Intro
On this Earth Day, I proclaim that my solar-powered electric vehicle is by far, the best automobile I have ever owned! It is not only the most efficient vehicle, it is also the highest performance. As a naturally aggressive, but courteous, driver, it has never been easier to pass sluggish fossil cars! There exists a clean, bright and healthy future with good meaningful jobs and a robust, stable economy, if only we can get the lying self-serving politicians and corporate ‘leaders’ out of the way.
With first the pandemic, the Russian mass murders of Ukrainians, and a likely return of the autocratic party of Trump to power in the US, the 2020s are challenging democracies and freedoms worldwide!
As though it is not enough, the global climate continues to degrade faster and faster in the background, adding to the accelerating general chaos. It has become so obvious, the insanity of political and industrial/commercial leaders’ need and greed has also become obvious. Not only are these fake leaders incapable of addressing climate damage, they double down on the same toxic policies and activities that created and exacerbate climate and social chaos. And, they lie about it! And, we pay them for it! It is plain insane!
Technology has been available for decades to provide clean energy, many more jobs, and a higher quality of life. It is obstructed and thwarted by politicians whose self-serving interest is to represent fossil fuel and other toxic industry groups.
Drill Baby Drill!
On Earth Day 2022 the true interests of world leaders, especially in the US, are on full display. The Ukraine – Russian war, financed by oil & gas sales to Europeans who have become addicted to Russian oil & gas, is just one of many dangers of basing National economies on oil, gas, and nuclear energy sources.
The US’ agenda in the Ukraine War is plainly to expand US oil & gas producers’ share of the European energy market, particularly for liquefied natural gas (LNG). Already the world’s largest oil & gas producer, ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia, US politicians and the oil & gas industry are salivating at the prospect of producing millions of barrels per day more. The politicians love to tout the US as emitting less toxicity than China. It is because only emissions associated with consumption within US borders are counted. Emissions associated with production for export is ignored.
Furthermore, on a per capita basis, individuals in the US are the #1 most wasteful and damaging in their use of oil & gas energy. Worse yet is that most Americans do not connect to that truth. Of course, it is not their fault. It is hidden from them by a corporate media industrial complex that is as responsible for Fake News as conspiracy theorists on Facebook. The only difference is that mainstream media ‘spin’ seems more plausible than Q-Anon. For over 100 years, politicians working in conjunction with wealthy corporate owners/managers have socially engineered an economy in which no alternative is permitted, thereby addicting populations to oil, gas, and plastic.
Like a political dog-whistle, the population reacts to higher gas & oil prices predictably. Nevermind that US gas prices are cheaper than most, if not all other peer nations. At 1/2 to 1/3 the price of gas in Europe and South America, only some under-developed autocratic nations are cheaper. While Europe enjoys more affordable education, healthcare, elder- and child-care, they are much more conservative in their use of higher cost oil & gas.
In the US, it is exactly the reverse: although gasoline is a small fraction of most American household expenses, way behind housing, food, education, healthcare, technology/media, childcare, etc., Americans are conditioned to outrage at higher oil/gas prices. They insist on lower prices, and the politicians and corporations are only too happy and ready to oblige with more subsidy, more exploitation, and less stewardship and accountability for the damage they cause. Anything that increases the volume of consumption: more drilling, less environmental regulation, less taxes and more direct and in-direct subsidy, including diplomatic manipulation and military intervention. It is disgusting.
So Who’s to Blame?
Contrary to popular feeling cultivated by those who are to blame, it is neither ‘all of us,’ or ‘none of us.’ Follow the money! It leads clearly to the corporate owners/managers and their advocates who need special treatment for their toxic products and activities, in symbiotic relationship with politicians who enhance their own power by granting them special legislative, regulative, and tax favors. Taxpayers and citizens be damned! They are only sheep to be exploited and manipulated!
While the dysfunction is systemic, there are specific individuals who benefit from the damage, waste, and destruction. Those responsible include individuals in the Energy, Financial, and Petro-chemical industrial complexes. The politicians most involved are obvious to discerning observers. Given the fact that oil and gas use cannot be immediately terminated, most politicians mis-guidedly rationalize ‘business as usual’ policies. In the US, supply is being aggressively increased….not because of any shortage, but because cheap US prices are not cheap enough!
If it wasn’t so damaging it wouldn’t be so insane! But it is! Historic releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, suspending taxes on gasoline, enhancing Federal lease sales for exploration and production, and diplomatic support for significantly greater global and US oil/gas production to displace Russia as Europe’s gas supplier expressly for the benefit of the fossil energy industry. It exacerbates environmental catastrophe while further addicting global citizens to an extremely destructive substance. As usual, the only acceptable change is ‘much more of the same.’
The Sane Solution
Clearly, the healing approach to the current global crisis is to assist Europe with fossil energy conserving technologies to make up the million barrel (oil equivalent) daily deficit. In context, one million barrels is being released from the US reserve (an effort to manipulate prices downward, for the first time ever), with 50% more coming from Europe. While it may sound like a lot, one million barrels is only one percent of daily global production/consumption. It can be easily and readily conserved, except for politicians’ and corporate needs for self-enrichment: they gain power, wealth, and security for their legislative sponsorship. Undeserved, earnings of the fossil fuel industry are much more like ‘stealings.’
This political/commercial activity is unethical and criminal. It is only because the US judicial system is thoroughly broken, biased, and ideologically contaminated that such ‘leaders’ get away with self-serving activities that are so damaging to the taxpayers and citizens who provide their pay and benefits.
Fear, the Mind-Body Split, and Social Dysfunction
Autocratic leaders are gaining traction around the world, often following the lead of such mass-murderers as Putin, Hitler, Mussolini and countless others, especially in ‘3rd world’ countries we know little about. Established democracies are also veering out-of-control towards autocracy in Brasil, Phillipines, and under Donald Trump, even in the US. The hallmark of autocracy is fear. Autocracy is enabled by fear in the population, and it gathers power and sustains itself by manipulating the population with fear.
World circumstances are so alarming and irrational, many observers believe there is an evil in some people. Wilhelm Reich has demonstrated that this apparent evil is actually a result of emotional disturbance. Too many leaders are psychopathic, seeking power as an illusory substitute for the humanity they did not receive as children. Too many followers need the security of authoritarianism, despite and because of the fear they experienced from parents who did not accept and/or support them.
Instead, their parents demanded submission and denial of feelings and vulnerabilities while acting-out their own insecurities and suppressed/repressed emotions. It has been this way through the generations.
Such leaders and followers are both afflicted with the Mind-Body Split (MBS). The MBS is a condition in which feelings and thinking are disconnected. Although the MBS is widespread, it is unrecognized in academic psychology and science.
While thinking is always a reflection of feelings, the MBS functions to depress and distort one’s feelings, such that fear, anger, and sadness are not experienced appropriately. Rather, emotions may become overwhelming, or they may be suppressed as people live in their heads, not knowing what or how they feel, except for anxiety, emptiness, and/or social disconnection.
The MBS is fundamental to the common psychological mechanisms of denial, rationalization, displacement, projection, etc.
A product of childhood fear, the MBS separates feelings from thinking. Fearful of their anger, sadness, early fears of abandonment and betrayal, and even their desire and the pursuit of pleasure, people become afraid of their feelings. Fear of their feelings drives them into an unreal, ungrounded, and disconnected world of thoughts and ideas driven by the fear of their own feelings. Rather than connection to their feelings, they experience anxiety, and/or emptiness, and/or overwhelming emotionality; all distortions caused by their fear of their feelings. Without access to one’s true feelings, access to their truth is restricted and the sense of self is diminished.
Being disconnected from feelings is being disconnected from the body. Since we perceive the world through the senses of our body, and engage the world with our body, we are thus disconnected from the world and reality. It is from this matrix of disconnected, un-grounded thinking that political ideologies, ineffective policies, fake news, and collective insanity arise.
On This Earth Day 2022…
…I am proud to announce that The Alexander Lowen Foundation center in Vermont, USA is now powered by clean, green solar electricity. A 15 KW solar electric system was installed to provide electricity for general use, water heating, 70% of building heat, and an electric vehicle.
As our ‘leaders’ have demonstrated their incapacity to create life-positive change, it falls to individuals to do what they can where they can. While it seems an insurmountable challenge, we know how disastrous our current leaders’ actions are, we don’t know nature’s resilience. We have reason to hope that our planet’s capacity to heal from the destruction wrought by our fake leaders, is greater than we know. We have never seen it flourish, only degrade.
I believe that the Earth and nature have healing powers and energies beyond our understanding. Just as in psychotherapy where healing is effected by removing the destructive elements and allowing nature to fulfill its age-old process of growth and regeneration, the Earth too is a living biosphere that may have more resilience than we know. If only we can remove the destructive elements.
Good luck to all!
