|
Ecological
Innovation (Sept/Oct 2006)
People are always asking me what
they should do.
In a world facing seemingly insurmountable ecological
crises at every turn, it’s easy to get discouraged. To throw
in the towel. People want to know that there’s an easy solution,
something tangible they can do to help build a sustainable future.
They want a guru to descend from the heavens in a burst of bright
light and succinctly impart easily implemented advice. A fix-it-all
magical method.
We always want a painless way out.
As a cultural revolutionary and artist, I use
my writing as a tool to promote a new vision. To catalyze change
and attack the memes at the root of so much societal dysfunction.
The first step toward avoiding our imminent extinction is to open
our eyes to the precariousness of the situation thrust into our
laps.
The next step is to get creative and stop expecting
that someone else will have all the answers.
To make it through
the next century we’ll all have to become bioneers. A bioneer
is a biological pioneer — someone who seeks inspiration
by peering into the heart of living systems and then taps into
our innate gift of ingenuity to develop solutions. Bioneers operate
under a new vision, by first throwing the old worldview of human
superiority out the window and acknowledging the current system
as irreparably broken and fundamentally flawed.
Whether it’s through redefining trade and
commerce, creating new methods of energy production and consumption,
reinventing agricultural practices, changing the way information
flows, looking at health holistically, or building ethical business
models, bioneers are developing a new framework. One that will
allow humans to thrive while remaining interconnected with the
rest of creation, rather than attempting to subjugate it to our
will.
They can share this vision with you, but at the
end of the day only you can decide how to best make use of it.
There may not be an easy answer to our modern dilemmas, but individual
actions do make a difference. When a few billion of us start living
our lives with a profoundly different worldview, things will vastly
improve.
In the words of the legendary satirist Bill Hicks,
“It’s time to evolve ideas.”
-Jason M Glover
Editor
|
