April 29, 2022
Where are we in our history? We are in a moment of truth that is absolute.
The system has gone, Rome has fallen. And now, here we are out among the fallen statues and cement, among the flowers and the grasses, opening up the picnic basket and sitting down to talk about where to go from here.
As I write fires are burning out of control in California, they are also burning out of control in Arizona, New Mexico and indeed even in Siberia, Russia.
California is heading into its third season of drought, at this point termed, “a mega drought.” Many farmers are saying they cannot even plant crops this summer that they have formally planted every summer. The water reservoirs are lower than they have ever been, and there has been no winter snow meltdown to refill the rivers.
What does all this really mean?
We are looking at the full expression of human malpractice towards the Earth.
What happened in California? They were once enormous red wood forests, where are they now? Most of them have been cut, leaving the soils to dry out, along with other forests elsewhere. The worst mistake human beings ever made was to cut the trees.
The human race has never cared about any species other than itself. It has looked at everything else on the planet as something to made use of by us. We have no sense for the reality that the planet is, or of any connections we had with her. And so, we have ravaged and savaged the Earth. And now, everything is poisoned, all of the soils are depleted, because we have never allowed the Earth her fallow periods, time to recover from our savage assault on her, forcing the planet to serve our most irrelevant needs.
We always thought it was all made for us, to do with as we like.
And it is all now an issue of truth.
Noam Chomsky: America was settled on two crimes, slavery, and then the extinction of the Native North American people. I would add to these a third crime greater than either of the first two, the complete extinction of wildlife.
Lewis and Clark, early settlers of North America described game as so plentiful there was an animal every two feet. Where are they now? Gone, to be replaced by the white man’s version of paradise, suburbia, superhighways, and parking lots.
The prairies were once covered with buffalo, their feet perfectly adapted to the prairie sod. Where are they now? Shot from trains, for sport. And then also, replaced by cows, whose hoofs destroy the prairie sod altogether. White settlers had already trashed Europe with their farming habits, and then came to America and trashed the prairies.
The passenger pigeons, so numerous they filled the skies, gone. Sometimes for food, more often for sport.
The human race has been an unmitigated disaster for the Earth. And now it is all wake up time big time.
Spiritual masters say that human beings will do almost anything to avoid having to wake up. At this point, the Earth is going to force our hand. We are the money changers in the temple, and the Earth is turning over our tables.
What does it take to make people wake up? Standing in a subway with water up to their shoulders? Losing their home and their entire possessions in one night of a storm? Finding themselves stranded on a highway in a traffic jam, in freezing cold temperatures, no blankets no food, for several hours?
We are in deep trouble with the Earth. And we are also in deep economic trouble, that is at its base the reason the source of our malpractices toward the planet.
Take a look at the Earth. The soils are poisoned and depleted, eco systems are collapsing everywhere, totally out of balance. The streams and the lakes are full of chemicals, our garbage is accumulating in the oceans, our filthy oceans. Forests are gone, fisheries collapsing, drought and famine increasing everywhere.
And it would now seem that everything is coming to a head.
The ravaged state of the Earth is an expression of our sick souls, our own face writ large, it is a mirror for us.
And then, the virus appeared, in early 2020, the perfect expression of our malpractices toward the Earth.
Michael Moore: The virus is our wake-up call.
What happened? The whole of the modern world is an enormous economic machine running rough shod over the Earth leaving a trail of death and destruction behind it. And with the virus, just a tiny little molecule, the whole machine came to a virtual standstill.
The virus has been a godsend. It is the expression for every one of our malpractices toward the Earth. And then, everywhere, the economy went into lock down. For a great many people, lock down was wonderful, they discovered new values, they enjoyed working at home and being with children and pets. Lock down gave many people a time to think. They realized the cruelties of capitalism, of being expected to work for wages of $7.00 an hour, they realized they are being victimized by the system, and they decided not return to their old jobs.
Now, the economy as we have known it has crashed. As a result, supply lines are disappearing, prices going up everywhere, inflation, and now, a war and political turmoil as well.
It all really begins with our malpractice toward the planet, and now all of these issues are coming to a head.
David Suzuki is a prominent Canadian environmentalist. Some years back, he had a study compiled by many scientists claiming that the human race had only ten years to turn the whole thing around, after that we were on the path to our own extinction. He sent it to the major news station in Canada, but it never appeared. He called the station to ask why not, and they told him: Well, it wasn’t newsworthy.
The human race about to go extinct, not newsworthy? And he commented on the endless trivial pursuits that the human considers noteworthy, filling their minds with them.
The human race has always celebrated itself as the very pinnacle of creation, who could never do anything wrong. The deepest truth of the human race is that it is much given to stupidity, and we need to get ourselves out of it. Take the cod fishery in North America, all of the fishermen knew it was going. Photos from the 1930’s show cod six feet in length, after that they became smaller and smaller until in the 80’s they were about six inches long, and the cod fishery collapsed. After that, the fishermen went for sea bass, and when they disappeared went for crabs and lobsters, also now on their way to extinction.
What is the matter with human beings? Waiting for some divine sign from on high to change their ways?
This also happened with the forests.
Throughout the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s lumbermen were cutting the forest. No replanting, clearcutting. Environmentalist urged them to cease these practices, but their answer was: We have to cut the forest, this is our livelihood. And so, as they cut the forests, the planet warmed, the spruce budworm that always died off in the winter, now survived the whole year, and has taken out most of what remains in the boreal forest of North America.
The rainforest of South America is the lungs of the planet, able to absorb CO2 gases. It is now being cut with the intention of creating grasslands for cows to satisfy the American mania for beef.
And now, our destructive practices have destroyed the balance of virtually all ecosystems, plundering the planet at will, hounded millions of other species into extinction. Many scientists estimate we will cause an extinction of life forms as great as that which went with the dinosaurs when 97% of all life forms disappeared. Then, because of an asteroid, now because of an idiot.
Our wholesale destruction of the Earth is the expression of human arrogance and human ignorance, all of our economies are based on the destruction of the planet, now visible all around us, and if we are to survive here, then we must change our ways.
The human race has never cared for any species except itself, has taken every other species on the planet as something to be made use of by us, and now, to be turned into consumer items to be converted into money in the bank.
The human race has always taken itself to be the most important being on the Earth, but no matter what high opinion we have had of ourselves, and what low opinion of everything else on the planet, we have simply proven ourselves unworthy of the bright array of beings who share the planet with us. And the Earth may well withdraw her support of us.
Human beings have taken themselves to be the pinnacle of creation, but we are the chief parasite of the planet, and the Earth may have realized she harbors this dangerous parasite and has found a way with global warming and climate change, to get rid of us.
2. And so, this moment of truth. The greatest gift of the virus has been after four years run by lies, people now wanted to know the truth of this life-threatening disease, for the first time in a very long time, they wanted to learn from scientists, and from physicians, all about the virus, how to protect themselves and their families, and so on.
People also want to know the truth about global warming, why these storms are getting larger and more devasting all the time, and so on. Why are the subways in New York flooding, why has the weather gone crazy?
My sense is that after four years of the kind of wishy-washy lies of political leaders, people everywhere hunger for the truth.
When Biden took office, he promised that his administration would be based on science and truth.
What passed for truth in the last four years has been something like “if the President says that is what happened, then that is what happened.” Rudy Giuliani brought 50 lawsuits to overturn the election, claiming that the election was rigged. Judge after judge said it is all very well for the President to say this, but I need to see the evidence.
Evidence? What has that got to do with anything?
A cartoon in the New Yorker: A son asking his father, what is science? I don’t know was the reply. We are Republicans.
Ronald Regan is a classic case of misinformation. The human race does not need trees, trees are just getting in our way, we need to cut them down.
What has happened over the years is that the human race has lost its connection with the Earth, and only our connection with the Earth, the ultimate source of our lives, can ground our thinking. When one loses our Earth connection as most people have, then you lose all touchstone with truth. And now the human race is convinced that the planet is really an engineering problem, and we have lost our barring’s totally. We are a great big hot air balloon of words that has slipped its moorings and is now drifting over the Earth pushed and pulled by the winds that blow.
When you lose your Earth connection, you are lost. And our failure to know the truth of the Earth is in all of our political thinking, our thought traditions, advertising and economics, capitalism, all of it grounded in an ultimate falsehood about the Earth because we never got the Earth right.
And now everything is coming to a head all at once.
I have spoken about the Love orientation. Truth is an aspect of Love. Jesus taught Love. And he added before Pilot, all who are in truth hear my voice. Truth is an aspect of Love. More and more, with every new crisis’s showing up in the Earth people are realizing how much they Love the planet. Every fresh oil spill, every group of whales beaching themselves, all of the birds caught in windmills, the tragedy happening everywhere with the animals, the cruelty of agri-business, are awakening people to their Love of the planet and to their desire to help.
Truth is an aspect of Love, if our Love of the planet inspires us to help her, we need to know something about her. We need to know something about all of the connections that exist among species, we want to understand ecosystems. When BP oil spill in the Gulf happened, every night NBC news was down there, filming the efforts to save the ducks and the geese, to clean oil from them, explaining how ecosystems work.
The insanity that the human race has now bought into, is finally making people want to know the truth, and it begins with knowing the truth about the Earth, and with it, the untruth of everything else.
I am proposing to you that all of the crisis’ we see around us, on all levels and depths, owe to a long civilization based on a tissue of lies, that have now run their course, and are disintegrating all around us.
The system has gone, and thank heaven that it has, because now we can think about rebuilding our shattered economies, our political systems, on a whole new foundation of Love, and of Truth.
Okay, now let’s talk.
