posted by Kamala on Nov 27
Dearest Friends and Family,
As Link nears the UNFCCC, we are both grappling with the obscuring and obfuscating issues created and promoted by politics and media around the very obvious fact that the Earth is out of balance due to our actions upon her. Amma has said, the ‘Dance of Dissolution‘ has begun. Whether we like it or not, Mother Earth can clear the board if she wants. Meanwhile, politicians and economists yak about development…
Who will pay the piper?
The current model of development has been greatly assisted by media. Media of all types has been used to divert our ethical awareness and attention from the cost of this development, and from being able to actually discriminate as to whether or not it is beneficial. Media has worked very hard to make us want to be consumers of the outputs of this model.
Meanwhile, poverty has increased over 337% from Gandhi’s time, in India alone. We suffer from human over population, pollution, depletion of resources and increasing inhumanity of man to man. Its a model of False Development.
With the spread of media, people in the remotest corners and pockets of the Earth have had exposure to the values of the current model of False Development.
The model has now maxed out. The resources are gone or almost gone. The ocean is being strained for gold, the tar sands are being mined for oil, the mountains are being blown apart for coal. The greedy are acting crazed and desperate. The natural systems that sustained the False Model are breaking down. But, the appetites created by the media have grown exponentially. The world has become full of people who dream of the model life put forth by the media. The American Dream. A life that has no ethical concerns and promotes individual greed as a human value. They are willing to work hard and long for the car, the fridge, the house, the suit, the watch, the cell phone – for all the dangling ornaments found on the Christmas tree of the False Development model.
The media has lulled our ethical instincts to sleep.
It reminds me of a professor I once had at Eastern Connecticut State University, where Daddy taught for 42 years. A group of us, students concerned with ‘deeper life issues’ were sitting at a cafe table in the Student’s mess. The professor joined us, and told us frankly,
“We – [meaning his generation] wish we were you. We want the chance at free love with no responsibilities, no commitments, we envy you.”
It was ironic, considering we were discussing how these very things had ruined our parents, and made us unable to know how to cope or deal with marriage and family life, confused us about ethics and morality and left us almost isolated from each other through deep feelings of mistrust, no sense of community or commitment, dealing with tremendous personal insecurities. We suffered the legacy, and wondered what it was he envied. Some there took his words as encouragement to keep on that painful path.
Its the same now. Those that have never had access to lifestyles that squander the Earth, that promote individualism and greed, now yearn for them. They want the glory of a cadillac or benz rides, the false respect of a rolls royce, the smooth shave, the label shirts and suits, the friendship circle of cigarettes, alcohol and coke….While we, sitting at the table with the data of evidential results of the False Development model, look at them, and say, “But we aren’t finding happiness here…its not the way to go, we made a wrong turn, gotta get back, gotta find the real track….”
We have allowed the media to promote and export an illusion of happiness world wide, using the human emotions we value most – respect, community, friendship, love, in the most warped ways, tying them to consumer products, rather than to our own human ethics in relation to one another.
How will we turn the tide?
And who will pay the piper except Mother Earth?
Somehow, for some reason, almost unconsciously, people look to India to light a moral way out of this dilemma for mankind to follow. Amma has said:
“Bharat is the heart of the world. The very utterance of the word Bharatam arouses a pulse of peace and effulgence in us; for Bharat is the land of sages who transmit life and light to the whole world.”
An email from my childhood friend, exemplifies this fact:
“I don’t like the idea that India is racing towards the west. Why does the whole world want to race towards the west? This terrible culture where we work like slaves just to stay alive… businesses open on holidays, and later and later at night…so people can buy more and more of what they don’t need and no one can rest at all. ” - Jo Neff
How can India be stirred to wake up to Her ethical duty to the planet? She has the capacity - one sees it in her working poor, who don’t have time to become infected by the unethical values of the media. But who considers them? They don’t even consider themselves…
90 years ago, Gandhi held out a track for us to put our minds and energies towards. He said:
“As long as millions are starving in India, we have no right to arrange parties and dinners, to indulge in rhetoric and
spend money on luxuries. We cannot even enjoy good dishes. I have stated our duty in regard to the chronic poverty of India. You may accept or reject it.” From the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. 18: 294-295. September 26, 1920. Age 50.
We need to think realistically, that is to say, facing the Truth about what we are doing and where we are going and how it is effecting everything and everyone. Amma has suggested that industry should use its profits to make retribution to the environment and other resources that they have utilized, the communities of life they have affected.
As individuals, we have tremendous power. We have to find it and use it.
Please join us in thinking how we can re-order our lives into ones that are ethically responsive to this situation. We can turn it around. We have the capacity to soothe each other, to soothe Nature and the Earth. Let us find our way back into each other ’s Hearts once more. Then we will have real development, because we will be caring about each other. That is what makes life worth living.
Loving you,
Aunty Kamala