Old Man and the Sea...Rising

I would begin by conceding to all of the arguments of my fellow authors. They innumerate a myriad of the most immediate obstacles. They range from lack of concern for the "negative externalities" of our "never ending appetite" to sheer apathy. Certainly Dr. Fish displays a stubborn reluctance to sacrifice in the face of overwhelming evidence-- evidence with which he admits he is intimately familiar. However, this may just be the way of an old soul. When enough dust has accumulated and our perspective has become sufficiently murky, cannot the urgency of necessary action seem to diminish? Moreover is not the wisdom of this measured, reflective approach the very source of esteem for experience in our leaders? It comes as little surprise then that a paradigm for such experience as part of leadership rather than some alternative, new ideas per se, represents one of the most intrinsic and systematic challenges facing the global environment.

Simply stated, people may not become aware that they are capable of autonomous thought until it is too late to have any. Can we be expected to shake ourselves from the traditional paths of accruing clout and serving our due time before we take our seat at the table when these paths are a part of our values and our values an integral (often unchanging) part of our identities? Progress, and further the idea that idolness is regression, has settled into the mind of humans around the world as a value. Actually returning to past maxims, an act more severe and sinful than settling into the current way of life, is unthinkable and precludes much hope for sacrifice-- a word I see as sometimes synonymous with truly being "environmentally friendly". It begs the questions: is farming "un-American"? Is craftwork "un-American"? Could young people ever be expected to settle for these alternative (certainly a good deal more sustainable) ways of life? We are subject to the will of trends and prescribed choices. While our options are considerably more vast than ever before, we simply have no sense of where any of them originate or how deep (not necessarily sinister) the system of providing those options to us runs. To be so much a part of a system's proliferation and to be so complacent would then seem logical. The sheer difficulty of grasping its entirety is monumentous enough to discourage most people from ever pondering to change it. Thus, American "environmentally friendly" living typically prescribes to the options our trends permit while our values never permit us to sacrifice our defunct practices and revolutionize our decrepit paradigms.