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Evolution -- or Revolution?

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Follow Me on Twitter     Message Burl Hall

I love all that is happening in New York City and throughout the Nation. Yes, people are waking up to their being controlled, manipulated and abused by the bankers and corporate heads. I also am concerned that another revolution is not enough. To revolve is to go about in circles. 

For example, the French Revolution led to Napoleon; the Russian Revolution to Lenin and Stalin, and the American Revolution to what we have today. Yes, there were great thinkers, like Jefferson, who had some insight into large businesses of his day and the corporate greed that runs the governments. But the basic pattern of our human societies has not been broken over the past 4,000 to 6,000 years.

What we need is to evolve. However, our evolution is thwarted by several factors, three of which are...

(1) Our technology has developed to such a degree that we have become less adept to the Earth's environment. As such, we need layers of clothes and oil based furnaces to cool off.

(2) Our business leaders have worked the technology in such a way that we are entertained by I Pods, the Internet, and games that make us want-to-be-heros who win the hearts of sweet maidens made in the image of a Barbie Doll.

(3) Our industry has become more and more standardized and controlled to the point that we are educating and evaluating our children according to standardized tests while our food is mono-cropped as evidenced by the rows and rows and rows of the same crop in large fields.

As many ecologists and scientists know, Nature thrives upon diversity. Indeed, it is diversity upon which a healthy ecosystem depends. Walk into any healthy forest and, with every step you take, you will find a wide array of differing species of plants. In contrast, our standardized farming practices make disease and its devastation of a crop more likely. For example, this year blight has hit the tomato crops in Maine. So, if you're a tomato farmer, you are likely to suffer big losses. However, if your garden is varied, then you will have other means of supporting yourself, your family and the surrounding community.

It's the same with educating children. What if we brought forth the talents and abilities within our children instead of       placing them strictly into some category or another? Yes, knowing a child needs help with math is important. But it is even more important, for the child and for the society in which he or she lives, that their strengths be maximized.

To illustrate, consider the following example of meditating Buddhist monks:

"In a monastery in northern India, thinly clad Tibetan monks sat quietly in a room where the temperature was a chilly 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Using a yoga technique known as g Tum-mo, they entered a state of deep meditation. Other monks soaked 3-by-6-foot sheets in cold water (49 degrees) and placed them over the meditators' shoulders. For untrained people, such frigid wrappings would produce uncontrolled shivering.

"If body temperatures continue to drop under these conditions, death can result. But it was not long before steam began rising from the sheets. As a result of body heat produced by the monks during meditation, the sheets dried in about an hour."

This puts our need for clothes in question. Each one of us has the potential to control our body temperature. What if we learned to do this as a species? There goes the garment industry.

Of course, in the present, we can also re-learn making our clothes on an individual and community level. This is precisely the mentality behind many growing movements in the world such as Transition Town and Permaculture. Why depend on clothes made by a Chinese girl for slave-labor wages and in horrid conditions when we can become independent of big business corporations?

Does this mean we go backwards? Absolutely not. Indeed, I think the mastery of our selves is our next movement. In this mastery of ourselves, we will evolve. But to do so is to break free of the pattern that we have been in for the past 4,000-6,000 years. It is time to evolve, not revolve. Evolution starts at home, within yourself and within your community, not in any external movement. It is there, inside yourself, that peace will unfold.

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Burl Hall is a retired counselor who is living in a Senior Citizen Housing apartment. Burl has one book to his credit, titled "Sophia's Web: A Passionate Call to Heal our Wounded Nature." For more information, search the book on Amazon. (more...)
 
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