Individuals

“I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something.”
Helen Keller.

“Follow not me, but You.”
Neitzche.

“It is the individual who is the custodian and executor of the self-organizing drive of the universe, and not society.”
Vladimir Dimitrov.

The power of one is never ending.
Making change is never easy. “Be the change you want to see” was how Gandhi put it.
Even he had to create a critical mass of people wanting to make the change. Historically, many Institutions and NGOs owe their genesis to social adventurers and visionary pioneers.

Thomas Barnardo (Barnardo’s Homes) began his life’s work when a child told him “I don’t live nowhere.”

Muhamad Yunnus, an economics professor at Chittagong University tried to persuade banks in Bangladesh to lend poor people money even though they could provide no collateral. When he failed and was ridiculed by them he set up his own bank. Colin Ball and Barry Knight in their essay “Why we must listen to citizens” say, “ He began in 1976 using his own money and in 1983 set up the Grameen Bank. His efforts have lifted one third of borrowers out of poverty, achieved repayment rates of 98% and been repeated in fifty eight countries of the world.”

Individuals in the position of responsibly spreading “ecological awareness” (EA) of our common “ecological predicament” (EP) should join webs and networks of likeminded Individuals to inform as many others as they may, about the survival threats facing the planet today. In a critical mass they create change. They may even become an Institution.

Never underestimate what you can do.

“Self leadership” of the Individual.
When studying Leadership and Change as a unit in a Masters of Social Ecology last year I came upon the intriguing concept of “self leadership” within the process of individual development. It was a lynchpin topic in the ecology of leadership, which was part of the study of leadership as it is understood in 21st century terms, for managing organizational change at the “edge of chaos” (to use a metaphor from Complexity Science).

How important is it that we all understand Nietzche’s words, “Follow not me, but You”? The question introduces to us the concept of leading oneself.
Self leadership means we are both followers and leaders. It means that both “the followers and the leaders do leadership; their activities are two sides of the same coin.” (Vladimir Dimitrov) In every aspect of our lives we are constantly playing both parts - we are both followers and leaders.

The nature of life is that we are the institutions we reside in - be they political parties, homes, schools, organizations, communities. “Self-leadership” is the crucial understanding that we are the system, we are the institution, we are the government, we are the leaders.
We make change. Or we protect what must not change. The extinction of animals is one area which must be protected from happening. The fate of our own species is mirrored in the extinction of Plants and Animals. There is no border between Human and Animal, Plant and Animal, follower and leader, worker and organization, school and student, government and the people. In today’s fast paced environment the relationship between each is mutual responsibility for each other’s survival.

Earth-Literate Leaders. There are leaders and leaders - witness George Bush and Gandhi. However in this 21st century we cannot afford to be complacent about the nature of our leaders. Interconnected by the effects of disease, terrorism, global finance and the LifeSupport of planetary Air, Water and Soil, You and I are Individuals living in a borderless world.

Our Leaders need to be Earth-Literate first because the interdependent ecology of this web of life means the Butterfly Effect of our actions is global. So local is indeed global. Educating Earth Literate Leaders (LINK) is the function of “self leadership”. Ecologically aware individuals are responsible for creating change and/or protecting what must not change because as Ash Hartwell says, “The dominant metaphor for nature and society during the 18th - 20th centuries has been mechanical. Our schools today reflect a Newtonian, positivist view.”

And of course our leaders today reflect those who elected them and that old view of the world.

When Lewis Lapham, editor of Harpers magazine, gave his keynote address at the Sydney Writers Festival in 2005 he “delivered a stinging and trenchant critique” of America today, saying that “we have a make-believe empire” because “the hegemon has feet of clay” and that “we have a make-believe democracy” where “ignorance is viewed as a natural resource, far more valuable to the prosperity of America than oil or timber.”

He began his address by quoting a few passages from “senior high school and college examination papers and essays” in “what passes for education” in America. Just two of the dozen or so he quoted,

• “The government of England was a limited mockery. When Queen Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted “Hurrah”! Then her Navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.”
• · “The Greeks invented three kinds of columns: Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth”.

His intellectual critique of his country’s Leadership was scathing - their belief in faith-based initiatives had “engulfed vast tracts of the American mind in fogs of superstition” and alive and well was their intent to “bring into being a contented labour force that will not ask impertinent questions and will not learn how to think, because if you learn how to think and ask impertinent questions, then what would happen to the consumer market?”

“The American War against the Intellect - by which I mean the drug trade, television, the pornographic film industry and so on - is now worth anywhere between $500 billion and a trillion dollars a year.” Here is not an Earth Literate Leadership on whom we may depend for survival in the 21stcentury.

And as Romona Koval, presenter of Big Ideas on Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National said, “plenty of what he’s saying has resonances for democratic societies around the globe right now.”
Read/Listen to it for yourself(LINK)

What approach should I take for 21st century survival? We are all pushed along by the rush to survive. Jobs, recreation, politics, families, kitchen duties and health preoccupy our lives. But it’s interesting to classify ourselves into types - this can help change direction and down-shift to a position of “I have enough”.

In this web-of-unme it is helpful to see a Table of Three Approaches which we often unthinkingly adopt in our daily lives. To survive into the 21st century it’s definitely the Third table we must aspire toward.

The Egocentric approach and the Homocentric approach are those of the consumer market which argues the destruction of forests for the sake of jobs, it argues the privatisation of the public commons (health, energy, water, education, etc), it supports individual self-interest and holds social and cultural interests (including science and technology) higher than the Natural World of which we are all an organic part.

Says Allan S. Miller in his excellent book “Gaia Connections: Introduction to Ecology, Ecoethics and Economics”, “While humans have exceptional characteristics (culture, communication skills, technology), they remain one among many other species and are interdependently involved in the global ecosystem.”

This is “Ecological Awareness” and without it we will not make it out of the 21st century. But it requires “self leadership” to make ourselves Earth Literate.

Leadership in the new millennium is to be put under the microscope, for our survival as a species on this planet depends on many leaders being able to understand that we are deeply connected with animals and plants - by our common requirement of air, Water and Soil.

These elements are borderless and they obey no manmade rules. As a result, the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich are always equally under a threat which favours neither.The poor take the Ecocentric Approach simply to survive. The rich have a choice. Not without Individual self-leadership will they be able to make the right choice of approach to the way in which they may make change or protect from change.

Individual Agents for Change or Protection.
As individuals we can wield great power but we are more meaningful change or protection agents if we connect with other individuals within the institutions we reside in. Each of us is capable of changing or protecting - through understanding and acting.

The New Scientist regularly features an interview with just such individual agents. The one who will feature first in the web-of-unme is an Israeli Arie Issar whose father sold ice with Arab friends in Jerusalem. His latest book “Climate Change - Environment and Civilization in the Middle East” comes from of years of work with water and the United Nations.
He says to Fred Pearce, “I find environmentalists are like religious fundamentalists who don’t want change.” And “People talk about water wars but water can also be the basis for peace…”. He represents the complexity that our “ecological predicament” signifies.(LINK)

Thousands of others like him make up the web-of-unme. In a borderless LifeSupport of Air, Water and Soil: Humans, Plants and Animals are co-dependent threads in a web.

In the race to act for planetary survival - Who and what is right and who and what is wrong?
The answer should be determined by the borderless LifeSupport.