COMMUNITY DEMOCRACY
TO BE A PEOPLE OF OUR PLACE — WELL NOURISHED in BODY, MIND & SPIRIT
What is the character of our place and period, the conditions of our lives as human communities in the present age?
The first of three pamphlets sets the scene about our time and place, and its social conditions, trends and influences.
It starts with the following prologue:
If the water in a glass is half way, it is half full to an optimist and half empty to a pessimist. Or so they say.
But being a pessimist or an optimist is just a state of mind, and is irrelevant to the reality of the situation. When it comes to the crunch, what is important is being realistic.
Whether the level is half way is also not really the point. What matters more is whether the level is rising or falling. It is the direction or trend that is informative, with life being about change and processes not static states.
We live in the present, with the conditions of our time and place, but with imagination we can foresee trends and patterns of change. This allows us to be responsive and proactive, and thereby more capable and creative in the way we live our lives.
If we look at the ‘glasses’ of our time and place, many are reaching empty, while some are overflowing. There are severe imbalances, which have a very destructive potential. Life is all about exchange, and the continual cycling of energy and nutrients through all parts of the whole integrated system. Excessive accumulations and over consumption by some parts at the expense of others is distorting, and brings forth countervailing forces of destructive cleansing and re-balancing.
We respond to our excesses, or we are destroyed.
The present human population and its consumption is clearly an excessive burden on the world and life on planet Earth.
Where are the responses to this excess? Will people respond sufficiently, and say, “Enough.” Or will we suffer a destructive cleansing by the forces of the Earth, with a withdrawal of support from the ecosystems of life?
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