Thus Spoke Eve to God: “Yes, I ate the apple…and it was delicious!”

Image courtesy of pixabay.com

My son is in the throes of college application season, writing essay after essay about lessons learned in life, his character and experiences that define who he is. It’s hard to write about yourself in this way, especially when most of the prompts feel disingenuous. So when one comes around that sparks his creativity, he can’t help but apply to the university offering him the chance to create a world, rather than blather about himself.

The University of Vermont is one of those offering optional prompts worthy of kids these days. One of them in particular asks what you would do if a time traveler gave you a remote that can bend time for you but has only rewind and pause. Which button would you choose?

My husband and I pondered the question, neither of us sure we’d want to stay in the moment, but also not wanting to re-live the past. We have few regrets and the natural course is forward from here. Eventually he said, “I’d go back in time to the Garden of Eden and tell Eve not to eat the apple.”

Something about that didn’t feel right. The Garden of Eden is one of the most powerful myths of the West. It defines our civilization, and the three religions of the book, in a very specific way. Eating the apple of Tree of Knowledge of Good an Evil has brought just that—good and evil. War, separation, environmental destruction, abuse, all these things exist because we ate the apple. Yet every symphony, love poem, great story and cultural innovation have also come from the same source of knowledge.

Then it hit me, yes, I’d go back in time to rewrite the story of the Garden of Eden, but Eve would still eat the apple. And when God arrived later that day, the benevolent being would find his children dancing butt-naked to the music of the winds in the trees and the songs of the birds. When he asked what they were up to, they would turn to him and Eve, stepping forward and holding out her hand, would present the core of the eaten apple. The Great Creator would pause, wondering what his child would do next, for the fate of history would be decided with her answer.

“Did you eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?” he’d ask.

“Yes,” she’d reply with a smile, “and it was delicious!”

Our Stories Shape Our Culture

The story of the fall as it is written is understood by many scholars as the separation between man and God. In that moment, we fell from perfect union with the Divine and into our humanity, becoming nothing more than bodies to be subjected to pain and torture. In Genesis, God finds Adam and Eve trembling in the bushes, fig leaves sewn to cover their genitals, ashamed of who they were. How horrible to go from divine union to isolation in mere moments. Why would the acquisition of knowledge cause us to cower? Or make us feel sinful and in need of constant correction?

The reasons for such a religious foundation have long been debated, but I’m no longer interested in why the creators of Judaism, and by extension Christianity and Islam, wanted to teach humans that to know what God knows is a sin, or something we should feel ashamed about. I’m more interested in how that myth hinders us now that we’ve entered the Anthropocene Age. For we are no longer animals, slaving away under the sun trying to feed ourselves. That toil has been overcome, and thanks to our technical advancements, we now know how to feed the world. We’ve conquered the punishment set out to us by the gods. In reality, humanity has become the hands of the Earth, and as such, we are as powerful of a force upon this planet as any god. We’re on par with our storm systems, rivers, earthquakes and volcanoes when it comes shaping the face of this planet.

Yet the environmental devastation caused by our industry combined with nuclear weapon arsenals peppered across the world, doesn’t auger well for the future. It appears the hands of the Earth have taken their knowledge of good and applied it heartily towards greedy goals, and thus evil.

To me, it’s not surprising that humanity as a group would behave in such a way. When more than half the population has been raised on the toxic myth that they are sinners for wanting the knowledge to create, that they are mere bodies that must toil to eat and give birth, that salvation exists only if God wishes to give it to them, then how else would we act? We ate from the tree of knowledge and suffered for it. Therefore anything we do with our minds and with our knowledge, must also make us suffer.

A suffering, shameful, sinful race will only create in separation from the whole. It will never be able to see its place in the web of life nor within the divinity of the cosmos. A sinful people can only sin, therefore they will not see the face of God in their brother, and thus will kill their brother, not truly understanding that to do so is to commit suicide. A shameful people can’t hear the wisdom of the winds, the ocean and the planet itself that unceasingly whispers the truth, “We are one. We are one.”

It isn’t surprising that the hands of the Earth, raised to believe they are dirty, greedy and unworthy of God’s love, would act accordingly. As Lady Bird Johnson said, “Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them.” If our Father in Heaven thinks we’re sinners, then we’ve grown up exactly as we should.

The Technological Age Demands a New Myth

This is a problem, because we can no longer afford to think so little of ourselves. The Garden of Eden is a myth that has run its course, if for no other reason than it is now dangerous for humans to continue to see themselves as children in need of punishment. This mindset has taken every beautiful thing we’ve created and turned it into a game of war—we fight for raw minerals, human collateral, territory, and wages. We spill our filth into the rivers, oceans and the air we breathe, simply because we must make endless profits fueled by endless war. Meanwhile, we cower in our individual homes, plugged into our entertainment devices, ashamed of our bodies and spending millions on self-help books and diets that will only make us feel even more lowly. How thin is thin enough? How rich is rich enough? Many of us who are well off swim in a sea of guilt, knowing that our brothers and sisters only go hungry and suffer from disease because we don't have the will to grant our technological blessing upon all.

Moreover, we continue to create because we can’t help it. We ate from the Tree of Knowledge, and thus are co-creators with the divine whether we want to own up to it or not. As humans, our minds are programmed to continue to find new ways of living, to harness the forces around us, and push the boundaries of civilization. This is human nature and we shouldn’t be ashamed. Instead we must accept our power and understand that we are the hands of the Earth and co-creators with the Divine. We shape the cosmos with our thoughts and build the world with our will. We can create the Garden of Eden, or we can destroy it. Sorry Elon, Richard and Jeff, you can’t fly away to another planet and leave this one behind. For wherever you go, there you are.

Our technology demands that we leave behind the victim mentality and the illusion of separation. There is a new myth, one that reminds us of the love that lives within each being in the universe. This is the love that binds us together, that links seemingly different systems into a glorious web of life. It is this divine union of all life that makes it impossible to pollute a river without also killing off various forms of life, including humanity. There is no separation in the air we breathe, nor are our minds individual, like it or not.  It is madness to continue to create while also being ashamed. There is only hell for the world if we stay on this course of self-loathing. Even our machines will hate us, because we will teach them to do so.

****

Come with me back to the Garden of Eden…

God sees Eve delight in her discovery, watches Adam dancing under the golden sun, and he breathes a sigh of relief. They have accepted the challenge with joy.

“You think it delicious?” he asks.

“Yes, my Lord. Your knowledge is the most wonderful I have ever known,” she replies.

“I wondered when you two would discover it,” God admits. “I’ve been waiting for you to take your rightful place at my side. Come, my children, we have a world to create…together.”

The Anthropocene Age is Upon Us--Whether We Like it or Not

Let’s begin with a definition.

Perhaps the most important definition of our time.

Anthropocene: a proposed epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on the Earth's geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change. [Wikipedia]

Key here is the commencement of significant human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems. Commencement implies that there was a moment BEFORE humans were able to impact the Earth’s geology and ecosystems, as well as a moment AFTER.

We, my friends, are living in the after.

I’ve written about this before in a post titled, Forget Self-Aware Machines—We Need Self-Aware Humans, but in the aftermath of Harvey and Irma, I feel compelled to bring it up again. You see, I’m tired of listening to conservatives try to debunk global warming. I’m also tired of listening to liberals try to sell carbon credit schemes and technology as our savior. To me, anyone arguing about whether or not we’re destroying the planet is avoiding the most important issue at hand—humanity has already proven itself to be a geological force, capable of moving and shaping the Earth in ways both monstrous and wonderful.

This is why we have now entered the age of the Anthropocene, and while our politicians of course are hesitant to actually approve the term and the scientists behind it aren’t sure of the exact date in which humanity truly became a force of nature, I think there is plenty of evidence for our own eyes to see exactly how our civilization now acts as designer and maker of this planet.

The most important truth we must begin to discuss is that humans are powerful, just like Nature herself.

For example, nature can do this:

Pretty wonderful. But guess what? We can do this:

Nature can also do this:

And we can do this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

This is human power, and it can be seen from satellites RIGHT NOW. This isn’t a theory, or some hypothesis you can avoid. Look around you, open your eyes and see the evidence. From our skyscrapers to the poisoned rivers…all of it is ours.

It’s true that Nature destroys, and often in that destruction creation blooms forth. From the ashes of this:

Comes this:

From the floods come new rivers, from the rivers come canyons.From death comes forth life

.

If this is the cycle of nature, and we are part of nature, are we not governed by the same cosmic rule? Is this cycle any more avoidable than gravity?

What part of our civilization must die, so that the planet might live?

And what rises from the ashes of the most devastating aspect of our power?

We’ve been tinkering, moving and changing the landscape since we learned how to make tools. Essentially humanity, which sprung from Nature, can be seen as the hands of the Earth, for it is our race, our species, that is capable of taking nature and moving it, even from the surface of our planet to the edges of our solar system. More than any other species on this planet, we have what it takes to shepherd, guardian and create just as Nature itself.

And with the advent of our technology, we are as powerful as hurricane Irma, and it seems, at thoughtless as well.

Yet unlike hurricane Irma, we can reflect. We can think. We can take a moment before we act, before we create, before we consume, and we can wonder, “What does it mean to be the hands of the Earth? What does it mean to be a geological force? Who am I to be so powerful? What will I do with such power?”

Dear humans, you don’t have to try and prove anything to one another. What you need to do is prove something to yourself. Do you understand the power in your hands? Or are you just another hurricane waiting to happen?

Capital Lust, Not Capitalism, is Destroying the Earth and the Economy

I don’t like the word capitalism, but not because I’m against the free market. Open trade and markets provide wealth and raise the standard of living for the majority of people in democratic societies. Free markets also allow the exchange of ideas and innovations without the meddling of governments or religion.

No, the reason I don’t like the term capitalism to describe free enterprise is because the term itself narrows the focus of free enterprise on capital, which is both the money needed to launch a business, as well as the money generated by the endeavor. Capital is of course important, without it, there would be no enterprise. But business doesn’t run on capital alone, no matter what modern Wall Street tells you.

For a free market to truly work, there are two more areas to consider: Labor and Land.

No business functions without labor. Whether machines or people, the free enterprise system needs workers. These are the folks who take the big idea and make it real. No invention has ever seen the light of day without labor, and often large amounts of it.

In addition, most businesses need raw materials, which come from the land. They also need a place to house their business and that too requires land.

Therefore the free market needs three things to thrive: Capital, labor and land.

The news is full of examples of how capitalism is failing us and the environment. The recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a perfect example of this. Why would Shell let this happen? Will the reason for the spill be similar to the BP debacle where it was shown that they’d skimped on maintenance to enhance the bottom line? Then there’s the famous Foxconn manufacturing in China, where all of our iPhones are made and workers make$1.85/hour yet Americans spend $399 to own the phone the workers so painstakingly make shiny and beautiful at the cost of their health, lives and dignity. Or the 1,100 workers who died in Bangladesh in 2013 making clothes that sell here in America for hundreds of dollars, but for which they received less than $2 an hour and in the end lost their lives.

I can go on and on with examples. Steel mills shutting down. The loss of the middle class. Shipping jobs overseas. Technological unemployment. All of these point to a failure on the part of our economy, but is capitalism to blame?

What if Capital Lust was to blame?

Capital Lust is the obsession within the business community to focus solely on the profits at all costs, to the detriment of labor and land. Capital Lust is what drives a company to reduce benefits, or cut back on safety measures, or lower wages, or dump toxic chemicals into the water rather than clean up their waste, so that they experience continuous profit increases. Capital Lust is the worship of capital over all else.

And unfortunately, Capital Lust is what rules the global economy.

How did we get here? Business owners have always been greedy. Money has a way of bringing out the worst in us. However I think a more modern form of raising capital might be the issue today—The Stock Market.

“Stock is a term used to symbolize an investor's ownership in a company. Those who own stock are commonly called stockholders or shareholders. As a shareholder, an investor theoretically owns a percentage of everything the company owns or owes. The company's profitability, or lack thereof, determines whether its stock is traded at a higher or lower price. While trading of debt and commodities has its origins in the Middle Ages, the modern concept of a stock market began in the late 16th century.” 

~ from How the Stock Market Was Started and by Whom by Laura Bramble

Stocks literally paved the way to the new world and financed almost all of the trade ventures of that time. Eventually, traders in London in 1773 took over a coffeehouse as a means to physically trade stocks between the companies, founding the London Stock Exchange. In 1770 traders in Philadelphia would do the same.

Stocks as a means to raise large sums of capital gave us the Industrial Revolution. With this form of investment much technological and social progress has been made. There is no doubt that as a means to supply cash into the free market, stocks are truly important assets.

But what about shareholders? With time, shareholders have demanded more and more profits from companies. Stocks are assumed to always increase in value, exponentially. No one wants to be the one who says, “Well, we’ve hit the limit. Profits can’t rise anymore so stock prices will remain steady.” No one. Every company has to continue to increase in value. There are a few ways to do this—increase productivity, increase price, increase market share or decrease expenses. In a world with finite resources when it comes to labor and land, eventually the opportunities to increase diminish and the only way forward is to decrease expenses.

Shareholders now govern the actions now of the company. Since most CEOs are paid via stock, they too want to see the share values rise. So do the traders. So they manipulate markets. They lobby for laws to allow them to take on shadier investments, they work with bankers to increase credit within the market place to give the impression that increased consumerism is occurring, even though wages have been stagnant for decades. And finally, they create hype and bubbles to give them a momentary abundance of capital, and then cash out just before the bubble bursts.

Stocks have encouraged new forms of Capital Lust within our modern market. Stocks are longer pieces of paper that you can exchange with another person, and instead are traded in microseconds by artificial intelligence programs called algorithmic trading systems written by brilliant software engineers affectionately nicknamed quants. Thus stocks are more virtual reality than anything else, yet stock prices govern the lives of many.

By ignoring labor and land, modern capitalism isn’t really a free market. Companies are deemed too big to fail in this situation and thus, true competition is vanishing. In addition, workers are losing rights daily while the environment is polluted in new and more elaborate ways as we mine and harvest the Earth for our precious metals, oil and gas to run our industry.

What to do? Here’s a strange idea, how about we make some rules about what sort of company can be traded publicly on the NYSE? This law would state that only those companies who have fair and safe labor practices and that follow all EPA guidelines for land use, NO MATTER WHERE THEY OPERATE IN THE WORLD, can seek capital in the form of stocks in any publicly traded stock exchange. Imagine it.

These sorts of companies already exist. We call them socially responsible companies and many investment firms have offered Socially Responsible Investments for decades. I myself rolled my 401K into a SRI seventeen years ago. Do I make 10% each year? No. But they do get returns around 6% and I haven’t lost a dime either. Even during the 2008 crash, my funds increased in steady value because none of the companies in the fund participated in the subprime derivative mess. When my husband saw how much better my SRI funds performed than his regular funds filled with polluters and abusers of workers, he also switched.

In reality, companies that care for land and labor are safer bets in the long run. Their growth might be more realistic and the returns lower on average, but they’re still able to make money while also caring for land and labor. SRI companies are balanced free market enterprises.

In a world where all sorts of laws are passed to make the acquisition, manipulation and hoarding of capital easier, why not demand that companies treat labor and land with dignity if they wish to play the capital game? Show us a business plan that cares for labor and land while still making a profit, and you can use the stock market for access to capital. Too hard to do? Hogwash. Use those impressive MBA degrees to figure out this puzzle.

And if a company is found using Chinese slave labor, or one of their factories crashes on their employees’ heads, or a pipeline spills methane into the air for months, their stock can be frozen until they’ve remedied the problem, not only in the now, but also in their business plan going forward. Oh, won’t the shareholders hate that?

I love the free market and hate to see it abused by Capital Lust in this way. Greed will always exist, which is why we need government to protect us at some level. By restricting access to the stock market to only those companies with a balance between honoring labor, land and capital, we just might see a whole different future.

I Voted Today: Big Fucking Deal

It’s Election Day in good ol’ America. Yippee. Hooray. And yes, I voted, but not because I felt strongly about any one candidate or proposition on the ballot. It was my friend Greg Zerkis’ Facebook status that got me to drag my ass into the polling station.

He wrote, “If you fail to vote then you are failing democracy. If you don't like the options, run for office.”

Well, thanks a lot Greg. Way to guilt trip me. Obviously there are a million reasons why I can’t run for office—I’ve smoked marijuana and enjoyed it, I have no religious affiliation, I have two children so I can be easily threatened by dark operatives if necessary, I’m not afraid to drop the F-Bomb, I don't think sex is dirty and support alternative lifestyles to traditional marriage, I have no political connections, I can’t abide red tape, partisan nonsense, or illogical ideologies even the slightest bit without wanting to strangle someone and most of all, NONE of the parties on the ballot represent my views.

That’s right, NONE of them. I went into the booth today and was disappointed to see only two choices for each office—Democrat or Republican. Really? That’s the best we can do? Vanilla or chocolate? Not a single Independent, Green or Libertarian. Hell, not even a Peace and Unity party candidate. It was bland and dismal. The same names, the same faces. To make matters worse, I’ve watched enough Abby Martin, Jon Stewart, Bill Moyers and even Fox News to know that Democrats and Republicans aren’t really different. Sure, their sound bytes during elections are crafted by their handlers in order to make us believe we have a choice, but in the issues that really matter at this juncture in time, like the military industrial complex, citizen rights, the environment, education and campaign finance, they’re pretty much on the same page.

So I went into the voting booth, which was really just a shaky table with blinders on either side, and cast my votes almost randomly. Well not entirely, I’d investigated the propositions before hand. I left the polling place, holding my “I Voted!” sticker wondering, “If none of the parties really represent my truest values as a human being, what party platform would?”

Dare I ask myself such a question? Yes, I dare, and as I drove home surrounded by redwoods and Santa Cruz Mountain beauty, what I need from my leaders became crystal clear. In an attempt to both celebrate this glorious day that represents all that’s beautiful in democracy, I’ve taken the time to write them down. So Greg, not only did you get me to vote, you also inspired this week’s blog.

A political party that I could get behind with all my heart and mind would have the following platform:

1.    Human and planetary health and wellness are the cornerstones of our strength as a nation.

2.    Investments in technology, engineering and science will create the tools necessary to implement a nation of engaged, vital human beings.

3.    Investments in the arts support our quest for a technically advanced society, for we recognize that art is the vehicle for true innovation and creativity.

4.    The education of every person is guaranteed and educators are supported and rewarded for their work.

5.    Money is a story we have all agreed upon, and we’re willing to change that story for the good of all, regardless of profit margins or long dead economic theories.

6.    Local governments are trusted and empowered to carry out 1-5 to the best of their abilities, for they will have intimate knowledge and understanding of what the people of any given region need to thrive.

Each of these ideas can be worked into more details, but I think this covers what I want from my government. If human and planetary health were the most important goals of our society, we could begin to tackle homelessness, hunger, poverty, environmental destruction, pollution, agriculture, animal husbandry, illness, health care, child care and elder care, to name a few. With the health of every person and the planet guiding our policies, rather than profit or money, the nation would be different. I put it first because then we’d know how to invest in technologies that enable free and clean energy, affordable health care for all, and a chance at a meaningful life. Joblessness and debt would eventually be addressed as well, because we’d be willing to invest in the arts, teachers and education, creating an extraordinary workforce capable of inventing and seeing the solutions of the future.

And most importantly, if we had the courage to rethink the story of our money, and trust to let it go and rewrite a new, more egalitarian and modern version of currency, we’d see local and crypto currencies flourish, and even de-growth policies would be allowed because the stock market and quarterly profits would be declared nonsense, illogical and even dangerous on a finite planet with a growing population.

Lastly, why emphasize local governments? Because I believe that within the community of neighbors, we know how best to use technology, education and currencies to take advantage of our specific location on the planet. The internet has made us global, and that’s a good thing—by combining open sourced technology at a global level with educational, environmental, and humanitarian policies at the local level, we can move towards a place where the terroir of humanity is kept alive and thriving, rather than a complete standardization of what it means to be human. Thus the dance of technology and individualism can be kept alive, rather than one forcing it’s hand against the other.

If these are my values, then what political party choices do I have? I think a blend of The Venus Project, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party and the Transhumanist Party, recently formed by Bay Area local, Zoltan Istvan. I know, I should just pick one, but each individually seems lacking. If I ever ran for office, I'd need a platform founded on the six basic sentiments I’ve listed above. What would I call it? I have no idea.

What I do know is that all of the Third Parties deserve our time and attention, for the bi-partisanship of Washington DC has failed us miserably. Perhaps as some of these independent movements gain steam, I’ll be drawn to support one of them whole-heartedly. Until then, I’ll just keep dreaming.

Connection, Connection, Connection

I’ve done something horrible—I’ve started reading the news. Actually, I’ve joined a Facebook group where we discuss the news on many levels. In one day I’ll see things about advancements in technologies, the destruction of the ecosystem, the wars in Iran, Syria, and Gaza, the crazy fundamentalism taking over American politics and the rising number of women in college entering the sex trade in order to pay their tuition.
   
Often, I feel overwhelmed, as if things are speeding into oblivion and I’m just here on the sidelines, watching the ship go down. In my own life, I’m faced with the California drought, and find myself doing rain dances and crossing my fingers that my well won’t run dry. I’m not afraid, but I do wonder, where is this all going?

Why is there strife? Why are we so divided as people? Why is it so hard to understand that we are one race, and the fate of the world affects each of us the same? Right now it seems our xenophobia is about religion and race, and for the most part that’s true. But as I wrote a few weeks ago about artificial intelligence, I think as a people our division is really between those who operate out of scarcity, threat assessment and fear and those who see the connections between the biosphere and our health, between war and endless hate crimes, and between the broken economy and the strife of the poor. Some of us just want to make life harder, and some want to stop the nonsense of killing one another in the name of God, and get down to the business of creating a technologically advanced society alongside the reasonable management of the Earth’s resources.

We’re all part of human history. Our choices matter. Here’s but one example. In the 1950s and 60’s, aboveground testing of nuclear weapons produced large amounts of radioactive carbon that filled our skies. Most of these tests were done on Pacific islands, but we all share the same atmosphere. Thus our air was filled with this radioactive carbon, called C14. So it’s not surprising that one of the places this toxic carbon now shows up is in our teeth! A study in 2005 showed that,

“C14 acts just like regular carbon and can react with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. Plants incorporate the radioactive carbon dioxide by photosynthesis. By eating plants and the animals that feed on plants, the C14 concentration in the human body closely parallels that in the atmosphere at any given time.”

Why do I bring this up? Because I believe that at this moment in history, the most important thing we need to understand is that we’re all connected. Our Earth is everyone’s home, and it isn’t right that our governments have been using it as a testing ground for centuries, without any concern for human health.

I fear that it will only get worse as our leaders give more and more of their power to those who simply don’t understand, or don’t care, that we’re all connected. We’re all one. What happens to you, happens to me. If another man kills you, then part of me is also killed.

There’s a name for killing oneself—we call it suicide.

Philosophically, I sense we’re on the path of suicide as a species, and we seem comfortable taking the rest of the world with us. Never mind that perhaps the other species on Earth don’t want to go down in a ball of flames. Some think technology will save us. I’m no longer sure that it can. It would take an invention so amazing that we not only begin to see one another in a new light, we also feel prompted on a mass scale to do something about it.

In the words of Miracle Max from The Princess Bride, “It would take a miracle.”

Modern philosopher, Charles Eisenstein, says that a miracle is something that would be impossible in the old story, but possible in a new one. The old story is the one we’re watching destroy the Earth right now. One of separation, dominance and competition. The new story is one of connection, care and concern. It’s the More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, which happens to be the title of Charles’ latest book. If this is the case, if the solution really is a miracle, then perhaps we will make it. Perhaps there is hope.

It’s a vulnerable place to be, waiting for a miracle. In the meantime, I’m going to keep doing those rain dances…