JUNE WHITE MULE'S EARS (Wytheia helianthoides)

THE FUTURE OF THE FAMILY FARM

We shape the world and the world shapes us.

The future of the family farm will be based,
in part, on two new interpretations of two familiar
words. The idea of family will no longer be solely
based on, or limited to, outmoded and overly rigid
concepts of marriage and gender relationships, but
rather networks of friendship and shared intention.
And the idea of farming itself will depart radically
from the current trend towards bigger and bigger
monocultures, worked unsustainably in every single
regard by fewer and fewer people. Instead, the new
idea of farming will ground itself in the much more
general concept of harvesting energy, whether in
the form of vegetable or animal produce, or the
whole generative spectrum of renewables, but also
energy in the more subtle sense of dialogue, meaning,
community, learning and education, and, ultimately,
the arts, sciences, and spiritual creativity.

All of this will be made possible by the two necessarily
parallel revolutions of Digital and New Energy technologies.
These, in turn, both emerge naturally out of what is
primarily an inward revolution of consciousness, one
which begins with the simple yet enormously powerful
insight that the way of violent force, and its concomitants
of power and control, are everywhere self-destructing
before our very eyes, bringing in extraordinarily sharp relief
the clear necessity of the alternative path of nonviolence.
Nonviolence is now the sine qua non of right relationship,
with oneself, with each other, and with the Earth. Which
country will be the first to step forward, and demonstrate
that these principles may both be stimulated and
protected by new limits set by a revised and greatly
simplified constitutional governance and rule of law?

UNJUST, UNFAIR & UNETHICAL

(1) The Human species is the only member of Earth’s
creatura that has taken away the individual’s essential
right to a place to be, right to a minimal niche or space
where the individual may flourish, and the necessaries
of existence may be responsibly found and harvested;

(2) In a way, it might be said that governments interfere
where the should not, and don’t where they should.

They tell us whom we should and should not love,
whom we should and should not marry. Every
enlightened world culture—past and present—has
embraced the whole wide spectrum of human Eros
and Sexuality and Relationship. But now, we have the
added ethical imperative of protecting the rights of a
minority against the tyranny of a very vocal, but
mistaken, majority. Worldwide, constitutions should
be ammended—just as they were to end slavery of
any kind—to prohibit the gross, immoral, and destructive,
discrimination against, and suppression of, an individual’s
sexual preference. The human family should be defined
anew, not by any absolute notion of gender and gender
roles, but rather by the clear and unambiguous freedom
to define love and right relationship in the manner
of one’s choice.

SOCIAL GRAPH or A NEW
'MEGA-MACHINE OF ME ?'

What does the new “Social Graph” of the old
“Culture of Me” look like? Is it not simply a bigger,
and more compulsive, ‘Me,’ with more hits,
more clicks, and more friends, to be sure,
but still in essence that same isolated little
node in a web sitting behind a computer, still that same
little being fragmented from all the life and suffering
and beauty of the Earth, still just barely aware
of the inward forces driving it to get ever more,
ever-more quickly?

Let us hope for the best . . .

FIREWEED POEMS please preview
my little book 51 mostly longer narrative poems
[opens in new window]