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Have a Happy St. Patrick's Day tomorrow!
As for that
silver lining, the likelihood that something resembling my
envisioned super-green living corridor across the USA will ever get built - just improved greatly in my opinion. I will explain after paying St. Patrick his due.
Although the celebrations around the world this year are being scaled down sharply, or canceled, due to the Coronavirus - perhaps someday we will recall that our luck began to change for the better on St. Patty's Day of 2020.
How so? Because this year, for the first time in the history o
f modern civilization, we are learning that we're
capable of living meaningful, happy and comfortable lives - without the totally unsustainable levels of travel, purchasing and consumption that have become central to almost everything we do.
The bad news is that Coronavirus is taking a horrible toll in terms of human lives lost and fortunes spent.
The good news is that the horrible impacts of that nasty virus may end up being exceeded by long-term benefits to humanity. Let me explain what I'm thinking.
As you probably know, since September of 2018, I have been writing about a green, sustainable vision for how we humans might transform our tremendously wasteful, harmful and grossly unsustainable way of life into a successor civilization that is dedicated to improving, instead of destroying, the natural environment.
But in order for us to execute that transformation, people must perceive that new way of life as being superior to the the one that most of us are living today in the developed world. Up until now, I have been trying to paint the picture of a very desirable, future way of life for humanity - albeit one that most people may not perceive as superior at first.
That's why I've been talking about a lengthy process of starting with a test-model of that future society and then gradually populating it with a very small percentage of Americans who would find it attractive, and would want to be among the first to move there.
But now - in the span of just two weeks - the entire population of the developed world has learned something great. They have learned that our lives do not necessarily stop when huge changes in our normal routines occur simultaneously.
We have learned that we can continue to enjoy
happy, comfortable, meaningful lives - without participating in any of the routine activities like the ten listed below.
Our lives will go on, we can adjust and we can be happy even without many of the things that we have grown to love. If necessary, we could adjust to what we have lost and compensate for it with new, joyful ways of living that we've never imagined. Here's a short list of ten activities that we now know we can live without - if absolutely necessary:
- Watching NBA basketball games in the arena
- Commuting to a central office where everyone works
- Attending classes together in a physical classroom
- Taking long airline flights to make sales calls in person
- Attending places of worship with hundreds of others
- Watching golf matches in person
- Attending college basketball tournaments
- Driving to crowded shopping centers to buy gifts
- Working out in a crowded fitness center
- Shopping in crowded stores and malls
In less than two weeks, there has been a paradigm shift that has opened the eyes of millions of public servants, executives, educators, administrators, sales managers and company owners - as to how life can go on while greatly reducing our carbon footprint at the same time.
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Far less flying and polluting but life goes on
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In a mere blink of an eye, many of the lifestyle details that are considered totally necessary in our normal society - have suddenly disappeared. Most of them will come back in time, but the knowledge that we have all gained - while surviving without them - will stay with us forever.
And that knowledge may inspire Homo sapiens to get busy planning and building a totally-green civilization that puts the natural world ahead of all of our wants and desires.
All of the above possibilities comprise what I am calling the Silver Lining of the Coronavirus - the fact that eventually learning how to live our lives in complete harmony with nature just got a whole lot more feasible.
To be clear,
Covid-19 has been, and will continue to be, a nightmare for millions of people. Indeed, we are all saddened by the widespread suffering and dying that it has inflicted on the entire world, but we can be encouraged by the possibility that our chances for surviving past 2100 as a species - may have just gotten a whole lot better.
Updated Preview of Outcry.
This Outcry Preview Link contains the cover, the Foreword by Mother Nature, the Introduction and the full table of contents.
Our publish date is April 22, which is the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day - and that was no coincidence.
PS: You may be wondering how you can help promote the never-ending search for a way to save our species. You can get me in front of some audiences who you think might be ready to hear about the long-overdue, global "conversation" about our survival.
As always, I am just trying to spark a global conversation about what is needed. By sharing a vision of what I believe is possible, I hope to influence others to think bigger, better and bolder.
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As for speaking, I continue to search for mainstream audiences who may have an interest in learning more about a realistically hopeful vision for our future - and their role in making that vision come true.
As such, I will travel anywhere for an opportunity to speak to one or more groups in each city that I visit. I will create a custom presentation for each audience and I only ask for travel expense reimbursement and a modest honorarium.
In the months ahead, I will continue to focus on the urgent need for a totally reinvented greening of our civilization - beginning with a model in the USA that could be applied globally over the next fifty years.
Upcoming talks
: There are lots of open dates on my calendar as my next scheduled talk is
at
Camp Plant-Stock
in Black Mountain, NC, in August.
As for the specifics of my topic, I invite you to
contact me directly
about how I might tailor my presentation to best suit an audience you may have in mind:
Universities,
churches, think-tanks, legislative bodies, environmental
organizations, alumni associations, leadership clubs, PTA's
and/or civic groups who may appreciate a message of reality and hope for our future.
What else can you do to help?
Three things:
1. Live as greenly as possible while doing all that you can to raise the awareness of "big picture" solutions that are crucially necessary for saving our civilization.
2. Share this BSB and my
"Mama Ain't Happy" BSB with prominent journalists, thought leaders and/or elected officials whom you respect. They need to learn a lot more about the many reasons why
Mama ain't happy.
3. Here are a few more GRATOLA-related blogs that you can share with your most powerful friends, leaders, journalists and movie producers.
Until next time, just remember...
Humanity is on a collision course with Nature.
A damaged Nature will survive. We may not.
We must change course to avert an ecological disaster.
This SOS Memo series was created by:
J. Morris (Jim) Hicks
CEO, 4Leaf Global, LLC
In the past two years, I have spoken at a
VegFest in
Fort Myers, at
vsh.org
in Honolulu and Kahului, Maui, the
College of the Holy Cross
in Worcester, MA, a
Plant Powered Manhattan
event in New York, at a lakeside health conference in
South Haven, Michigan, in Buffalo, NY, at the
University of Scranton, at Dr.
Fuhrman's
Golden Gate Health Getaway
in California and at the
Healthy World Sedona Health and Sustainability Conference in AZ.
To schedule a presentation at a venue near you, please contact me at
[email protected]
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