Creating Solutions — Blog Action Day
What would happen if every blog published posts discussing the same issue, on the same day? Blog Action Day is one day, thousands of voices, one issue — the environment.
If we can create problems, we can create solutions.
Until very recently in human history, we didn’t even know we had an environment.
Our awareness that we have an environment and that human actions can affect it represent an evolution of consciousness. This is the first time that a living entity threatened with extinction has been aware of that danger. Every other extinct being on this planet had no idea the threat was there or the end was coming; and had they known, they couldn’t have done anything about it.
There is a unique, massive amount of hope associated with humanity’s threat of extinction — the very fact that we know that we contribute to the environmental degradation of our planet shows us proof that we can affect it.
So, knowing we can affect the biosphere negatively — that we can affect it at all — means we have the power to positively impact it as well.
That’s huge.
Our impact didn’t happen overnight, it didn’t result from the actions of an isolated few, it accumulated. The way forward, the way out, will come from cumulative actions as well.
Technology is Evil?
Please. That is an absolutely ignorant statement — it’s also a cop out. People label things as evil so they don’t have to feel responsible for them. It transfers the power elsewhere, says it can’t be your fault.
You need consciousness and motivation and intention for evil. The tools themselves do not have this consciousness. If that were the case then sticks would be evil — stones, verbal grunts, symbols painted on cave walls, fire pits.
To return to some state prior to this evil, we’d have to go back before homo sapiens and erase all development. Yes, maybe that is the Story of the Fall — Adam and Eve, ignorant in the Garden, wandering around hunting and gathering with their bare hands. Yes, with Knowledge comes responsibility — to wield it properly, to be accountable for the actions taken.
We get it. We know what we screwed up — it is our technology that reveals this to us. Our emerging universal awareness is collective, connected, dispersed like a hologram across all human consciousness. All together we make messes; all together we fix them.
Try a cooking metaphor — what happens to the kitchen when you prepare a large meal? You make an enormous mess. Nobody’s running around like Chicken Little calling food preparation evil. Grow up. Clean up.
Problems bear their own solutions. The accumulated knowledge, technology, and actions of human beings made a mess in the kitchen. The same tools that created the problems will produce the solutions.
The tools are not the problem.
- How to fire a gun can be used to murder someone or feed your family.
- How to split the atom can be applied to making bombs or to harness zero-point energy.
- How to take the earth apart and put it back together allow strip-mining or nanotechnology.
We have plenty of gloom-and-doom stories — via our technological advances, these horrors reach everyone. So what happens when we use our evolved awareness and connectivity to spread stories of hope and brilliant solutions?
The unconscious actions that created the mess required a certain amount of ignorance and lack of collective focus. The actions and awareness of the individual ended with the individual, even as the cumulative effects continued to grow. Now, an 11-year-old kid with a great idea can share it with a blog and it becomes available to the world.
What will the world look like when every brilliant idea can be initiated, shared, and worked on by all of us? We already know — it’s called open source technology. The coded wisdom behind this page, the reason you can read this, is one tiny, incredible example of what we can make simply because we want to and because we can. Someone had a great idea, and it evolved through collective action.
Doesn’t that make you incredibly hopeful?
Now that we know…
We know what the problem is — what’s the solution? Find it, share it, lend your voice to the future. Everything we make starts with an idea.
We need a vision — an inkling, a conversation — about how to create the world in which we want to live.
Seek Wisdom — Practice Love
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12 Responses to “Creating Solutions — Blog Action Day”
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“Everything we make starts with an idea.” - I think that is the key point, before any significant widespread action can be taken more people need this idea and to share it.I hope this day moves us a little further along that path …
Slade,
I smile at the striking similarities between our posts.
Yes, we have a problem, but the solution is in our hands. Perhaps it’s time to start using our tools to their fullest potential.
Chris,
The suggestions you make in your post — things to consider the next time you make a purchase — is practical, useful… It goes well beyond the general “We can do it!” message I’m preaching here to represent an example of how we can.
And I’m not surprised at all to see that you share my views of how blogging can contribute and make a difference.
Kudos for digging deep for those specifics, man!
Check out Chris Garrett’s Blog Action Day post
Noticing the world around us
Vitor,
I’m not surprised at all to see how your message about responsibility, choice, and hope reinforces my own, like striking a chord to a note in a song…
Check out Vitor’s Blog Action Day post
Our Choice
Adam Kayce | MonkatWork asks the question
Like Chris G’s post, I truly commend Adam for taking on the challenge of presenting practical — actionable — solutions with examples of how to take a basic question and apply it to choices in everyday life.
I found it particularly useful.
Check out Adam’s Blog Action Day post
Leave That Which Makes You Doubt
[…] Update: You can check out my Blog Action Day post Creating Solutions on Shift Your Spirits […]
We need to bring spirit into business…corporate spirituality is the solution. When companies realize a greater profit from implementing policies that include honoring another’s path, letting go of ego drama, encouraging creative solutions and devotion to a task out of love, a shift will occur that will eventually become global. Time to be glad that corporations run the world, yes?
Carol,
I couldn’t agree with you more.
I remember my Daddy, who is an environmental scientist for a federal agency, telling me, when I was a kid, that we could expect to see environmentally-conscious programs such as recycling become incredibly effective when someone discovers a way to profit from it.
What he meant by that was essentially if altruism and moral motivations were powerful enough, they would’ve already affected the shift we wish to see.
I predict that the corporations who successfully harness energy alternatives are not likely to be new companies or organizations, but the existing “bad guys” — remaining entrenched in the current system is money driven. The largest polluting entities are the most likely to be put out of business — therefore, it is their greatest interest, in terms of economic survival, to create the solutions and own them.
We don’t need Brand New, so much as we need that internal shift in the Already Existing that you speak of…
[…] And thanks to all those who commented on the previous post so far: Jon, Dave Lucas, Liz Strauss, Slade, Joanna Young Share This Tags: blog, community, conversation, intention […]
Slade,
The internal shift is already happening and you are a part of it. As more people begin to feel disillusioned with the material world and turn to spirituality for answers, that change is going to be present in all they do.
Institutional morality and integrity is wholly subjective to the institution’s goals and principles - religions, governments, corporations. But true spirituality is an all-encompassing individual experience that changes your entire outlook on who you are and why you are here.
Spiritual people dont lie or cheat not because someone tells them it’s bad but because it is uncomfortable, even painful to do so. Spiritual workers are more productive because they give their undivided attention to every task, dont have the sort of stress-related behaviors and illnesses as other folk and view problems as learning opportunities not disasters.
And, finally, there is the nature of spirituality…we are creatures of light and the more we shine, the more we spark the light in others. People will choose the products and services of spiritually-tuned companies without even knowing why especially, except that it feels good.
Future generations will view these days as the “dark ages of business” and look at corporate greed and exploitation as a disease similar to the black plague that was once powerful but eventually eradicated by progress.
~ Carol
[…] And thanks to all those who commented on the previous post so far: Jean Browman, Christopher Tysh, Gayle, Slade, Rhett, Sue Melone, Biren Share This Tags: experience, freedom, intuition, productivity, service, special, work […]
[…] The paths forward barely exist in our modern culture — we have few images of the future — we’re still stuck looking backward… Wringing our hands about what a mess we’ve made on Mother’s carpet and how we have to put it all back together… […]