Today this youth shooting class popped up in my email and gave me pause. Lots of conflicting thoughts. I am very much for education around firearms. Anyone who gets a license should go through the same sort of test people driving a car are required to pass.
The class looks really good. I mean, I’d love to take it. Kids between 8 and 16 learning marksmanship at an indoor range under the guidance of professionals. Parents are encouraged to be present. Everything about it is responsible, educational, and technically well executed. Safety first!
And still—it just made me queasy.
I don’t have a problem with teaching kids how to shoot. I understand the value of marksmanship. I understand the importance of safety training. I’ve got no moral opposition to children learning how to handle firearms in a structured environment. Kids raised around responsible gun culture often have a healthier respect for firearms than kids who only interact with guns through say video games or media.
But something about this feels off.
Maybe it’s the setting. Not outdoors, not on a farm, not tied to any cultural tradition like hunting. It’s inside. Lined-up stalls. Targets downrange. It feels clinical, tactical—even a little militarized. Like training, not sport.
Maybe it’s the timing. We live in a country where kids are more likely to die by gunfire than any other cause. Where “active shooter drills” are part of the school calendar. Where the kids in this class are referred to as “bright-eyed new shooters”.
So while the class itself might be innocent—even admirable—it exists in this America. Right now. And in that context, it doesn’t just look like education. It looks like preparation. Like we’re handing our kids the tools to survive a world we’ve decided not to fix.
That’s what’s bothering me. Not the marksmanship. Not the firearms. The feeling that this might not be about sport anymore.
This might be about surrender.
We’re preparing kids to live in a dangerous world, but not fighting hard enough to make the world less dangerous. We’re teaching safety in a system that won’t keep them safe. And that contradiction sits heavy.
It’s not an easy answer. It’s a hard feeling. But it’s worth sitting with.
Because maybe it’s time we ask: Are we building resilience? Or just teaching kids to accept a broken reality?
I watched Severance when it first came out. Like a lot of folks, I saw it as a brilliant analogy for the alienation we feel from ourselves because our labor is exchanged for money rather than directly nurturing us as it once did.
We don’t own what we produce, we have little control of our own work and we’re often pitted against one another in competition for that raise, window office, Chinese finger traps & waffle parties. Marx talked about this—how our labor, our time, our energy, once a part of us, gets separated, sold, and turned into something that no longer belongs to us. That’s exactly what Severance is. I mean they don’t even know what they are doing.
We trade our hours to corporations, we sell off our days, and in exchange, we get just enough money to survive. We come home at the end of it, too drained to do anything except pour a drink, make dinner, and stare at a screen for a couple of hours before passing out and doing it all over again. Our best hours, our most vibrant energy, goes somewhere else. It doesn’t belong to us anymore. And after years of this, we start to forget who we even are outside of it.
That was my first takeaway. That was the meaning Severance held for me the first time I watched it.
The Second Severance Watch Party
The second time I watched it, I got something a little different from it.
What if we—as in humanity—are the real severed ones? Not just from our jobs, but from ourselves, from each other, from nature, from the very essence of life?
Because isn’t that what we’ve done? Split ourselves up, snipped our connection to the whole, and now we’re wandering around, pretending we’re separate, pretending we don’t belong to each other?
These days it’s not just our labor that’s being sucked from us but now our attention is being sold off in bite sized reels, likes, alerts, texts and emails.
Instead of connecting over dinner, we trade updates on the latest outrage. Instead of being present with each other, we pose and capture our moments to share with others on media platforms that sell us.
The Cosmic Serpent
Anthropologist Jeremy Narby explored something strikingly similar in his book, The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. Through fieldwork with Amazonian shamans, Narby found that their visionary experiences often revealed serpentine imagery that looked uncannily like DNA’s double helix. Across cultures—ancient Egypt, Mesoamerica, and beyond—serpents, coils, and twisted ladders appear in mythology as symbols of life force and interconnectedness.
Narby’s insight is this: at some deeper level, we already know that life intimately connected, interdependent forming a single living whole. DNA itself is a universal code shared between all species across eons, uniting us with all living things now and in the future. Yet, in the modern world, we’ve forgotten—or we’ve chosen to forget—the real meaning of these cosmic threads.
Stuck In The Cubicles Of Our Own Little Mind
In Severance, each character’s “innie” is trapped in a windowless workplace, where exchanges between co-workers are a rare indulgence. Yet those same workers, once they leave the office, become “outies” who remain largely oblivious to the exploitation of their own inner selves.
This is not just a sci-fi premise. We have “outies” who get to live in comfort, detached from what’s happening, and “innies” who are stuck in an endless, inescapable nightmare. And the worst part? We pretend the “outie” version of ourselves has nothing to do with it. It’s us, every day, when we compartmentalize or ignore our deeper awareness that the pain of another is our own pain, and that we’re all connected—by ecology, and by literal threads of DNA.
Life isn’t about individual survival. Never was. It’s about continuity, interdependence, weaving ourselves into the larger tapestry. Nature knew this. The birds know this. The mycelium networks under our feet—whispering chemical messages through the soil—know this. But we? We got severed.
We believed the illusion of the ego, the “me,” the “mine.” We forgot that the pain of another is our own pain. That the displacement of a people is the displacement of all people. That severance from each other is a slow death.
Narby’s shamans don’t see a boundary between their minds and nature; they live in a world where the forest’s psyche and the human psyche intermingle. They recognize the “cosmic serpent” as part of their own being. By contrast, we tend to seal ourselves off in individual, isolated boxes – removed from each other’s suffering, from the environment we depend on, and often from our own inner wisdom and intuition.
Remain Severed or Reconnect?
The tragedy is that we don’t see this severance for what it is. It feels normal to chase promotions and corporate trinkets, to tune out the suffering of strangers halfway around the globe, or even the suffering of our next-door neighbor. But sometimes, we remember: a protest that unites strangers, a baby’s cooing that stops time, a walk through the moss covered forest where something ancient in us exhales and says, “Yes, this is home.”
Severance— the real one, not just the show —is ultimately a choice. At some point, we have to realize that this is a lie. The suffering of others is not separate from us. The destruction of the planet is not happening to someone else. The violence and greed that fuel all of this are not just abstract evils—they are the result of our own severance, our own refusal to see that we belong to each other. We can decide whether to keep splitting ourselves off into smaller and smaller warring groups or if we reclaim our inherent unity.
We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
The Political Severance: We Are We Losing Our Minds?
Yup, it’s no secret that politics is a disaster right now. But it’s not just the issues—it’s how we talk (or, more accurately, don’t talk) about them. We’re so divided, so reactionary, that we’ve stopped thinking at all. Instead of conversations, we have battles. Instead of listening, we strategize our next attack. Instead of curiosity, we have certainty—rock-solid, unshakable, take-it-to-the-grave certainty.
I recently finished What’s Our Problem? by Tim Urban, and it laid out his theory of why we’re all turning into ideological zealots (with drawings). It’s not that we’re bad people—it’s that our brains are wired for survival. When faced with a belief that contradicts our own, we don’t pause to evaluate it; we react. We fight. We defend. We categorize. Us vs. them. Good vs. evil. And in that moment, we don’t just reject the opposing view—we reject the person holding it. They’re not just wrong; they’re dangerous. And suddenly, even considering another perspective feels like a betrayal of our own side.
That’s the real problem. It’s not just that we’re divided—it’s that we’re stuck. Stuck in our own beliefs, stuck in the narrative our group espouses, stuck in a fear loop that keeps us from even questioning whether we agree with everything our team says. And God forbid we voice a dissenting thought.
I’ve been there. There are ideas that I hear all the time that don’t fully sit right with me, but I stay quiet because, well, I know the rules. One that nagged at me when my daughter pulled into a photo of a chocolate mold the teacher had made of an ethnic mask? When we were told over and over again that intent doesn’t matter—only the harm caused matters. And sure, I get why people say that. If you hurt someone, they’re hurt, regardless of what you meant. But all I can think is—intent does matter. A huge amount. There’s a massive difference between someone accidentally shoving me and someone deliberately shoving me because they hate me. My pain, my reaction, the whole situation—totally different. But did I say that out loud when I heard people confidently declaring otherwise? Hell no. Because I knew that was not how people were thinking on my team. And if I spoke up? I knew how that would go down.
That’s how you know when you’ve entered zealot territory—when dissent feels dangerous. When you know you disagree with something but keep your mouth shut because it’s safer. When questioning a belief isn’t just frowned upon, but seen as treason. And from there, it spirals:
If we can’t listen to another viewpoint without immediately reacting, we’ve lost the plot.
If we shut down conversations, ban books, cancel people for asking the wrong questions—we’re not protecting truth, we’re shielding ourselves from it.
If our beliefs can never be questioned, they’ve stopped being beliefs and become dogma.
If we feel a sick thrill when someone with an opposing view gets destroyed in a debate, that’s not justice—it’s just ego.
If we use shame as a weapon to silence others, we’re not arguing in good faith—we’re bullying.
If we’re always angry at the other side, addicted to outrage, and convinced that they are the problem.
Because at the end of the day, the biggest threat isn’t “the other side.” The biggest threat is when we become so certain, so rigid, so terrified of our own curiosity, that we lose the ability to think for ourselves. And once that happens? We’re not solving problems. We’re just picking teams to fight on.
My Red Pill Moment: What Happens When You Actually Listen?
A few days ago, I watched The Red Pill, a documentary by Cassie Jaye, a feminist filmmaker who set out to explore the Men’s Rights Movement. I went into it expecting to cringe, and honestly, there was a lot to cringe at (leaving out the numbers of women who end up in the hospital or dead from domestic violence, that women have been denied access to the high risk jobs that men die in, poverty levels for single moms, that women who were raped had nowhere to turn until the Rape Kit was created etc.). A lot of it felt messy, defensive, not entirely well-thought-out.
But here’s what surprised me: I actually listened.
And when I did, I found that buried in all the noise were some valid points—ideas that could be a part of feminism rather than framed as the enemy of it. Because at the core, weren’t they fighting for the same thing? The destruction of gender roles? The dismantling of a system that tells men and women and everyone in between how they must behave in order to be accepted, love and respected?
I started thinking about how severed these movements had become, when in reality, they could totally be allies.
But, this is what we do isn’t it? Not just in gender politics, but in everything. We take ideas that could work together and rip them apart. We pick a side and refuse to budge, even when the common goal is staring us in the face.
What If There Are No Sides?
Have you ever asked yourself “What if we’ve been playing the game all wrong?” What if the real trick being played on us isn’t about left vs. right, men vs. women, worker vs. boss, but something deeper, more sinister, more severed?
We’ve been so conditioned to pick a team, to stake our claim in the ideological battlefield, that we never stop to ask: Who benefits from us being this divided?
Because when we’re busy fighting each other, we’re not questioning the system that keeps us exhausted, alienated, afraid. We’re not building something better.
It’s a fundamental lie we’ve been sold: the lie that we are separate. That your suffering isn’t my problem. That your humanity stops where mine begins. That if I win, you must lose.
But if there’s one thing that history, biology, and every ancient spiritual tradition teaches us, it’s this: separation is an illusion.
The indigenous tribes knew it. The mycelium network beneath our feet whispers it. The DNA spiraling inside every living thing screams it.
We don’t have to play this game. We can refuse the severance.
We can decide—right now—to stop choosing sides and start choosing each other.
Because at the end of the day, there’s no us vs. them.
There’s only us.
Photo by Douglas Schneiders: https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-in-modern-office-corridor-at-night-30479225/
When I started to understand how the things around me are made I began to understand just how dastardly the products we purchase from large corporations are and how EASY it is to make your own.
Ever thought about what happens to that plastic deodorant tube once you’ve twisted up the last bit of product? Well, it’s probably not getting recycled. Most conventional deodorants come wrapped in single-use plastic that clogs up landfills and oceans for centuries.
Making your own deodorant (or choosing an eco-friendly brand) isn’t just a personal health win—it’s also a win for Mother Earth. You get to ditch the sketchy chemicals and the plastic waste, all while saving money and taking control of what goes on your body.
I’m going to break down what deodorants actually do, why most store-bought ones kinda suck, and how you can make (or buy) a better one.
How Deodorants Actually Work: A Quick Science Lesson
Sweat Doesn’t Smell (But Bacteria Does)
Contrary to popular belief, your sweat isn’t the problem—bacteria are. When sweat meets the bacteria living on your skin, they break it down into smelly byproducts. That’s the B.O. you’re fighting.
Deodorants vs. Antiperspirants: What’s the Difference?
Deodorants tackle odor by killing bacteria or neutralizing their smelly leftovers.
Antiperspirants block your sweat glands using aluminum-based compounds, preventing sweat from ever reaching the surface. Less sweat = fewer bacteria = less odor.
Blocking your sweat glands isn’t exactly the healthiest approach. You need to sweat as it’s your body’s way of regulating your temperature. That’s where natural deodorants and DIY options come in.
Why Do Natural Deodorants Seem Like They Don’t Work?
Ever tried a natural deodorant and thought, Why do I still stink?! I I have. The biggest myth about natural deodorants is that they don’t work—but the truth is, they work differently, not worse.
If you’ve been using chemical-laden deodorants (or antiperspirants) for years, your body needs time to adjust when you switch. Mainstream deodorants don’t just mask odor—they stop your body from sweating entirely by clogging sweat glands with aluminum. Natural deodorants, on the other hand, let your body function the way it’s supposed to while neutralizing odor. But yes, this means you might go through a stinky transition phase before it starts working like magic.
So before you write off natural deodorants as useless hippie nonsense, let’s talk about why they sometimes don’t seem as effective, how to get past the “detox” phase, and how to find (or make!) one that actually keeps you fresh.
The Problem with Conventional Deodorants
A Chemical Cocktail Nobody Asked For
Take a peek at the back of a typical deodorant stick, and you’ll find a list of ingredients that sound like a toxic slew. Some of the biggest offenders include:
Aluminum – Linked to concerns about hormone disruption and potential health risks (still debated, but do you really want it in your pores?).
Parabens – Preservatives that have been flagged for their potential role in hormone imbalance.
Synthetic Fragrances – A vague term that can hide a slew of undisclosed chemicals, including allergens and irritants.
Plastic, Plastic Everywhere
Most store-bought deodorants come in plastic tubes that don’t break down for hundreds of years. Even “recyclable” ones rarely end up being repurposed because the mix of materials makes them tricky to process and what can you make out of them?
Environmental Impact of Mass Production
Manufacturing conventional deodorants means:
More plastic waste.
More carbon emissions from production and transportation.
More non-biodegradable chemicals washing down your drain.
Every small change helps, and switching up your deodorant game is a simple way to reduce your footprint and keep you healthier.
The Perks of Natural and DIY Deodorants
You Control What’s Inside
Making your own deodorant means you know what’s in it. No parabens, no phthalates, no unpronounceable ingredients—just the good stuff.
Less Waste, More Sustainability
Store your homemade deodorant in a glass jar, metal tin, or compostable tube instead of tossing out plastic tubes.
Reduce your overall consumption by making one batch that lasts for months.
Avoid supporting brands that rely on wasteful packaging.
Custom-Made for Your Body
Got sensitive skin? Skip the baking soda and try magnesium hydroxide.
Prefer a specific scent? Add your favorite essential oils. You are the master of how you smell instead of Dove.
Like it in a stick, jar, or spray? You do you.
Cheaper in the Long Run
While buying quality ingredients (like coconut oil and shea butter) might seem pricey at first, they last forever. One batch can cost a fraction of store-bought deodorants and keep you fresh for months.
What To Look For When Buying Coconut Oil Or Shea Butter
Unrefined/Raw/Cold-Pressed – Retains natural nutrients, aromas, and skincare benefits.
Certified Organic – If possible, so you avoid pesticides and chemical additives.
Check the Ingredients – For coconut oil, the label should say “100% coconut oil” (ideally “virgin” or “cold-pressed”). – For shea butter, look for “Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea Butter)” as the only ingredient.
What to Look for When Buying a Natural Deodorant
If DIY isn’t your thing, you can still make better choices when buying deodorant. Here are a couple I like:
Humble Brands – I love the smell of the Palo Santos but it may not be for everyone. They have a 6 pack of mini travel deodorants so you can figure out what scent you like best. They also have a version with CBD in it which I am going to give a try.
Fat and the Moon – Love their entire line! They encourage pit massages with their deodorant cream.
Here’s what to check:
✔️ Natural Ingredients – Look for things like coconut oil, arrowroot powder, and essential oils. Avoid anything with synthetic “fragrance.”
✔️ Sustainable Packaging – Opt for brands using compostable, biodegradable, or refillable containers.
✔️ Cruelty-Free – Check for the Leaping Bunny or PETA cruelty-free certification. Many big-name brands still test on animals.
✔️ Baking Soda-Free Options – If your skin is sensitive, try deodorants with magnesium hydroxide or zinc oxide instead.
✔️ Transparency – If a brand is truly ethical, they won’t hide their ingredient list or sustainability efforts. Check their website to see if they back up their claims.
Finding the Right Deodorant for You
Not All Armpits Are the Same
What works for one person might not work for another. If you’re switching to natural deodorant, your body might go through a “detox” phase as it adjusts (a fancy way of saying you might smell a little funky for a few days while your pores unclog).
Test & Adjust
Some people swear by baking soda, while others find it irritating.
Some need stronger odor protection (hello, activated charcoal), while others prefer something ultra-gentle.
The best way to find what works? Experiment!
DIY Deodorant: What You Need & How to Make It
Key Ingredients in Homemade Deodorant
Coconut Oil – Antibacterial and moisturizing.
Shea Butter – Soothes the skin.
Arrowroot Powder or Cornstarch – Absorbs moisture.
Making your own deodorant—or choosing a better store-bought one—is a small change that adds up over time. Whether you DIY or buy, the goal is the same: healthier pits, less waste, and a cleaner planet.
So, are you ready to ditch the toxic, plastic-wrapped, corporate-controlled junk and take your underarm game into your own hands? Once you have the ingredient, making your own deodorant takes around 5 minutes. Aren’t we all worth that? Whether you go full DIY or pick an eco-conscious brand, your pits (and the planet) will thank you. 🌎✨
I just finished “Climate, A New Story” by Charles Eisenstein, on the heels of “The Sum of Us” by Heather McGhee and had my mind blown.
These books don’t just tell us inconvenient truths; they present them so clearly and compellingly that they become undeniable. Instead of making you feel burdened or resistant, they provide the gift of actionable insights, inspiring you to eagerly engage and take action. At least that’s how these books made me feel.
We all sense that our relationship with Earth is deteriorating. Many of us have wondered if the planet might be better off without the human infestation.
But it wasn’t until I delved into these books, which repeatedly emphasized the same truth, that I began to see a path forward—towards something new, or rather, something profoundly old. Perhaps all is not lost. Their repeated refrain highlighted our interconnectedness with everything. We are not isolated; we are not destined for loneliness. We exist within a vast web of life, so deeply intertwined with everything around us that we will never be alone if we only choose to listen.
Personal Journey In Sustainable Fashion
I’ve been selling apparel for over two decades and I try to be mindful of my materials. In 2008 I launched a line called Light & Gravity focusing on cradle-to-cradle clothing that could decompose in your garden. Fast forward to 2018, and I dropped nearly $3k on a class called Launch My Conscious Line, hoping for connections to suppliers and production partners for sustainability. I walked away with no new suppliers, no vendors, just a sinking feeling that sustainability was elusive unless you had loads of cash to throw at it.
The frustration with making sustainable clothing can be seen in the organic cotton tote bag versus a disposable paper one. When you dig into all the costs, they often end up about the same unless you use that tote bag 150+ times. The organic cotton tote? It guzzles water to grow the cotton, might still involve pesticides, and the manufacturing eats up energy. The disposable paper bag? It involves deforestation, chemicals in the pulping process, and tons of energy and water. Every choice has a hidden cost, making it tough to figure out which is truly more sustainable.
If you manage to find fabric that’s milled locally from organically grown plants, dyed without chemical runoff, buttons sourced from sustainably harvested trees, printed with water-based inks, and sewn by workers paid a living wage, the clothes end up so expensive that hardly anyone can afford them.
It seems like every choice has a hidden cost.
The Illusion of Sustainability
Feeling jaded about the sustainability movement has me questioning all our so-called sustainable practices. Recycling was a marketing tactic to encourage the adoption of plastic and less than 10% of it actually ever gets recycled. Most of it ends up in other 3rd world countries polluting their land and water. Switching our cars to an electric grid? It just continues the cycle of extracting materials and consuming resources. We’re trading one form of environmental degradation for another. It’s the same with massive windmill factories or solar panel deserts. Plug one hole, and two more cracks appear.
Then there’s my own hypocrisy. I’m aware, yet I order from Amazon, drive to work instead of biking, buy food wrapped in plastic. I know these actions contribute to the problems I’m fighting against, yet I keep doing them.
I walk past the homeless, the degraded RV’s covered in tarps or tents that dot the side of the freeway under a bridge. It feels deeply wrong, but I still do it. I pretend not to see them. We live in a system that dehumanizes and isolates us, making it easier to ignore those who suffer around us. This perpetuates a cycle of disconnection from both the environment and each other. It’s not until you realize that the whole system is flawed that things can change.
Traditional and Innovative Practices
Recently, I came across inspiring stories of humans working with nature. Communities in Meghalaya, India, build bridges by training tree roots to grow over water. Unlike conventional bridges that degrade, these living root bridges grow stronger with time. The roots’ continuous growth makes the bridges resilient, enduring extreme weather. This practice, requiring multiple generations, embodies patience, respect, and long-term thinking. Or the stories of desert land in Africa and Mexico springing to life with grasses and streams. Or a sheep herder who rents her Quessant sheep to properties looking for grazing to help regenerate their land. These stories are everywhere.
Climate: A New Story” by Charles Eisenstein challenges our fundamental frameworks. I always thought our environmental issues came from not having a column for our natural resources in our General Ledger, the love of money, and our addiction to consumption and throwaway. But Eisenstein argues the real problem is our flawed interaction with nature. We look at nature as resources. We don’t treat the Earth as a living being to be respected and nurtured. This flawed interaction extends to how we treat animals, plants, marginalized groups, and each other. Our systems are fundamentally broken because they lack respect for life.
Before the arrival of white settlers, the land that is now the United States was teeming with life. From Steve Nicholl’s Paradise Found: Atlantic salmon runs so abundant no one is able to sleep for their noise. Islands “as full of birds as a meadow is full of grass.” Whales so numerous they were a hazard to shipping, their spouts filling the entire ocean with foam. Oysters more than a foot wide. Swans so plentiful the shores appear to be dressed in white drapery. An island covered by so many egrets that the bushes appeared pure white. White pines 200 feet high. Spruce trees twenty feet in circumference. Black load thirty feet in girth. Hollowed-out sycamores able to shelter thirty men in a storm. Forests stretched endlessly, rich with diverse flora and fauna, creating a complex and vibrant ecosystem. Cod weighing two hundred pounds. Plains roamed by vast herds of buffalo, numbering in the millions.
Now these images seem impossible to believe.
Indigenous people had a profound relationship with the land and nature. They saw themselves as stewards, living in harmony with their environment. Their hunting, fishing, and agricultural practices were sustainable and deeply respectful. But with European settlers came devastation. Approximately 90% of the indigenous population was wiped out through war and disease, along with their knowledge and traditions of land stewardship.
Settlers imposed a mindset of domination and exploitation. Forests were clear-cut, rivers dammed, wildlife hunted to near extinction. The land was seen as a resource to be used and conquered, rather than a living entity to be cared for. This fundamental shift led to the environmental degradation we face today. By constantly asking, “What’s in it for me?” we perpetuate this separation, this loneliness, this darkness.
It’s In Our Language
Our language has moved away from image and spoken word. Has this put a distance by removing us from our environment? Instead of telling our stories aloud surrounded by life, we read words in our head.
According to Robin Wall Kimmerer in “Braiding Sweetgrass,” the Potawatomi language, which is similar to Ojibwe, consists of about 70% verbs compared to English, which is around 30% verbs. This stark contrast reflects the linguistic focus and worldview inherent in these languages.
Indigenous languages like Potawatomi often emphasize actions and processes, thereby infusing the language with a sense of animacy and connection to the environment. In contrast, English tends to be more noun-heavy, which can lead to a more static and objectified view of the world
Recognizing this relationship as wrong is crucial for moving forward.
To love all beings for who they are, not for what they can offer you. In this new relationship, whenever we take from the earth, we strive to do so in a way that enriches and sustains the earth.
Finding Hope in a Hopeless Fight
It all feels so hopeless. It seems like a losing battle. Many countries are struggling to meet their CO2 reduction pledges, falling short of the commitments needed to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. You hear it’s already too late, that even a drastic pivot of world economies wouldn’t be enough. We’ve already gone off the cliff and we are now in free fall.
You look around you and see everything is still wrapped in single-use plastic. You come across warning signs of toxicity in that the places you used to swim. Your favorite swimming spots are closed due to algae blooms, or the water is undrinkable even when filtered because of cattle runoff poisoning it. The population of monarch butterflies has plummeted by 90%. The biomass of fish in our oceans has more than halved, and coral reefs have suffered a 50% decline. In Asia, mangrove forests have decreased by 80%. The Borneo rainforest is on the brink of disappearing, and globally, rainforests now cover less than half of their original area. You notice your favorite forest fauna covered in a fungal or insect infestation. You see the relentless and now commonplace forest fires, the monthly climate disasters—floods, landslides, tornadoes, hurricanes—hit some part of the world. Rainforests and old-growth forests are still being cut down, land is still drilled for oil, and minerals are excavated from the earth. Massive rivers are being drained, aquifers going dry, and it’s still business as usual.
This sense of hopelessness around our ecocide permeates every part of my life but I try to ignore it just as I ignore my fellow human beings, sleeping it off on the sidewalk huddled beneath a filthy blanket.
This all started to shift for me when I really began my listening.
A New Perspective
Reading “Climate: A New Story” was a revelation for me. Eisenstein argues that the conventional approach to solving environmental problems—primarily through reducing carbon emissions—is not the right approach.
Even if we clean up our carbon problem, unless we recognize the importance of the ecosystems and species we’ve often overlooked, we will end up in the same place again.
In a complex system, all variables are interconnected, and causal relationships are nonlinear. A minor change in one element can significantly impact the entire system. It is impossible to understand any part in isolation. Focusing solely on carbon emissions oversimplifies the issue, neglecting the myriad interactions within the system.
Carbon accounting fosters the belief that we can sustain a healthy biosphere by evaluating the carbon contributions of individual components, potentially sacrificing those with minimal impact and enhancing those with significant contributions. This approach overlooks the broader effects, such as the influence of whales, forests, or wetlands on CO2 levels and the impact of chemicals on water quality. But, more importantly, we are once again quantifying that which should not be. Basically, we humans are mucking about in a complex living system we can never understand as there are millions and millions of variables that all interact with one another to form our environment.
He advocates for a deeper understanding of humanity’s relationship with nature, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all life forms. We are part of nature, not separate from it. Our well-being is tied to the planet’s health.
Some things are beyond measure and price. If a forest is sacred to you, how much would I have to pay you to cut it down? How hard would you fight for the old growth forest in Atlanta, the Amazon Rain Forest, the Great Barrier Reefs, the sacred lands & water of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe if you truly understood that these living things weren’t just some trees that you can replant somewhere else?
Eisenstein then shares with us win-win systems where resources are infinite because they are regenerative. He shares with us examples of places that have been regenerated by breeding large amounts of sheep or cattle. He talks about traditional small farms that switch to regenerative farming and not only increase their profits, they nurse the soil back to health and life returns.
He is telling us that by being respectful of nature, by working with nature instead of trying to control it, we no longer debase ourselves.
This realization turned my hopelessness into purpose. I began to believe again that every small action I take for regeneration and sustainability contributes to a larger healing movement.
All Current Revolutions
All current revolutions are the same: to love everything for its own sake reflects the core theme in Eisenstein’s book. This theme is deeply rooted in his argument that the ecological crisis cannot be separated from social and economic injustices, and that true healing requires addressing all these issues simultaneously.
I’ve been told countless times by my mom (who is a saint) that humans inherit a sinful nature and only by turning to God can we be good. Watching the world deteriorate, I’ve begun to think nature would be better off without us. But another part of me wants to believe we haven’t reached our potential yet.
We live in a system that quantifies and exploits everything, assigning value to determine its place in our reality. Many things are valued at zero and treated accordingly. To say that humans plunder and harm each other due to ‘human nature’ is to ignore the sick system we live in. We’ve created a zero-sum game where everything is quantified and given a value, resources are defined as finite and unfairly distributed, and when people steal, kill, or do drugs, we blame it on human nature.
But I don’t think we’ve seen what human nature can truly be, because our system dehumanizes and exploits. It demands we treat others as mere tools for utility. Corporations are just a natural adaptation to these rules. Eisenstein’s chapter on Money & Debt made it clear: if you have 1,000 people and only 980 chairs, those without chairs end up desperate. This isn’t human nature; it’s a result of a flawed system.
By bringing the excluded, devalued, and marginalized in, we are doing our part. I thought Eisenstein’s idea for an EcoCorpse was spot on. He suggests forming an EcoCorpse dedicated to restoration of nature for at risk youth, prisoners, prisoners and people suffering from addiction. From my brief stint at Blanchet House I know that working in nature and tending to animals helps people with addiction. It also helps with grief as you can see from the Selah Carefarm. Check out this study on how Gardening is Beneficial To Health.
Whether it’s fighting plastic pollution, human trafficking, incarceration, inequality, poverty, homelessness, racism, or advocating for access to medical care, ending wars, and famine, we help our planet survive. The climate crisis isn’t just about greenhouse gases but the system separating us from each other and everything else.
Practical Steps to Support Sustainable Practices
Feeling empowered by these new insights, I realized there are pretty simple steps we can all take to support regenerative and sustainable practices in our daily lives:
Support Regenerative Farms: Purchase meat, dairy, and produce from farms practicing regenerative agriculture. Look for local farms or farmers’ markets where you can ask about their practices.
Grow Your Own Food: Even a small vegetable garden can reduce your carbon footprint and reconnect you with the land. Herbs, tomatoes, and greens are easy to grow and provide fresh, sustainable produce. Charles Dowding is amazing to follow. As soon as I retire I am taking his No Dig Gardening Online Class.
Choose Sustainable Products: Look for clothing and other products made from regenerative or recycled materials. Support brands that prioritize environmental stewardship and transparency in their supply chains.
Reduce Plastic Use: Aim to minimize single-use plastics in your daily life. Bring reusable bags, bottles, and containers when shopping. Take photos of plastic packaging you find unnecessary and post it to their social asking them to change.
Advocate for Change: Get involved in local environmental initiatives. Support policies and organizations that promote regenerative practices and sustainable living.
Conclusion
I have heard countless times about how we are all connected but reading these books started me on a path to really understanding our interconnectedness with the natural world and each other. This understanding is essential for addressing the profound environmental and social challenges we face. Books like “Climate, A New Story” by Charles Eisenstein and “The Sum of Us” by Heather McGhee highlight the urgent need to rethink our relationship with the Earth and each other.
Reading Eisenstein’s work shifted my perspective from hopelessness to purposeful. It taught me that addressing climate change is not just about reducing carbon emissions but also about healing our broken relationship with nature and each other. Every small action towards regeneration and sustainability contributes to a larger movement of healing and restoration. So don’t feel overwhelmed or ever give up trying!
As Eisenstein emphasizes, all current revolutions share the same goal: to love everything for its own sake. This approach challenges the zero-sum game mentality and encourages us to see the inherent value in all beings. By bringing in the excluded and marginalized, we create a more just and sustainable world.
I leave you with William Shatner’s quote on his trip to space and “the strongest feelings of grief” he’d ever felt. “It was the death that I saw in space and the lifeforce that I saw coming from the planet — the blue, the beige and the white,” he said. “And I realized one was death and the other was life.”
Every morning, before I head into the requisite eight hours of alienated labor, I try to carve out time to focus on something that actually matters. For the past year, I’ve been nursing this idea, unsure of what to do with it. What finally made me act was a deep, gut-level pain I felt for all of us—our collective “we”—as I watched the inauguration. The presence of billionaires at the forefront of our nation’s leadership underscored how money, more than anything, seems to dictate power.
It’s hard to ignore a few simple truths most of us can agree on:
There’s way too much money in politics, and it’s concentrated in the hands of a few.
Greed is destroying the planet, turning its gifts into poisoned trash heaps.
These two things have been eating away at the collective We The People. First, our labor was extracted from us and now it is our attention.
Recently, things hit a new level of creepy. I saw ads on youtube for a medical condition my doctor had just diagnosed me with—something I hadn’t written about or shared with anyone except my husband.
Yesterday, after talking to a kitchen designer about pull-out trash bins, my husband started seeing posts for them an hour later.
That was my breaking point. I decided to take back a little control. Here’s what I’ve done so far:
Deleted social media apps from my phone. I’ll only use them on my computer now.
Switched to ProtonMail and started using the Brave browser instead of Google.
Locked down my phone settings: Siri is off, and location tracking is set to “only with permission.”
Turned off every single alert except for Calendar & Texts/Calls from my favorites list. And, unfortunately had to leave Slack because of the alienated labor thing.
What Can We Do????
I just heard this episode on VOX about the global birthrate declining. I’d have guessed the cost of having a baby is enough to put anyone off, especially with inflation and the cost of living going up so that you have to have two employed parents., Conservatives think it’s because women are in the workforce. But, the researcher believes it has way more to do with people not meeting up anymore IRL. We’re all in our little digital holes.
Then, a few minutes later on the same radio station I heard this woman laughing about how she used to be embarrassed for always canceling plans last minute, until she realized everyone was secretly grateful when someone bailed. She joked that people would probably wonder if she was going to flake on her own funeral. Everyone agreed. I agreed. I’m glad when someone cancels so I can stay home and what? Watch another episode of something? Not get dressed?
After COVID, it’s just harder. Harder to leave the house. Harder to commit to anything that requires going outside. But apparently kids aren’t falling in love. They’re not building lives. They’re not having kids. And no, I’m not saying everyone needs to be popping out babies—but I am saying this level of disconnection is probably good for the planet?
So yeah, I decided to do something I really don’t want to do. I’m going to fight for something with others—in my own community. I can be part of something that feels alive, not virtual, not scrollable.
I’ve come to believe that the single most important thing we can do right now is look each other in the eye and make eye contact.
Ever feel like no matter how much protesting you are doing, no one is listening? Ah, the sweet irony of peaceful protests—like knitting a cozy blanket while the world’s on fire. But this here blanket is made to smother the fires and you may not think anything is happening when you protest, but it makes all the difference.
Historical Examples
When it comes to peaceful protests, two shining examples stand out: Gandhi’s independence movement in India and the American civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi, with his unwavering leadership spun a movement that unshackled India from British rule. His quiet resolve was mightier than the sword, demonstrating the sheer power of peaceful resistance. Similarly, Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream, marched, spoke and led a movement that dismantled segregation and galvanized civil rights in America.
Why Nonviolence Works
Nonviolence Works Because It’s Harder to Justify Repression
Governments and institutions rely on public perception. When a regime cracks down on violent protestors, they can justify it as “restoring order.” But when they attack nonviolent protestors, it often backfires, creating public outrage and shifting support toward the protestors.
Examples:
The Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. – The brutal response to peaceful marchers in Selma was televised, shocking the public and increasing support for voting rights.
India’s Independence Movement – British soldiers beating peaceful protestors made British rule look oppressive and unjustifiable.
Arab Spring (some cases) – Early nonviolent resistance in Tunisia gained massive international support, whereas later violent uprisings in places like Syria led to prolonged conflict instead of change.
When nonviolent activists don’t give their opponents a reason to justify repression, it makes it much harder for authorities to legitimately use force without public backlash.
Nonviolence is a Strategic Disruption Tool
Nonviolent resistance isn’t just about “looking good.” It’s a tactical method for disrupting power structures in a way that’s hard to suppress.
Mass strikes shut down economies.
Boycotts deprive corporations of revenue.
Sit-ins and blockades create logistical nightmares for governments.
This forces those in power to negotiate because nonviolent resistance creates real-world consequences without escalating into a battle they can crush with superior firepower.
Example:
South African anti-apartheid boycotts – Economic sanctions and internal boycotts weakened the apartheid regime without armed rebellion.
Nonviolence works because it’s an effective way to apply pressure, not just because it’s morally righteous.
Nonviolence Makes It Easier to Build a Diverse Movement
A violent revolution tends to attract young, physically capable fighters willing to risk their lives. A nonviolent movement, however, can involve everyone—children, the elderly, religious leaders, business owners, and people who would otherwise never pick up a weapon.
A diverse movement is stronger because:
It’s harder to dismiss as “just radicals.”
It makes the cause more relatable to the general population.
It spreads more easily because more people can participate without fear of immediate violence.
Examples:
Women and children in Gandhi’s protests – The presence of families softened public perception and made British crackdowns look even worse.
Montgomery Bus Boycott – Black communities were able to nonviolently cripple an entire industry by simply refusing to participate in it.
A nonviolent movement has a much larger potential base of support than an armed uprising, which often alienates moderates.
Nonviolent Movements Tend to Have More Sustainable Victories
History has shown that violent revolutions often replace one form of oppression with another. Nonviolent movements, however, are more likely to result in lasting, democratic change.
A famous study by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to succeed as violent ones—and they tend to create more stable post-revolution governments.
Why?
When a revolution is won through violence, the leaders are usually the ones who were best at fighting—not necessarily the best at governing.
Nonviolent movements require organization and coalition-building, which makes democratic governance easier after victory.
