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CONNECTING THE DOTS:
From Resource Wars to the Rise of Planetarian Culture |
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EON, The Ecological Options Network is dedicated to “connecting the dots” both of the present geopolitical puzzle and the future promise of the planetization process. From Globalization to Planetization - the Planetarian Vision Whether we view ourselves primarily as citizens of the United States, of another country, as citizens of the planet, or all of the above, we are all, each in our own ways, now struggling to understand the underlying patterns of present unfolding events and how we can put our shoulders to the wheel of intentional evolution and work with others toward a peaceful, sustainable future for ourselves and our descendants. While it's important to understand the “deep background” of current developments domestically and internationally beyond the spin and hype of propaganda and managed news, it's also imperative not to lose sight of the larger historical picture - the co-evolutionary drama in which we are all, consciously or not, contributing actors. As U.S. citizens we urgently need to connect the dots of the present terrorism/counter-terrorism, corporate-driven “globalization” puzzle. What our government does in our name impacts mightily on the rest of the world. As world citizens we simultaneously need to connect the dots of the emerging people-driven “planetization” movement. This exciting new 21st century co-evolutionary development outframes the outmoded 20th century “dominator politics” of the past and puts “cultural creatives” and international “civil society” in a pivotal, democratic, counterbalancing role to the powers of transnational corporations and the official institutions that govern on their behalf to the detriment of human rights and ecological continuity. We are privileged and challenged to be living through a major historical cross-disolve as old entropic patterns play themselves out and new syntropic patterns arise. We are participant-observers in an age of transition between a self-deconstructing industrial and economic “globalized” world disorder and a self-generating biospheric and noetic “planetized” society. Like most births, it's both frightening and awe-inspiring. From Homeland Security to Homeplanet Security The “sound and fury,” smoke and flames of the current conflict can dominate the foreground of our field of vision, obscuring the broader, deeper epocal landscape of which they are a significant, but not determining part. For it is clear that in an ecosphere wherein “everything is connected to everything else,” “homeland security” for one nation-state can never be achieved at the expense of “homeplanet security” for all the members of the entire international community. What are the new social, political and economic forms, the relationship forms; the sustainable technologies, the innovative institutions that have emerged at the local, national, regional and global levels in response to the multiple converging planetary survival threats we face as a species? Who are the individuals, groups, companies and institutions that are helping to create a democratic, peaceful and ecologically sustainable future? From multi-lateral personal relationships to multi-lateral global institutions; from intentional communities to international networks of CSO's (civil society organizations); from consensus decision-making to non-violent conflict resolution; from sexual healing to universal human rights; from straw-bale construction to a solar economy, the EON site is looking at some of the key elements of a new transnational culture growing up through the cracks in the status quo. The EON team is researching, reporting on, teaching about and working to co-create, support and embody the new institutions, economic models, political and social forms and liberatory technologies based on humane and ecological values. We will continue to highlight those methods that are being invented, adapted and deployed by individuals, groups, corporations and governments around the world, to meet the converging “manmade” crises brought on by the globalization of corporatist industrial profit-driven values, practices and institutions. We emphasize working models embodying the key value shifts crucial to the shift from corporate industrial based culture to a culture of enlightenment. |
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From control based To cooperation based
From exploitation based To compassion based From possession based To liberation based From short term profit based To long term sustainability |
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"Crisis Clusters' are paired with 'Eco-Option Clusters"
As one takes an informed look at the world today, it is as if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - Pestilence, Famine, War and Death - have been merged, through leveraged buy-outs and hostile take-overs, into a larger, vertically and horizontally integrated Big 4 - |
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Corporate-led Globalization, Nationalism, Fundamentalism and Militarism |
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Their wild and reckless ride across the world brings us what political analyst Susan George calls the four converging, overlapping and interrelated “Crisis Clusters” that together characterize the opening of the 21st century: |
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The Environmental Destruction Cluster
The Poverty and Inequality Cluster The Democracy & Empowerment Crisis Cluster The Looming Economic Crisis Cluster |
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In the light of new emerging revelations, we would add:
The Energy/Peak Oil Crisis Cluster |
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Lest we despair, let us hasten to add that substantial counter forces, some of them not yet on the ruling elites' radar screens, are rising to meet and transform the four new Apocalyptic Riders (plus one) with what we call Planetarian Solution Clusters: | ||||||||||||||||||||
The Environmental Sustainability Solution Cluster,
The Eqalitarian Justice Solution Cluster The Democratic Empowerment Solution Cluster The Eco-Economics Solution Cluster The Eco-Energy Solution Cluster. |
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Reports of “the End of History” Have Been Greatly Exaggerated - Another World is Happening “History,” said Time Machine author, H.G. Wells, “is a race between education and catastrophe.” Now, as the petro-philes of the current administration strut their arrogant, unilateral stuff on the world stage -- abrogating treaties, bombing, threatening, sanctioning, engineering coups, installing puppet regimes, supporting dictators and oligarchs, causing unspeakable misery, scoffing at international law abroad, trampling civil rights at home, targeting 60 countries in its pursuit of “Full Spectrum Dominance” (as the weapons wonks call it) --- a growing number of “observers” have begun to wonder if history isn't now more precisely, a race between the demise of the biosphere and the deconstruction of the American Empire. |
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Converging, Interacting Global Crises Vectors (All arguably traceable to unchecked, entropic corporate rule.) Climate Change - carbon loading of the atmosphere by industry Epidemics Social Dislocations - Refugees - Mass cross-border population flows Subjugation of Women Biosphere Destabilization Resource Depletion - Diversity Loss - Biological & Cultural Militarism & Institutionalized Violence, State and 'private' terrorism Elite Media Control Weapons of Mass Destruction - nuclear, chemical & biological Poverty/Health Gaps Pollution - Technological Intoxication - chemical, nuclear, EMR Human Rights Violations - labor, children, minorities, indigenous peoples Ecological Option Vectors (Civil Society-led initiatives of syntropic innovation.) Civil Society-led Democratic Governance Bio-Regionalism Bio-Benign Technology Bio-Remediation Food Health Eco-Economics Non-Violent Conflict Resolution Community Self-Reliance, Going Local Celebration & perpetuation of diversity - cultural & biological De-Corporatization - 're-regulation,' enforced corporate accountability Expanded Relationship & Family Forms Human / All Gender / All Species Rights Universal Access to Education & Information Biomimicry in industrial and social design Multi-lateral, Democratic Regional & International Institutions |
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What the World Wants
Back in 1991 the World Game Institute published a chart entitled “What the World Wants.” It listed 14 objectives, showed their interlinkages, and gave supporting data and strategies to “make the point that what the world needs to solve the major systemic problems confronting humanity is both available and affordable.” Those objectives :
Another useful metaphor is the cinematic “cross-dissolve,” in which the fade-out of one scene overlaps the fade-in of another. “Freeze” the film the middle of the dissolve and both scenes are present, superimposed on each other in the same frame. It's as if in this period we're in the middle of a long, slow, historical “cross-dissolve.” The incoming scene of a post-corporate world of Enlightened Cultures of cooperation, liberation, conservation and long-term sustainability is just beginning its fade-in to visibility, while the present corporate scene of competition, control, exploitation and short-term profit is almost imperceptibly beginning its fade-out. SOUTH - NORTH LINKAGES .
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Local Self-Reliance Indigenous Rights/Wisdom Links - General Education Communications/Media/News Planetary Policies Eco-Transportation Human Rights Alternative International Institutions Cultural Transformation Consciousness/Evolution Eco-Community Bio-Benign Technologies/Biomimicry Non-violence/Peace/Real Security Real Democracy Food/Agriculture Energy Eco-Economics Alternative Health and Healing |
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Neither Cassandra nor Pollyanna
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The Forum of the Poor, micro credit banks, peasant cooperatives and alternative currencies in Thailand Grassroots urban economic democracy and waste recycling in Curitiba, Brazil Integrated Pest Management in the Philippines The Grameen Bank - microcredit & coops in Bengladesh Wave power electrical generation in Scotland and Canada Wind power generation in Denmark and Holland Non-violent conflict resolution in Darmsala's Tibetan exile community Permaculture in Australia and No., Central and So. America and Asia The international “eco-village” movement The international intentional community movement Economic democracy in Kerala, India The Landless Peasant Movement in Brazil The “Earth Charter” initiative process “Cradle-to-Cradle” extended resource responsibility by industries in the European Union Gaviotas in Columbia WOOF - the World Organization of Organic Farmers Union-led municipal government in Puerto Alegre, Brazil The international Jubilee 2000 movement to “forgive” third world debt U.S. Municipally owned utility districts using renewable energy sources |
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These examples are only a small representative sample of what preliminary research suggests are thousands of working alternatives which together form what we've begun thinking of as “ECOS” - the Emerging Culture of Sustainability. The prospect of mapping and mirroring ECOS to its many contributors and to the widest possible public gives us great juice and enthusiasm which we hope you share. We find it to be a welcome antidote to the current depressing political developments in the U.S.. There's a big world community out there, ECOS is rising, "another world IS possible" and sooner or later, grudgingly or willingly, Washington, the right, the left, the oiligarchy , the TNC's and the technocrats are going to have to get with it. |
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