Transforming the Paradigm

"If you are coming to help me you are wasting your time.  If you are coming because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."  Indigenous quote

For many indigenous peoples, grasping the deep responsibility of stewardship of the natural world is inherent in their world view.  This concept is likely easier to manage when one is looking at one’s own small habitat.  It is when we combine this idea of stewardship with our understanding of the entire globe, replete with tribal states spread across seven continents with various resources, unique languages and countless cultural and religious paradigms that we begin to realize the complexity of establishing and living a shared, global concept of stewardship.  Add to this the limitations of the human heart and the misguided tendencies of the human ego and one becomes easily deflated in any belief that there is hope for the future of life on our planet if such a future is dependent upon unprecedented levels of cooperation across cultures and demographics.

And yet, while capitalism and its cousin, greed, rage unchecked around the globe, humanitarian efforts to end poverty and relieve suffering also persist.  In joining this humanitarian effort, I became aware of the myth The Eagle and the Condor.  Said to have cropped up independently from many indigenous cultures around the globe, the myth prophecies a time when the human race will be split into two groups – the scientific and intellectually based and the earth-bound and spiritually based - and that the survival of the earth will be dependent upon a sharing of their talents and beliefs.  In short, the myth suggests that it will be through the merging of scientific pursuits and spiritual, earth-connected wisdom that man will arrive at a series of practices that will save our planet from disaster. 

While I am not a great proponent of prophecy, this one, along with Lynn Twist’s powerful assertion that the earth abounds with sufficient resources for all, set out in her book The Soul of Money, strikes me as a pertinent illustration of what is indeed required of us as we wrangle with the concept of the sustainability of life on earth.  Twist writes, “…my years of work with hunger and poverty, affluence and wealth, have shown me that collaboration and all its tributaries – reciprocity, partnership, solidarity, alliance – flow from the truth of sufficiency.  It is all here, now. It is enough. We are each other, and our resources abound.”  Taking this a step further, it becomes clear that it is our perpetual quest for more that lies at the root of a destructive tendency toward excess and wastefulness, conquest and hoarding, pollution and trash. 

Wherever one may stand in their beliefs about the effects of human activity on global climate change, it seems to me as obvious as the old jingle Fish and Chips and Vinegar that pollution and trash are never welcome.  It is not a desirable practice to throw one’s trash into another’s backyard, nor is it desirable to hoard trash in one’s own. I am led, then, to the conclusion that producing trash at all is unwise. So while I sit here in my suburban home in Newburyport, MA living what I hope is a mindful existence with my husband and three children in a country teaming with discontent and dangerous political discord, I can not help but scan my house, my yard, my neighborhood trying to determine what exactly is trash.  It wasn’t until I traveled to the tiny of village of San Pedro, Panama, that I was given a truly alternate understanding of what is necessary and what is not in order to live a meaningful and happy life.

Panamanian history is riddled with stories of conquest and the dubious geopolitical ventures of the English, the Spanish, the French and the US Americans.  Most notable is the story of the Panama Canal where hundreds of thousands of French and US citizens died in constructing a more convenient passage for sailing vessels. Lesser known and remembered are the workers from Barbados, Jamaica, and other islands of the Caribbean and West Indies who made up the majority of the Canal workforce and who had a significant cultural impact on Panama. The construction of the Canal is, of course, a story of dominance and repression, an illustration of the powerful will of imperialism.  But it is also a story of indomitable spirit, a story of mankind’s extraordinary tenacity and might put to use to alter the physical world to suit his needs. 

After years of strife, the Panamanians gained control of the profits garnered from the Canal and the effects of those profits are evident in its cosmopolitan capital city and in the services its government is able to provide, including more sophisticated road systems than are enjoyed by most Central American countries.  But a majority of Panamanians live in poverty and the rural poor and subsistence farmers continue to practice slash-and-burn farming techniques that deplete the rain forests upon which the rest of the globe is dependent. It is here that my story really begins in conjunction with a humanitarian organization known as Sustainable Harvest International whose mission is “to provide farming families in Central America with the training and tools to preserve our planet’s tropical forests while overcoming poverty.”

There is a propensity to judge the slash-and-burn farming techniques of rainforest dwellers as ignorant and such practices would seem contrary to any notions I presented earlier that indigenous populations tend to hold a greater respect for and connection to the land on which they live.  But it is important to remember that on a less populated planet, these practices were entirely practical and effective.  It is only with the dawning of our modern understanding of the interconnectedness of the earth’s biomes that it has become clear that healthy rainforests are essential to a healthy planet.  And it is ironic that people from a nation responsible for the highest levels of pollution and consumption on the planet have taken it upon themselves to redirect these indigenous practices toward more sustainable, place-specific, organic farming.  But that is, in fact, the place from which we set off. 

 Exploring the Rainforest

In the village of San Pedro there isn’t much trash. There is no electricity and only a very rudimentary system for transporting water down the mountain through plastic piping that runs fully exposed along the ground and hangs in the trees overhead.  The families there live in cement block homes with corrugated roofs.  The children in each household work on their homework in the evening around the small halo of light from a kerosene lamp.  The village is in the Cocle Valley - rainforest territory - abundant with cashew, calabash, coconut and banana trees, yucca, and coffee. Countless chickens squawk and peck in and around the houses unsuspecting that any one of them may be chosen for the next meal.  Mangy, ill-fed dogs and cats roam the dirt roads that converge on a central area where the school, the church and a roofed community meeting place nestle in on the side of the river. The region is mountainous, breathtakingly beautiful and tranquil. But there is a pervasive acrid smell and one can see plumes of smoke on the hills in all directions.  “Who would have known that they were living so backward there,” a friend of mine said to me.  But it didn’t feel backward, it felt just right, uncluttered and free.  

In describing her commitment to the work Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) does in Central America, founder Florence Reed, says, “A farmer in a remote village in Honduras is providing us with organic coffee, providing winter habitat for our song birds, stabilizing our global climate, preserving the forests that are the source of most of our medicines, creating oxygen to breath and protecting coral reefs from siltation as a result of deforestation.  So, if a poor farmer in Honduras can do all this for us, what can we do for him?”

It was with this idea in mind that my daughter and I traveled with three other families to help the village of San Pedro as a part of SHI’s Smaller World Tours program.  The trip was spearheaded by 14-year-old August Umholtz, whose family had worked with SHI in Belize the year before.  Our group consisted of five children, ages 10-14, and five adults all of whom had embraced the Montessori-based value of our school that community service is as essential to life as breathing. With a meager understanding of the Spanish language and an even more meager understanding of the living conditions of these people, we arrived in San Pedro right before the start of the rainy season in April 2011.

The people of San Pedro have been working with SHI for two-and-a-half years of their five-phase program.  The program directs financial resources and organic farming knowledge from the US to struggling Central American communities in order to provide farmers with knowledge and encouragement in changing their farming practices.  The result is sustainable agriculture that empowers and feeds.  The villagers have grown accustomed to visits from North Americans interested in helping and they expressed (through an interpreter) a deep appreciation for our willingness to travel so far to work with them. Balancing their appreciation was our thirst to encounter, to understand and to help through the donation of our time and money.  So, in the beginning, surely, our notion of who was doing the giving and who the receiving was unbalanced, at best.  And yet, after our four days hiking the hills, clearing the land, visiting the school, planting a rice paddy, building a wood-burning stove and exploring the natural world of San Pedro, we left with a gaping view of how our cluttered, micro-managed, consumer-driven lives have stolen from us the true joys of simple living and the peacefulness of walking with one’s feet on the earth.

“The kids there were so happy,” says Cam Gibney, the youngest in our group.  “They were not always looking for the next best thing.” And my daughter, Alexa, adds, “I thought the village would be small, dirty and cramped. My main fear was that these people would be so much worse off than me and I would feel too awkward to even try to speak with them. But I definitely did not feel bad for them.  I was jealous.”

We were lucky to have our children travelling with us.  Children have a way of breaking through barriers, in this case both lingual and cultural, through play.  They will shed shyness, overlook differences and throw themselves into any game.  In San Pedro, that is exactly what they did and through play they led the adults away from the cautious adherence to social politeness that can hinder friendliness and trust. When we arrived, it was the appearance of a soccer ball that broke the silence and separation between villagers and visitors.  At the school, a game of Duck, Duck, Goose that started among a small group, grew to a circle of nearly one hundred laughing, smiling children.  Patty Cake and Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes easily translated into both languages and ended in peals of giggles.  Mud wrestling in the rice paddy united us in fun.  Slowly we moved from working beside one another to working with each other and though we struggled to speak we discovered the simplicity of communicating with a smile, a questioning expression, a gesture.

But we did not only find joy and playfulness, we also discovered the satisfaction that comes from purposeful, physical labor. Our Panamanian companions in this labor were strong, creative, generous and gracious. Each day, they carried ten-gallon containers of water for us on the hour-long hikes required to reach the day’s place of work.  They carried our food, including freshly harvested coconuts and bananas, on their backs.  Three times a day, they prepared meals for us and happily watched while we ate them.  When the poorly-made tools they purchased in the city fell apart, they fixed them. And they delighted in showing us how sugar cane is pressed, calabash bowls are used, rice is dried and separated, Panamanian straw hats are woven.  They knew how to partake of the fruits of the natural world while living in harmony with it.  They wove the small tabs from soda cans into belts.

“I will never forget our trip to San Miguelito and the gang of people who showed up for work that day,” says Aaron Banas, our SHI guide and interpreter.  “At one point I grew exhausted from the tilling and stopped.  I didn’t need to look up to appreciate what was happening all around me.  There was the amazing sound of dozens of tools chipping away at the soil.  I had never heard anything like it.  When I did look up and around, I was in awe at the force of a group of people working together.”

After a hard day's work, we sat together and read aloud Spanish translations of our favorite American children’s stories, passing the books around a circle with our battery-powered lights to read by. Together we shared empathy for the injustice of Wilbur’s fate in Charlotte’s Web.  We laughed over the antics of Curious George whose innocent curiosity gets him into so much trouble.  We fell in love with Miss Rumphius who believed a meaningful life could be found through finding one’s special talent and using it to make the world a better place.  And we were relieved to discover that talent could be as simple as spreading lupine seeds to brighten the landscape.

It is not my intention to romanticize the living conditions of the people of Central America.  There you will find poverty, hunger and suffering.  In the home where my daughter and I stayed, 4-year-old Melixza coughed and whimpered throughout the night and spent her days sucking on stalks of sugar cane for comfort.  While I lay in the narrow wooden bed she had let me borrow, I gained an inkling of the sacrifice and worry a mother feels when having to wait for the monthly medical van in order to get care for her daughter.  And I felt the despair of knowing that paying for care and medication would mean skimping and scrounging for money. Further, I experienced the frustration that while I could give her the money she needed, it would not solve the problem in any long term or meaningful way

I would, however, like to debunk the myths we tell ourselves about our own conditions and habits of living.  Encompassed in these myths is the belief that we have found our way to safety, to comfortable, squeaky-clean living that frees us from toil, hunger and disease.  That through innovation we have constructed a superior lifestyle.  But, while we may have much to teach about sustainable farming practices, we have a great deal to learn about sustainable consumption.  In the midst of the people of San Pedro we had a good, hard view of our own limitations – our fractured pursuit of physical fitness, our disconnect between the food we eat and where it comes from, our assumptions about health care and transportation.

“For me it was a Walden experience for the modern age,” says Mary Gibney, “a stripping down to the most basic elements – work, food, family and play – and realizing how simple, but rich, life can be.”  Her husband Colin, the teacher among us, adds, “I am eager to share our experience with students.  We are focused on learning to change our impact on the environment by minimizing motorized transportation, not buying unnecessary items, learning to grow and eat local produce, unplugging and reconnecting with each other.  This is exactly how the people live in San Pedro. They are already living the good life.  In fact they never seem to have left it.  We, on the other hand, seem to have lost our way. Many of the kids I teach see hope and believe we can change the way things are.  The trip to San Pedro has inspired me anew to support students in implementing that change.”

The Bling Culture

Many of our children are well aware of the issues of global warming.  They know about oil spills and carbon pollution.  They have been taught about the effects of plastic trash on the environment. They are saddened by the growing list of extinct and endangered species. But while they may well feel hope, they are also hindered by cultural values that use the possession of material goods and gadgets as currency for friendship and status. They are manipulated by an invasive commercialism that tells them that “things’ make them happy.  They retain a mistaken impression that when they grow tired of this or that they can simply replace it with something new, and that throwing away the old makes it disappear.  A friend of mine calls this the bling factor. I understand what she means. And I have come to the sad conclusion that, while also a strong, creative, generous and gracious people, we Americans have become entirely driven by consumerism.  In an attempt to fill a pervasive feeling of emptiness and boredom, we shop.  We have even been told that shopping is an expression of patriotism.  We have willingly relinquished our status as citizens for that of customers and consumers. 

Once submerged in the bling culture, it is very difficult to find pathways to change.  Back at home, I find myself once again living in a cluttered mind, racing in my minivan from place to place chasing the acquisition of things.  Expending a vast amount of energy worrying about the money I will need to acquire these things. Expending a vast amount of energy trying to get rid of things I no longer need.  Expending a vast amount of energy attempting to avoid producing trash. Expending a vast amount of energy moving trash out of my home each week. Even expending a vast amount of energy trying to conceal trash, placing it in plastic bags and green plastic garbage bins in hopes that this will make it disappear.  I have been slow to accept the notion that America is a culture of addiction, but this sounds like the circular trap of addiction to me. 

It is common knowledge that the first step to fixing a problem is accepting that there is one.  So common, in fact, that the words appear trite. This process of acceptance can be frightening and shame-inducing. It is no wonder that many of us continue to cling to a state of denial.  But, please, allow me to be clear and honest about some things many of us already know.  Plastic is forever.  The trash we put out on the curb each week does not disappear.  Our consumption of non-renewable energy is not sustainable. Natural resources are not boundless.  The acquisition and burning of fossil fuels is devastating our planet. We have come to a fork in the road where we can choose to continue on a path of destruction or we can own up to our shared, global responsibility as stewards of the earth.

But even those of us who have acknowledged the devastating reality of our current predicament feel discouraged and, indeed, thwarted in our attempts at meaningful change. We encounter a cultural resistance to even our most benign efforts to establish sustainable habits.  Such habits would appear to be in conflict with deeply held beliefs about the American dream.  Perhaps this is because the pioneering spirit of our ancestors, or at least the story we tell ourselves about them, is fused with the notion of boundlessness, of vast, unchartered territory, of raising oneself from rags to riches in a harsh, but tamable wilderness. 

In the early days of our nation’s forming, we encountered a race that lived peacefully on the land without exploiting it - a race that believed that the Great Spirit inhabited and connected all living things.  “It was our belief,” said Native American Ohiyesa (aka Charles Alexander Eastman), “that the love of possessions was a weakness to be overcome.  Its appeal is to the material part, and if allowed its way, it will in time disturb one’s spiritual balance.”  Algonquin elder William Cammanda takes this a step further saying, “Traditional people of Indian nations have interpreted the two roads that face the light-skinned race as the road to technology and the road to spirituality. We feel that the road to technology… has led modern society to a damaged and seared earth.  Could it be that the road to technology represents a rush to destruction, and that the road to spirituality represents a slower path that the traditional native people have traveled and are now seeking again?  The earth is not scorched on this trail. The grass is still growing there.”

And yet industrialization and new technologies empowered our nation.  Both offered a freedom from manual labor and a path to unprecedented prosperity.  Plastics revolutionized our ability to store and transport perishables, providing a welcome control over food supplies. Because it is light-weight and durable, it has become the basic material of all our commodities. It is used to wrap, package and protect all of our goods.  Perhaps most importantly, the production of plastics is a profitable market. 

It is when innovation walks hand-in-hand with an insatiable hunger for profit that we encounter trouble. Defining our success through profit margins, we willingly blind ourselves to the environmental and spiritual costs of our economic choices.  Opening our eyes to these costs demands a deep shift in our values and our way of life - such a deep shift that many are unable to imagine, let alone work toward, this change. It is clear that the concepts of economy and ecology are irrevocably connected, and that the winners of the money game are strongly motivated to keep things as they are. Even the individual dedicated to change is required to court a transformation that leads to unknown consequences.  How do we switch to a “slower path” without toppling our current reality?  How would we support the welfare of all people during such a transition? What will we be required to give up? How much will it hurt?

Re-Visioning

It occurs to me that it wasn’t that long ago, in fact only 1969, that we got a first real look at our floating planet when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin gazed upon it from the moon.  Perhaps we should not feel too discouraged that it has taken us just over 40 years to accept that our world is not boundless, but finite. That finite world has been floating in space for millions of years forever reinventing itself. Perhaps we should not feel so frightened of the change required of us now to protect our fragile but persistent ecosystem.  History shows us that both man and his environment are remarkably resilient and adaptable. Perhaps we should have a greater faith in our stories of transformation.  Afterall, stories and faith can shape outcomes.

The success of that journey into the universe planted a seed in our human imagination that out there in the great unknown there is another planet we might inhabit one day. There are many among us who are champions of that idea. But I suspect the most significant result of that moon walk was the re-visioning of the earth it offered us.  That distant perspective allowed us to see that it is indeed ‘a small world after all.’ Through that vision, it has became ever more evident that while we may feel separate from our fellow travelers on earth, we do in fact all share the experience of living together on a single floating sphere.  And while we perpetuate our notions of otherness through geopolitical conquests, resource grabbing and war, we do so at our peril.

In an attempt to sum up our experience in San Pedro, Aaron Banas, who has devoted his life to humanitarian pursuits, uses these words: “Who would have thought such an admirable joy and tranquility would be tucked back in the hills of San Pedro.  Down that windy road, then up and down the steep hills is where Alfredo presses his sugar cane, Pablo shares his coconut water and Erasmo grows beautiful, organic tomatoes. There are a lot of hot days, long hikes and physical labor that go into getting by in San Pedro, but I think a lot of people have figured out the key to what appears to be great happiness: being together.”

It is this simple notion of “being together,” united around a common cause with common goals, that seems to be the greatest challenge we face as a global community. Yet, SHI has found a way to do just that.  Their programming demonstrates the extraordinary effectiveness of crossing cultural boundaries and marrying resources with need through the simplicity of heart-felt connection.  Programming that benefits not only the materially impoverished but also the spiritually impoverished, leaving both with a new sense of hopefulness -- a glimpse at the unbridled and boundless hope of a child.

I often wonder what would happen if our friends in San Pedro were to visit us. I suspect they would delight in riding in our cars.  I can imagine the children bounding endlessly up and down the stairs in our multi-storied homes and it might take them some time to get over the joy of turning light switches on and off and basking in the comfort of a warm bath.  They might be lulled into endless hours in front of the television.  They would likely experience the same awe and respect we have for our computerized gadgets. 

But would we, as my daughter hit upon, experience an embarrassment of riches?  Or might we experience an even more profound embarrassment as their watchful eyes exposed to us our wastefulness and excess?  What would the muscular Pablo and Carlos think of our fitness centers?  Would Erasmo help me to see that grocery shopping is somehow less about buying food than it is an expression of my allegiance to Hunt’s or Del Monte. I imagine the women who cooked for us, wide-eyed, as they watched my family and me throw away food that is slightly stale or somehow not exactly what we wanted. And what might I learn from little Melixza?  How I long to take her to the doctor and the dentist.  But might I not see, through her eyes, an excessive love of safety, sterility and, even, vanity? Would I understand that my blindness to everyday riches and everyday miracles has indeed left me spiritually bereft? Would we spend our afternoons weaving the tabs of soda cans into belts?

Before we left the village of San Pedro, villagers and visitors gathered once again in the open air, under the protection of the roofed community meeting place.  We exchanged thank-yous and were given gifts of hand-painted calabash with scenes of San Pedro’s luscious beauty, hand-woven baskets and trinkets, and maracas and drums constructed from native plants - gifts that tell the stories of life in San Pedro. Christian, a teenage boy who often flirted on the edge of our reading circle, gave my daughter a beautifully-drawn picture of Miss Rumphius spreading her lupine seeds.  We left behind our soccer ball and our Spanish translations of Charlotte’s Web, Curious George and Miss Rumphius.  I told the community (again with the help of a translator) that my experience there left me with a deeper understanding that we truly are all one people around the planet.  The sentiment won me bright looks of recognition and hugs from a people not inclined toward hugging.  

Crusaders of Change

In The Soul of Money, Lynn Twist reminds us that money, free markets and capitalism are human constructs designed to facilitate the exchange of goods.  Somehow, along the way, money became a controller of man rather than his tool and isolated humans from their collective reality.  The construct of money embodies and drives the notions of wealth and poverty. It has become a catalyst for greed. When we wrap our sense of self-worth around money, we are driven to atrocities in the pursuit of more.

 The good news is that there is a global movement afoot. While some may argue that this movement is another manifestation of greed – a poor majority demanding a greater piece of the pie - I believe it is a movement toward social justice that is informed by a humanitarian urge that rejects the belief that wealth is defined by money.  It rises up from the pain inflicted by global markets that continue to function under the dictates of capitalism and imperialism.  I also believe it is an environmental movement that rejects any notion that, should we trash this planet, we could move on to another.  At its core, lies a collective understanding that in order to save ourselves and our planet we must first challenge and transform the institutions of money and power. To do this we must shed our complacency which permitted money and power to take charge of our fates. 

The uprisings of people around the globe, the Arab Spring, the Global Occupy Movement, the state of unrest in evidence on all seven continents have brought hundreds of thousands of people out into the streets. And while the messages of these protests are not clearly formed, the protesters are champions of participatory democracy and their revolution is informed by nonviolent political action.  It was Mahatma Ghandi who first demonstrated that it is possible to overcome power and self-will-run-riot through discipline, sacrifice and peace.  He believed that change started with and spread out from the individual to the collective. Today, we are witnessing countless individuals leaving the isolation of their homes, pitching tents in public squares and beginning the slow, patient process of listening to each other so that they might figure out how to marry resources with need through heart-felt connection. These are the powerful first moments of a shared, global togetherness.  And, yes, through the use of technology, social networking, and YouTube videos, we are able to encourage the empowerment of our common cause.  Through the sharing of our stories we are forming a global solidarity.

There is no uncontested proof of the global origins of the myth The Eagle and the Condor.  But a myth can work its magic without empirical evidence bolstering it up.  Hasn’t it always been the case that storytelling is the crusader of change?  If it were up to me to write the sequel to The Eagle and the Condor, I would write another story of indomitable spirit.  To date, indomitable spirit has been used to reshape the planet to suit humankind’s needs.  In my story, that same indomitable spirit will be used to reshape humankind to suit the planet’s needs. I will be sure to resist Disney’s love of villains and superheroes and will steer clear of dramatic climax.  Perhaps it will be a story punctuated by silence.  One inhabited by people who are as in love with listening as they are with debate. People who have learned to quiet their minds enough to hear a deeper truth within us.  Perhaps my story will even find a way to merge technology and spirituality into a new paradigm that encourages the triumph of the individual, the collective and the natural world.  An archetype that rekindles our reverence for the interconnectedness of all living systems on our tiny, floating planet called Earth.