Four Changes
(Page 2 of 4)
II. POLLUTION
RELATED CONTENT
The Condition
Position: Pollution is an excess production of substances
which cannot be absorbed or transmuted rapidly enough to
offset their introduction, thus causing changes the cycle
is not prepared for. All organisms have wastes and
by-products, and these are indeed part of the total
ecosystem; energy is passedalong the line and refracted in
various ways, "the rainbow body." This is cycling, not
pollution.
Situation: The human race in the last century has allowed
its production and dissemination of wastes, by-products and
various chemical substances to become excessive. Pollution
is directly harming the ecosystem. It is also ruining the
environment in very direct ways for humanity itself.
Goal: Clean air, clean clear-running rivers, the Presence
of Pelicans and Ospreys in our lives, unrnuddied language
and good dreams.
Action
Social/political: Waste and by-product quantity must be
reduced. Strong legislation controlling DDT and related
pesticides with no fooling around. Direct exposure of the
collusion of certain scientists, the pesticide industry,
and agri-business in trying to block this legislation.
Strong penalties for air and water pollution by industry.
"Pollution is somebody's profit." Phase out petroleum
fuels, explore all possible energy sources of a
non-polluting nature: solar power. Tell the truth regarding
atomic waste disposal and the threat it represents. Stop
all germ and chemical warfare research and experimentation.
Laws and sanctions encouraging the use of bio-degradable
substances; and sanctions against wasteful use of paper,
etc. which adds to the solid waste of cities. Determine
methods of re-cycling solid urban waste; and re-cycling as
a basic principle should inform all waste disposal
thinking.
The community: DDT and such: don't use them. Air pollution:
use less cars. Cars pollute the air, and one or two people
riding lonely in a huge car is an insult to intelligince
and the Muse. Share rides, pick up hitchhikers, legalize
hitch-hiking and build hitch-hiker waiting stations along
the highways. Also - as a step toward the new world - walk
more: look for the best routes through beautiful
countryside for long-distance walking trips: San Francisco
to Los Angeles down the Coast Range, for one. Learn how to
use your own manure as fertilizer if you're in the country
as the far East has done for centuries. There's a way, and
it's safe. †
Solid waste: boycott wasteful Sunday papers which use up
trees, and add vastly to the solid waste of the city.
Refuse paper bags at the store. Organize park and street
cleanup festivals. Don't waste- (a monk and an old master
were once walking in the mountains. They noticed a little
hut upstream. The monk said, "A wise hermit must live there
- "The master said, "That's no wise hermit, you see that
lettuce leaf floating down the stream, he's a Waster." Just
then an old man came running down the hill with his beard
flying and caught the floating lettuce leaf.)
Our own heads: Part of the trouble with talking about DDT
is that the use of it is not just a practical device, it's
almost an establishment religion. There is something in
western culture that wants to totally wipe out
creepy-crawlies and feels repugnance for toadstools and
snakes. This is fear of one's own deepest natural
inner-self wilderness areas, and the answer is, relax.
Relax around bugs, snakes arid your own hairy dreams. Again
farmers can and should share their crop with a certain
percentage of buglife as "paying their dues" - Thoreau says
"How then can the harvest fail? Shall I not rejoice also at
the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of
the birds? It matters little comparatively whether the
fields fill the farmer's barns. The true husbandman will
cease from anxiety as the squirrels manifest no concern
whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and
finish his labor with every day, relinquish all claim to
the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not
only his first but his last fruits also." In the realm of
thought, inner experience, consciousness, as in the outward
realm of interconnection, there is a difference between a
balanced cycle, and the excess which cannot be handled.
When the balance is right, the mind recycles from highest
illumination to the stillness of dreamless sleep; the
alchemical "transmutation."
