Catherine, for any solution to be found, you will have to find unity with those who are the perceived victims, and those who are the perceived perpetrators. It is a partial view that sees one as good and not the other. Vivekananda also said that he who believes in a God that is all good believes in a one-legged God :). Buddha, said the same thing a little differently - pointing out that everything that we do has a good and a bad aspect, and at a deeper level, neither aspect. The object is to see things as they are.
On damage to the environment, far more damage has been done by those who wanted to protect it, because the head was not combined with the heart. First, it is important to accept that the people who are supposedly creating problems are not outside the environment - they are also part of it. Second, in the long scheme of things, those who live unsustainably will get their due rewards, and things will balance out. Thus it is that every great city is ultimately ruined and lies ensconced in a jungle. That a jungle can come back gives us hope - nature will take care of itself in ways that we cannot know.
Third, when we see the unity in all that exists, we start to recognize strange solutions. For instance, in Sri Lanka, elephants are considered to be pests by villagers, eating up valuable crops or damaging village homes. Therefore, elephant killing was rampant. The elephants, on their part, were attacking villages because their habitat had been eroded and they wanted food. Some action heros decided to do something - without judging either the elephant or the villagers as bad. They thought hard about the elephant, asking, "what is it that the elephant gives that humans can find useful?" It turns out that elephant poop is massive in its fiber content. It is also massive in quantity. Our action heros developed a process to convert elephant poop into paper, branded it as "Mr. Ellie Pooh," and sold it in the international markets at premium prices. The villagers were now engaged in collecting the poop and processing it, so they didn't need to aggressively farm and destroy the elephant's habitat. Rather, protecting the habitat was very important so that the elephants continue to get their fiber. Is this going to solve the entire problem? I don't know. But it gives me much hope that the same consumer markets have now been turned on their head to align with a heart that wants to do some good.
On Feb 1, 2011 Somik Raha wrote :
Catherine, for any solution to be found, you will have to find unity with those who are the perceived victims, and those who are the perceived perpetrators. It is a partial view that sees one as good and not the other. Vivekananda also said that he who believes in a God that is all good believes in a one-legged God :). Buddha, said the same thing a little differently - pointing out that everything that we do has a good and a bad aspect, and at a deeper level, neither aspect. The object is to see things as they are.
On damage to the environment, far more damage has been done by those who wanted to protect it, because the head was not combined with the heart. First, it is important to accept that the people who are supposedly creating problems are not outside the environment - they are also part of it. Second, in the long scheme of things, those who live unsustainably will get their due rewards, and things will balance out. Thus it is that every great city is ultimately ruined and lies ensconced in a jungle. That a jungle can come back gives us hope - nature will take care of itself in ways that we cannot know.
Third, when we see the unity in all that exists, we start to recognize strange solutions. For instance, in Sri Lanka, elephants are considered to be pests by villagers, eating up valuable crops or damaging village homes. Therefore, elephant killing was rampant. The elephants, on their part, were attacking villages because their habitat had been eroded and they wanted food. Some action heros decided to do something - without judging either the elephant or the villagers as bad. They thought hard about the elephant, asking, "what is it that the elephant gives that humans can find useful?" It turns out that elephant poop is massive in its fiber content. It is also massive in quantity. Our action heros developed a process to convert elephant poop into paper, branded it as "Mr. Ellie Pooh," and sold it in the international markets at premium prices. The villagers were now engaged in collecting the poop and processing it, so they didn't need to aggressively farm and destroy the elephant's habitat. Rather, protecting the habitat was very important so that the elephants continue to get their fiber. Is this going to solve the entire problem? I don't know. But it gives me much hope that the same consumer markets have now been turned on their head to align with a heart that wants to do some good.