EARTH DAY 2012

EARTH DAY

What a great ‘Holy-Day’! One which unites the entire planet by celebrating our achievements as a population of singular species, Homo sapiens sapiens, and our relationship to all other biological and abiotic terrestrial beings.

A holiday which does not focus on heritage, cultural, or socially constructed theories of race, those prides which tend to divide humans, but one which realizes we share this planet-it is our home. With our breakthrough in technologies we can unequivocally know that we are here together, Planet Earth’s physical boundaries have been defined, explored, mapped. Although differences surely do exist within our human population we have an obligation to each other to share life.

As Earth Day has become thoroughly mainstream by 2012, ‘going green’ has found its way to the supermarket-place and mass-media culture whose message we can no longer ignore. This co-option by Corporate America has in fact severely tamed and reframed the message of eco-consciousness to fit within the consumer market based economy we find ourselves within. This happens to all popular movements, trends are capitalized upon in the free market. This should not negate the very real benefits it can provide towards creating a healthy planet by influencing popular culture and encouraging consciousness in the marketplace. This sudden mass awareness is causing a re-thinking of our relationship as individual humans to the greater eco-sphere, and on a planetary scale. This is great!

For the skeptics of any popular movements endorsed by multinational industry, for which I am one myself, at least this shift towards sustainability has begun, albeit slow. Any change to such massive and deeply entrenched social systems takes time. A realization on a planetary scale has now crept into the consumerist mentality that we in fact live on a finite planet with finite resources. This naturally leads to the realization that the great successes we have enjoyed as a species have come with side effects- of creating an increasingly carcinogenic environment which we have become saturated within. When we pollute or create excess or toxic wastes we also do this to ourselves internally. Therefore we have an incentive to create a healthy external world if we wish to become more truly healthy ourselves as individuals.

We have the power at every step of the way with every decision we make every day, as we live in a consumer, market based economy. What we choose to take within ourselves- air, water, food, thoughts, emotions- reflect back out from us. With thousands of millions of humans inhaling and exhaling every second of everyday around the globe, we create a massive, dynamic platform.

So celebrate life this Earth Day, smile, enjoy the sunshine, and give thanks for all of the bounty and blessings this planet Earth has given us as humans. At the same time we must also focus our consciousness on all of the damage and unhealthy practices we have created, and what opportunity this presents us for creating a healthier planet.