Gaia Sense

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GAIA-PC list.  December 19, 1998

"I haven't responded right away to remarks (indicating that I wrote with arrogant tone in my last post) because I was taken aback a little by the extreme direction (that) my original remarks (were taken) in ... a direction I didn't intend. There was no intention to be arrogant or superior-sounding. And there is very little I can "teach" you folks, your competence and wisdom and hard work in many areas to protect and advance and enact Gaian concerns leaves me in the dust.

I speny many early years attending a Quaker grade school in Philadelphia.    Every congregant was expected to rise during Meeting and share something ..   of spiritual or personal importance ... or at least interest. (Quite an
experience for a Jewish boy !) And so I've carried that atitude:  of everybody as a competent spiritual expressor, (preacher/teacher) throughout my life.  It's in the image of that sharing that I use the word 'preaching' ... and I guess I'm not always clear about that. Sorry.

I do not concur that GAIA-PC is self-insulated. In fact, the diversity of members' interests and activities is very impressive. The intent of my original posting re Douthwaite was to clarify the importance of a focussed graspable message when trying to motivate communities and populations into actively changing their behaviors. Which is all the more difficult when there are so many different organizational formats that people are already involved with. Different kinds of governments structures, different management flows in corporations, different sets of values in communities, and in cultures at large.

They have incredible inertia. People are used to them ... wieldy or not, functionally competent, or sufficient, or not. It's tough to turn people, let alone have them undo all that they've become acceptant of.

What I hope is easier, is to hold up an image of what the long term goal is .. a style of organization and coordination which enables a system to be wholisticly interfunctional, competent, and self-ful (versus 'selfish'; {I
heard this word used on an Oprah Winfrey program recently... and liked it very much}). I think it's important for a society to have an overall sense-of-itself, to be (at least subliminally) cognizant of its role and proportion and destiny and place in the world. If an individual thrives best with a positive self-image, is it any less true of a culture, of a world population? No. In fact it's more so.

What I was trying to say in that post is that I think Gaia-PC can be a very very valuable voice .. saying something established and known ... in a very new way ... fresh and meaningful ... which people will hear, understand, and
identify with. They'll 'get it' finally.

What ever the regional and local efforts and styles of re-organizing are tried, the overarching and consistent message should be ... do what works - what ever it is ... as long as the result is building smooth holistic re-integration of human activities in with the full metabolism of the planet. Humanity is a piece of the living body. Humanity is not a self-sufficient organism that can de-animate the rest of the world as if it were merely a granite pillar to support our achievments and future and relationship with creation alone.

I didn't want to see the conversations here get sidetracked on narrow interpretations of social mechanisms or old perceptions.

Big or small, tall or skinny, robust or meagre, local, regional, or transnational ... it's not the 'form' or structure that counts, it seems to me, its the vision of co-involvement, knowing that the pond ripples affect all the waters, and sometime somewhere will come back to re-inforce or haunt what we do each day and moment. With that picture that criteria always before our eyes, good systems ... correct and useful ... will emerge."

Jamie

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