Just walked around downtown Medford (Oregon), looking at old stores and such. Thought about all the radio shows and cable TV shows I have been watching lately, and how few of them have anything to do with the environment or its health. My idea of the parallel world, is that we can choose to dwell there instead of out in Disneyland.
For example, if you are tackling poverty, in the parallel world you ask the question, how much food, what quality of life does the person have, and how does this affect the environment, not what is their income? Because many 3rd world development programs kick people off their land where they are maintaining a subsistence lifestyle in a traditional community, with contact with nature, dam and flood the area or clearcut or mine it, and put them to work in a factory, paying them barely enough to stay alive. It counts as an improvement on the balance sheet (Gross national product) because there is money involved where formerly there was none. Even if they get about the same amount of calories, quality of life (and probably of food) is lost. Same thing happens in the US, in poor neighborhoods.
How does this impact the environment? Usually for the worse. The industrialized mind set asks, "which housing situation is more sterile, streamlined, has less bugs?" The parallel mind set asks, "which is healthier, happier, which controls the bugs with good bugs and natural processes? Which uses poisons which kill a lot of other things besides the bugs? Which has more color and variety? Which is cheaper to maintain, with methods easily found in nature rather than purchased?"
I think we are being fed a lot of baloney, with this idea that you can't have a good life unless you have money. Please do not confuse this statement. I am not saying money is bad, don't give it to poor people. Just stop shifting everything around so that it comes at a monetary price. A lot of good stuff is free and should not involve the necessity of finding some job, any job, and earning a check. Example: it should not be so hard to find a legal place to sleep in this country. Other countries have refugee camps, but we can't even sleep in a park. But I'm not going to go into that--it's just one example of the barriers to life without cash. Note that in the Great Depression, people were getting along a heck of a lot better with things like this, wandering around the country in search of work and sleeping in barns, but those were more innocent times, too, when more people farmed.
For example, if you are tackling poverty, in the parallel world you ask the question, how much food, what quality of life does the person have, and how does this affect the environment, not what is their income? Because many 3rd world development programs kick people off their land where they are maintaining a subsistence lifestyle in a traditional community, with contact with nature, dam and flood the area or clearcut or mine it, and put them to work in a factory, paying them barely enough to stay alive. It counts as an improvement on the balance sheet (Gross national product) because there is money involved where formerly there was none. Even if they get about the same amount of calories, quality of life (and probably of food) is lost. Same thing happens in the US, in poor neighborhoods.
How does this impact the environment? Usually for the worse. The industrialized mind set asks, "which housing situation is more sterile, streamlined, has less bugs?" The parallel mind set asks, "which is healthier, happier, which controls the bugs with good bugs and natural processes? Which uses poisons which kill a lot of other things besides the bugs? Which has more color and variety? Which is cheaper to maintain, with methods easily found in nature rather than purchased?"
I think we are being fed a lot of baloney, with this idea that you can't have a good life unless you have money. Please do not confuse this statement. I am not saying money is bad, don't give it to poor people. Just stop shifting everything around so that it comes at a monetary price. A lot of good stuff is free and should not involve the necessity of finding some job, any job, and earning a check. Example: it should not be so hard to find a legal place to sleep in this country. Other countries have refugee camps, but we can't even sleep in a park. But I'm not going to go into that--it's just one example of the barriers to life without cash. Note that in the Great Depression, people were getting along a heck of a lot better with things like this, wandering around the country in search of work and sleeping in barns, but those were more innocent times, too, when more people farmed.