Without Intimacy the Planet Must Perish

Why are we NOT ALL fully participating in visionary plans to save the world?

Global warming, economic collapse, increasing poverty, peak oil, food and water shortages, disease epidemics, destructive wars, etc , etc, etc. The list of catastrophes seems to grow every year. However, there is no shortage of bold visionaries with brave new models of sustainability and planetary survival.

The call for a new global system of values is loud and clear. But visionary paradigms seeking to change whole value systems, involving massive systemic changes, tend to be top-down theories since the problems are so large and of global proportions.

The problem with expansive, top-down theories of change is that they are removed from the everyday life of most people. These solutions rely on the WILL for change and the desire to participate. But a lethargic and drained WILL can only delay involvement, causing many visionary goals to die of inattention or, at the least, seem unendurably slow in implementing.

Many of our global problems demand immediate attention and any delay only compounds our problems. We need a more bottom-up method of change that involves every individual and requires the WILL to participate on a daily basis.

WE HAVE LOST THE WILL FOR INTIMACY

Our lack of intimacy with the planet makes it a stranger to us, just as we have become strangers to each other. The macro-global world must continue to deteriorate as long as our individual micro-worlds continue to decay. How can we attain and preserve intimacy with our world as long as intimacy with those we have consciously chosen to love, continues to erode and dissolve? Our individual ‘world’ is the foundation of our larger world and when the foundation is decaying the entire edifice must crumble down upon us.

When peaceful, deeply loving relationships continue to be unsustainable, as divorce and domestic abuse statistics continually demonstrate, how on earth do we believe we can ever sustain the planet? When love between two becomes nothing more than a domestic hell on earth, what hope for the earth? When families exist as adverse and alienated strangers under one roof, how can an entire global population come together for change under one sun? Where is the WILL to intimately engage the earth, when we have lost the WILL to intimately engage with those we claim to love?

It is NOT my intent to negate the visionaries and their ideas and theories of change. I merely suggest that the WILL to change must exist within each individual mind before the collective mind can WILL to implement these perspectives. If you have lost the WILL to attain and enhance an intimate exchange with those you profess to ‘love,’ from whence will you find the WILL to participate in an intimate exchange with the larger world? The means of world change are available, and may have always been available, yet, it seems the WILL has yet to arrive.

WILLPOWER is the fuel of action. Yet, for many, daily life has become a barren wasteland of emptiness, devoid of higher value and sapped of vital energy. It seems we are either seeking to expand our individual consciousness, while enslaved to the paradigm of the solitary spiritual journey, or seeking to expand our bank accounts while enslaved to the paradigm of capitalist consumerism. In either paradigm the question remains, what about the others.

We all realize that we cannot sustain our planet and improve our global existence alone and we must all engage with “change” together, but the chief paradigms that make up our individual micro-worlds have not changed. Therefore, how can we ever expect the macro-world will change before the damage is too widespread and beyond effective remedy. There are no second chances here.

INTIMACY WITH THE WORLD, BEGINS WITH ANOTHER

If I cannot engage intimately with the one I have chosen to love “till death do us part,” how can I intimately engage the world that sustains and supports our being together? How can we save our planet and improve our relationship with this life sustaining foundation if we can’t even save our marriages, intimate relationships and families? You can go off and seek to activate magical visionary systems of global sustainability, but if you and your ‘loved ones’ are steeped in mutual resentment and episodic loathing what does that say about your efforts to save the planet?

Can we really separate our individual ‘world,’ which we share with a choice few, from the world we share with everyone? If your relationship with your loved one is rapidly eroding and doomed to fail, is this not commentary on your expectations for the planet? There is no division between our intimacy with each other and our intimacy with the world. If the experience of daily life is decayed and rotten so must be the experience of our world. Our deteriorating families and marriages are nothing more than a smaller rendition of the larger world. Too many divorced and abusive relationships and too many neglected and abused children can only mean one thing.

The system must change because it is no longer sustainable I believe this hypocrisy is not lost on most and this is why grand new paradigms of sustainability seem so hopelessly delayed or even unattainable. Unfortunately, if we continue to deny and discard intimacy within our little enclaves of unity, I see no reason to believe we will ever engage the larger world with the degree of intimacy required to save it. The sad part is that, if we continue to deny and discard intimacy with the world, there will be no “second marriage” to save us. “Love the one you’re with” and allow that intimacy to naturally invite ever more intimate engagement with the world.

This is the “awakening” and “enlightenment” that the masters spoke of and that level of intimacy cannot be experienced alone. It is crucial that we begin to seek that "deeper understanding" as soon as possible, because sustainable planets do not participate in serial monogamy.