Save Nature !

What can we do to save Nature ?

2009-12-31T00:00:00.000+05:30

What Can I Do Now?

Trust your instincts: Reconnect with them, listen to them, and don't let other people tell you you're stupid, crazy, irrational, or immoral. If you're unhappy it's for a reason. Your gut feeling, your intuition, is written in your DNA, and it's the source of knowledge that allows every living creature to know what to do. And it worked for man for the first three million years of his life on Earth as well -- before language, before laws, before codes of right and wrong -- and these were arguably the most successful, leisurely, and happy years of man's existence. Listen to them, and they'll tell you what to do.

Listen, Learn, and Teach Others: Spend time both in nature, away from civilization, and with people, listening and talking about things that matter. In nature, reawaken and reconnect with your senses, focus each sense until you really see, hear, smell, taste, feel, connect with the rest of the living organism called Earth. Open yourself up to the joy, and learning of nature. Pay attention. Re-learn to wonder. Then, 'back' in civilization, have the courage to talk openly to people about things that really matter to you. Ignore the raised eyebrows and comments about your seriousness and intensity -- you'll find most people care, too. Then listen, don't preach. Leave behind one practiced, important (to you), articulate idea or thought with the other person, like planting a seed. Learn to tell stories -- it's the only effective way to teach. But share what you know. When you're talking to someone who strongly disagrees with you, listen, don't try to convert them. There's a reason why they feel so differently from you -- ferret out and really understand what that reason is (don't assume they're ignorant or stupid). Then sow a single seed of doubt. And read quickly and selectively, but don't let it keep you indoors, or away from people. The real learning is outside. So travel when you can, but forget the hotel chains and chain restaurants. Live with the locals, talk to them, try different things, listen and learn.

Learn and Practice Critical Thinking: Challenge 'established wisdom', especially your instincts tell you it's dubious. Learn your vulnerability to spin, and how to recognize and discount it. Learn to avoid the intellectual fallacies of groupthink and arrogance, but also avoid black hat thinking. Develop emotional intelligence, but never use it to manipulate.

Re-Learn How to Imagine: The school system and most business environments drive it out of us, and it's easy to get caught up in your own left brain. It can also be frightening: imagining literally means putting your thoughts into images. But it's powerful, motivating, educational, and creative. Imagine -- picture it -- what it happening in Sudan where genocide is happening right now. Imagine what is happening in the factory farms before you decide what to make for dinner. Imagine what you could be doing if it wasn't for your boring, meaningless job. Imagine a better way of doing something, a better way to live. Imagine what could be. Your instincts will tell you what to do next. If we can't imagine, we can do anything. That's what got us into this mess.

Use Less Stuff: Consumerism is doubly addictive -- you get the fleeting pleasure of acquiring something, and then you have to work harder and earn more money for The Man so you can pay off the debt you incurred to buy it. Learn to live a Radically Simple life -- buy better quality stuff that lasts longer, make your own meals instead of using processed foods, think before you buy, don't get into debt (only buy when you have the cash in your account), buy local rather than imported goods (especially stuff from countries that have poor social and environmental standards), complain about excessive packaging, recycle, reuse, buy used, share tools with neighbours, turn off the lights, cover the pool, use energy-efficient lighting, keep your tires inflated, carpool, walk or bike instead of driving -- you know what to do. Make a list, draw up a schedule, and do it.

Stop at One: Consider the virtues of a single-child family. Learn why children in such families are the happiest and most successful. Better yet, adopt.

Become Less Dependent: Learn how to fix things and make things instead of always having to buy replacements. Cut your own lawn, and perform other services yourself, even if you can afford someone else to do it. Self-sufficiency is good for your self-esteem, reduces consumption and waste, helps the environment, and is good exercise.

Become an Activist: Pick a cause you care about, research what needs to be done, use the Internet to organize, and do it. But follow Peter Singer's advice to make sure your time is well-spent. Especially the parts about not getting caught up in administration, and not trying to change, or enforce, laws. The most fruitful activism is all about informing and educating people, making them aware of their options, and their power as citizens and consumers, often one person at a time, until enough people have changed their minds or their behaviours to change the system.

Volunteer: Rather than sending guilt money, go out and spend time helping those suffering or in need. Pick a charity that you really care about -- the soup kitchen, the animal shelter, whatever. Get involved, and talk to the people you're helping. Don't get talked into fundraising activities -- really get out there and do something with your own two hands. You'll learn a lot, you'll feel better, you'll make a difference, and you just might find out something important about yourself.

Be a Role Model: Talk to others about, and show others, what you're doing, not just what you're thinking. People are far more inspired by a good role model than a good speech. And if people tell you you're a good role model, get out there and flaunt it in the right places -- if you're a woman engineer, go out to the schools and tell girls what a great career it is. If you're doing half the things on this list, you're a great role model -- inspire others to follow your example.

Be a Pioneer: If you have the time and the passion for it, pick a new cause, use the Internet to find like minds, do your homework, organize, and do something completely new. Start a community energy co-op. Set up a 'virtual' market for local crafts, organic or free-range foods, or whatever needs better local distribution. Establish a community-based business. Or create a whole community, self-selected, self-organized, self-sufficient, with people you love, and show the world how much more sense this makes than living in a community of strangers and driving long distances to work for someone you dislike so you can buy stuff you don't need made by other strangers even unhappier with their lives than you are. The new culture will be built bottom-up, one community at a time, and the sooner we start finding a community model that works well in a post-civilization society, the better.

Find or Create a Meaningful Job: Each of us has talents, interests, and time. It's amazing how many of us spend all our time doing work that we find uninteresting, and which doesn't effectively use our talents. We become wage slaves, underemployed and bored because we're convinced or afraid that a better job doesn't exist. And we work so hard at it we have no time left to challenge that conviction or fear. That's what the corporatists are counting on. Don't give them the satisfaction. Find the time to figure out what you really would like to do with your life, how you'd really like to make a living. Then research the possibilities, talk to people who are doing it, find out what's possible, learn what's involved in creating your own business (and don't listen to accountants or MBAs). If we were all doing jobs we loved, with people we love, and in charge of our own careers, the corporatists would have no staff, and their environmentally devastating empires would crumble.

Share Your Expertise: If you have talents, specialized know-how, or technical or scientific skills and knowledge that could be useful in solving birth control, clean energy, disease prevention, conservation, animal cruelty, pollution and waste, local self-sufficiency, non-animal foods, 'more-with-less' product streamlining, self-organization, collaboration, consumer and citizen awareness and activism, animal communication, conflict resolution, mental illness, and other issues contributing to environmental deterioration, create 'open source' spaces where others can access what you know, contact you, and collaborate with you and with others to solve these problems.

Be Good to Yourself: You're not going to be any use saving the world if you're depressed, unfit or stressed out. Don't take the problems of the world personally, or blame yourself for them. If news or failure to accomplish something gets you down, go out and do something you enjoy. Eat healthy and stay fit, but don't make a religion of it -- indulge yourself from time to time. Learn how to prevent illnesses instead of waiting for them to occur. Spend time with people who like you, and accept their compliments warmly. Love yourself, realize that you can do anything you want to do. Appreciate that you're part of the solution, and that makes you extraordinary.

Infect Others With Your Spirit and Passion: Love openly, completely, as many people as you can. Be emotional, except in those very rare occasions when dispassion is needed. Smile excessively. But refuse to tolerate cruelty, suffering, unfairness, bullying, jealousy, apathy, despair, cynicism or hate, in yourself or others -- alleviate it, disarm it, discharge it, whatever it takes to stop these negative emotions and activities, and appreciate that they're signs of sickness, not evil.

A period of great change is always turbulent and unsettling, and the transformation to a Relater-Sharer culture won't be achieved in our lifetime. So we will need to be, like all pioneers, patient, indefatiguable, and aware that the beneficiaries of what we do starting now will be our descendents, future generations who will only know us from stories. As human beings, and as the species that created this mess in the first place, we owe them no less. We know, instinctively, that that is why we're here.

Why civilizations doesn't work ?

2009-12-24T00:00:00.000+05:30

Why Civilization Doesn't Work, and Why We Invented It

Blue Blocks --> Reasons ( or say ANSWERS to why? )
Orange Blocks --> Result ( Solution provided by NATURE to our misleading activities )
Brown Block --> Final Result ( That shouldn't be happened )

This picture looks something like this: We learned that for civilization to work, we had to live closer together, and to work in a coordinated way in new and difficult jobs. To do so we needed to evolve new, abstract, technical languages and create hierarchies of command and control. The crowding, the coercion, and the development of very successful agricultural technologies had three immediate consequences: High levels of physical and emotional stress (nature's way of signalling and dealing with overcrowding), excess food (which in turn led to exploding population, and even more crowding), and, paradoxically, recurring and catastrophic shortages, as the new monoculture crops occasionally and spectacularly failed. Thus the vicious cycle shown in the chart above began.

With more and more people crammed into civilization's new 'cities', opportunistic diseases that required proximity quickly evolved and blossomed into epidemics. The human forms of poxviruses, nature's ubiquitous species-specific population regulator, became endemic and killed over a billion of the first few billion humans born into civilization. The crowding and the loss of community and purpose and place led to mental illness, to new physical ailments (like tooth decay and heart disease) connected to the loss of variety in our diet, and to addictions, which are now so common and widespread that we have come to think of them as normal, and only notice them in the descendants of tribal cultures most recently conquered and forced to adapt to civilization's ways, where their symptoms are most tragic and most obvious. The crowding also produced continuous violence and war, as fighting broke out over increasingly scarce land and resources, and the ethic that had held for three million years that land was sacred, and belonged to the community that was already there, was replaced by an ethic of acquisition, of justifiable genocide of uncivilized cultures, and of manifest destiny to conquer and seize every acre of land to meet civilization's insatiable needs. Catastrophic crop failures led to famines, previously unknown on the planet, and the 'fear of not having enough' caused everyone to try to hoard surpluses, and prompted those higher in the new hierarchies to demand more than their share, and to use their power to establish and preserve a staggering new inequality of health and wealth.

Social order, which for three million years had been egalitarian and instinctive and built around the tribal community, started to break down as the new larger social structures did not work on the same principles. New social principles therefore had to be developed: New religions taught that suffering was normal and divine will; New laws and punishments and prisons were introduced to enforce obedience to the rules set by those at the top of the hierarchy; New educational and moral codes taught that war is honourable and inevitable, that some people deserve more wealth and security than others, and that conformity and other qualities that keep order and discipline are 'virtues'; The nuclear family unit was conceived to promote patriarchy and hierarchy as the natural human order, and to replace the loss of the tribal community. And all of these new systems portrayed nature as dangerous, brutal, something that had to be conquered and subdued in the interest of man, and portrayed man as divine, above and apart from all other life, so that man was absolved from the guilt, the responsibility and the intuitive distress over destroying nature and enslaving the tribal peoples and animals that got in the way of global dominion by 'civilized' man, in his insatiable need for more land, more resources and more slave labour to feed the ever-increasing masses. And man, social, adaptable, gullible creature that he is, bought it all. He learned to forget his true nature, to distrust his instinct, and to believe that civilization, despite its vicious cycle, was the only way to live.

How Nature Works ?

2009-12-17T00:00:00.000+05:30

How Nature Works ?

Imagine that you, and a small group of other people, were to wake up tomorrow with absolutely no memories of your past or even of the language you spoke, in the middle of a forest in a tropical wilderness. Even if none of you had ever spent a moment away from the shelter of civilization in your life, you would not awake and be filled with dread and fear. You think you might because in the 'real' world you have been conditioned to fear nature, to see it as savage, violent, a struggle to survive. You have been taught, brainwashed, to distrust and ignore your instincts. But now you would awaken with no such prejudgements. You would become, in many ways, as children, and your whole group would awake full of wonder, and greet each other awkwardly, and then, probably, until hunger and thirst and sexual desire started to command your attention, you would probably play with your new 'friends', exploring and discovering, as children do, and as the newborn of all species in nature do. Imagine, too, that there is an unseen force that, for a while, protects you -- pulls you away before you can touch plants that are poisonous, guides you to safe, comfortable places to sleep, eat, drink and play, and repels predators, until you have learned from this force -- let's say you call it ma -- how to survive without its intervention, at which point ma leaves you to your own devices. Your group becomes, in fact, a hunter-gatherer tribe, completely unaware of any of the precepts of civilization -- language, science, reason, morality. Your initial state is one of astonishing joy, wonder, health, well-being, self-sufficiency, peace, security, community, learning, alertness, awareness, cooperation, imagination, love and respect for nature, and, to the extent needed, creativity -- all the elements of natural systems shown in the diagram above. You will instinctively hunt together and gather and share food, and you will recognize in each other specialized talents for doing one thing or another, and learn from your expert peers. There will be a 'pecking order' of sorts, based on consensus of, and respect for, those whose talents are most valuable -- keen senses, physical strength, creativity -- but the tribe will be egalitarian. There will be no hoarding or inequitable distribution of food or other resources. Since there is no scarcity, sharing will be according to need. Sex will be consensual and non-exclusive. Some members of the tribe will be eaten by predators, and others will contract diseases and go off by themselves to die, but these deaths will not cause the members of the tribe to become fearful, paranoid, selfish, greedy or violent. They will simply be accepted as the way life is. Your tribe of amnesiacs will know of no other way to respond. You will respect and flee from predators, and be alert for them and protect your young from them, but you will not fear them.

That is how nature works. Each creature strives to live and to bring more of their kind into the world not because they fear death, but because life is wonderful. When you see tiny birds scrounging at your bird-feeder or shivering in a tree in winter, don't feel sorry for them. They are not helpless and struggling and cowed. They shiver because instinctively they know it keeps their body temperature up. They have amazing (at least to us, who lack them) instinctive survival talents -- they need a lot of food in winter to keep warm, and they find it easily, enjoyably, and if they can't, they simply hibernate, and if they even suspect they won't be able to, they'll migrate. They can fly, and I envy them, I wish I were one of them. Although lots of birds are eaten by predators, few freeze or starve to death -- famine is a modern human invention, due to our huge numbers and loss of natural adaptability. If you see a dead bird, it almost certainly succumbed to one of three human-caused injuries: Collision with a window, or an automobile, or a domestic cat that no longer needed or wanted to eat what it killed.

The people in your amnesiac tribe, and all the creatures in the wild, know what David Abram calls the Spell of the Sensuous. Many animals have senses that are much more acute than ours, and we have lost much of our sensory acuity and openness, largely because we live most of our lives in cities and indoors, areas of great sensory homogeneity, poverty and concealment. We no longer have either rich sensory environments to experience, or practice exercising our senses, opportunities to open ourselves up to the richness of sounds, sights, smells, tastes and feelings in nature, so that even in those rare times when we are in natural environments we are unaware, insensitive, closed, disinterested in their magic, their meaning, their knowledge.

Our ignorance of nature, combined with our collective arrogance (because of our unquestioned evolutionary success), leads us to believe that we are the only sentient, emotional, intelligent creatures on the planet, and to tell ourselves that all other life couldn't possibly have done so well for so many millions of years because they're smart, sensitive and creative, so it must be because they're automatons just doing what they've been 'programmed' to do. But just as economists and historians are tearing apart our myths about prehistoric man, scientists are systematically deconstructing the anthropocentric myths of our emotional and intellectual uniqueness and superiority. Although our incompetence at deciphering animal language and communications has so far made it conveniently impossible to prove conclusively, there is very compelling evidence that many animals exhibit extraordinary intelligence, great awareness of their own existence, and profound emotion.

How Nature deals with imbalance ?

2009-12-10T00:00:00.000+05:30

Reframing History: Understanding How Man Lived in Harmony With Nature for Three Million Years

Green Blocks --> How Nature deals when it affects ?
Blue Blocks --> How Human & Other Species affect when nature is imbalanced ?
Black Blocks --> Warnings & Signals for the species !
Brown Blocks --> A pre-condition for Black blocks.
Orange blocks --> Required state for nature . . .

Here it is important to see that Our relationship is with nature is like that of Mother-Son. As you will treat her , So will she take care of you. Even if you don't treat her very nicely , she will take care of you but not for long.Nature is our primary mother and we've to take care of it , preserve it and maintain it.

What is affected by nature ?

Our Mental State ---> Our Health ---> Our Activities ---> Our lifestyles ---> Our Society ---> Our Civilization.

and if our civilization ruins then none other than us will be responsible for it as we didn't take any actions to preserve it.

10 Arguments to Save Nature

2009-12-03T00:00:00.000+05:30

The Truth About Nature: What We Have Forgotten

Man is not Special, not the Crown of Creation, or a Species Apart, but rather a fairly minor evolutionary adaptation to one ordinary branch of the tree of life on Earth. The impact and 'success' of this species is no more an indication of greater importance, predestination or divine will than is the impact and success of the mosquito, HIV, bacteria, cancer cells or the Plague.
Our planet is a single self-managing organism. All life on Earth exists to sustain, nourish and support all other life on Earth. As with a human body or any other organism, that is only possible when each component of the organism does its part, in balance and harmony with the rest. In that sense the Earth is sacred, it demands and earns respect and obedience to its 'laws' because that is essential to the survival of all life.
The Earth is full of sentient, intelligent, communicative, emotional creatures. Most human moralities and religions seem to hold that creatures with these attributes deserve freedom from harrassment, suffering and enslavement, and the right to exist. Therefore much human activity, which deprives all non-humans of these rights and freedoms, is an atrocity no less despicable than human genocide, holocaust, torture and slavery, and must be stopped.
Small is beautiful, and place gives us identity: The community as the basic political unit and Natural Enterprise as the basic economic unit work best because they can be self-selecting and self-managing, and are extremely adaptive. In nature, the community teaches you what you need to live, it defines you and gives you purpose, it anchors and connects you. And though we are all part of a web, a mosaic, and we all travel, ultimately we have our own place, our 'home'. If you're not totally connected with everything and every creature that is part of your place, then it isn't your place. If you don't have a place, then you don't yet really exist. It is your community, your ecosystem, all of it, that is your place -- not the isolated, nuclear-family, locked house on 'private' property. Larger political units (states) and economic units (corporations) are inherently unwieldy, inflexible and less democratic. Because of their sheer size they are detached, remote, and cannot possibly understand or respond to our needs. Forged from both idealism and cynical greed for power, these abominations serve no useful purpose except to protect us from other large political and economic units (and they do that poorly).
We learn what we're shown, not what we're told. Our senses provide us what we need to learn, to really understand, to be happy. When we live in our minds, we close ourselves off from so much. Formal education is futile. To bring about change we need to show people something that works better, and reconnect them with their senses, their imagination, the Earth.

The Truth About Civilization: The Problem and Its Root Cause

Civilization was a well-intentioned response to a sudden drastic shortage of human food (possibly arising from overhunting of large game and/or the last ice age). But it was not an instinctive way to live, and needed a lot of artificial constructs and controls to work. Our civilization systematically brainwashes us into staggering cultural homogeneity and imaginative poverty, and to believe ours is the only way to live -- that there is no other human way. To do so it must get us to forget or deny the 5 truths above, and teach us these great myths:

That our instincts are unreliable (what nature 'tells' us to do), and logic and morality are infallible (what human codes tell us to do);
That life is a struggle of 'good vs. evil', and that we are inherently weak, selfish and lazy;
That it's good to be 'normal' and to be like other people, and that we're all part of society and not ultimately, terribly alone;
That we must be unconditionally obedient to our 'superiors', their hierarchy and their laws, or society and order will collapse;
That our well-being is appropriately measured by our material possessions and our ability to acquire more;
That disparity of wealth, health and dignity is necessary and inevitable and that with hard work 'have-nots' can become 'haves';
That we must all work long, hard hours at unsatisfying jobs or we will all suffer and starve;
That humans have an inherent right to all the land and all the resources of Earth (and even beyond);
That history began with civilization, before which life was short, fearful, nasty and brutish (and in nature and tribal cultures, it still is).

We are instinctively responsive to, and responsible for, everything we have control over. In nature that is the immediate community -- what goes on outside is not one's business. But now that we, as a 'global community' control the whole world we cannot respond, cannot bear the commensurate responsibility. This conflict between our instincts and reality, along with the stress of overpopulation and separation from nature, has made us all mentally ill. This illness manifests itself in violence and war, hatred, abuse, greed, jealousy, and fear. We are helpless to do what we 'know' we must. It is like facing 'Sophie's choice' (being asked by the Gestapo to decide which of your children to spare from the gas chamber) over and over and over. We cannot bear to know, so we turn off, we hide inside, we distract ourselves. It is only when we don't know, and cannot even imagine, that we can go on, and tolerate the world we have created. This makes it easier for us to accept the brainwashing that ours is the only way to live, to tolerate the abuses and outrages that weknow are going on behind closed doors, and to accept the arguments of skeptics and apologists and holocaust denyers that it's not really that bad, or perhaps it's even good, or at least it's divine will so it's beyond our control, there's nothing we can do about it, we're not really responsible
As a consequence, we are poised, by the end of this century, to create a world that contains one billion Americans and fourteen billion people, and uses eight Earths worth of resources (at current regeneration rates) just to meet human needs. A world that will, as a direct consequence of this overcrowding and unsustainable consumption, be preoccupied with catastrophic famines, epidemic (new) human diseases, crop failures, cannibalism, crop failures, nuclear and biological wars, water rationing and desertification, economic depression, catastrophic terrorism, cascading weather disasters, and the decline of democracy, constitutional liberalism, and the rule of law. A world, arguably, not worth living in.

Forward Not Back: The Solution Process

Solutions are needed that either directly address overpopulation and unsustainable consumption, or address the causes of these problems . Or, alternatively, we could resign ourselves to the inevitable crash of this horrible world (probably as a result of a new catastrophic disease or nuclear or biological holocaust), and start designing a post-apocalypse world that will allow the survivors to carry on and perhaps learn from our mistakes. Solutions, throughout history, have come in four 'flavours': innovative (new technologies), social (changing people's minds), commercial (changing the economy) and political (changing laws and regulations). Innovations have been, throughout human history, by far the most effective and enduring. Revolutionary change requires radical solutions -- solutions that undermine, replace and ultimately destroy existing systems, technologies, ideas and beliefs. But they must represent bold steps forward, not nostalgic steps back to a pre-civilization world that is no longer possible or desirable.
If we hope to impose change on a world unready and unable to save itself, enough of us must be informed, aware of the consequences of our actions, skeptical, willing and able to learn from nature, fully committed, confident we can do it, passionate in our search for radical solutions and courageous in following through on them.

What is Nature ?

2009-12-01T00:00:00.000+05:30

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, or the environment, physical universe, material world or material universe. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The term generally does not include manufactured objects and human interaction unless qualified in ways such as, e.g., "human nature" or "the whole of nature". Nature is also generally distinguished from the supernatural. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the galactic.

Look Nature Smiles

The word "nature" is derived from the Latin word natura, or "the course of things, natural character." Natura was a Latin translation of the Greek word physis (φύσις), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics that plants, animals, and other features of the world develop of their own accord.This is shown in the first written use of the word φύσις, in connection with a plant. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre-Socratic philosophers, and has steadily gained currency ever since. This usage was confirmed during the advent of modern scientific method in the last several centuries.

Within the various uses of the word today, "nature" may refer to the general realm of various types of living plants and animals, and in some cases to the processes associated with inanimate objects – the way that particular types of things exist and change of their own accord, such as the weather and geology of the Earth, and the matter and energy of which all these things are composed. It is often taken to mean the "natural environment" or wilderness – wild animals, rocks, forest, beaches, and in general those things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention, or which persist despite human intervention. This more traditional concept of natural things which can still be found today implies a distinction between the natural and the artificial, with the latter being understood as that which has been brought into being by a human or human-like consciousness or mind.