[Oe List ...] Fwd: OpEd Wednesday

[Jaime R Vergara]

I thanked Randy W. for his last reflection on Spaceship Earth.  It was the familiarity of the terrain that found us in the same ball park.


I repackaged it for my Saipan audience.


For the curious, am sending this copy to the listserv.


j'aime la vie


Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate!



-----Original Message-----
From: Jaime R Vergara <jrvergarajr2031 at aol.com>
To: jayvee_vallejera <jayvee_vallejera at saipantribune.com>; mark_rabago <mark_rabago at saipantribune.com>; editor <editor at saipantribune.com>
Sent: Mon, Jun 3, 2013 6:00 pm
Subject: OpEd Wednesday


Spaceship Earth
 
The late Buckminster Fuller latched on to the metaphor ofthe Earth as a spaceship hurling in an elliptical motion around aninsignificant star, the Sun, in a corner of a minor galaxy, the Milky Way.
 
This emerging consciousness of what since fully evolved intoan environmental movement was aided by the powerfully evoking picture of theplanet taken by Apollo astronauts of a blue orb rising from the lunar horizon,now dubbed the "earthrise".  Spaceship earth showed no political boundaries that our map-orientedminds took for granted, and the definition of nation-states that visa-separatedone earthling from another.
 
I would later gaze at a fabulous Mactan sight with my eldestdaughter noticing how marvelous the sunset was until she said, "Dad,that's an earth turn!" 
 
In the 60s, we were a youngish theolog gathered around acoal-fired furnace with members of a Faith and Life Community House near thecampus of the NC-Greensboro U in the Piedmont when the earthrise imagerose.  Steeped in the medieval traditionof gazing up unto Heaven, but increasingly getting lucid about theEgyptian-inherited practice of Rah-veneration as totally irrelevant to anearth-centric existence, we were pleased to replace Zeus of Olympus and Deus ofthe Roman pantheon with the old YHWH of Moses, and the Tao of Lao Tze, the Way Life Is.
 
In 1962, Rachael Carson penned disturbing Silent Spring that revealed extensivepoisoning of North American air and aquifers caused by agrarian pesticides,insecticides, and fertilizers.   That ledto the banning of DDT, a common chemical in many households.
 
We were a guest camp counselor in Maine for the UnitedChurch of Christ in the summer of '67 at a lake in Litchfield near Augusta whenwe encountered the DDT residual effect on mosquitoes.  The State tried to eradicate the crittersearlier with widespread spraying of the chemical.  It resulted in a resilient breed that buzzedlike mini-drones and stung like Mohammad Ali's bees!
 
We returned to Manila as an effete religious social activistwith a Caucasian spouse ready to battle the forces of evil in the comfort ofecclesiastical garb at Ferdinand Marcos rather riotous watch.  He declared Martial Law in '72, though notwithout the assent of the US State Department, and quietly toasted by themerchants of war materials, as the move purportedly was cooked around amilitary camp in Korea.  Clark Air ForceBase and the US Naval Base at Subic Bay were at the time Pentagon's hub in theFar East.
 
Right about the same time, the Club of Rome issued its Limits to Growth that highlighted thereality of the demand-and-supply equation as not infinite.  Earth as a supplier of natural resources isnot limitless, so demand had to be more intentional.
 
Serendipitously, we joined an intentional community ofreligious clergy and laity the day Marcos declared martial.  For a decade, a corporate body sought toexpress their intense faith in the trustworthiness and goodness of life byfearlessly plumbing with their lives the profound depth of life's mysteries,deriving intense height of ecstasy from unconditional human expenditure, donewithin a comprehensive view of history and prophecy, (genesis to apocalypse),focusing on the human factor in world development.  A tall order, it was, but an engaging one inthe new dispensation of politico-ecological awareness that was coming to vogue atthe time.
 
We resided in Canada in 1976 when we staffed our NGO at theVancouver United Nations Conference on Ecology. Marshall McLuhan of the Medium-is-the-Message fame is often quoted assaying: "There are nopassengers on Spaceship Earth.  We are all crew."
 
As a secular-religious in the 60s, we were only too aware ofthe boundaries of fragility, the intimations of our mortality, and the nuancesof our finitude, but we were not yet ancient, and we soldiered on for a decadeof relentless prodding the wealth of the human psyche around the world. 
 
The UN's Bruntland Report of 1987 got our mission code intopublic discourse.  The report defined"sustainable development" as meeting the needs of the present withoutcompromising future generations.  Itidentified three pillars: economic growth, environmental protection and socialequity.
 
Economic growth continues today oblivious of a limitlesssupply of resource.  The earth consumes150 percent of its regenerative capacity. Definitely not sustainable.  Theprotest on the Keystone pipeline and northeast fracking of fossil fuelextractive industries challenges the nation's political union, reveals the reachof the oil political lobby, and questions the very nature of Wall Streetitself.  Citizen's participation againstMonsanto's chemically aided farming reached the global stage this week.
 
Entropy is the law existence.  Spaceship Earth is a singular trip, aone-time-only journey, and mine is but a measly 87-yr segment of it, not even ablimp in the HDTV of life.  I am but acrewmember, albeit, of a cancerous global brain.  Still, I aim to ride this baby with gusto,knowing that while intentionality may falter, the journey is what journeys on! 
 
Hi-ho, tally-ho, around the sphere as it careens into thestars!  Oblivion will occur, mine and later, thespaceship.  Meanwhile, Gaia journeys on.


 j'aime la vie


Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate.  In all, Celebrate!


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