Wednesday 27 November 2013

15 days to Go - The Final Countdown!

Are you sick of hearing about my Peak Challenge project?  Probably, I've been banging on about it for 45 days now. It's a subject very close to my heart.  I believe we've come as far as we can with science and information, there's a glut of it. Sometimes it contradicts itself, sometimes it scares the pants off you, sometimes it focuses on elements, like economics, rather than the real issue at stake... a dying planet.




But generally it all points in the same direction. We need to act now and the actions need to be as big as the impacts of our chosen lifestyles in order to offset them.  Governments are privy to the same information, but they drag their heels. If science and governments can't save us, then we will have to.

But over the past 100 or so years we've gradually had our responsibilities taken from us, no longer do we take care of our power or water supply, they're delivered to us and are of consequence only viewed in $ values. Our waste, both human and domestic is taken 'away' for us. Mostly we don't even know where 'away' is.  If a tree falls over a road, there's a number to call, if there's a fire, if there's an accident, if our car breaks down...  it reminds me of the story of a woman whose electronic key for her car ran out of battery and she waited for the equivalent of RACT  to turn up to help her get in her car. When they did, they showed her how to use the pointy end of a real key to open her door because she'd forgotten there are other ways to open one.  It's called learnt helplessness. We've learnt it well.

Our ingenuity, resourcefulness, our ability to cope and cater for the essentials of life on our own has been undermined. I don't think it's a conspiracy, or a deliberate ploy but an unfortunate outcome of civilisations push to constantly specialise and compartmentalise. But we can change that.

But it does me we feel helpless now and all we can do is petition others to do something.But it's not going to happen. We have to all stand up and  against those who would convert our environment into cash until both 'economies' collapse.

That's what Peak Challenge is. The learning to stand up again business. It's not just about resilience, the learning to grow carrots and change your light bulbs, while that's essential, it's not enough. It's also about direct action, (and I don't mean violence), withdrawal and spirituality, and by the last I mean a re-connection to what it is we're losing.

It also means finding a path to what it is we want, and even knowing what that is. Knowing that what we have currently is wrong, does not provide us with a better direction.

That's what I believe Peak Challenge does. It doesn't just say, hey things are really, really bad, let's do something. Creating the imperative, but without pointing the way.  It provides a comprehensive list of things that can be done under the four types of action. You can tick off those already achieved, see how you're going, but then address what else you could be doing and decide what to work on next.

One of the things I've learnt in my life is that I'm not crash hot on asking for help. I prefer to struggle on until I'm exhausted before I do. Usually I've done the damage by then. But I'm learning. Which is why I'm asking for help in getting Peak Challenge up and happening. I can't do it on my own. Please help out, and yes, I'm asking for small donations. Enough small, wouldn't-even-miss-it, donations will enable me to work on it concertedly and to be able to ask (and pay) for technical assistance with codecs and conversions etc.

www.pozible.com/project/35124  you can check out the first four minutes of the movie, either through Youtube (which is a bigger file download) or the swfcabin link which is a 4MB flash file (oddly it takes a while to load though). Both have been recently updated.

The Pozible quest is 15 days from closing. It's over 50% funded, but it has to be 100% funded or it fails and no pledges will be processed. If you think the project has merit please feel free to share it with others.

Thanks for putting up with my long prattle.

Linda



3 comments:

Unknown said...

And a well written prattle it was Linda. I wholeheartedly agree with what you are trying to communicate with this project.

That is why I support it financially. This narrative needs to be told.

Keep up the great work.

Gav

Linda Cockburn said...

4 more days to go! 92%

Anonymous said...

I loved you comment about the woman and her electronic key. Being from the US, I see this on an every day basis. Some days I sing to myself the Wizard of Oz song - "If I only had a brain"