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12 December 2009
When 25, 000 'tourists' all travel to Denmark at the same time, regardless of their agenda, it is fair and balanced to say that the earth is in upheaval. This earth, and its resources live and breathe at a historical cross roads more dire than any Climategate debate or whether one believes the source of global warming is human, alien, corporate or delusion. As members of the ecosystem, as the species that has chosen to dominate this ecoysystem for the latter part of the last gazziliion millenia, now we are in peril. Unlike the dinosaurs, which have been firmly established to have gone extinct due to cigarette smoking, the state of the human species and how we got here somehow still remains everybody's guess. And given examples like The Situation, a rare breed of our species inhabiting my own native land, the situation's not looking so bright.
In response to the current events underway at Copenhagen, Naomi Klein recently asserted that there's a new breed of anger surfacing among humans of all kinds across all regions of the ecosystem, that a new time of unprecedented response is upon us. Were I in the lab, I would casually observe this behavior as a species and ecosystem that has reached carrying capacity, and log the data until the test subjects ran out of resources and slowly turned on each other. Yet this is no experiment we are undergoing, and the human species now seems less suited to exist and thrive in its current environmental state than the rats we continue to study in labs. Meanwhile, the real species we could learn most from observing and mastering is ourselves. It would appear that the very survival of our species depends on it.
The New Urban Ecological Paradigm
More than half of the world's population now lives in cities, ecosystems with limited resources now inhabited by the most hungry and consumption-oriented species this planet has ever seen. So the world is going to hell in a plastic sweat shop made handbasket? Hardly. But a new urban ecological paradigm shift is upon us, and we as a species must react in kind and engage our cities as resources that will enable the entire earth to thrive. Though I'm not so sure the Hopi had this exact vision in mind when they foresaw that 'we are the ones we are waiting for', this is where we're at in the world, literally. And as my great grandma once said "we've made our bed, now we must lie in it." Fortunately, my mother was wiser, for she always said "one can only get stepped on, if they lie down'.
Actualized in present day context, this means nothing short of the absolute evolution of the human species. I'm in. I hope you are too, or at the very least, you try to embrace the tiny idea that all our species may depend on it. What will this evolved species look like? We're looking at it. Sometimes it's downright beautiful. Sometimes it ain't pretty, and we try to look away. Yet this is no experiment. There is no where left in the lab of life to look where our actions as a human species do not impact or touch upon every single last one of us. That's some scary shit. I'm still in. Everywhere I look, everything is in and each and every one of our locales must be the rich environs through which we all contribute to healing the entire ecosystem.
The creative conversion of the urban space and its inhabitants into a thrivable resource is something all humans living in cities can realize, especially if they engage one another in the process. Unlike creationism, where guilt is at the heart of every transgression and action, there is no right or wrong along evolutionary road. Just like in the lab, we try and we err. We intend to invent ice cream and end up creating crazy glue. Stunningly, our infallibility and our process in creating this forever changing world with this elegant imperfection, is what makes us human and what makes it possible for us to get our world in gear for an overhaul of our species and its tools of creation.
What's your work in progress, sensational creation, or next powerful vehicle for social change that you are introducing to the world? Think of the Comments Section as ripe organic soil, and please plant away with the ideas, ventures and links to what you're up to.