Alien American Dream Changes the Earth as Some of Us Awaken

[chlamor]

Alien American dream changes the Earth as some of us awaken

by Jan Lundberg

The American Dream is just a dream in the sense that people are indeed virtually asleep.  It is still honored by many as a great pursuit, even on a par with Martin Luther King Jr.'s celebrated Dream (although Utopian, given ecocide and unremitting population growth).  The American Dream is dead set against the Earth, even though the dream of decent housing and what passes for peace are entirely reasonable wants.  When the images of "This Land is Your Land," the Woody Guthrie song, are quickly becoming a shrinking memory, it is time to wake up immediately.  

As we ponder our technological and mechanical world, it becomes more and more clear that everyone in modern society is caught in an alien dream going too fast.  Our existence characterized by dreaming amounts to an illusion in the midst of nature, when we acknowledge the questionable sustainability of manufactured goods such as the artificial components of housing, etc.  Even without the nuclear threat -- that the U.S. primarily poses -- nature has been diminished and stepped on, to our permanent detriment.  We don't know just how badly at present, but it doesn't begin to stop our numbers from increasing while trade and transportation grow to serve the feeding frenzy.

<snip>

It turns out we will never see feeling and compassion triumph from within over the increasingly sped up industrial system.  This depressing but enlightening argument is reinforced in a new exploration into the effects of modern commercial culture on the mind:  Sushil Yadav states in his new article in Culture Change that emotions are prevented from registering and developing when the brain and body are distracted by constantly shifting mental tasks and stimuli such as images.  (see www.culturechange.org/industrial_mind.html)

<snip>

As our false dream speeds us up, we postpone the day of reckoning when our bodies and spirits crash from too much speed taxing our resources.  Speed is not just in terms of how fast we are traveling; our physiology is bombarded with speed from the brain's vernbal/aural perception of images or tasks demanding thought.  This occupying of our being with nonstop thoughts, instead of being allowed time just to feel between thoughts, has shut us off from caring about the Earth, according to Yadav.  Threats are hardest to recognize when we are still on speed.  Such as:

MORE AT:http://www.culturechange.org/e-letter-aliendream.html

[billbuckhead]

1. There is a possiblity that the oil shock could turn into a good thing.

But with the Republicans in power, I sort of doubt it.

[bemildred]

2. "... if you have the idea that you are [outside of creation], you will

logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against
the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself,
you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not
entitled to moral consideration. The environment will be yours
to exploit ..."

"If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have
advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a
snowball in Hell. You will either of the toxic byproducts of your
own hate, or, simply, of overpopulation and overgrazing."

--Gregory Bateson "Steps to an Ecology of Mind" 1972