Imagine

In this globally hot Saturday mailbox...

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. – R. Buckminster Fuller

“Living things are part of a planetary-scale self-regulating system that has maintained habitable conditions for the past 3.5 billion years.”

– James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis

Gaia (Lovelock and Margulis) has operated without foresight or planning on the part of organisms. That said, the evolution of humans and their technology has now entered a new epoch called the Anthropocene, and humans are beginning to become aware of the global consequences of their actions.

The chief obstacles – transcending a Paleolithic mind set – are the adverse feedback signals of today’s consumer democracies. The media, the market and politics are all geared toward immediate gratification ... What may appear sane at the retail level adds up to wholesale madness in the face of the climate challenge.

Restoring planetary homeostasis will require deliberate self-regulation — from personal action to global geoengineering schemes which is either happening or imminently possible. Making our choices fully conscious is an immense challenge to our imaginative capacities for the immediate and future of the planet.

Imagine!

Li Po’s moon

Giotto’s moon

Beethoven's moon,

and Debussy’s moon,

and tonight's moon,

and all on the same night!

– after Lola Haskins