Current Issue - See Below Archived Issues - Click Here
The Global Systems Review Issue 11 December 2009
The Global Systems Review is a periodic e-newsletter that explores critical world issues through the lens of whole systems thinking.
Wishing all a joyous holiday season, and a 2010 filled with peace and prosperity, hope and happiness!
In this Issue:
Copenhagen and Holiday Gifts Galore
Louise Diamond
The holiday season is a time of giving and receiving gifts. In our obsession with shopping, with finding just the right present at just the right price for just the right person, we often fail to remember and appreciate the gifts that abound in our lives already.
Many of these gifts have to do with friends and loved ones and the kindness of strangers. Yet there is another category of gifts that we rarely acknowledge, the gifts from the natural world that make our lives possible and pleasant.
I have recently been introduced to a term for this: ecosystem services. Quietly and steadily, the natural world is constantly providing us with essential services – for free! Bees and other insects pollinate the plants that provide our food. Tree roots and wetlands filter toxins from underground water supplies. The wind disperses seeds and helps break down rocks into organic materials that enrich the soil.
Plants with healing properties grow in every corner of the world to provide us with the medicines we need. Trees take carbon dioxide from the air and sequester it in their trunks, ensuring a healthy atmosphere for humans. The sun gives light, heat, and energy every single day. Waters, fields, and woodlands teem with animal life available as part of the human food chain. Mountains, oceans, canyons, forests, and more provide recreational opportunities and places of spiritual uplift for us two-legged creatures.
Not only do we tend to take these gifts for granted, as our due and right as the pre-eminent species on the planet (so we believe), but our actions have so compromised these natural services that we are in serious danger of destroying the life-giving carrying capacity of our precious earth.
The recent UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen was a partial attempt to repair some of the massive damage we have done and continue to do to these natural ecosystems., and thereby to ourselves. Like all partial steps, it was necessary but not sufficient.
As long as we think of the natural world as a ‘thing’ subject to our manipulation, as a set of objects we are entitled to take for our own use and enrichment, and as a lesser part of creation over which we have dominion, we cut ourselves off from that which gives us the greatest gift of all, the gift of life.
We cut ourselves off from the immeasurable bounty, the generosity, the loving abundance on offer from a complex and vital life system that we are not apart from but an inherent part of. We too are gifts – to each other and to all the other beings and elements that comprise the intricate web of life in which we exist. The basic organizing principle of that web is reciprocity: a constant flow of giving and receiving, of taking in and giving back.
We are taught as young children that when we receive a gift we are to say (and hopefully mean) ‘thank you.’ Gifts are to be cherished, not trashed; cherished both for the inherent value and pleasure they bring, but also for the love and caring behind the giving.
Our society has become so monetized that scientists are now busy assigning dollar values to the various ecosystem services so that we will wake up and take note of the destruction we are causing. This holiday season we can wake ourselves up and start with the most basic step of reciprocity – that of awareness and appreciation for what the natural world offers us unstintingly every single day. I can’t think of a better gift to give our children. It sure beats the latest Barbie doll or G.I. Joe.
Digging Out
Louise Diamond
The East coast is digging out from a major snowstorm – 2 feet where I live just outside Washington DC. Two feet is a lot of snow to move, and in a narrow driveway and city street there are not a lot of places to put the snow once it’s been cleared off the cars and sidewalks.
And yet, after the snowstorm there was a profound peace, a deep silence, a special beauty of sunlight on frozen crystal. In my neighborhood everyone came out at once, as if by some mysterious signal, and began helping one another. After some hours of hard work and pleasant chatter, we had transformed the landscape.
In many ways it feels like the U.S. has been digging out from a number of storms this year: the economic meltdown, the housing bust, the massive job losses, the continued violence in Iraq and the new surge in Afghanistan, the emergence of H1N1, the vitriolic debates on health care and climate change, to name a few.
Many people have suffered, are suffering – in this country and around the world. Often hidden from view for those who live with the privilege of being able to avoid it, this suffering is a profound wound in our human family, a wound that calls for our attention beyond the usual holiday donation time.
And yet, and yet, the peace, the silence, the beauty after the storm are also here, if we would look closely enough.
We have a new administration that has set a different course for America in the world, one that embraces engagement, dialogue, multi-lateralism, and bridge-building. We have a government seeking to re-structure itself to operate more holistically, with greater cross-functional cooperation and coordination for addressing complex global challenges.
We have a president not afraid to face squarely into some of the most critical issues and go for a solution. Whether these efforts will ultimately succeed or not, whether they are the very best decisions that could have been made, we cannot know. What we do know is that we have named the obstacles we face in seeking a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world, and started on a path to transcend them.
At the same time the storms that have taken us to the edge (or over) of chaos have also activated even greater dimensions of creativity and innovation among individuals, communities, civil society organizations, and social entrepreneurs. People are working together to support those among us who are in trouble; the values of ‘going green’ are gaining ground in industry and households alike; and localities are inventing new forms of social services and economic exchange.
2009 was very much like this big snowstorm. The digging out doesn’t end when the neighbors go back inside, the shovels get put away, and the sore backs are soaking in a hot bath; there is always more to do. Yet what we have accomplished so far has left us with a transformed landscape, one very different from this time last year. True, it has left more families suffering, but it has also left us with more energy, deeper connectedness, and a sense of quiet anticipation for what comes next. On this street, I hope it will be the snowplow. In the world, I hope it will be a steady advance toward peace on earth and joy to the world.
|
