ALL OF NATURE

Unattainable: the paradise of legend

This summer one of our last surviving American uncles visited my family in The Netherlands in a short European trip. He is ninety years of age and was born in 1919, the year of the Treaty of Versailles. The treaty was discredited by many at the time and thereafter for its shortsightedness and its focus on retribution and revenge rather than on the true needs of the future.


Versailles 1919: not the wisdom of these men could make the world a better place

As a teenager I had a correspondence friendship with my uncle for a time. Invariably he and I exchanged our views and experiences of the main events in the 1960s. And very much in the same spirit we spent a late afternoon, upon his visit to my place, discussing the events and challenges of our present time. In many respects, I observed, our present time very much resembles the fin de siècle – the period preceding the Great War. Our world leadership may not be as misguided as the ruling class in those days, especially in Europe, but so far it has failed to set the path to effectively face our present-day world wide challenges. “They are unprecedented!” my uncle exclaimed. “We are taking a massive responsibility for many future generations – in terms of our natural environment, resources, our (nuclear) waste, overpopulation and so on – but we have no true solution for any of these.”

My uncle has visited The Netherlands in various successive stages of his life; as a teenager in the 1930s, as an American Army officer immediately after the liberation in 1945 and at regular visits in the years thereafter. For most of this period my grandparents’ residence in Amsterdam served as his prime landing place. My uncle’s mother and my grandmother were sisters, born and bred in New England. “Your grandparents were true mentors to me,” my uncle said. “Now my dog is my mentor, “ he added with a smile.

Old age has gradually slowed him down physically but his mental abilities are undiminished. The dog is symbolic for the essence of his belief, not in any God or in biblical tales but in “All of Nature”.

It seems a sobering perspective in the last stage of long life. Humanity is facing great peril, more massive and inescapable than at any time in history. We may wish to reach the closing years of our life in a spirit of optimism and confidence in human kind. Yet I didn’t observe any particular disappointment or sorrow in my uncle’s expression. It rather came to me as the personal evaluation of a realist who is well aware that at one point in our lives it is truth that counts, not merely our hopes and wishes, and that we have to let go in a spirit of restful abandonment.


Judgment day for Planet Earth

Is it true, then, that God can offer us no better prospect than the mere forces of our primal instincts? In my own life too, I have little need to answer this question. God is the product of our very own human fallibility. It can not transcend it, however much we might pray for it. Even reptiles are capable of better wisdom. Thus, if I had a dog, like my uncle, I would sit down and look him in the eyes as deep as I can.

WHY NOT TAKE THE DEEP DIVE TO PROTECT LIFE ON OUR PLANET NOW?

A new age of invention


Looking beyond the current crisis

Our world is bogged down by a financial crisis at a time when forward looking investments are most needed. We need to move towards a clean global economy as rapidly as we can. The sooner we reach it, the least disaster we risk and the better quality of life we achieve.

My question would be whether the crisis should not be a trigger instead to make us take such a move with even more pressure. Investments in sustainable wealth will make us prosper beyond imagination – if we succeed. This is a certainty.

I just read the announcement of a new car made in China: it is a car powered by electricity. The article suggests that China may be pushing harder – harder than we do – towards a green economy. Most likely, if this were the case, the country will be stronger in our world because of it.

Life preservation is wealth. This should be our economic axiom. We should create richness for every natural habitat we preserve and for every new habitat we create. If need be, we pay for clean air. Let’s make clean air an element on the DOW Jones Index, but in reverse. The lower its share value, the cleaner we have become.



The 21st century should become known for its ability to advance on the merits of the 20th but also for cleaning up its downsides. We should pass a clean, sustainable world to the 22nd.

This, in my view, is the kind of inspiration too that can in fact drag us out of the current financial problems and the stagnation this has caused. Financial institutions, industry and commerce have a large role to play in reducing waste, increasing product relevance, in enhancing the entire habitat of life, and in making it a joy for all humanity on this planet.


What's in the bag?

But is an effort too which can not succeed without our own contribution. Humanity has gone haywire in its use of the markets. We are being led by many needless, wasteful things. Just look at what goes out, week after week, with the garbage collector. We can be more pro-active, as a consumer, in dictating the market and not allow us to be simply exploited by it. In a sense, as I have indicated in my previous blog, consumers should at least in part be producer too.

There is lots of talk about innovation and new invention. There should be. It is best achieved if we are imaginative in our needs too. How do we really want to run our lives. What are the thins – materially and otherwise – I really need and what should they be like? What can make my life most “nature friendly”? What, today, is the state of the art?

I do believe that if we let our imagination go wild over saving life on our planet, new economic growth will follow to the benefit of many