Artistic Footprint

As far as climate change goes, there seems to be a trend of ideas that don’t seem to jive with a process of understanding that is truly necessary to find solutions.

First of all, it’s important to know, that the solution to climate change is already fully available, it simply needs to be implemented

When the size of our planet is grasped, and even accounted into its potential, Earth is simply a closed system. Nothing comes in or goes out of significance. What we have to work with is all we’ve ever had and ever will.

It’s also important to be aware of the chemistry and physics of change. The expenditure of energy will likely result in heat or the storage of it’s potential energy. There is no quick solution like inventing a product that makes cold.

In select cases, it’s very possibly to get more by using less, which, if implemented as a systemic change, can create a dramatic solution. Simple technological advancements, powered by the capitalist demand for sustainability can alter our impact without compromising the comforts we have evolved to become accustomed to.

What is key is knowledge. We must be exposed to the realities of Earth’s fragility on a daily basis and passionately believe we are responsible for its conservation. We must appreciate, on a cellular level, how we are at the mercy of its will.

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Even a humble witness of the world can say that good is stark. From the beginning of conscious memory we are indoctrinated to believe that all is good and that if evil prevails, our innocence at stake. It’s easy to concentrate on either side, but what does the world look like if it were placed on a spectrum of good and bad? Where would we sit? would the trends shift over variables like gender? nation? wealth? species? Who is the best of us all, and who is the worst? how do we set that standard? Who is responsible for altruism, and who for evil?

The childhood innocence is a false vile toxin. To grow up with the expectations of prosperity and unlimited resource, only to realise one day that it has costs – makes one feel undefined by the standards of true human nature. How do you break it to a child that nuclear weapons exist? How that the environment is exploited? or that people are tortured? Do you break it all at once over the dinner table? or do you slowly let him realise it on his own?

But how do we gauge the bad against altruistic progress? Is the world getting better? Are we advancing towards bliss?

Unfortunately we have all been force-fed the concept of super-sized all-inclusive bliss, and while we were enjoying the ample supply of life-multiplying resources, nobody stopped to wonder where it all came from. How were we able to leave the quest for food water and shelter, only to enter the rat-race of taxes, vanity,groceries, and dividends?

The advancement of privatized investigation, the growth of information technology, and people seeking truth, has brought the truth of human existence out of news-networked fear gimicks to our doorsteps to help us understand those costs. Over the past few years those of us willing have been bombarded with the truth – where our comforts, wealth, health, and happiness comes from – and at who’s expense.

A part of me forces myself to sit through gruesome, horrifying documentaries. Perhaps because I was born into the grouping of humanity, and I feel responsible for the actions of this species as a member. Perhaps because of my addiction to truth and my hatred for ignorance. I quickly felt my vision of a perfect world diminish in my dreams. The eden of good was never worth the cost of atrocity. I want to fight for the vision that was falsely placed in my dreams.

But I cannot live in fear of doom and hatred. I need to have a cause in my fight. So I listen and I watch, and I feel for all that is good to me. I understand where my happiness comes from and I seek it with whole-hearted appreciation. From the filling of my lungs and stomach to the beauty captured by my eyes and the excitement of life, I seek preservation of this overall sensation. I seek homeostasis, harmony, and sustainability. Eden can grow from there.

More than anything, I have begun to understand that the definition of humanity is wavering at best, dynamic in optimism, but likely more questionable and critical. If you are like me, and you seek truth through this new and overwhelming form of revealing information, you may find yourself scared into action, but helpless in your situation/ Remember this, because this is what helps me sleep at night:

1. You are not alone

2. Seek like-minded individuals

3. Relate your mindset with your environment

4. Make your beliefs part of yourself

5. Stand up for your beliefs

6. Take action at every opportunity

7. Expose the truth

8. Remember what you’re fighting for, sometimes which is worth dying for because to you, the cause is greater than yourself.

9. Seek new ways to overcome obstacles, and share them with the world.

We are at a turning point in humanity. We have reached our lowest point without even knowing it. You may say it’s not your fault that you were born into the world this way, but those same events are what made the world an acceptable place for you to be born into. It doesn’t mean volunteering for a food bank, or travelling to the far corners of the globe to save a whale – these are either for the die-hards or the miss-americas. Your debt for the right to live is to fulfill the definition of how you call yourself human. Thats as simple as believing in the air that you breathe, the food that you eat, and the laughter you share. This is your opportunity to fill your life with all these amazing things that make you you.

In a world of disconnection, it’s easy to flip a switch, twist a tap, or swipe a card, and all the conveniences of civility rush to your fingertips. And if ever something goes wrong, there are lights and sirens to grasp you from mistake. It’s hard to find a place where the borders of such comforts dwindle and the human is left to its own vices. We seek a world to promote a civilized, comfortable, unstained life and always have. I say, we have forgotten how powerful we are when left to the whims of nature and ourselves. To take off the blindfold of society and accept the risk of trust in oneself or one’s other and to become a local with the source of our being. To experience a tangible world by sipping from a river, leaning on a tree, or accepting the warmth of the sun. To simplify the future and prioritize the present based on the building of the past. One cannot be happy until sadness has been felt, and the same applies to hunger, loneliness, or safety. The only way to be scared, hungry, or lonesome is by taking the first step into the unknown and leaving the structure of sterilized life behind. Escape from the rat race makes time slow and life last longer.

I miss the days when machine was operated by hand instead of button, when you knew someone loved you because they’d actually look into your eyes or touch your hand. When warmth came with the smell of smoke and light had a time limit, or when the classroom was the story of a salty-dog’s chance at life. The feeling of being animal cannot be fabricated in the synthetic jungle of career and commute; the smell of sanitized air and taste of purified water is toxic to me.

Whats lacking is the recognition of truth; that life is meant to be a struggle. The materialism of consumer greed, social status, and hardship solving has turned us into incapable wimps set on providing solutions to every problem. Its said that one person will surround themselves with like-minded people in order to achieve what cannot be done alone. I look at the world and I see people who will pick up a phone the moment disaster strikes, as opposed to dashing to the streets to sustain civility until hiding in the hills from it. I take comfort in the friends that are awaiting disaster, in fact packed for it, because they are the ones who  have already lived and plan on inserting another quarter.

How can you appreciate your life if you have not felt close to death?

Its always been “They” – this organized group of people, like mystical creatures of the night building and inventing and designing ways to make the world turn, only to earn the name “They”
They have always been on the top floor looking over us with eagle eyes and conspiring ideas to make us walk in step. Something behind every TV screen, inside every nameless face on the bus, every question of inadequacy. But They are nobody. They are not the executives or diplomats. They is the world which we have created. An economic god that produces progression necessary for growth, documented by autonomous media centres and enforced by standard justice, created by us to live in a world of bliss.
The new human is no different from the old. necessities, hardships, experience, and stimulation are the drive to make us “we”. We walk the fabricated hallways, breathe the synthetic air, taste the modified food. You and I are smart, but We are stupid. We obey flashing lights. Stare in the same direction and step in stride. We live in materialism and pursue infunctional dreams in systemic lives of structure, like death was an appointment.
A confrontation between the created supremity of They and the sheepish world of We is upon us. Our advantage is only the last breaths of memory in an unsterilized environment. To seek a world outside of that which we created. To see the beyond the retailers, plastics, memos, bank books and structure to reenter the wild from whence we came; and understand the real necessity, hardship, experience, and stimulation.

No one can deny that the world is always in transition. The ominous prospect of death and destruction has been side by side with  man since the beginning of history. But perhaps this is the first time the Earth has been in transition in the modern world. Scientists and protection agencies will tell you that the polar frontiers are melting, that the ocean is acidic, that species are disappearing like they know something we don’t. Religious leaders would only suggest that this is not our doing but a divine plan to save mankind from the plight of this testing ground which is shockingly correct. Skeptics will tell you that this is whole thing is a load of bullshit – that people are being tipped off to sell you things, that the world is too huge for humans to tamper with it’s balance. All points in the spectrum are correct to a certain degree, and it’s all up to what you believe.

Here’s what I believe, and my bias comes from having remembered what the world looked and felt like when I was a kid compared to now. I don’t know if any of you remember this, but winters were cold and summers were hot and we learned to enjoy both. Going out and experiencing the power of the Earth was an adventure, and seeing how we could handle it was empowering. Nowadays we are removing ourselves from our natural surroundings with air conditioners, antibacterial soaps, synthetics, and sealed doors. I often hear people comment angrily on the weather as if it had to adhere to their comforts. I have seen snow-less winters and budding flowers on the shores of Lake Ontario in January. I have seen forest fires react to an unseen fuel type and been in summers that simply cannot be survived without some sort of invention. At the very least I have shown interest in the speeches and data from environmental scientists. Climate change, to me, is real.

An interesting perspective has begun to hinder the efforts of conservation. The largest concept of Skepticism says that we are being sold “green” things because “being green” is the new “being cool” – and most of these trinkets and inventions are not green at all, just scams and money-makers. They are totally correct. We buy new more fuel efficient cars and then send our old ones to rust in the scrapyard.  Perhaps they’ve seen the numbers and became so scared that they put on a pair of glasses that dummied the data so that they could sleep at night. I have three questions for skeptics: how do you sell the idea of buying less? Whats wrong with being environmentally conscious? And hasn’t this happened before?

Consider for example, the Great Plague of London. the “Black Death” took 100,000 lives. I perceive this as London, the capitol of an island; consider it a closed ecosystem invaded by a foreign vector. Humans died at a rate up to 7000 every week because the city was overcrowded, poorly equipped, and had no management between waste and produce. The city could not quarantine itself. I wasn’t until the great fire of London in 1666 was the plague considered gone. Afterwards London created something greater than time or steam locomotion – The sewage system.

So what do we do when we hit the fence? Our resources deplete at the same time our population is at record high. The plague happens. A deteriorating species becomes weak and vulnerable and bacteria takes over. We will never actually see the end of the world. Lets just assume that climate change can happen. What would the world be like? My darkest nightmares are a colourless sky that casts its grey on the scorched Earth stuck in the last days of autumn. The reassuring trickle of a stream or the chirp of a bird is long gone. Now remember the worst day you ever had. Maybe your dog died. And now imagine your dog dying and no one was there to give you a hug, you couldn’t go outside and be alone to think or smell the home she used to be in. You couldn’t talk about it to anyone because they’re all just as depressed as you are. That to me is the Earth without her beauty.

There is no end of time, that’s why they call it never. So at some point our species must end, because unfortunately death happens to everything and we shouldn’t want it any other way. What we do have control over is when. And we need to approach this perspective as a system. First is Awareness, which most of us already have. Then Acceptance. We cannot deny that we are no different than any other animal and when given the choice we will take more than we need. Now we Know what our problems are – and here’s the kicker, we have the advantage of a brain that is so powerful it takes half our energy to fuel it. We are smart enough to outsmart ourselves. Here’s what we have figured out: We have a lot of people and there’s still more to come. We cannot survive without the resources of Earth. We need to feed those people and find them homes and a “human” living….. How do we do that?

Action: We have genetically modified our foods, we have invented “free” energy through constant renewable sources, we have created a capitalist market based on being efficient. We have designed self-sustainable systems and technologies that exemplify human intuition. But more than anything, we need to redefine “being green” with just plain old “consuming less.” If we all just loved what we had and loved what we did, we’d have half as much junk. Don’t supersize, don’t drive where you can walk, don’t buy what you don’t need. Learn how things work and fix them yourself. Don’t buy into the gimmicks of being green when you don’t understand exactly how it is better for your environment. And most importantly, Appreciate. Appreciate what you have and know what it’d be like without it. Take a second to look beyond the windshield and skyline and actually see the surrounding nature. If we can do all these things, our pride and quality would skyrocket and maybe we’d get to stretch that timeline a little farther.

We are not giving ourselves enough credit. We have grimly defined ourselves as gluttonous evil and doomed creatures ill-fitted to survive on this undeserved planet.

Every species tempts fate by becoming too successful. The pasture fence is reached and extinction is imminent.

Humans are the only species with special talent that has predicted their own demise. And not only that, were making changes to prevent it. Never before have people decided to ride a bicycle or say no to a plastic bag or buy sustainable, local products. I have understood the term “pride” in my own words: you can be proud of the hoardes of inexpensive, use-once and store products, and am beginning to understand that less is more. Purchasing sustainable, locally-produced, rare, high quality products are harder to afford, but they come with an increased level of purchaser’s pride. I can feel the different I am making, and learn to appreciate the things that make my life comfortable. For the final push, we need to acknowledge our shortfalls and eradicate them. Replace greed and entitlement with fairness and community  – ignorance with awareness and understanding- automation and blind obedience with appreciation and opinion.

Secondly, we need to stop beating ourselves up for the things we’ve done and start thanking each other for the monumental achievements we’ve made in the fight against climate change and resource depletion. We haven’t even seen what good repercussions will come out of changes like the invention of computuerized combustion nor hybrid technology nor electronic information or even wind generation.

Every morning I wake up fearing the end of my unfinished life because we single-handedly shat where we ate, and yes it seems now that we are destined for demise but I urge us all to realise that this is not an option. Survival is the only card left and shame on you if you give up. Because we are living in such an interesting time! We could verywell be the generation that sees the tipping point of civilisation. To survive or to perish. We will see the old-fashioned, traditionally-viewed babyboomers to their graves along with their politicians, taking their lifestyle of greed, power, and one-way or the highway mindsets with them. We will see the end of the oil age, We will see governments actually being held accountable because we understand and care about the decisions being made. We will see complete strangers come together to save themselves. We are the green generation.

http://www.ted.com/talks/nic_marks_the_happy_planet_index.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/johan_rockstrom_let_the_environment_guide_our_development.html

Every day we are faced with the promise of a doomsday. Polar bears are turning cannibalistic, oceans are rising, the arctic will soon be a fairy tale. But I want to shatter that idea. Launch it into space with all the other primetime fear driven fallacies, never to be heard or spoken of again.

“stop giving me problems – give me solutions”

Constantly dwelling on this innevitable apocalypse does nothing but sell products that we do not need, and only drives that train further into the ground, firmly rooted and weeding out the garden of a real opportunity. We don’t hear enough of the good things that are going on. The inventions, organisations, and people out there who have devoted their whole lives to make the world better. This one’s for you.

The way I see it, we have two options – do nothing and continue on this plight and consume ourselves in famine, war, greed, and toxic environments. OR, we would do something about it. Even if climate change is a total hoax, the amazing accomplishments in the quest for sustainability would be monumental. But do you really have a choice? which would you pick?

More importantly, think of a world where sustainability was reached. Where man, woman, and beast lived harmoniously with the planet. A stasis where the land reciprocated the people. This would be the last hurdle – the largest, hardest, and most important move on the board. Greater than any war against evil, and greater than curing the worst of diseases.

Imagine a world where your home was heated and lit by the sun itself. Where your water was replenished in your basement and back to your tap. Where a grocery store was synonymous to your backyard. Where work was literally a hop, skip, and a jump from your bed. Where you live as a community and the greatest reward for your good deeds was immediately returned with the awesome feeling of meaning and retribution.

And making it happen is so so easy. You don’t even need to lift a finger. In the back of everyone’s mind is a thought of “what can I do? I’m just one person in this big world.” But that’s exactly why you’re so important!!! you personally have the ability to get the ball rolling and pull your friends along for the adventure. All you have to do is develop that little voice in the back of your brain from the dwelling cynic into the responsible optimist that understands where your decisions take you. “I don’t want to buy that because I don’t think it’s good for my environment” “I’m going to ride my bike today” “I’m going to eat sustainable produce as opposed to those expensive and unhealthy chicken wings” “I want to go for a hike to get in touch with the Earth and understand its fragile beauty” “I want to take a break from work to realise that there’s a real planet out there that’s more important than me”

Thats right the Earth is more important than me or you. It’s survival is the true necessity. The Earth doesn’t care who lives on it, if any. It doesn’t care if it’s an iceball or a utopia. It doesn’t care if it resembles Venus or Saturn. It doesn’t even know the difference. It’s big enough to take care of itself. The World we live on is just our perception of what we make the Earth to be, and if we just appreciate the true value of it, that it is bigger than your comfortable life, we will naturally evolve a way of life that reciprocates that appreciation.

Have you ever stopped to think that maybe we are more animal than we’d like to admit? instead of being eaten by predators, we die in car crashes. Famine is still a huge killer just like that endless battle for every other species on the planet. We follow almost identical tactics in finding mates, and we are not the only beings to mate for life. Love, hatred, satisfaction, self-protection, and family values are universal instincts. Have you ever watched a primate use tools and just be completely blown away by our similarities? Are you aware that fish can fly? Or how about the fact that all embryos pass through every stage of evolution its family tree visited? The whole concept that this Eden was made for us must be abolished. We can halt this selfish right, or the coming apocalypse will be our own.

The best way to start the process is to escape the norm. You spend almost your entire life in air-conditioned, warm, disinfected, innoculated lives. From the car to the office to the bedroom to sandals resort vacation. Your home should be larger than this constant image of 4 walls and a roof. Where do you find the time to reflect on your home? When was the last time you pondered which direction North was? When was the last time you saw a wild animal? Have you ever truly been lost?

If you’ve never spent time appreciating your planet, how could you possibly care to protect it? Do you know any people who like the outdoors? If you do, latch on to them on their next excursion. If you don’t, go somewhere and take your friends with you. And I don’t mean camper-van with a big boat across the country, stopping at your favourite fast food restaurants. I mean take the necessities and disappear. That’s the real adventure.

Just fucking love this place and realize that it’s here. It’s the only place you’ve got. You’ll be healthier, happier, stronger, and you’ll have some awesome stories to tell and spread the new appreciation you have for your true home, Earth.

http://www.ted.com/talks/alex_steffen_sees_a_sustainable_future.html

I’ve always been amazed by how much the human body can take, and yet again, I am even more amazed at how easily broken we are. We weren’t born with a caution label mentioning that our mushy sacks of water mixes rather easily with concrete, metal, or any hard surfaces and should be avoided. Have you ever felt like you should have broken a bone after a nasty bail and didn’t? that your brain finally figured out “how to fall” and turned your *smack!* into something more of a rolling tumble?

It’s made me wonder just how fragile we are. And I don’t mean something trauma based, but something more in the sidelines. The BIG picture that we take for granted and don’t often look at.

Life: What is it’s probability?

I’m going to introduce you to the DRAKE equation. Which I feel very proud of because I have, in my fat little notebook from the ripe age of 15, came up with a calculation for the probability of life, only to find that it had already been calculated by Dr. Frank Drake , and used once again in the movie Contact Starring Matthew McConaughey (bit of a douchebag) and Jodie Foster. Regardless,

this is what it is: Where N is the number of potential civilized galaxies in the world, and every other variable symbolizes what is needed for life to exist.

Some of these factors would include:

• Distance from a star
• a Large orbitting neighbour like Jupiter to take relentless meteors and comments in our stead
• a suitable atmosphere
• A renewable source of energy
• Amino acids (the “building blocks of life”)

This infinite list is full of variables that we have here on earth that made life possible from the start, and continue its survival. Now given all these million variables, it appears as though life is impossible, and that we should not exist at all. But on a clear night, drive out of the city and look up. Those are stars. That is a galaxy, and there are many many more like it. a million stars divided by a million variables is one.  Earth. A BILLION stars divided by a million variables is 100. That means that there could be a HUNDRED other planets just like earth!!!

Consider the next fact. Amino Acids. These are the most basic molecules that literally were an inanimate collection of atoms on Earth 4.6 billion years ago. They just happened to tumble over eachother, mix, get struck by lightning, and magically become a key component in RNA – me and you. Then into a protein, and after millions of years of evolution, a bacteria was born. And the rest, as they say, is history.

But no it’s not that easy. There then had to be a special type of fungus that bubbled oxygen into the atmosphere whilst another organism turned CO2 into limestone (todays United Kingdom) Then there was so much oxygen that life was HUGE, and lizards were the first prime beings, happily crunching on the first mammals with its feet and teeth. Mammals were hanging by a thread so much that it’s possible that at one time, there was only one little tiny mouse scurrying in the night.

Even then, life is just a walk in the park. What about ice ages that took out 99% of life on earth several times? Humans have made it through one or two, but our numbers dropped like a meteor in gravity.

Speaking of which, ever see the movie armaggedon? that movie is more correct than you might like to believe because every 10 years or so, a meteor the size of Africa, large enough to split OUR planet in half passes between us and the moon.

Ok now we’re on the surface of earth, where, in Yellowstone National Park – and I mean the entire park – Earth’s crust is a quarter the thickness, and slightly protruding outwards. That’s one hell of a zit, and it’s a couple thousand years overdue to pop.

I find it really funny because if this information came from the White House or the 6:00 news, people would shit rabbits. Wal-mart would be overrun and the bomb shelter industry would boom. The fact of the matter is that every breath we take is extremely fragile. Life just wants to be, and will consumate wherever it can. But it appears as though our loveable planet doesn’t really notice that there are people with nerve endings down here. Now consider that we may never leave planet earth because we need our magnetic field to stop harmful solar rays from shooting very painfully through our bodies like atom-sized bullets. Consider that a simple skip over to Mars would take years and years and years not even our solar system yet. Then take the likelihood that we happen to cross paths with some flying saucer at a red light in the Polaris district. Kinda makes you skeptical about UFO sightings. Is it a bunch of drunk aliens coming over to buzz the human cattle and smoke pot with Steve Buscemi? Or just another mockery of human malleability?

So that’s the first half of this little post. Next, I will concentrate my observations about how risky our daily lives really are in: You’re so Special