To Save Our Home Planet:
Let's Broaden Our Very Narrow Minds!!!
Statement on World Environment Day 2010
By Ed Aurelio C. Reyes
Secretary-General, World Environment Day-Philippines Network
(WED-Phils., also named Green Families and Communities Network)
From our humble archipelago between the largest ocean, to our east, and the largest landmass, to our west, and from amidst our people in whose hearts "the twain actually does meet," we dare raise our humble voice to plead that we all heed the plea of the smallest living cell of Life for us to help preserve that Life.
.
...... The inexorable realities of fierce competition among life forms for the favor of surviving the moment-to-moment challenges of Darwinian natural selection does not threaten to extinguish that Life itself. Left alone to its own wildest wind and water storms, to its own immense tectonic collisions, to its own frequent quakes and eruptions, and to its own cycles of axial polarity shifts, the planet does not threaten to extinguish that Life itself. Human activities do, and they have inflicted much harm, to put it kindly
.
...... What do threaten and harm entire species, families and kingdoms of life forms on this planet are effects from the repeated and sustained activities of the supposedly-wisest of these life forms on this planet, the homo sapiens who swaggers on this earth to lengthen his life and make his life and only his life comfortable, using his supposed wisdom. But such brand of wisdom his physical and consciousness evolution has so far afforded man has accorded him with a very narrow mind.
.
...... With many noble exceptions that cannot, anyway, lessen the effect of the dominant narrow mind-set, man has not evolved within himself the broadmindedness needed to go beyond his own safe skin. He has not yet learned the reality of "fellow-man," much less, of "fellow species" of Biodiversity on this earth. Locked in the narrowness of his consciousness, he has learned only the value of his own instantaneous moment of existence, and has denied himself of the benefits of real historical memory and a real sense of foresight.
.
...... Given just a precious few more dozen years or so to unite on a common mind and will to stop climate change from going beyond the "tragic rubicon" of "having a maximum 350 parts per million of CO2 in our atmosphere," man's more powerful governments were allowed to keep their own narrow minds for justifying and maintaining comfortably wasteful lifestyles for a minute elite, who have never really learned about "other people" and never learned to be concerned over how these (namely, we!) barely live.
.
...... And so, with the feeble technically defensible but obviously morally-condemnable failure to "seal the deal in Copenhagen" last December, the "world leaders" now have to face the same big life-and-death challenge to curb global warming with the same narrow mindset over a much shorter timeframe. Although we have been predisposed to celebrate "Earth Day" and "World Environment Day" every year, this is obviously not the time for any celebration.
.
...... The rest of the billion people in the world are apparently not concerned enough to really lift a finger to help avert the environmental catastrophe. Shackled by real and imagined conditions and feelings of powerlessness by governments and institutions that would even habitually invoke their own collective name, the majority of humans apparently think we can still afford just to categorically excuse ourselves of substantial involvement ("Sorry, we're busy!"), or just sigh and whimper and then immediately shift our attention to many distractive affairs that would not force us to work too hard or work at all for the sake of life forms outside our own families houses within our respective neighborhoods.
.
...... The "New Seed" Declaration of commitment of families and communities to actively defend the environment as our collective home, (see http://newseed.8m.net/) has had moderate initial spread in the Philippines and beyond, but it is being met in many instances with questions like "Why bother?" or with more polite non-responses. A similar effect has been had with the less-than-moderate spread of the Earth Synergy poem, titled "A Giant Leap for Humankind," since 2000. (see http://love-life.faithweb.com/poem-eng.htm; send inquiries and comments on this to wedphils@yahoo.com.)
.
...... We don't know if its is just lack of information or really a lack of I.Q., to derive the logical conclusions from the information and muster enough strength of will to act, that Humankind desperately lacks.
.
. .... Without the broadminded real intelligence that humans can have, we are apparently preparing to perish still clueless as to where we shall have fallen short. Well, as some say, there is bliss in ignorance. And we can only pray that before the great Day of Doom, sleeping gas would be combined with all the greenhouse gases, that continue to be emitted undeterred, so we can all simply intensify what we have been doing beyond the fruitless high-level conferencing that we have been doing... we can continue sleeping and die smiling in slumber sans even sighs of regret.
.
...... Can we change such a tragic and gloomy ending to World and Human History? With much difficulty we still actually can. A great place to start is our narrow minds about our billions of "totally disconnected" selves, and start seriously developing our collective thinking and feeling about the concept of ourself.
.
...... Dare we start this historical process on June 5, World Environment Day? Let's do it! Let's seal the deal among ourselves, whatever our governments and institutions do or refuse to do! And whatever we have to do to actively defend our environment, let's do it well, and let's do it together, fully conscious of our oneness among all Humans and within our broader synergy and Biodiversity.
Quezon City, Philippines
5 June, 2010
Let's Broaden Our Very Narrow Minds!!!
Statement on World Environment Day 2010
By Ed Aurelio C. Reyes
Secretary-General, World Environment Day-Philippines Network
(WED-Phils., also named Green Families and Communities Network)
From our humble archipelago between the largest ocean, to our east, and the largest landmass, to our west, and from amidst our people in whose hearts "the twain actually does meet," we dare raise our humble voice to plead that we all heed the plea of the smallest living cell of Life for us to help preserve that Life.
.
...... The inexorable realities of fierce competition among life forms for the favor of surviving the moment-to-moment challenges of Darwinian natural selection does not threaten to extinguish that Life itself. Left alone to its own wildest wind and water storms, to its own immense tectonic collisions, to its own frequent quakes and eruptions, and to its own cycles of axial polarity shifts, the planet does not threaten to extinguish that Life itself. Human activities do, and they have inflicted much harm, to put it kindly
.
...... What do threaten and harm entire species, families and kingdoms of life forms on this planet are effects from the repeated and sustained activities of the supposedly-wisest of these life forms on this planet, the homo sapiens who swaggers on this earth to lengthen his life and make his life and only his life comfortable, using his supposed wisdom. But such brand of wisdom his physical and consciousness evolution has so far afforded man has accorded him with a very narrow mind.
.
...... With many noble exceptions that cannot, anyway, lessen the effect of the dominant narrow mind-set, man has not evolved within himself the broadmindedness needed to go beyond his own safe skin. He has not yet learned the reality of "fellow-man," much less, of "fellow species" of Biodiversity on this earth. Locked in the narrowness of his consciousness, he has learned only the value of his own instantaneous moment of existence, and has denied himself of the benefits of real historical memory and a real sense of foresight.
.
...... Given just a precious few more dozen years or so to unite on a common mind and will to stop climate change from going beyond the "tragic rubicon" of "having a maximum 350 parts per million of CO2 in our atmosphere," man's more powerful governments were allowed to keep their own narrow minds for justifying and maintaining comfortably wasteful lifestyles for a minute elite, who have never really learned about "other people" and never learned to be concerned over how these (namely, we!) barely live.
.
...... And so, with the feeble technically defensible but obviously morally-condemnable failure to "seal the deal in Copenhagen" last December, the "world leaders" now have to face the same big life-and-death challenge to curb global warming with the same narrow mindset over a much shorter timeframe. Although we have been predisposed to celebrate "Earth Day" and "World Environment Day" every year, this is obviously not the time for any celebration.
.
...... The rest of the billion people in the world are apparently not concerned enough to really lift a finger to help avert the environmental catastrophe. Shackled by real and imagined conditions and feelings of powerlessness by governments and institutions that would even habitually invoke their own collective name, the majority of humans apparently think we can still afford just to categorically excuse ourselves of substantial involvement ("Sorry, we're busy!"), or just sigh and whimper and then immediately shift our attention to many distractive affairs that would not force us to work too hard or work at all for the sake of life forms outside our own families houses within our respective neighborhoods.
.
...... The "New Seed" Declaration of commitment of families and communities to actively defend the environment as our collective home, (see http://newseed.8m.net/) has had moderate initial spread in the Philippines and beyond, but it is being met in many instances with questions like "Why bother?" or with more polite non-responses. A similar effect has been had with the less-than-moderate spread of the Earth Synergy poem, titled "A Giant Leap for Humankind," since 2000. (see http://love-life.faithweb.com/poem-eng.htm; send inquiries and comments on this to wedphils@yahoo.com.
...... We don't know if its is just lack of information or really a lack of I.Q., to derive the logical conclusions from the information and muster enough strength of will to act, that Humankind desperately lacks.
.
. .... Without the broadminded real intelligence that humans can have, we are apparently preparing to perish still clueless as to where we shall have fallen short. Well, as some say, there is bliss in ignorance. And we can only pray that before the great Day of Doom, sleeping gas would be combined with all the greenhouse gases, that continue to be emitted undeterred, so we can all simply intensify what we have been doing beyond the fruitless high-level conferencing that we have been doing... we can continue sleeping and die smiling in slumber sans even sighs of regret.
.
...... Can we change such a tragic and gloomy ending to World and Human History? With much difficulty we still actually can. A great place to start is our narrow minds about our billions of "totally disconnected" selves, and start seriously developing our collective thinking and feeling about the concept of ourself.
.
...... Dare we start this historical process on June 5, World Environment Day? Let's do it! Let's seal the deal among ourselves, whatever our governments and institutions do or refuse to do! And whatever we have to do to actively defend our environment, let's do it well, and let's do it together, fully conscious of our oneness among all Humans and within our broader synergy and Biodiversity.
Quezon City, Philippines
5 June, 2010
For a fuller articulation of the spirit of this message, with data supplied as addenda, please read http://love-life.faithweb.com/biped.htm.)
