environment – The Conscious Pilgrim

I think about the environment a lot this time of year. Not just THE environment, but MY environment, and not just THIS time of year, but ALL times of year… I just think about it more affectionately this time of year because it’s not actively trying to kill me at this time.

I’ve said it in this blog before, and although I cannot credit myself with saying it first, I will repeat it: The biggest error the human race ever made was to view itself separate from nature. A grievance I can take up with the church quite easily, but not something I can fix, especially by complaining about it.

I get into Edmonton’s river valley almost every day in the warm months. There’s a path down into it less than a mile from my house, and between dog walks, recreational running, and mountain biking, I can say I am down there between 4 and 7 days per week… and even when I travel for work, most major Canadian cities have a river or two flowing through them, and I go find those, too.

In Edmonton, you don’t have to go far into the valley to feel like you’ve left the city, and if you’re down there pushing your own body’s boundaries, it’s not hard to find god – and by that I mean the infinite wisdom of the universe more so than the variety of idols adorning every temple under the sun.

I’ve dabbled with meditation; of course, but for my money, getting into nature and losing yourself is the best way. I like to get my heart rate into it’s beloved Zone 2 and see what god has for me – often by way of a message in a podcast or a new song, because my environment includes a level of privileged technology, though I wish I weren’t so married to my headphones. They have a tendency to distract me just as much as they inspire me and I’d like to be more of an antennae for creativity than a consumer of it. I suppose it can be both… and now that I think of it, it is both.

I don’t ride my bike with headphones. That’s as dangerous as it is uncomfortable. And I’ve been blessed with many songs, visions, and ideas on those rides.

I receive so much from my environment, and from the people and creatures that share it with me. It’s not enough to know that we are made up of the same cosmic stuff, but once we remove the man-made concepts of space and time, we are literally THE SAME stuff, all of history existing at one time, all creatures with no space between them.

If we looked at eachother with that in mind, I can’t help but think that none of us would find reason to kill another, be it for resources or religious differences.

This line of thinking reminds me why I am vegan.
Not that I need a reminder.

I’m not sure what this blog entry is about.
Perhaps it’s a reminder to myself what my role is here.
Maybe this entry has inspired something in its readers.

I hope I never find out.

Hey all. Welcome home.

A couple months back I listened to a podcast episode on the Rich Roll Podcast – one of the few I listen to with great regularity – where Rich Roll interviewed Seth Godin. I highly recommend anyone who’s creatively inclined check this one out for a great number of reasons. One of the several nuggets that was mentioned that really stuck out to me was around the boomer narrative (and I’m already paraphrasing, btw). It was a quick part of the conversation, but I’d like to expand on it here.

Since the beginning of anything that any of us can remember, a specific generation of people have been controlling the narrative of the entire planet, and this is the baby boomer generation. I’ll assume everyone reading this knows what that is, but for the kids at the back of the class: The Baby Boom Generation is that age demographic of people who were born between 1946 and 1964, aptly named for the influx of pregnancies that resulted from people coming home at the end of World War 2 and starting families.

From that time on, the narrative of western civilization has been told from the voice of that generation, and despite the fact that this generation is reaching their end of life and/or their end of their working years (it’s an 18-year span) – they are still driving the narrative of pretty much everything.

Now, don’t @-me because I don’t have a dog in this fight, and don’t get all hashtag-not-all-boomers on me either, because of course there are individual exceptions to the rule. I acknowledge that the individual is smart, nuanced, and capable of change but in higher numbers, humans have a tendency to adopt a ‘mob mentality’ which serves no one.

Ok. When rock & roll and hot rods and teenage rebellion came about, it was a narrative driven by the boomers – of course it was. This carried over through the 1960s up until the Vietnam war happened. At this point the narrative became all about the draft and how the war was pointless. As the 70s & 80s the narrative became all about arena rock, the corporate ladder and property ownership which brought about construction booms and fuel shortages.

As the world came barreling through the 90s and into the new millennium, things like punk rock and pepsi-cola became synonymous; not because of the quote-unquote Pepsi Generation but because the boomer generation was packaging and selling the next generation’s own version of teenage rebellion back to them. Music, TV and Film were largely handed down from the boomers to their children under the guise of being ‘indie’ even though marketing budgets were huge, and the companies were top-heavy. This was all endorsed by a since-falsely proven theory of trickle down economics perpetuated by – you guessed it.

Environmental concerns started to materialize as GenX and the Millennials started to take note, but it was the Boomers who were finessing and dictating how that story was going to be told and they did a very self-serving job of it right up into the 21st century when the bottom fell out of the market that the boomer generation had been using, profiting from, and bleeding dry for decades. Thereafter the pensions and nest eggs that many boomers had been working for to enjoy their retirement were essentially stolen by other, richer boomers.

Now we have a – and this is where I start to get to the point of writing all of this – ongoing narrative surrounding the idea of a dystopian hellscape future not unlike the boomer-made films ‘Mad Max’ and the ‘Terminator’ franchise in amongst the Church-going God-fearing belief that the End Of Days is upon us. And why do we have this? We have this because ultimately, the boomers are afraid of death – so the narrative is death.

Even though their time is up, and 2 other generations are set to inherit this planet, we’re still using their guiding light into a bleak future.

I am personally tired of this. If we believe it’s bleak, then were right – but the fact of the matter is that it’s not as bleak as we’ve been told. Truthfully, every day for the past 25 years we could have had a TV news reporter broadcast a story stating “less people are living in poverty today than yesterday” and it would have been 100% true every single one of those 9125 days. But… that’s not sensational, so it doesn’t happen.

I’ve spoken before about how ‘realism‘ has been incorrectly pair with ‘fatalism‘ falsely, and that optimism is far more realistic. I’d love it if you dug in on my ramblings about that right here. The principle holds true and generationally speaking, we need to decide consciously how we want to move forward as a planet and as a species… because not making a choice is still a choice, and choosing not to choose is a weak option.

We’re going to need to take an active role in our own future, and it starts in our daily lives with what we buy, what we eat, and what we throw out. We can all do a little better, and I don’t even need to tell you how.
There are changes you want to make in your life.
There are changes I want to make in my life.

Why wait?