Disabled in the Morning

I can walk. Normally, I manage an hour of limping around--enough to dress, water plants, feed the dog, and eat breakfast. While eating, I put my feet on ice to keep them from turning nasty. The rest of the day, I slump in a lift chair, legs elevated, feet touching nothing.

This morning, my feet got loud after only 30 minutes. That was it. No more walking. My hope for a quick trip to the farm market was gone.

Grief hit me hard, and I cried like a three-year-old who's pet just died.

I know grief is normal. After all, it's only been two years since I first tried on the label "disabled."

That was so-o-o-o liberating.

I'd been losing function for thirty years, but since I always found a way to get what I wanted--especially hiking alone in wilderness areas--the losses never registered as such. But the last three years of struggling to work had been h*ll. Giving up that struggle was a relief. A disability identity was comforting.

I can handle the pain--though, yes, I hate inspiration porn. The isolation is harder (among complaints, I have erythromelalgia which makes wearing shoes and socks excruciating--so no outside excursions in winter--while heat exacerbated pain keeps me inside in summer).


Walking has always been my main deal. Regular in-wild-ness time feels as necessary as food--in all seasons. (I can spend hours lying comfortably in a snow drift.)

Now, I usually can't sit on the deck.

Grief has it's own rhythm. It can become less suffocating while never going entirely away. But then when it hits, it can still hit hard.

Speak Before It's Too Late

First they came for Muslims, and I didn't speak because I wasn't Muslim.

Then they came for Blacks and Latinx, and I didn't speak because I wasn't Black or Latina.

Then they came for LBGTQ, and I didn't speak because I wasn't LBGTQ.

Then they came for PWD, and I didn't speak because I wasn't disabled.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

- after Martin Niemöller

Global Warming, Marketing, and Zen Cats

I recently watched a video of economic predictions for 2020. A compendium of stats flashed by with rah-rah audio and snazzy visuals.

It was very much less than convincing. 

The video assumes that world economies will continue along existing change vectors. This is not realistic.

Oooh: colorful social media stats.

“Business as usual” can’t survive escalating climate disasters, rising sea levels, and the upset of local climate norms–with unpredictable swings among extreme heat, cold, wet, and dry.

As these impacts accelerate, no one will deny global climate change. The desire for profit won't let them. 

Frankly, I won't miss Florida or Texas (two states guaranteed to flood), but the US economy will.

Already, low-lying countries are being lost to sea level rise. Marketers expect Asia to be the economic powerhouse of 2020, but sea level rise will devastate many parts of Asia, not to mention flooding coastal cities around the rest of the globe.

Corporations in Europe are beginning to understand this. Self-preservation motivates businesses to become a force for climate sense.

Will it be enough, and on time?

Unfortunately, my years as an earth scientist lead me to say, “no.”

Global climate change is rapidly spinning us off into a vast economic and civic unknown, and we are likely far past the point where bright engineering solutions can stop earth's trajectory into warmth.

We can slow down the change, reducing the scale of human misery global warming will continue to cause, but we can not stop it.

An earth-centered view considers hundreds of millions of years. It's a very long civic view that considers a hundred years. Marketing considers only months while social media marketing is even more painfully myopic.

So what's a marketer to do? (After we get our collective heads out of our collective asses on climate change.)

Cornelis van Haarlem, The fall of Ixion

• Become like cats. Accept that change is the only constant, and develop an inner sense of gravity so we have a sense of uprightness while spinning through space.

• Take a tip from Buddha. Let go of the shore and live norm-less lives, grasping nothing and floating amidst turbulent change as if all was as it should be. 

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If We Are An Organ In Earth's Body

According to the Gaia theory, the earth is becoming a coherent individual, so I can't help wondering about humanity's function in earth's body.

Discover what we do best and you will discover which earth organ we are.

So what do we do best?

Collect together and talk.
                                     Connect.
                                                Send.
                                                     Receive.

We create community and we communicate.

That suggests that humans are the connecting, communicative organ in earth's body--earth's neural net.

According to a Morgan Stanley survey 91% of mobile phone users keep their phones nearby at all times. We use them everywhere: alone or in a crowd, in bed or on the toilet. In fact, 75% of American mobile users used their phones in the bathroom.

Connectivity is addictive. 

Once we get it, few of us can let it go, even for a few hours.

Why?

Most of us have an unsatisfied hunger at the center of our being. Unsatisfied longing hurts. Connectivity combines two of the best ways to distract ourselves from pain: keep busy and consume.

But is there more to our love of connection?

We humans have only just filled our environment. What if this is the required tipping point in earth maturing into a coherent homeostatic individual? If so, we have only just crossed that line.

Then our NEED for connectivity is not just a desperate wall social isolates erect against loneliness, or a way business profiteers build global markets, or how all of us keep ourselves from feeling. Our connectivity addiction would be an inherent response to our nascent biologic role in homeostatic earth.

Then connectivity would be vital to every human, plugged-in or not.

Vital to all life, human and non-human.

            Vital to the earth.

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Human Population Growth: Earth's Push Back Time

Humans are entering the top of our population growth curve. 

Partly because some of us have chosen to limit births, but also because, for the very first time in human history, earth is limiting our births for us. 

It’s a biological given that populations have an s-shaped growth curve.

At first, growth is exponential, starting slow and increasing at a faster and faster pace.

Sound familiar?

Until recently, this is what all the human population growth charts looked like:

Doomsday scenarios say if we keep reproducing at greater and greater rates, we will soon run out of food, water, and space.

For most biological populations, though, the rate of growth starts off exponential. Then it slows and eventually stops. The top of the curve becomes flat, making that characteristic s-shape.

Why?

Most critters are no smarter than people. They don’t choose to limit how many babies are born.

The environment limits births for them.

Populations race exponentially upward until the critters have filled their environment. Then the environment pushes back. 

The critters' waste products pile up. A poison to them, their waste damages their fertility and vitality. Meanwhile, predators--including disease organisms--settle in for a steady munch. The result? Population growth slows, then levels off.

The human population is still growing, but our growth rate is going down.

We have entered the top of our growth curve.

Now, some of that is sociological. For people in rich countries, kids are expensive, social services means you don't need them to take care of you in your old age, and better medical care for children means you no longer need a bunch to have some reach maturity. So people choose to have smaller families.

But there may also be a more biological explanation.

Think about it.

1. We are the only true world-wide species. (Other world-wide species, like Norwegian rats, live off us).
2. If the whole world is our environment, we have only just filled it.
3. As we cover the earth, our waste products spread--primarily industrial and agricultural pollutants. These decrease our health, and many act like hormones to decrease our fertility.
4. As a global monoculture, we are fast food central for human disease organisms.

Humans are not really better than other critters. We are not immune to normal, biological processes. 

Neither are we worse. 

In fact, we’re just the same, and we’ve finally filled our environment: the whole earth.
  
Giving the earth a chance to push back.

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