Lawrence.com

Since 1997, the biggest shopping day of the year in North America has also been known as Buy Nothing Day - a playful protest against the cultural and commercial pressures that compel us to consume more every year, grow more in debt to prove our love to our loved ones and find temporary happiness in that euphoric moment of purchase.

It's a movement that has been growing internationally every year, and will likely see its biggest year yet from all the creative energy coming from the Occupy Wall Street movement (Adbusters, the Canadian based magazine that first put out the rallying call for occupying Wall Street on September 17th also launched the BND meme in North America over a decade ago and is calling on occupiers to add Black Friday to their global days of action).

Here's a roundup of a few of the best articles and films on the shopping free holiday from alternative and traditional media:

Buy Nothing Day Campaign http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd (primary source) "On Nov 25/26th we escape the mayhem and unease of the biggest shopping day in North America and put the breaks on rabid consumerism for 24 hours. Flash mobs, consumer fasts, mall sit-ins, community events, credit card-ups, whirly-marts and jams, jams, jams! We don’t camp on the sidewalk for a reduced price tag on a flat screen TV or psycho-killer video game. Instead, we occupy the very paradigm that is fueling our eco, social and political decline."

Buy Nothing Day: Adbusters' role in the global Occupy movement http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/buy-nothing-day-adbusters-role-in-the-global-occupy-movement-6263205.html "Of course it feels good that after all this time people are finally starting to get it. But there is also a darkness underpinning that good feeling. It sounds apocalyptic, but I have a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that the economic pain people are going through is just the beginning. If that's right, then we will really see the young people of the world stand up in a way that is many times bigger than they have up until now. We need to find ways to capture the imagination of the rest of the world. If we can do that then I believe this movement may well pull off some incredible radical transformation that needs to happen to make the future of our planet work."

What Would Jesus Buy? http://www.filmsforaction.org/Watch/What_Would_Jesus_Buy/ "Rob VanAlkemade’s ‘What Would Jesus Buy?’ is a rousing, irreverent and simultaneously sobering documentary about the year round destructive shopaholic obsession that spins into an out of control buying and spending orgy by the time Christmas rolls around. The movie follows performance activist Reverend Billy and his ragtag cross country caravan, The Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, to bring the voice of reason a few holiday seasons ago, to compulsive consumers everywhere. The intent of this countdown to Christmas is to save the holiday from what Reverend Billy has dubbed only slightly in jest, the Shopocalypse. Ironically, many of his group are injured when one of their buses collides on a highway with a truck rushing to deliver Christmas merchandise to stores. Meanwhile, the Reverend muses, ‘everyone in a car is driving to a television."

Thanksgiving as Day to Shop Meets Rejection http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/business/some-consumers-object-to-sales-on-thanksgiving.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all "Ms. Nyberg is drawing the line now that major chains like Target, Macy’s, Best Buy and Kohl’s say they will open for the first time at midnight on Thanksgiving, and Wal-Mart will go even further, with a 10 p.m. Thanksgiving start for deals on some merchandise. "

The Story of Stuff http://www.filmsforaction.org/Watch/The_Story_of_Stuff/ (Not directly about BND but does a great job of explaining the motivation behind it) "From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever."

What will you be doing on Buy Nothing Day/Black Friday?

For our future! by tribalzendancer

Reaching out to young people is especially critical at this time. With mounting psycho-social stress attributed to an increasingly uncertain future, young people are going to need support grappling with the social effects of the coming collapse. (If this statement seems strong, click the link for context)

The world is rife with uncertainty about our fate on the planet. Declining ecosystems and biodiversity, a quickly destabilizing climate and an end to the cheap energy we're currently addicted to leaves a lot to question. With all this going on, I think it's more important than ever to have elders that can guide young people through this initiation into adulthood - towards fully realizing the world with eyes wide open.

As for myself, I had my personal awakening to this information on my own, when I was 22 - circa 2005. My parents weren't aware of much of this information. My friends were not that political at the time. None of it was taught in school and the mainstream media was still promoting the fantasy-notion that the status quo can just keep rolling along, into a sunset of infinite growth and record-breaking profits.

It was strange to wake up to this world of understanding relatively on my own. My early companions were books like Ishmael, Culture Jam, and The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. There was no one in my community that was there to say, "Yes I understand what you're going through. I had my own moment of insight and it was difficult to come to terms with. You feel like everything you were told as a kid was a bill of lies. American democracy, the free-enterprise system, our heroic national history, the ideal of the American dream - where anybody can make it rich if you just try hard enough - all of these cultural memes - together what Kalle Lasn calls "Brand America" appear to have been a sham."

"I hear you. It's a tough pill to swallow, and certainly it must be frustrating to realize you were born into this crazy world. That the world had gone mad long before you were even born. I felt the same thing, but I want to reassure you: a far more joyous and beautiful meaning to the world awaits on the other side of this difficulty. And with so many mass illusions being shattered by the economic collapse and all the other challenges we're facing, everything is now on the table. The world may be crazy, but this is an amazing opportunity, too. We have the potential to completely rethink and redesign virtually every facet of modern life. What kind of paradigm we transition to in the next generation is entirely up to our own imaginations and creativity."

I want to tell the kids growing up today this message. I would have loved to have been told this when I was young, to have some guidance that seemed trustworthy. As more people wake up and abandon the "just go to school, get a job and make lots of money" mantra, we are left without any real sense of an alternative path. What does a young kid do when she realizes that the map she's been given by her parents and school teachers to navigate this world is almost entirely out-dated?

We need new maps to help us navigate the transition, and we need to make these maps available to people of all ages, at a community level as well as a purely informational level.

On an informational level, it has been Films For Action's goal to create this map on our website, divided into the 42 general subjects that we believe are essential to building a society that is just, sustainable and socially fulfilling. As people dive into these sections we believe that a personal and collectively-shared map will begin to reveal itself, where all the dots will start connecting and we'll find the strength and confidence in our life's direction. We'll have a new map to navigate the transition from "Empire to Earth Community," as David Korten puts it.

At a community level, we need to build relationships that support each other during these challenging times, both informally and in our educational institutions. We need each other to "carry the light for each other," as my friend Michael Weil puts it. We need to support the people who are going through this transformation right now, and to be a light to the people who are still asleep, dreaming the old American dream.

More formally, we need to engage with our local schools and colleges. Amazingly, as eco-literacy advocate David Orr writes, "we are still educating the young as if there were no planetary emergency." Schools by and large continue to prepare students for the status quo jobs and market conditions that existed in the 1950s. We need schools that are preparing students for the world that is actually going to exist when they get out of school, not the fantasy world of infinite growth and business-as-usual that is currently being presented. 

I was inspired by my friend Brady Karlin's idea to create "transition" mentoring associations, where college students mentor high school students, high school students mentor Jr. High students, and so on down the ages - enabling young kids to have slightly older peers that support them, while allowing the older generation to get a sense of their own confidence and autonomy - their worth as someone who has something important to teach as well as to learn.

They would embody the transition movement in that these mentoring relationships would focus on helping each other navigate the challenges our society faces, learning the skills that will be essential in a low-carbon world. Ultimately, we need to bring the lexicon and understandings of the transition movement into the curriculum of every class room and department in higher and lower education.

Being the creative research labs of our society, our educational centers have a critical role to play in cultivating a brain trust of creative young minds that are approaching their careers and life path with a firm understanding of the challenges and opportunities they'll have to create a new world.

May 8th: http://imattermarch.org/

Richard Register's vision of an eco-city in Berkeley, CA by tribalzendancer

Today's LJWorld editorial about voter apathy got me thinking. I also find our abysmal voter turnout deeply troubling, and I think I may have a solution.

If we want to inspire more people to go to the polls, they need something to get excited about. We're going to be facing some serious challenges in the coming years, and this can easily get pretty depressing to think about. Simply trying to figure out how we can get back to the 'good old days' (pre 2008 financial collapse) isn't going to get people jazzed up, because frankly I think most people know those days are long gone.

What we really need right now is a city commission that can see ways for Lawrence to become a vibrant ecological city as we transition into an era where climate change and peak oil are major realities. Our city commission has done some great things so far. Forming climate change and peak oil task forces were both a great start, and hiring a dedicated sustainability director was a great move. Now it's time we move from these foundation-building efforts to start implementing some really bold actions.

If we can get ahead of the curve now, we have the potential for Lawrence to thrive and attract people and jobs to our city when times get tough, because we spent time preparing while other cities floundered with the status quo.

We have to look at peak oil the way any innovative company would: identify the challenges that $150+ barrel oil is going to bring, understand how that's going to negatively impact your current business model, then think of ways that you can change these negatives into positives, especially considering many companies are going to be blindsided by this change, since they'd prefer to milk short-term profits. Understanding the geological certainty that conventional crude oil has now peaked and is going to get increasingly more expensive is the same as getting a sure-fire stock tip that gold is going to double or triple in the next several years, so dump the Enron stocks before the bubble bursts and make your investments in the coming low-carbon economy now.

All this labors one single point. What we need is vision - a comprehensive view of an alternative paradigm that is better than the one we have now, and which takes the science of climate change and peak oil seriously.

I personally believe that a world with expensive oil could be preferable to a world with cheap oil, if we have the vision to see it.

For example, the end of cheap energy is going to cause globalization to reverse: Wal-Mart's business model is going to stagnate, and local businesses will thrive because the cost of long-distant imports from China, for example, will no longer be subsidized by cheap transport fuels. Local is going to become competitive again.

Relocalization is going to be an essential strategy for cities to thrive in the future - fostering the growth of a fully functioning local food economy, and cottage industries providing essential goods and services. We also need to create incentives for businesses and individuals to start investing in local renewable energy sources and for the city to rapidly support alternative transportation. These options may not be used immediately, but will once gasoline costs more than $5 a gallon (and it's already this expensive in many countries around the world).

What a more localized world means to us as citizens is the re-birth of community. It means strengthening local relationships, and finding happiness in people more than things. It means growing food with your neighbors, slowing down our overly stressful schedules and enjoying more time with our family and friends. There's a new film out called "The Economics of Happiness," and it lays out beautifully how globalization isn't actually making the world happier past a certain point, and that a new economic paradigm based on local community is providing a more promising alternative.

Acknowledging peak oil and climate change does not necessitate a gloomy outlook - it simply means acknowledging the trends of the future and finding creative, positive solutions to adapt to these new realities.

No matter who wins this year's election, I hope all of our commissioners will seize this moment to think creatively and differently about our economic problems, and not rely on the advice of the old economic strategies of the past. They certainly worked once, but it's clear we need to start thinking outside of the Chamber of Commerce's playbook (I can't speak for the local chapter, but the national organization didn't even recognize that climate change was real until very recently, and to my knowledge they're still not even mentioning peak oil).

With a fresh perspective, we can stop trying to make the future less bad, worrying about what we might have to lose; we can start thinking about everything we have to gain from imagining a way of life that's even better than the one we have now.

To jump start this conversation, I want to outline 7 policy positions that I hope all five of our next city commissioners will adopt as a common platform to help inspire and give direction to their time in office:

1) In favor of adopting the Environmental Chapter of the Horizon 2020 Comprehensive Plan, which would ensure that prime agricultural soils around the city would be preserved http://www.lawrenceplanning.org/documents/Environment_Approved.pdf

2) In favor of significantly increasing bike lanes - also known as "Complete Streets" - in the city http://www.completestreets.org/

3) In favor of mixed-use, high-density development - also known as New Urbanism http://www.newurbanism.org/

4) In favor of creating a city feed-in tariff to spur solar power growth by individuals and businesses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed-in_...

5) In favor of passing a Food Sovereignty Bill http://www.filmsforaction.org/News/Maine_Town_Becomes_First_to_Declare_Food_Sovereignty/

6) In favor of adopting a Zero-Waste strategy that will aim to reduce landfill waste by 90% by 2040 http://www.garyliss.com/id18.html

7) Supports Richard Register's vision of creating ecologically healthy 'eco-cities' http://ecocitybuilders.org/

Cheers!

Adbusters.org by tribalzendancer

So, I was trying to get my friend to read a recent issue of Adbusters magazine.

"You've got to read this!" I said. "There's an article about how the media today is owned by only a handful of corporations, and corporate consolidation is leading to fewer voices getting on the air and stifling the range of debate, which is stifling the health of our democracy. And corporations themselves are legally bound by law to seek a profit over any other competing interest. And because of a judge's ruling that unlawfully declared that corporations are to be deemed legal "persons" - giving rights to corporations that were originally intended for recently freed black slaves - these corporations (due to their vast wealth and influence) now have more rights than people. And these corporate rights are now the source of the power they use to destroy all of humanity!!" I said with a half-laugh, nearly out of breath.

"Yikes," she said.

"Yeah I know. It's crazy."

And then there was a pause. "Yeah, the thing is..." she said with a sigh. "I really don't have time to read that. I mean, look: I know things are bad. Everyone nowadays knows about all these problems at some level. It just seems kind of tiring to keep reading about things that at a basic level, you already know."

And I thought about what she said, and I understand what she's saying - at some level. But here's the problem: When problems are vague, so are the solutions.

When you think about all the world problems... Oh jeez, well don't think about all of them. But if you think about just a few. Take: climate change, deforestation, bought-and-paid-for elections, and the corporate exploitation of millions of people working in sweat-shop factories around the world. How are we even going to begin to solve these problems? Now if we tried to attack each of these issues individually, well, we'll be trying to plant corn in the deserts of the Midwest on a very hot planet before that happens. Climate change and peak oil alone give us a deadline of only five to ten years to do most of the significant work to solve these issues. We simply do not have the time to keep hacking at individual branches while new branches grow every day.

But what if there was one solution which got at the root of all these problems, and if you solved this one thing, it would quickly solve many of the others?

Now let's say I told you that the laws that give corporations their legal power were the source of all of the problems listed above. You change the laws that govern the corporation and you change the landscape of our economy, environment, and society all at the same time. Now of course, appreciating the significance of this solution can only be grasped when you have a full understanding of the problem. And this means specifics, and this means reading that damn article!

It was at this particular exclamation point that I realized: getting informed on the issues is kind of the whole point. It's the solution that leads to every other solution.

Because clear knowledge leads to clear actions, and clear actions lead to results.

When you understand the problem, you know what needs fixing, and you feel empowered to support actions that can lead to fixing it. And when a whole bunch of people learn about an issue and know what needs to be done to get our country back on track, then the people can start organizing. And as you launch targeted campaigns to solve specific issues, you eventually see results, and your community is the better for it.

It's all about getting informed and taking action. It's the essence of democracy. Not to bust out some history books on your asses, but this goes back to the days our forefathers first drafted the constitution. The first amendment talks about the need for a Free Press. They knew that a democracy could not thrive without the full participation of its citizens, and that you need to be fully informed to truly participate. The two go hand in hand.

Originally, informing the public and arming them with the knowledge they need to act was the cardinal responsibility of the media. It was to foster a free and open "marketplace for ideas," so that all could have a voice within the commons, and the best ideas could rise to the top - regardless of the economic or political power of the people who voiced them.

Today, these ideas seem quaint in comparison to the profit-driven, consolidated, and corrupt media we have now. Most of us are aware of how bad the mainstream media has gotten. It reveals itself every time a Lady Gaga story makes headline news, and when political pundits paid by the Pentagon debate the pros of more war, and lots of war.

You could stock a website full of examples. Between the unashamedly partisan coverage on FOX and the infotainment and soft-ball fluff predominant on CNN, ABC and the rest of the mainstream media, there is clearly a gap in quality news, and this gap represents the bottleneck that impedes the progress of nearly every social cause we care about. 

Getting our elections free from corporate cash and undoing Citizens United is a big one. You can bet abolishing corporate person-hood isn't going to be easy. It's going to require a mass movement of people all across this country demanding it, and to get to this stage, we need mass awareness.

So, what solution will go right to the thick, deep root that will reach every other rotten root and heal every branch and make those proverbial flowers bloom?

We fix the media. And rather than wait for these massive media conglomerates to reform themselves, or wait for congress to step in - we're going to create our own media. We're going to declare independence from the Corporate Media by creating new information channels that serve the public's interest and speaks with the public's voice. And we're going to do if from the bottom up.

We start in our communities, working on creating a communications infrastructure that will allow everyone to get the real deal on a given issue, so that the people have the power to mobilize in great numbers when the time is needed. Then as we build momentum we expand the scope of this network to eventually include the entire city. We'll accomplish this with documentary film screenings, public access TV, low-power FM radio, street team promotion, and a central indy-media website dedicated to keeping our city connected and informed. These city sites will allow anyone to contribute content, and let the community decide what content is promoted to the front page. From here we can network with other city indy-media websites, allowing us to communicate news, mass actions and events with millions of people through these networks of city chapters. We will bypass the need to write press releases and get coverage from traditional media altogether. And before we know it, within the next three years, we have the potential to create a nations-wide communications channel that rivals the best of the old corporate giants.

A democratic media breaks the bottleneck. It's the strategic foundation that will allow us to amplify our efforts to build truly sustainable and vibrant new ways of living here in our own city, and in every city around the globe.

This was the work I and the other members of the Films For Action team set out to accomplish when we first began the project four years ago. We have organized over two dozen film screening events, cataloged over 700 world-changing videos on our website, aired documentaries on public access TV for two years, launched several targeted campaigns, and have currently finished work on version 2.0 of the FilmsForAction.org website.

With the recent launch of our site - over a year in development - we've entered the 2nd major phase of the strategy. The new site's infrastructure has been programmed to make it easy to create whole new city chapter sub-sites with just a few clicks. Our original chapter based in Lawrence, KS demonstrates the concept, and shows how these cities will stay networked with our international "main" site. In the coming months, we expect to see dozens of new chapters form.

As I see it, these are all the first few steps in a thousand-step chess game. But there's no way to make progress until you get started on step one.

A sign of things to come? by tribalzendancer

You wouldn't know it from the mainstream media's coverage of the BP oil spill, but the 184 million gallons of oil that are now devastating the Gulf region is only a part of a much larger problem. Corporate greed and corrupt government oversight played their roles in the disaster, but so far little attention has been given to why the hell oil companies are drilling miles below the ocean surface for oil in the first place.

It’s now well known how technically unsafe and inherently risky drilling for oil is so far under the ocean surface. And while energy companies may be greedy, and they may be shortsighted, they certainly wouldn’t expose themselves to undue financial risk unless they had no other choice. Sadly, as BP, the Pentagon, and all the other energy companies know, they’re taking these risks because all the cheap, easy-to-get oil has already been drilled or is being drilled. The low-hanging fruit has been picked, and as long as our civilization remains addicted to petroleum, oil companies are going to continue to drill in more dangerous and environmentally hazardous locations to give us our fix. In this respect, the BP disaster represents only the beginning of what a post-Peak Oil world is going to bring.

Since I stopped getting my news from mainstream outlets several years ago, I feel like I’m living in some sort of twilight zone. Peak Oil – what it is, what it means, and why we can’t ignore it – were all questions and discussions that went mainstream in the alternative press back in 2005. That’s why it’s amazing to me that five years later the mainstream press still hasn’t initiated a national dialog on the subject, and many people still remain either uninformed or misinformed.

Now, granted: a serious national discussion of the issue would almost certainly crash the financial markets and drive us into a global depression, but how long can the mainstream media dunk its head into the sand while the signs that we need to urgently address this issue keep smacking us in the face (and washing up on the shore of the Gulf Coast)?

After the $148 price spike of 2008 destroyed demand and sent oil below $100 a barrel again, we’ve been lulled back into a false sense of security. We’ve entered what the International Energy Agency calls the “undulating plateau” of peak oil – a multi-year period where oil prices spike as demand collides with declining supply, then the price goes down as demand is destroyed. Subsequently, as the economy recovers, demand increases and smacks back into declining supply, which sends the price of oil even higher the next time. We’re now in that relatively comforting dip where the price of gas and other petroleum products remains relatively affordable.

We can expect that the next major price spike will come within the next two years, fueled likely not by our own economy recovering, but from rising demand from China and India, among other developing nations.

So for the next two years we have a rather unique opportunity. The next price spike is likely going to make the financial collapse of 2008 feel like the “good old days.” Over the medium term, the continued instability of financial markets, along with the instability of our own finances is going to make it increasingly difficult to prepare for and transition into an oil independent way of life. Since we need fossil fuel energy to build the solar panels and wind turbines and smart electric grids, it makes a whole lot of rational sense to invest in this infrastructure while oil is less expensive. Will we even be able to afford the transition to a “green” economy when oil is $200 to $300 a barrel? Many energy experts have their doubts.

I have to wonder how many people recognize the significance that our choices will have over the next five years on this planet. Many climate scientists have predicted that by 2015 we may hit a series of “tipping points,” where rising global temperatures will trigger enough glacial melting to release further CO2 into the air, causing accelerated glacial melting, and the problem will permanently tip out of our control. That’s only five years away.

I know, I know. Our whole civilization is like the college student that waits till the night before his mid-term paper is due to start writing it. We all love to procrastinate, and maybe, like the college student, we perform better under the pressure of a hard deadline. But let me tell you: that paper is due tomorrow. The deadline is here. It’s time to pull an all-nighter, drink some double espresso lattes and get to work. If we don’t, and we wait for the next spike in energy prices to get our butts moving, we may jeopardize our ability to address global warming with the stability and financial resources necessary to avoid an even greater environmental catastrophe.

Ah man, it’s so annoying right? It’s like hearing your mom tell you it’s time to clean up your room. Well, here’s the good news. The solution for both peak oil and global warming is the same thing: reducing and then eliminating our use of fossil fuels. The more our society transitions to renewable sources of energy, the less we'll emit global warming causing CO2 emissions, and the less we'll be sucker punched by expensive fossil fuel costs.

Ultimately, a post-carbon society is inevitable. Whether that future looks remotely desirable to us depends on what we do now. The sooner businesses, private citizens, and elected officials stop futzing with little tweaks to the status quo, and get serious about the big picture at the end of the road, the better off we'll be. These distractions include ethanol, nuclear power, "clean coal," tar sands, oil shale, hydrogen, Cap & Trade, more efficient cars, and many of the other single-fix responses being proposed by industry and government currently. Many of these approaches may actually exacerbate our problems.

I'll give two examples. The first is with the Alberta tar sands that skeptics often tout as a reason why peak oil is bunk. They claim that there are massive repositories of oil capable of fueling the world's energy needs for the next 100 years. The problem is, on top of the devastating environmental, climate, and human health consequences of using this oil, on an engineering level, this oil is mixed in with thick encrusted sand and rock, making it incredibly energy intensive to process. As a recent report by Environmental Defence Canada found, when you do an energy ROI audit, you find that mining and processing the tar sands requires more energy to produce it than what you get to use. 

As the EDC writes, "It is estimated that by 2012 the Tar Sands will use as much gas as is needed to heat all the homes in Canada ... Using huge amounts of relatively clean burning natural gas in order to produce dirty and carbon heavy oil is what commentators have dubbed "reverse alchemy" -- the equivalent of turning gold into lead."

The second example is cars. Though it may help in the short-term, we don't need more efficient cars; we need radically redesigned cities that are not dependent on cars to get us everywhere. We need radically re-localized food and product economies that do not require the importation of food and resources from thousands of miles away. 

The city and suburban infrastructure necessary to support the speedy movement of our cars, trucks and semis requires an immense overall supply of energy and resources to build and maintain. Not only that, but we forget oil is not just in the energy we put in our gas tanks. A car's tires are made from oil. Asphalt is made from oil. All the resins and plastics that go into cars are made from oil. And there are currently 800 million cars in the world that were built on this paradigm of cheap energy. Can we honestly expect to build another 800 million electric cars, with all of it's massive supporting infrastructure, with the remaining expensive oil we have left? It's just not going to happen. That's why trading out the gas tank with batteries and going on our way is not going to cut it. We've got to go back to the basics. We need to rethink our whole system.

Solutions that take into account a “whole-systems” approach do exist. In fact, the more I’ve looked, the more I’ve discovered sustainable and innovative ideas that are already being implemented in places all over the world. A resident of Oakland, California, Richard Register presents an inspiring vision of what a post-carbon, ecologically healthy city might look like in his book, “Ecocities: Building Cities in Balance with Nature.”

Similar to New Urbanism, the places where people live would be built in close proximity to a mixed combination of work, shopping, food, and recreational spaces, allowing for easy use of bicycle or mass-transit to get where ever you need to go. The city’s economy would be re-localized, from organic food production to basic goods and services. Decentralized wind, solar, and geothermal energy systems would provide energy to a net-metered grid, while advanced efficiencies in building design would reduce energy demand by over seventy percent. Long distance travel would be accommodated by high-speed rail or boat, and electric cars borrowed through community car-share programs would be used for medium distance trips. Urban food gardens and plants would be integrated throughout multiple floors of buildings, in back and front yards of people's homes all over the city, and streams would weave through public centers and parks. 

Finding an abundance of ideas for how to create more sustainable cities is not the problem. What we need is a national discussion at all levels of society, and at all levels of our communities, so we can start to talk about how we're going to address peak oil here at the local level. How are we going to get from here to there?

We need to get our schools involved. We need to get our city and planning commissioners involved. Businesses, elected officials, and private citizens all need to come to the table and get to work.

Now, at the end of most problem-themed articles I've read, specifically ones dealing with global warming, I've noticed a curious trend. After spending most of the time talking about the problem, the one paragraph at the end devoted to "things you can do" usually centers solely around personal suggestions: Change your lights to compact fluorescents. Turn down the thermostat. Bike more. Buy less, and try to buy used more than new.

These are all things we should be doing to cut down on our own energy use, but I wonder why it always stops there. Presumably it's because American's are too lazy to expect they'd be willing to do anything more ambitious. I want to prove this assumption wrong.

Great change has never been inspired by small requests. If it seems like people in America haven't been doing much lately to address global warming, it's because not much has been asked of them. Most of the time, our leaders simply ask us to shop or make sure our tires are inflated properly. I think if we do start to expect and ask more of each other, though, we'll be surprised by the results. As Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R, Md) has said, "There is no exhilaration like meeting and overcoming a big problem... and I think that Americans could be exhilarated by the challenge."

So there it is. We're facing some pretty unprecedented challenges. The time for just making small, personal changes is over. As I heard Alex Steffen say recently, "Don't just be the change. Mass-produce it."

Tim Hjersted Lawrence, KS

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A true religion throws away religion. I must be a true Christian, a true Buddhist, a true American, a true Iraqi, a true patriot.

A practitioner of one of these philosophies may say I am not a true believer, to identify with other religions and countries, but he would have misunderstood.

This perspective is the true path of Jesus and Buddha. They walk together as brothers, and for this reason, as I am concerned with every religion, so too am I concerned with none of them. I am concerned solely with the welfare of all mankind, of all the life of the earth.

A true patriot, likewise, is not concerned with red or blue, or any ideological perspective. He is concerned with the welfare of his country. Yet the greatest patriot of all belongs to no country. He is a citizen of the earth - of all nations, tribes, and animal kingdoms.

His fight is a fight for the welfare of the planet to which he belongs. His struggles are the struggles of the collective beings of the earth. His triumph is found in the equality, freedom, health and success of all beings finding happiness.

Namaste, my brothers and sisters of the Earth. On this 4th of July, may we all find that place!

The root of polyamory means literally "many loves." Now, immediately people often think this only relates to our intimate relationships, but at the heart of it, it is about every kind of love - platonic, family, friend, intimate, social - the whole spectrum. It is about not seeing love as something we can feel towards our partners only, and opening our hearts (that is, our compassion and kindness) to a much wider circle of people.

It's funny then, that when this kind of aim becomes our goal, the openness and naturalness to have lovingly intimate relationships with more than one person seems to arise organically. That doesn't always happen, of course; it depends on the person, but that was my experience.

Now, I think it's worth stressing. Even though the multiple, loving intimate-relationships thing is what usually takes all the spot-light in the discussion, it is really just one effect of this philosophy. It is not the essential purpose. Whether you prefer to have intimate relationships with one or more people is not the point. If you're not interested in loving people and you just want to have sex, you can call that kind of situation swinging, or openly dating, or a free lunch, but it's not polyamory. Polyamory is a philosophy on love. It includes the love we have towards one partner, towards two or three partners, towards our friends, strangers, and society as a whole. But maybe we need to take a step back a minute.

This may all sound completely crazy. It's hard to say. What does it mean to try to love everyone, not just our romantic partners, but our friends - strangers? To disassociate sex with love and to love people completely, not just maybe 10 or 15 people in the world, but 50 people, 100 people - everyone we come in contact with in our life? Is it possible to even love like this? Now, if we're talking about romantic love, I would say no. Physically that is probably not even possible. The kind of love I'm talking about is the kind of love we can feel towards anyone. Love, as I would define it, is the will to take kind actions; it is that quality inside of us that compels us to be compassionate and thoughtful towards the people in our life.

Now, usually the number of people that would make this list is pretty short. We usually afford our compassion and thoughtfulness to a fairly small group of friends and family, and of course, most prominently, our significant other. But for the longest time I've asked myself, why is it so easy to love someone I'm attracted to, but loving someone I don't like that much is this incredibly difficult thing? I close my heart off to them, and everyone else does this as well, and so it becomes this accepted norm in our society.

Our capacity for empathy and compassion for others seems very limited. I can see this in myself, like most people I would have to guess, and I want to know if it is possible to love more than this small circle of people, to keep my heart open to more and more people in my life until one day I can feel in some real, physical sense a love for everyone in the world. I want to find out what the limit really is. The question is: how do we make the leap from loving this very small circle of people, to opening our hearts to everyone?

If I had to take a stab at it, I think loving others unconditionally is the secret. Loving someone, even knowing their flaws, even knowing their boring sides or whatever sides - you see them as you see yourself.

You can love them, knowing who they are, just the way they are, as if who they are doesn't even matter.

Just by their existence, they are a part of you and all of it. I am not separate from him. I am not separate from her. We share the same basic desires, hopes, fears, sufferings and dreams - the same basic humanity. Intrinsically, just looking into someone's eyes, while they're talking or doing something very ordinary, without them knowing what you're thinking about, just looking deeply into their eyes with mindfulness and that sort of conscious intention, aware of who we all truly are - it would seem hard not to love them.

It could be a moment like this.

You could look into one of these person's eyes, and love inside them what is common in all of us, to appreciate the beauty of that. For me, the breakthrough came when I asked myself, "If I can love so-and-so with such ease, why not this person? Why not these people? What's really the difference?"

It's funny that it has always been easiest to work on opening my heart in this way to women whom I've been intimate with at some point in time (whether in a polyamorous or a monogamous context). That is just the way we are taught to love, so it is what feels the most natural for us.

Quietly, though, the voice inside my heart knows that my love must not be one-pointed. If I want to find out what it means to love fully, completely, not just to love sexually, in this very limited way, then I must love the world before it becomes particular shapes, or particular people.

Love the parts, because you understand the whole.

If I can love a woman in this way, should I not then be able to open my heart to others? Am I not able to love all my friends, strangers, acquaintances, and lovers in this way?

Using this love, this openness as a template, I can apply these feelings to everyone.

This to me, is what polyamory is about - opening our hearts to a wider and wider circle of people, no longer limiting our love to a select few, no longer cutting off existing loves when we meet someone new, no longer seeing love as a limited commodity. To explore polyamory is to tap into that deep, limitless well of loving energy that resides in all of us. And from this point, the desire and willingness to explore polyamory in our intimate relationships (when a good situation arises for it) becomes one of many new great adventures.

This last statement makes a subtle point. Many people are surprised when I tell them that, philosophically, I'm polyamorous, but that most of the time I prefer to pursue monogamous relationships. I'm sure some brains are exploding trying to compute this. :) But the difference is flexibility. If monogamy is the best fit for the situation, awesome, I'm all for it. But if a situation arises where it would work better to explore third-dimensional options (which would bring a greater mutual happiness to everyone involved) then I'm all for that too. There are so many times that I've experienced or that I've heard about when being flexible in a situation can allow so many more joyous possibilities. And these possibilities are simply unattainable when we stick to the "one winner and one loser" outcome, where a person is stuck in the tragic dilemma of having to choose between two people she loves. And I find situations like this happen all the time.

But whether we prefer to be in monogamous relationships, or we want to actively work on cultivating loving, committed relationships with two or three people, that is simply our personal preference. What makes a person polyamorous is our desire to simply be a more loving person, to love everyone we come in contact with in our life, and to want to discover what is truly possible.

For me, it all starts from understanding the essence of the love that we all feel in our monogamous relationships, seeing the pathways that allowed us to open our heart to this person, and then working to apply this same path to everyone.

It's a good template to work from.

Things that bother me intensely:

*Dishonesty - Boom, right up at the top there.

*Elitism - that is, considering you and your approved peers as better than other rejected individuals or groups, affording your consideration to this very small circle of friends, and forming your sense of identity (incredibly!) around the exclusion of others.

*Cutting Off Communication - Yep. It's called not being a jackass.

*Littering - There are more than just Native American's crying because of your ignorant and self-absorbed dumbass.

*Apathy - Yeah, apathy is pretty cool right now in a lot of circles, principle among them the hipster, that amorphous, stand-for-nothing type of person that floats among the sea of options, whether activist or entertainment, much like how they go shopping. What activist issue best expresses ME? None of them? Op, oh well. Maybe I'll try on a pair of these ridiculously over-sized sunglasses. Because that's what matters.

*Fake agreeableness, compliments and smiles (also called insincerity) - If you want to talk about creepy this takes the cake.

*Ego Games - Though, I gotta admit, if you can see the cosmic drama of life in a comedic light, and aren't overly attached to your particular ego in the play, they can be pretty damn funny sometimes.

Things I like a Lot:

Well, the opposite of all of the above, really.

*Authentic Being-ness, for starters - No false fronts. No masks. You are you yourself, just as you are. Part of this comes from 2:

*Deep Communication - Being able to express your desires, needs, intentions, issues, hang ups you're grappling with, beauties, joys, and dreams all with honesty and up-front transparency.

*Compassion - Ahhh yeah. This one doesn't get a lot of play in the fashion or lifestyle magazines, but it's pretty awesome. Loving someone when it may not necessarily fulfill one of your own desires may not be sexy. It may not promise the on-demand satisfaction and entertainment value that a more selfish, material-oriented world-view can offer, but I think it offers the difference between the instant satisfaction of Taco Bell verses the slow satisfaction of growing, cooking, and eating food you made yourself. Tasty!

*Mindfulness - Mmm, yeah I could devote a whole book to this... but fortunately someone already has. It's called Teachings On Love by Thich Nhat Hanh. Read it and be amazed.

*Ego Relativism - Did I just make this term up? If so I'm putting a copyright on this term. Feel free to use it and send royalties to my home address. Haha. So what is Ego Relativism? It's realizing that every conscious being on the planet earth has an ego, and that, as it was so finely put in Earthlings, we are all the psychological centers of a life that is uniquely our own.

That part we all understand. Here's the crazy part: Our ego is not more or less deserving of happiness than any other ego. We all view life through the filters of our own ego's needs and desires, but an ego relativist often steps outside of this filter to see a situation from all the other egos involved.

An example would be good here. Let's say you're dating a woman and she loves you but also still has feelings for her ex. The default habit here would be to put our own considerations above the considerations of the other two people, and especially the ex. The ex becomes a threat to our own ego's happiness, so we get intensely jealous and possessive and may get angry and hate the ex and get mad at our partner for having any feelings that might threaten our own wants. An ego relativist, on the other hand, can see that their own wants are no more valid and deserving than their partner or their partner's ex. Their egos are thinking exactly what you're thinking. They want to be happy. You want to be happy. And from this realization, the only inevitable reaction becomes to work towards fulfilling the happiness of everyone involved - as best as you possibly can.

Now when I told my friend Eli about this, the first thing he asked was, "Well what if you're in a situation where everyone's needs can't all be met? What do you do then? What if one of them is staunchly monogamous?" And I said, well, if you are firmly an ego relativist, then a flexibility to explore possibilities flows naturally from this original logic. Their happiness is your happiness. Their suffering is your suffering. From this understanding, a willingness to explore third-dimensional options beyond the usual 2D, black and white monogamous option becomes second nature. You might even attempt these explorations without even knowing there is a name for it. You just do it because it makes sense.

But, if you or the other two people are definitely not into an open-relationship situation, and there is no way for the needs of all three people to be met, then an ego relativist would handle the situation in the following two ways. Ultimately, your partner is put into the undesirable and tricky position of having to choose (a real tragedy in my opinion, but hey, it's their choice to go this route).

If they choose you, then you can simply try to be as loving and considerate to the ex as you possibly can. You will probably experience deep empathy and ambivalence because you've been on that end of the equation many times before. You share their suffering as if it was your own, and whatever you can do to lighten this suffering, you do it.

If she chooses her ex, it is difficult, but you can experience some peace knowing that her ex is happier now that he can be with her, and that she is happy with him. Their happiness IS your happiness, too. Their happiness is equally as deserving as your happiness, and the dice just happened to come up snake eyes for you - this time. Next time it will probably come up sevens, and that's just the nature of life.

Another question Eli asked, playing Devil's Advocate at this point, "What about when two countries want the same oil?" And I said, simply, "They share." It's called the Oil Depletion Protocol, an international treaty that has not been put into place, but follows the same logic of Ego Relativism on an international level as it follows on an individual level.

Now as some might have guessed by now, when we believe that no ego is any more deserving of happiness than any other ego, this applies not just to human egos, but every conscious ego on planet earth - anything with a nervous system, in other words. Suddenly, consenting to the mass slaughter and suffering of chickens, cows, and pigs at the moment of our purchase and consumption of meat seems entirely unethical.

Of course, my decision to become vegetarian came from many angles, but what sealed the deal was the realization that the human-centered view that puts human interests above the interests of all other species was not based on any objective truth, but definitively a culturally conditioned mythology. It is speciesism - a step up from sexism and racism in the moral hierarchy of today's culture, but a form of baseless and selfish discrimination nonetheless. It seems like if we are to follow Ego Relativism to its conclusion, then fighting for the rights and happiness of all animals seems to arise organically.

Hmm, I'm wondering how many people reading this were gung ho about Ego Relativism right up until this moment. Our eating habits are certainly a sensitive topic. It puts us face to face with our own limits to compassion - "Yea I'll be compassionate all you want until you start talking about what I like to eat! Then we gotta a problem here."

Well, fortunately, a side-effect of Ego Relativism is a good degree of moral relativism. I believe in being vegetarian and I hope someday all humans are, at least 90%, but I don't hold it against anyone that isn't. Everyone's got to make their own choices in life. It's why I've never held it against anyone I've dated that wasn't a vegetarian, either.

Ah, trying to harmonize a strong belief in social justice and compassion with not judging people or cutting off my heart from them - it is one of the most beautifully complex balances to find, but it makes for a great life adventure!

Ah ha! Well. I seemed to have went on a bit of an unproportional tangent on that one. What's the last thing I really like a lot you ask?

*The willingness and desire to learn and grow from every situation. - Yea, without this one, the rest seem pretty hard to achieve.

With a growing awareness of mounting ecological, economic, political, and social problems, there exists many growing currents of response.

On one hand, more people are waking up. They're getting involved. They're saying, "Not another day! This is where I mark the line." Their desire to change the world is turning from simple wishful thinking on Monday mornings into tangible action. The thoughts they used to have only occasionally about their relationship to the rest of the world now occurs to them all the time. They're beginning to see activism not as something that is done only at non-profit meetings and at protests, but that activism is a way of life - that it represents nothing less than our personal, spiritual choice to choose determination over defeat, and compassion over apathy. Ultimately, in some way, it is the choice to reject our culture's post-modern slide into narcissism. It is to reject the modern consumer philosophy that true happiness and joy comes from personal material accumulation, from seeking personal desires and needs. It is the realization that the joy that comes from connecting to our relationship with the planet blows the old way of seeking joy out of the water.

These people are realizing that humans are social animals; we crave connection and community; we crave a wide, encompassing identity that connects us with the whole humanity of the world - not just our friends and family, not just our city, our country, our species - but every living being on Earth - plant, animal, and human.

It is a new philosophy, perhaps a very, very ancient philosophy, one that sees everyone on this planet as one family - that everything is interconnected, that the whole humanity and life of all beings resides in each one of our hearts, and that we reside in theirs. There is no "I" and "them." Truly, honestly.

The happiness of another is my happiness. The suffering of another is my suffering.

There is no separation. For millions and millions of people growing around the planet, the problems of the world are their problems; the happiness others find as we collectively realize a more just, compassionate, and sustainable world is their happiness. It is the most profound and meaningful happiness one could possibly experience.

You can't buy that kind of happiness at a store. You can't get it from beating the last level of a video game. It doesn't come out of the end of a pipe or at the bottom of a bottle. It doesn't come from watching sports. It doesn't come from how you dress or what kind of car you drive. It doesn't come from getting a college degree or from getting a fatter paycheck.

It comes directly from the final and profound realization that there truly is no "self" and there is no "other." We are inter-connected with everything. We are all of it.

To paraphrase Shunryu Suzuki:

If the world did not exist, I could not exist. If I do not exist, then nothing exists.

Scientifically, this is true, but our culture makes it hard to see. But it is what Martin Luther King saw; it is what Gandhi saw. It is what every person that works to change the world in some way experiences - not in words, but in conviction. It is what animates the life of every person that has committed to not giving up until the last person has the same opportunity for happiness that everyone else has.

It is this realization, how ever it might be described (it has been described in hundreds of ways) that gave every inspirational person in our history the personal, spiritual power to face the most impossible odds and to succeed.

To quote from the documentary that Films For Action will be screening at Liberty Hall on April 26th, it is what "Martin Luther King called ‘Love in Action’, and Gandhi called ‘Soul Force’; what Velcrow Ripper is calling ‘Fierce Light.’"

It is what has made me want to dedicate my life to improving the world. It is why I do not feel like I have a choice anymore in the matter. It doesn't matter if it's impossible. It doesn't matter if everyone around me says it's hopeless. I've got to do it because my inner-most nature wants me to do it.

I'm not sure when it happened. I'm not sure how it happened, but at some point, reading more news about how the world is falling apart, watching more documentaries about how urgent and dire our situation has become doesn't shut me down. I've watched over 150 documentaries at this point, absorbed an ungodly amount of "depressing" information, and I have not become jaded. I've been burnt out before, several times in fact. And over time I have come to see that if we don't know how to absorb this information we will undoubtedly be crushed by it. I've seen this happen to many of my friends. They just shut down, not because they don't care, but because there is too much to care about, and we just don't know how to deal with it.

In an age where we receive more information from one edition of the New York Times than a man in the Renaissance might receive in his entire life, it is simply too easy to become overwhelmed by the barrage of stimulus, the barrage of causes and problems that beg us to care about them and to help out.

It is a problem unique to our generation (and I have to laugh as we throw one more on top of the list). But it is one that if we do not discover the solution to, frankly, we're all gonna be screwed. Figuring out how to turn apathy into action is one of the most important and vexing problems we can try to figure out.

Because as I mentioned at the beginning, there are many ways people are responding to our mounting environmental and social problems, and among all the people that are waking up and getting involved, there are many that have responded by shutting down. The empathy center in their brains has short-circuited: too many images of oil-soaked baby seals, too many images of starving children in foreign countries, too much political corruption rampant in Washington, too many examples of the media failing to do their job on The Daily Show, too many ingrained and inter-locked institutions upholding the status quo. Logically, they could make quite a case for saying that trying to change anything is pointless. And it seems that the logical side of their brains has won over and suppressed the voice in their heart. Or maybe not.

But in either case, they have given up before they have even started. They've accepted that the world is spinning out of control and have resigned themselves to enjoy what little of the party pie is left before it's all gone. There may be a deep seated rage in many of today's youth, that goes suppressed, a rage from simply being born into these problems - that it was already out of control before they were even born.

And from the way it's looking, the world they will inherit has already been squandered. Our parents generation grew up in a time of unprecedented growth, the age of cheap oil - a 100 year paradigm that fueled all the rich affluence that we have enjoyed up to today. But the 21st century, the young are realizing, will be a century of decline - declining supplies of cheap energy, fresh water, arable soil, and clean air; declining mental clarity in a world saturated by commercial noise, declining security in an age of climate change and growing resource wars. For the youth of today that have not responded by becoming incredibly pissed off, they have responded by becoming incredibly despondent - birthing the kind of philosophical narcissism and ironic distance that is so perfectly embodied by the modern "hipster."

Of course, billions of people all over the world never even got a taste of the party that we in the affluent West have gotten to enjoy. Can you imagine the rage and anger one would feel knowing how so few in the West could enjoy so much while so many in the rest of the world will not benefit from any of it before it's gone? And some people have trouble understanding (not condoning mind you, but understanding) why kids in the Middle East would dream of blowing us up.

We've got to listen to this rage, not fight it but listen to it. So many people in our society are apathetic towards politics or social change. How can we turn the tide? What's the secret to transforming apathy into resolve?

I mean, what do you say to a person that says "everything is pointless"?

Like I said before, I've felt burnt out and depressed about our situation many times, but every time, a spark was lit and my enthusiasm regenerated. Now, it's been quite a while since I've felt jaded. Something happened to me that made "pessimistic realism" completely unacceptable to me. Now, I get depressed if I play video-games or party too much, and I feel more alive than ever when I'm "working" on activist projects. I don't even feel like I have a choice about it anymore. I do it because there's simply nothing else to do. Anything less just feels like I'm denying reality. I know that a world of incredible potential and beauty exists if I will simply work to find it.

That's the conclusion, but like many core convictions that we accumulate over life, I cannot remember how I got here. I know millions of people all over the world have had this same kind of conclusion. I know many of my friends have had this conclusion. They've felt jaded about the state of the world, and then something happens to them, and suddenly their old view of the world seems entirely unacceptable. A spark ignites inside them, a passion to engage with the world rather than insulate oneself from it. And the beautiful thing is, whatever this spark is, it is self-sustaining. It is the furnace that burns in you the rest of your life, and the more you use of it, the more of it you have.

So I would like to ask everyone reading this, what was the spark that lit the fire for you? If you felt jaded once but found your way out of it, what was the catalyst? What gives you the energy to not just care intellectually, but in action?

I would love to hear your stories and thoughts on this. Because if we can figure this out, then I think we'll have found the key to riding this tsunami of growing problems like a surfer rides a wave. We can engage with the reality of the world without being drowned by it.

From this, I think we can discover a philosophy on how to live one's short life on this planet with passion and vigor, with unconquerable determination. And from here, a whole other world becomes possible.

As time goes on, the logic of monogamous relationships become increasingly foreign to me, always a bit more curious, always a bit puzzling. But at the same time, viewing monogamous relationships from a distance, as it might be seen by an anthropologist, I feel like I can perceive monogamy in its pure sense, on a level deeper than someone who is so absolved into its logic and customs that they do not have any perspective on it. It is much like the fish that cannot perceive the water all around it.

Seeing monogamous relationships from a detached perspective, the logic of it seems fairly straightforward. What makes monogamy desirable? For most of us it is the security. Being accepted for who you are, regardless of your flaws. This is what everybody wants in the ideal monogamous relationship - safety, certainty, security, and - most importantly, having the person that provides these feelings all to yourself. And being aware of this, when I try out a monogamous relationship, my actions and words actually tailor to fit this. If I'm with someone who's in to monogamous relationships, I tailor my language to fit the paradigm. Somewhat subconsciously, I find myself saying things like, "you've got me," which is a way of saying, "Don't worry. You can feel safe." And when I say it, I do mean it. I take care to say only what I mean. And if I say, "you've got me," then I accept the responsibility that this entails. It means they can let their guard down without worrying that I will be careless with that trust - that even if the relationship changes, their feelings will be looked after with care.

The interesting thing is, people usually take this "you've got me" statement to have more serious "dropping the big words" kind of significance, a unique monogamous connotation. The reality is, I would feel this way towards anyone I was dating, whether it's been for two weeks or two years.

So I kind of wonder what unique impression these last few people have had about me, seeing only a partial side - one version of Tim chosen among many. Because, the irony is - choosing this path seems completely arbitrary. I adapt to the paradigm I'm living in, and most people today want a monogamous relationship. But I could just as easily not be monogamous. I could just as easily be in an open relationship. If my partner wants that, great. It's no trouble. My consciousness is open to following the logic and "rules" of either monogamy or polyamory.

In a monogamous context, I may get attached. It seems like that is not only likely, but it's the goal in most cases in the long term. After the honey-moon phase dies down, however, the passion you feel is accompanied with attachment, and when it's mutual - security, which is what everybody wants.

Of course, for the true monogamous game players, it's more complicated than that. You don't try to make someone feel secure immediately. You don't show the person love and long-term consideration immediately, if ever. You've got to "play hard to get." You want to be nice and thoughtful but not too nice and thoughtful. You've got to keep them uncertain. Don't reveal too much of your true self too soon. He who says "I love you" first, loses. I have literally heard people say this. It is all a big mind-fuck, in my opinion - bullshit game playing for a culture that still has a lot of growing up to do.

I say, fuck playing games. I want to be real.

When you know everyone wants to be accepted for who they are, then that should be the goal. Accept people for who they are. Don't judge them. Judging others only breeds fear in yourself, because ultimately people will judge you just as harshly.

In today's dating environment, I can understand why some people might think it wise to judge and reject first to avoid the possibility of getting hurt yourself; so many people are careless with others feelings today. Has anyone reading this ever seen Jersey Shore on Cable TV? Case in point. Really there are too many examples to choose from.

Of course, some people might enjoy these games - the drama, the betrayals, the extreme ups and downs. But if you're not into that kind of thing, I think we might enjoy the possibility of letting go of the script - letting go of the to-do list and game rules that everyone follows when moving through the dating-to-marriage cycle. "Don't say I love you until the 50 yard line, oh! Fumble!"

No, I say, let's forget about all of those conventions. Start with a new premise. One that starts with loving the person, being totally real with them from the very start, not 6 months to a year down the line.

Love them, just as they are, without discrimination. Love them regardless of whether they are right for you. Love them for them. Open your heart to them - today! - even if you know you won't be together forever.

I think it's a beautiful thing when two people involved have the emotional maturity to love deeply but be able to let their beloved go when the time is right. And until then, love them 100%. Isn't that the deepest form of love? To love 100%, even when you know it's not going to last? Isn't that true of all relationships? We love, even knowing everyone we love one day will die, or move away, or want to share their life with someone else.

But until then - in this moment - you can love them like this moment is all there is.

Post-script 4/14/2010 ---------------------------------------

When I posted this blog to Facebook, it was interesting that the comments gravitated mostly to discussing polyamory overall, when the subject of this blog in my mind is focused on what I would consider to be the fairly bizarre logic of monogamous behavior, and how my 'polyamorous philosophy' towards monogamy regularly finds myself being misunderstood. People freak out all the time because I tell them I love them sooner than is socially accepted. People also freak out all the time when I still love them after we 'break up,' and it just seems crazy to me, the kind of rules and expectations we have about how we are supposed to love and when, and what that is supposed to mean.

So, essentially, I was trying to look at monogamy purely on its own terms. How do we love and behave towards each other within this system? To me, polyamory is not about the number of partners we have; it is about the philosophy or approach we take to those partners, whether one, or several, or none. What I was beginning to articulate in the writing above, is that just within our monogamous relationships, it would seem there is still plenty of room for conscious growth and evolution in our philosophy towards love, how we treat others, how open we are, what our goals are etc....

Being in a meaningful, loving relationship with one person can be great; being in meaningful, loving relationships with several people over many years, and allowing those relationships to ebb and flow with the changing currents of life in a loving 'no-broken-hearts' context, also is great.

Polyamory, for me, is a philosophical approach to both types of relationship models, and everything in between. Beyond that, it is a philosophical approach to our friendships and our relationships with everyone we interact with in our life. Essentially, it is about opening our hearts.