(8) Create Instant Equality. Forget the rich and the poor. The rich have great power, which is too much to contemplate. So don't. The poor can't meet thei.r basic material needs, which is also a downer, best ignored. Preach that we all have enough and that more self-help is needed. Fits nicely into the antipoverty strategy of the Reagan administration. (9) Be·Self-Centered. You have the power of the New Age in your head; change your consciousness and you can change the world. We have met the enemy and he is, us. The responsibility for health, for change, for peace, is within you. · All of the above-and more, no doubt, could be added-add up to the Sandbox Syndrome: a set of behaviors guaranteed to keep an individual or an organi-, zation in a childish state of innocence, 7 content with building sand castles, instead of real-life structures. A good CIA agent would prorhote this simple.:.mindedness, rather than publicly fight the specter of the Green Menace. ' To enhance communication, invite Them ·to your saunas and hot tubsdon 't even think of visiting their bridle trails and tennis courts, or their corner bars and bowling alleys. _ · But what if you read some books by Lester R. Brown, . Willis Harman, Hazel Henderson, Ivan Illich, Amory Lovins, James Ogilvy, James Robertson, Theodore Roszak, Kirkpatrick Sale, Mark Sat.in, E. F. Schumacher, Robert Theobald, William Irwin Thompson, Alvin Toffler, and others, 8 causing you to believe the Green Message? What if you see the necessity of a sustainable, decentralized, human-needs-oriented society-the Jeffersonian vision of America as the real American way of life, rather than the Hamiltonian, corporate view?9 With a flush of true patrio~ism, you decide to be a counteragent and to work for genuine ecodecentralism. What do you do? Here are some general tips: (1) Grow Up. All of the above-mentioned positions are simplistic. An upward growth :requires a broader, mo_re subtle, and complex view: (a) Develop a wide range of indicators that describe both successes and failures. · · (b) Don't confuse goals and results, but insist on measures of performance and on standards. (c) Be constructively critical: Point to good work and how it can be improved-and also to work that is useless or damaging. 10 · (d) Be humble: We all have much to learn in an age of November/December 1984 RAIN Page 7 ignorance. Identify your opponents and their arguments, and learn from them. 11 ~ (e) Use the English language correctly as a-tool of thought, and to enable communication with those in need of hearing your message. (£)Seek the best thought from both academics and nonacademics; use your intuition as one of many learning tools. (g) Similarly, holism should also be used as a tool for learning, and recognized as an ideal to strive for ceaselessly both in space and time. (h) Recognize that inequities in wealth and income are increasing, that the poor need help to help themselves, and that even good help will not necessarily help. (i) Understand that there are many sources of problems in both individuals and society, that the two are interactive, and that individuals are often not at all responsible for their problems. 12 · (2) Connect Some Disconnected Yins and Yangs. In advocating a Taoist framework for dealing with reality, Fritjof Capra notes that a dynamic balance between yin and yang is good, and imbalance is bad. 13 Several balances· are mentioned above (success and failure, academic and nonacademic, individual and society). Several additional pairings not to be found on Capra's·list are also needed: (a) Inspiration and Perspiration. Our spirits can benefit from the uplift of preaching and cheerle.ading. But exhortation toward the promised land is not enough; we must work very hard to bring it about. (b) Realism and Idealism. We need idealists with a foot on the ground of reality, as well as realists who can keep some ideal in mind. Both, in dialogue with each other, .should replace the great number of utopians with no sense of reality and "realists" with no appreciation of any ideal. · (c) Cooperation and Struggle. In our age of instant gratification by video and drugs, many think that social
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