Hello to the Gaia-L group from Don Chisholm

Personal Introduction:
I've been a consumer of mostly non renewable Gaian resources for 60 years. Living as a typical North American, I've had several cars, an airplane, dozens of household appliances and countless other material items. The sum of the raw materials and energy which went into the manufacture of these products is far greater than I personally, or even my community could produce, so I, along with others in my community, took the material and energy from the commons, good old, friendly old Gaia and Gaian reserves which had accumulated over billions of years. Not only am I a debtor to the system of Gaia, but I've father three children and brought them up to debtors too. In today's populous society, we can live no other way.

Since I am a law abiding citizen living within the paradigm of my community and country, for most of these years I had no conscious feeling that I was doing something dreadfully wrong. After all, I live like most of my neighbors - and my rights to buy, own and use the commons, and to bear children are entrenched my country's constitution, and who could question something as sacred as that; our system of free enterprise consisting of stock markets, corporations and banks and jobs for all, depend on buying, selling and shaping the commons, with the overall motive system energy coming mostly from Gaian fossil fuels. All of these things seemed like apple pie and ice cream - `just plain normal' - `so what else is new?'. Anyone who would suggest otherwise may be labeled a fool or Chicken Little.

Beginning about 5 years ago conflicting realities and paradoxical common knowledge caused me to study the system of Gaia, and for me, a slow, painful, agonizing new reality has emerged. I have been, and still am, living a wholly unsustainable life style! I, and my neighbors have accumulated a tremendous debt to our parent system, Gaia. And since things generally balance out in the long run, the question of `when and how will this debt be paid?' comes to mind.

The results of serious technical analysis of when and how will this debt will be paid are quite unbelievable. At least, they were to me, before my painful process of understanding. And that it is `unbelievable', seems to be the crux of the `human predicament', as coined by the Club of Rome a quarter century ago after publishing Limits to Growth (MIT study of where current trends lead). I have learned that human nature has left us with a variety of tricks which we play on ourselves to avoid knowing horrible truths.

Psychologist B.F. Skinner refers to believing this unbelievable as: "Conscious evolution: The only form of evolution now available to humans".

It seems that part of what makes the human predicament so unbelievable is that thoughts of correcting our collective Gaian debt, at first, seems quite impossible. Perhaps it is. Some of the unbelievables are:

Human Carrying Capacity of the Gaian System have been greatly exceeded.
We would have to re-think and modify some of the established concepts of `human rights.
We would have to re-think and modify our system of governance and many of our ancient institutions which are dedicated to the expansion of human activity.
Eventually, people in all countries of the world would have to come to these understanding.
For several decades we would have to consider humanity to be in crisis until intelligent understanding has led to an acceptable means of reducing our numbers - and until we can live without spending the commons, our home.

Having found that many other people have gone through the transition of acknowledgment of the unbelievable, some of us formed an organization called the Gaia Preservation Coalition (GPC). I am currently the President of GPC. We sometime feel like we are on a small raft in a sea of reality avoidance. We acknowledge, however, that our personal view of reality are subjective, and the thoughts above are mine and not necessarily shared by all. We offer our raft to those who would find comfort here. We are motivated by hope in different ways.

Various GPC members seek ways to bring people through the process of conscious evolution. But it's tricky business. People are quickly turned off by a doomsayer.

Long before GPC existed some members, such as Tom Ellis, Dick Richardson, Mike Nickerson or Allen Tough have taken various approaches to bring people to a point were they acknowledge that our apple pie and ice cream existence is melting away, and that the sum of the green movement and eco-villiages alone do not adequately address the human predicament..

We wish Tom lots of luck with the renewed GAIA International (Global Awareness Interdisciplinary Alliance) project.

Don Chisholm

**** Fran Donaldson & Don Chisholm & GPC ****
416 484 6225 of fax 484 0841
**** donchism@io.org ****
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