Vision Mountain Spokane

"Humans who don't know much about themselves, know very little about how to help save the planet." Sun Bear

 Long Lake or Lake Spokane

Above "Grandmother"

 "Grandfather"

Stupa

Lama Geshe Thupten Phelgye blessing on Vision Mountain. There is a lot of healing to do, healing between tribes, nations, and between human-kind and the earth they stand and depend totally on.


"I looked ahead and saw the mountains there with rocks and forests on them, and from the mountains flashed all colors upward to the heavens. Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy."
Nicholas Black Elk

http://www.sravastiabbey.org/photogallery/2009/aug09phelgyeregion.html

http://www.whale.to/b/sunbear.html

The Story of Stuff

Teaser Trailer about a site that shines awareness on consumer culture and the forces behind it. To view this video in it's entirety, go here:
The Story of Stuff



Couple of the main points that this 20 minutes video shows:

- Only one percent of all the new stuff bought after 6 months is still being used. The rest either trashed or filling up people's increasingly large homes. This is an almost unbelievable statistic, have to check where they got that figure from.

- Victor Lebow on how to keep the economy growing after WWII, "Our enormously productive economy ... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.... we need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."

- President Eisenhower's council of economic advisors chairman stated:
"The American economy's ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods."

- Paul Wachtel writes in The Poverty of Affluence: "Having more and newer things each year has become not just something we want but something we need. The idea of more, ever-increasing wealth, has become the center of our identity and our security, and we are caught up by it as the addict is by his drugs."

How does an unsustainable economy keep people spending money on stuff?

- Planned Obsolescence

An endless market is created by introducing rapid, disposables, one time use items, basically designed for the trash heap, so you have to go out and buy it again. Examples, disposable diapers, cameras, brooms, carpets, etc. Upgrade the motherboard on the computer, and likely many other things will need upgrading as well, many just get a new computer to avoid the hassle of incompatibilities. Disconnection from the earth as a whole system is literally written all over these products. It is a symbol of our disconnected separate thinking state of mind. The video discusses designers figuring out a way to keep consumers loyal to their products while at the same time making components break fast.

- Perceived Obsolescence

Convince the consumer to throw away stuff that is still useful. How to do that? By changing the way things look, basically, changing the fashions often, whether that is for clothes or gadgets. Look at advertising, it appeals to people's manufactured self image, "do you really want to look, breath, show yourself in that way?", with our product, xyz, you will look cooler, more color coordinated, get more happiness, more girls, look younger, act more confident, show you care, etc, etc. Basically preying on people's insecurities, and limited self image. The video mentions the example of shoe fashion changes each year. An important element in this conditioning is creating a perceived value to the user. Again, this comes from a disconnected, separate thinking self identity, one that puts ficticious value judgements on people things and planet.

How to keep people from questioning their conditioning and continue shopping?

- Carpet bomb them with advertising, a bombardment of the average person of 3000 ads per day.

- Telling the consumer that they are not happy, unless they buy xyz. Similar to a priest a few centuries earlier telling people that they are sinners, and they can only go through the church to get a chance at eternal rewards. Basically by projecting small identities onto the consumer.

- Keep the nasty stuff or REALITY out of the field of vision, as though it doesn't exist. Examples are the cartoony happy chickens running around on the farm (instead of the undignified factory farms where they are fattened up with who knows what, beaks cut because they are stuffed in small cages so they can't kill each other, avoiding humane killing to save a penny, etc), the bugers that grow on trees, the face that suddenly looks 50 years younger. It truly is the "matrix" of manufactured happiness, version of reality. The advertisers have no incentive to show where the stuff comes from, as that would bring out the citizen, or perhaps move people's heart, which is in conflict with the non-feeling, non-connected consumer persona which just wants to consume, neural networks which are encouraged to grow like weeds in people's heads and sanctified (endorsements by public figures, heros, or celebrities).

- The connection between national happiness falling and consumerism rising is made. We have the gross national product as a standard for wealth, Butan has the gross national product of happiness. Different emphasis, different outcome. While neither might be the best way to go into the future, it sure would be nice to have product life cycle cost, national wellness, and impact on environment or future generations included in this mix.

- More time off is not neccessarily better if it is not quality time, but less time off in order to buy more, which creates a cycle of even more work to pay for keeping up with the Jones's.

Shift Happens - All Things Change - Ceaseless Transformation is the sign of the times

The "Shift Happens" video creates a space for reflection on the exponential fast paced times we live in where adapting to change will be highly valued. But sometimes "no change" or keeping the status quo is subsidized as in for example the meat and ethanol industry, creating an artificial market place. Will these subsidies, obstructions, or lack thereof improve the welfare in the world or not, it is not black and white. As H.L. Mencken once pointed out, it is difficult to get a man (or congressman in this case) to understand something when his income (big campaign contributions) depends on his not understanding it.



Another quote relating to environmental changes that business will have to go through, "The winners will be the folks that don't resist change, but look at ways to apply innovation and ingenuity to capitalize on the migration toward a lower carbon economy." Ken Ostrowski.

Reasons for Converting to Straight Vegetable Oil

This will probably change some, some of these reasons also apply to Biodiesel users, however SVO has the added advantage of not dealing with Methanol and caustic soda or lye and further heating, using more energy..)

-- Decreasing our dependence of foreign oil. (The latest stat was that we rely 65 % on foreign oil, or 13.2 imported barrels a day)
http://oversight.house.gov/Documents/20050720134711-47263.pdf

-- Diversification and de-centralization of energy sources (The potato blight or great Irish famine taught, or should have taught all of us that planting one crop, or putting your eggs in one basket is not a sensible, sustainable, survival strategy, same with energy sources, diversification is the key to long term survival, preferable using sources that decrease our harm/resource footprint)

-- Recycling waste restaurant oil makes sense (this stuff has a lot of energy in it, I get pretty much the same mileage and power from this as from regular dino diesel) Some folks would add that running on waste oil saves them money, this would primarily apply to people with large daily commutes. I have invested about 1500 dollars in the setup and use the bike several days in the week as well as telecommute one day out of five. Also not counting buying an old diesel truck, so I don't see it making money any time soon)

-- Recycling waste heat from the engine to make the oil thinner, or lower it's viscosity (so that it gets close to that of diesel and prevents coking or gelling). I read somewhere that the engine produces enough waste heat when running to heat a house, this is very inefficient, so re-using this waste heat makes sense.

-- 50 + percent reduction in particulates

-- Carbon Neutral, doesn't contribute to global warming.

-- No sulfur (the stuff that causes acid rain and cancer and is bad for your health)

-- sulfur is added to diesel for lubrication, well, vegetable oil lubricates even better and doesn't need it added. (when I switch to vegetable oil, I hear a reduction in engine knocking, it just seems to go a bit smoother, some folks say it is less noisy, perhaps someone can do an audio test)

-- Help the local farmers grow canola or rape seed as a rotation crop and an extra source of income (again not putting all the eggs in one basket seems to be key in survival), it doesn't have to replace food crops, and rotation crops help retain the precious top soil, a clear win-win for the farmer and the land, assuming the farmer is using sustainable practices. If I were a farmer I'd add some windmills and or solar panels, fast growing living fences that are harvestable, as well to generate additional income on those windy hills. Basically diversification.

-- Re-using existing diesel vehicles to create a hybrid is cheaper than buying a new hybrid that is still dependent on fossil fuel. In other words, if you can't afford a 20 thousand dollar vehicle, but still want to have a hybrid, this is the cheapest route. If you have a gasser, you could still have a hybrid, take the car half way to work, and bike or walk or take the bus, that cuts your fuel costs in half, and feels good physically. You can then throw out the gym membership as well, as now you get your exercise when going and coming to work.

-- Re-connecting with other members of the community, with the farmers that grow our food and fuel, re-learning to share equipment and resources, rooted in an understanding that we are in this together and that we're not so separate as we have been conditioned to think, this has nothing to do with some romantic notion, it is key to long term survival and increasing wealth to many, rather than concentrating it for a few at the cost of others. Everyone has something unique to contribute to this world but few realize their potential and their right to inhabit this world and be respected as much as the next person. Much of our conditioning is still based on the fictious concepts of class/color/gender etc.. separations, certain people are special and the rest are "lesser" who need to be put into complacency. It is easier to control others and disempower humans when you have convinced them they are of lower value to the world.

Below are some thoughts and reflections that seem to want articulation and that may or may not be of interest, for what it's worth..

If one slows down, and looks around, one can see beauty all around. An obvious example is when you stand on a mountain in the desert and you look at this display and sharing of unconditional beauty. But as Joe Campbell used to say, seeing it in the mountains is easy, seeing it in the slums of Detroit is a bigger challenge.

The birds sing their songs regardless of who is listening, the mountains show their beauty and play with the light and clouds, why can't we humans too, share ourselves unconditionally? Is any flower or mountain exactly the same? No, they all have something unique and can be appreciated for that, so we too can share our uniqueness unconditionally. Value judging ourselves, and consequently others, has created a big boundary that I believe keeps us from walking on the "pollen path" as the Navajo call it. What is the pollen path? You're on it...................However, your sight might be obscured, clouded, covered up.

I believe running an old polluting vehicle and transforming it into something less harmful, without building new vehicles is a nice way to make the transition to a sustainable lifestyle, and re-use what we have. Transformation of oneself into something that is less harmful seems to influence those things around us that were also the products of the state of our minds at the time. If you change your relationship to yourself and the world, the world inevitably starts reflecting this different relationship in small but noticeable ways (some would argue that it takes transcendent endurance to see the changes, but I don't think it is that bad).

It is therefore logical to see what is around us and what we have created as a reflection of our own inner state of mind. Thoughts are seeds that when cultivated and watered in our minds crystallize outward. It doesn't take much reflection to realize the implication of responsibility we have for our own thoughts and their resulting consequences that ripple outward. I don't believe in a distinct right and left, I believe we all want happiness, the trick is finding out an imperfect but workable win-win route for all parties involved, this is a process fraught with trial and error, hard for the perfectionists in ourselves, but doable with some patience and creativity and perhaps most important of all, humility.