This was first written back in 2001 as an article and presentation. Recently the message about our environment has finally gotten out to the world thanks to the efforts of some high profile people. This article also talks about our society as a whole.

It may be time for every person to ask themselves, “Where are we going?” It’s certainly time to take a look at the world as it is now, noticing the effects of long term human occupation. We can already see that the system is faltering under its own weight. Our present methods have generated problems that we still haven’t found suitable solutions for, so the system slowly bogs down in the muck of its own making. But this isn’t anything unusual, all cultures before us reached their peak and declined in due course, so why should ours be any different? The way we go about living on the Earth is obviously not going to continue forever. The ‘always more’ is running out. If it is not sustainable it’s not viable. In some far of day will we also go the way of the Dinosaurs? Or are we going to make some changes first?

We are faced with questions. Do we want things to change or are we content to let everything run its course? What could we do about it? And if we are going to make changes for our future, which ones, when and who is going to do it? Do we have enough time to make effective changes so that our great grandchildren’s children can live and prosper in a healthy way?

I would like answers to all my questions, like this one; why does the majority of Earth’s population have the least say in where we are going? The sheer numbers of that majority could easily take the steps needed to make important changes now. You only need one thing to start with, Unity. My idealistic theory is that we can achieve unity by understanding that we really are the same, despite our apparent differences. We are all Human Beings, People. We are all in this boat together so we all need to row together. The benefits of sharing as a global community far outweigh our traditional system with its limited individual benefits.

We’ve all heard about Globalization in the past few years, where a very small percentage of the world’s population will reap the largest rewards while reducing real incomes and conditions for the rest of us. It’s Market Globalization, driven by the desire to further increase the personal wealth of the few. So why don’t we change it? Let’s make it a humanitarian globalization that puts the needs of the people, and the world that supports us, before Net Profits. Ok, how do we do that? I do not know all the answers, but I can tell you this. It won’t happen if we do not make it happen soon. If we are to reach unity we must put aside some of our personal wants in order to serve the best interests of the whole. That is a difficult issue in our present societies, particularly in the west.

To do this takes a maturity that seems beyond the capabilities of Governments and the elite power-brokers who still cling to the outmoded idealism of “Might is Right”. Well might is not right and the proof for this is that most people on the face of this planet still live in medieval poverty! And it is this way because not enough people stood up to change it, we let it happen. If it hasn’t worked effectively for all people in the past few thousand years, why are we still doing it?

We know when large groups of people unite for a cause that great things can happen, so why aren’t we getting together in huge numbers to bring real change? For how much longer will we choose to let other people suffer because of our choices? Most of us know that in many countries people are forced into debilitating work to support our lifestyles and culture, yet we still let it happen. At the same time some of us are recognizing that our lifestyles are becoming more suppressed by those in power. Most people are having a hard enough time now just surviving in what has been an increasingly more hostile environment. And it is hostile.

You only need to look at the world-wide scale of changing weather patterns, increasing economic woes and the deepening rifts between various cultures, races and nations. People are still starving, we still pollute the Earth in increasing amounts every year, we still rely on fossil fuels for our energy when that technology is clearly outdated, people are still dying from diseases we can control, we are even creating more variants of diseases to reduce populations and still too few people are standing up for change. There are so many messages for change that you would think everyone must have seen or heard about it by now. Some messages do get heard, some are watered down for our consumption by the governments and many messengers are silenced by the very government agencies that are meant to protect them! This sounds like human history in a nutshell, and it is. Wouldn’t this imply the need for change as soon as possible?

If we take a short look at our environment we see that many problems exist, some are not our doing but a whole lot of it is, and none of those problems have effective solutions. Left unchecked these problems can and will have detrimental effects on us humans if it isn’t already, and we do know now that it really is. These problems include nuclear leftovers; a billion other toxic creations; dead and dying waterways, rivers and lakes as well as the removal of Earth’s Lungs, the forests.

We think we are so clever that we discovered nuclear power, made it a weapon and used it twice on other human beings then decided it was safe to use in electricity production. Smugly, we built the power stations and hoped to discover how to decommission them before we needed to, of course we didn’t learn how to do it so it would last as long as the radiation, so we use stop gap measures that might last one hundred years. Witness the fact that measures taken to isolate the Chernobyl reactor are already breaking down and posing a new threat to human safety, and this requires multi-national co-operation to find another stop-gap solution. In England, their first nuclear power station is being decommissioned in a process that will take another 120 years!

Meanwhile, scientists argue over the existence of all the problems while governments turn a blind eye for a while longer and indirectly fund half the scientific debate. And yes, money can still buy specialist opinion; remember the tobacco companies fighting to keep their livelihoods back in the ‘70s. Obviously our governments and big business will not commit to effective change while there are still squillions of dollars to be made from current exploitation. As an exercise, imagine that we do nothing and allow everything to continue on over the next few generations. Let yourself imagine that for about thirty seconds. Did you imagine something a little like this scenario……….

"History tells us the world’s problems multiplied, no one did enough to stop it. The sky is a different colour blue than what the pictures in old books show. And anybody would be thought insane to actually swim in the sea or rivers; it’s hard to believe that people did those things back then. They must have been crazy to want to go outside for recreation; we only go out there when we have to. People are dying of old diseases faster and at younger ages than ever before and there is no medical system like the old days, so we all have to suffer through it until the end.  

The last wars took many lives and left more in terrible poverty with all the health problems that go with surviving modern warfare. Even the rich are falling like the rest of us, and they thought their money would buy them freedom from the fall. Grandma said her own Grandmother told her that when she was very little, water came out of a tap and it was clean enough to see through. We didn’t believe that. She said lots of women had babies in great-grandma’s time, we didn’t believe that either. In one of her old books it shows people walking around in cities without wearing protective suits and respirators. We all laughed about that. Once, we talked about what life must have been like to live in the old days, to have freedom to move, express your opinions and be able to breathe enough clean air to actually feel good. We blamed all the people who lived before us for letting things get this way...  "

While this sounds very gloomy it is also very probable. People say we humans have only added 10% to the world’s ecosystem, and that figure may be correct. If the world’s ecosystem was operating at 100% efficiency before our meteoric rise to the present, and we have added 10% to that, wouldn’t our ecosystem then be changed? If we put 10% more water into an already full glass it will upset the balance and make life hell for the microbes living in the glass, much like our ecosystem. Look for yourselves and you will see the effects. When a group of scientists can walk on bare rock in the Antarctic that only twenty years ago was covered by hundreds of meters of ancient ice, when the world’s glaciers are melting at phenomenal rates, with sea temperatures and currents altering from year to year, and we can record reduced Oxygen levels in the atmosphere that are lower than only 100 years ago (research these things for yourself) then we start to get the picture that things aren’t really fine at all. We become more sure of this when we look at the current rate of forest depletion, and then wonder if we even have about 25 or so years of effectively breathable oxygen in the atmosphere. Our 10% is a significant change.

Perhaps my gloomy scenario is not too far from the probable reality ahead. We could stir many more variables into the equations but they would only adjust the outcomes a little either way. If the predicted cataclysmic Earth changes do come then at least we won’t get the opportunity to strangle all life of this small planet we currently call Home. If they don’t happen, then we are staring down the barrel of a slow and ugly demise for the human race if we let things continue on the way we do now. But what if we actually got the populations together, forced the issues, made the necessary changes and worked towards a longer term existence for the human race? Could we then cushion the effects? This is the variable that I would choose, although it does come with its own set of problems. Whatever we do from now on is already unfashionably late in the bigger scheme, and prone to being marginally effective because of this. And yet it is painfully obvious that we need to do something and it needed to be done yesterday. (Now that global warming is out in the open we are all able to easily learn what we can do to improve our long term prospects)

Let’s take a short peek at human relations these days. The trend is towards more separation and isolation, with more people out to get what they want, exclusively. We are forcing the children to have less of a childhood because of the frantic pace we choose to live at and the growing expectations of our lifestyles. Children need a childhood to grow into balanced productive adults. They are expected to grasp adult concepts and cultural ideals before they are ready to, and we inflict this on them as a matter of course. We give them more unhealthy foods and then complain about their behaviors, without thinking about how the chemical ingredients are causing these problems. We want them to accept adult responsibilities at the same time that we are poisoning them with substances! How can we allow them to grow into healthy, empowered and self-directed adults with balanced perspectives on the world if we don’t try to model what is needed for them to do so?

Our growing ranks of older age people are expected to be happy with being regarded as dispensable to our needs. We no longer give them the respect that they are due as people who have lived for longer than us and therefore have a wealth of important experiences that they can share. Many older people are sent to live in retirement villages and homes so that we don’t have to care for them in their weaker years. Doesn’t it seem like we have forgotten what things are really important? Most of us keep on trying to get ‘better’ this or that to make ourselves feel better about ourselves, all the time trying hard not to realize that we will be old one day too. Who will care for us then? Will our children and theirs also send us away to some expensive detention center (retirement home) so that they can continue trying to get more personal belongings in a vain attempt to find happiness? It is up to us to decide what we want and how to go about making the changes.

We can see a pre-occupation with violence in our society, and seem happy to accept it as normal reality. I began to see the changes back in the late 70’s and early 80’s; when explicitly violent movies became the trend and we sat back to watch them without wondering why there was a need to increase the bloody-realism. Twenty years on we have a society that has no ability to deal with the violent youth we raised! We can see and understand the mechanisms that have brought this reality into being but we lost sight of the means to change it. Violence is an indicator of deeper problems in our societies, it exhibit’s the lack of respect for people and property, as well as showing that this is because there is no respect for Self. The dis-empowerment bug has run rife throughout our cultures and this then hints at a solution to the problem. Our youth are feeling dis-empowered in a world of increasing Chaos; they are further distanced from what they perceive as the good life, which they also believe they deserve as a right! We gave them everything, video games, as much entertainment as was wanted, most of it was violent in nature and because it was given without requiring anything in return it taught them to expect that they should get everything they want. And if they don’t get it, they think that they are hard done by, missing out, not worthy etc. The growing numbers of these disaffected younger generations could easily spiral into mayhem in the near future if we allow this trend to continue. Do we want these urges to play themselves out to their inevitable conclusions? Should we wait and see? Will we make the same mistakes again and allow our world to continue with warring, exploitation and destruction? I would hope that we don’t.

The problem of feeding our children with tainted, over-processed foods will only grow if we do nothing to stop it. Yet we are being passively led down a path toward Corporate Control, in the United States, of the world’s food production within the coming decade. We know that this production will be based solely on trademarked Genetically Modified foods, so that we will not be able to grow healthy, untainted, live foods for ourselves. In recent years Australia’s government asked for input on the G.M. debate from the population. But, they insured the notices were very small and inconspicuously placed in the media were most people would not notice them. Basically, they were in small print, buried halfway through the papers in ad-space. Who controls the media? Powerful money is forcing the modified foods issue on to us and our Governments are keeping us in the dark about it. What are we going to do about it?

Usually the differences between the cultures are blown out of proportion, so that we can then be led to see other cultures as something less than us. This makes it easier for some of US to shoot at some of THEM. We are told that this group or that are the Bad Guys and we are the Good Guys. Our governments and the elite power brokers manipulate us through all forms of media to insure that we have homogenized opinions on a situation. We can see this in play right now, it’s the good versus evil scenario that we are expected to accept, it is the same process that’s been used throughout history. You’d think we would have had enough of this by now. We are treated as if we are unable to make informed decisions for ourselves. This is part of the game that these power brokers play with us. They keep us misinformed so that we can’t make important decisions and make effective changes. Once again, this process dis-empowers us and most of the time we don’t see it happening, we are made to not rock their boat. Ask yourself this, what if our boat’s captain is only interested in what it can squeeze out of us without us realizing it?

If we look back over the last century we can see certain trends and patterns that we can use as indicators in our modern framework. The most obvious are the events leading to war. It’s as if some people decide to have a war, but not straight away, the players all need time to build up their military strengths first. Look around you, the same thing is happening now and has been building for some time. You can see many countries have and still are allocating massive increases in funding for all things war. If there is not going to be another War, then why do we need to build up our war machines as if there is? What are we to deduce from this, is the world moving closer to another major war and if so is it on schedule? Most, if not all the wars and skirmishes, are brought about by power brokers using governments and alliances to further their own interests. They stand to gain the most benefits from the miseries of War and Suffering. They create the right atmosphere for war by actively providing armaments and funds to both sides of a potential conflict, while stirring the pot with their political alliances. We all now know this as Fact.

I ask you, why should anyone die to provide the elite with more Wealth and Power? If ten percent of the world’s known military funding was diverted into humanitarian projects, starvation would end in the first year! But, that won’t happen because we let it go on, as long as we are comfortable and unaffected. What about the Power Brokers themselves? We know they have detestable plans for control of the population as a means to reach their goals, which will see them reaping huge benefits from our suffering. We know this has been the case for the majority of human history, which makes us feel powerless to do anything about it. Governments may come and go but the power broker’s game stays the same. It’s a long history. Maybe if we refused to play their game we might slow them down long enough to get some change happening. Unfortunately most people would not give up the necessary things to make that difference. Things like our reliance on Banking, our very comfortable lifestyles, all the nice little must have things, credit cards, television and other media, plus all the rest of the trappings of modern Western culture. Ask someone in the street to give up any of these things for the betterment of the human race and you might get laughed at, abused or worse. Doing these things will hit the Elite controllers right in their soft spots, we will slow them because they want us to not think, to not ask the big questions and to not rock their boat.

They know that if the majority of people got together to make important changes, then their own time would come to an end . And they can’t let that happen. This is why they treat us like Mushrooms, they really are afraid of us Waking Up and changing it.

Look at our recent history in Australia, during the early 90’s we were asked as a nation if we agreed to have Smart Cards, Employment Contracts etc. The voters gave a resounding NO. What happened next? We were allowed to forget them for a little while, then ‘Employment Contracts’ went around to the back door where our Government let them in, making us capitulate when it was obviously too late. Smart Cards were evolved into many forms so that we would accept them without knowing that they were the same thing. Doesn’t this mean we cannot trust our own government to do our bidding? Can we trust our future to this publicly elected public service? I would think the answer to both questions is also No.

It would seem that effective change is needed in almost every area of our world and that nearly everyone is content to let ourselves continue along this current path. This is due to a number factors, the major one being that we are ‘educated’ to accept, to follow the crowd, to not seek our own answers and to believe that our governments wouldn’t let something bad happen to us. We are led to believe that everything is alright, that there will always be more of everything and the meaning of life is to accept the cultural dream. Everybody is expected to buy into this ‘dream’, rather than breaking free from the mould and being different. Our education systems reinforce this ideal in our children from an early age, while we support it with our lifestyles in order to model the required mediocrity.

Added to this whole scenario there are now polarized beliefs regarding the future of the world and its people. One side perceives a spiritual awakening occurring, while the other side sees the demise of humanity and major earth changes ahead. Each side thinks the other is wrong. Each side holds firmly to its belief and refuses to see even a portion of the other sides view; neither side has yet realized that these two apparently opposing perceptions are actually occurring at the same time, exactly as they should be.

So when we look at the world around us we see the changes humans have wrought upon this beautiful planet and we see that we cannot go on at this pace for too much longer if the race is to survive. It must survive for the awakening to higher spiritual awareness to be brought fully into this world. I’m not advocating a return to living as we did hundreds or thousands of years ago, that would be as inappropriate as the way we live here now. All we need is for more people to see that we are the same, that we are powerful in numbers and capable of the greatest possibilities. And we need to see that we must make changes NOW, before we slip further into the darkness of Hatred and Greed. Maybe we can ask others the question about where we are going and share what we know with them so they can come to an understanding about their own choices, and the effects of that around us.

In the end, our choices must make these decisions. Without enough people making the same choices, change can’t come fast enough to insure a long survival for us. Without enough people standing up for change, it can’t come into reality. We all must choose, and choose NOW.