The Year of Contemplating the Big Picture and a Few Big Parties

Dear friends,

This past year I’ve been thinking about the big picture, the really big picture, the unfolding of the universe, the story of evolution, the nature of consciousness, our human place in it all, the future of our beautiful planet both in the near term of decades and hundreds of years and longer in terms of millions and more, big questions.  I have been reading in the science and philosophy of evolution and consciousness.

Evolution is a process, but it is also a set of epochs with important distinct characteristics and periods that set the stage for future action. I grew excited about the story of the Cambrian explosion of about 500 million years ago, when life developed limbs and really began to move.  Then around 250 million years later the great Permian extinction (the biggest of 6 mass extinctions) seemed to threaten life itself, with over 80% of all genera wiped out. I admit to sadness at the loss of all those life forms, but at the same time this die-off created the conditions for the future worlds that include our own. Some small reptile made it through and gave rise to all our ancestors.

And at some point somewhere consciousness, self-consciousness and symbolic representation each emerged. While symbolic representation is the tool that has given humans so much of our power, I think that subjective experience of consciousness is the most important achievement.  Subjective experience is the great mystery, while we may be correlating it to more and more specific brain functions, subjectivity by its nature always stands outside of (or perhaps inside of ) third person objective descriptions. While I embrace the truth of material science, reflections on consciousness bring me back to the mystical. Subjective experiences leave us with questions that just may be outside of the realm of the answerable.

In the short term we face the 6^th mass extinction event.  Current species extinction rates may be as much as 10,000 times the average rate. That’s bad news. Humans and our machines are behind this disaster.  Habitat loss, invasive species (largely human introduced), over-fishing, pollution, and global climate change all play a role.  Ethically, that’s really bad news. But humans still could do a lot to mitigate this disaster.

This happens against a background of human relations out of balance.  One percent of the people on the planet own nearly half the assets of the planet, and with wealth comes power.  In spite of a general trend towards more democracies on the planet, other trends stand to undermine those democracies, overturning of election finance reform by the supreme court in the “Citizens United” case, trade agreements like the pending TPP treaty that threaten to undermine local laws. In Michigan, civic sovereignty is being dismantled by the governor’s appointed managers. It has taken courageous whistle blowers to expose the extent of surveillance, the lack of oversight and lack of transparency that large governments (notably our own) will try to get away with.

But here is a glimmer of hope, the truth can be uncovered, resistance is possible, organizing makes a difference. I once asked the historian Howard Zinn, who was going to win this race? and he pointed out that it wasn’t a race but an ongoing struggle. One person can make a difference, but I think it takes social movements to change things.

My own efforts in the struggle have increasingly turned towards the strategy of building democratic economic institutions through the cooperative movement. I have been the president of the food coop’s board this past year, I am engaged in an effort to organize a home care business to be run by a workers cooperative, and I am involved with a network of coop activists trying to build this movement. I also continue my efforts to promote the peer listening movement known as co-counseling, and the compassionate communication movement called non-violent communication or NVC. 

One other effort that I’m involved with that I wanted to mention is a fund-raiser.  Some friends of mine and I will be hosting a fundraising party to raise funds for a community center building for the Dancing Rabbit eco-village. The building will be a model of sustainability, built to the standards of the Living Building Challenge. To date only 6 buildings worldwide have been able to meet this high standard. We need examples like this.

Speaking of parties, this past year was marked by three important ones for my family. In May we celebrated Zev’s Bar Mitzvah. Zev and Teo participate in a spiritual education program that is described as “Jewish Roots and Interfaith Branches”.  The ceremony involved, among other things, Zev reading and interpreting a passage from the Torah. Zev is articulate and bright, a natural speaker. I was proud of how well this presentation went, and I was proud again when several people well experienced in Bar Mitzvahs told me it was the nicest Bar Mitzvah that they had ever attended.

In June my brother got married to a woman he had known in high school and then reconnected with through the internet. I had the honor of being the best man.  While I enjoyed the whole project of thinking about how to best support my brother on this important day of his, I particularly enjoyed making a toast. The wedding was in New York City.  While there I also had a moment to reconnect, in my case, with my best friend from college Eric Soloff who I hadn’t seen in nearly 30 years.

The third party was my mom’s 80^th birthday this January.  My dad organized a surprise party, and our family traveled to Atlanta, that was the first surprise.  That evening the second surprise was a party with some 80 friends of hers!  The party included dinner, a slide show about my mom’s life, music and speeches and it concluded with group singing. During our time there we attended a demonstration and an awards ceremony for a peace essay contest that my mom organized. On the morning of her 80^th birthday my mom swam a mile.  Way to go, Mom!!!

January this year also marked the 20^th anniversary of my relationship with Beth. We considered another party but decided to put that off until the 25^th .  Instead we went out for dinner and a walk through the snowy streets of Ann Arbor. And we reminisced about our relationship. I can’t imagine a better life partner for me. We share in common the things that are important to share, and we complement each other with many of our differences.  The longer I share relationship with Beth the more I find that I love her.

Teo cares deeply about equality and fairness, so although he won’t have a Bar Mitzvah for more than a year, I should say something about him.  I’ll mention his passion of equality.  As part of a class project he did a presentation comparing wealth inequality in Sweden and the US. He picked this topic with no prompting from his politically left parents. Teo continues to thrive in Math and he enjoys playing the violin.

The other big event for us this past year was a sort of classic vacation.  We took a train to Glacier National Park and spent a week camping, hiking in the mountains, horse riding and river rafting.  Although global warming is certainly taking its toll on the Glaciers we were able to hike to ice, the boys had fun sliding on it.  This brings me back to the start of this letter. Although Glacier National Park is sparse of fossils it is about 200 miles south of YoHo park in Canada. YoHo is the home of the Burgess Shale, the fossil rich mountain side that gives us the core of our understandings about the Cambrian explosion half a billion years ago. Looking in the other direction there are the issues we face now, and in the big picture, a few billion years from now we will have to address big time solar global warming as the sun expands out to where we are. If we make it that far I’m guessing we’ll manage. It’s always something.

With love,

Gaia