Saving the World

Dawning of a New ERA of Eco-Response-Ability

Brian Sarwer-Foner

2024 saw the dawning of a new ERA of Eco-Response-Ability largely due to actions I, Brian Sarwer-Foner, initiated through the development and promotion of a new paradigm which catalyzed a watershed shift in people’s thinking while serving as guidepost for shaping individual and collective behavior. This led to Humanity achieving Harmony with Life and All Relations by 2050.

It started by launching a collaborative co-creative process on the Deep Transformation Network (DTN) to interpret a traditional Indigenous teaching of the Anishinabe from Quebec, Canada about a 13-part Constitution based on the symbolic depiction of 12 bones of a pike’s head plus the singular bone of the sturgeon’s. Using the pike’s and sturgeon’s head teachings as a template, the collaborative process led to the co-creation of a living document, ERA Constitution, exemplifying the understanding, passion, care and devotion of the participating DTN members.

The Anishinabe teach that all 13 pieces of the Constitution (Belief, Vision, Balance, Peace, Freedom, Destiny, Principles, Education, Integration, Structure, Prosperity, Environment, Responsibility) need to be defined, understood and acted upon in order for any human enterprise to be successful.

The definition of each piece of ERA Constitution (Constitution of Eco-Response-Ability) emerged through a collaborative co-creation process synthesizing the collective knowledge, wisdom, experience and all the great ideas of the contributing participants. ERA Constitution incorporated the Earth Charter (principles) and the fruits of many other important initiatives already undertaken. As well, deep reflection and brainstorming on how to disseminate, share, and publicize ERA Constitution was performed as a final part of the collaborative co-creative process.

ERA Constitution became the blueprint for Environmental Social Change (ESC) which allowed us to escape from the destructive pathway we were collectively following and veer off in a new direction leading to Harmony with Life and All Relations based on applying individual and collective Eco-Response-Ability.

Traditional Indigenous Peoples and their teachings about how to live a good life, based on generations-old knowledge and understanding of how to live in harmony with Nature, led the way for implementing ERA Constitution, shining a beacon for the dominant societies to follow and pattern themselves upon. They held constant gatherings (local, regional, national, international) and ceremonies, leading to the formation of a plethora of councils (local, regional, national, international) of elders, women, men and youth. Defining needs, identifying best practices and innovating new ones to fill existing gaps was the work at hand, with experts in pertinent fields invited to join the counseling processes to share their ideas and solutions.

The expertise of marketers, publicists and advertising agents were solicited. A communication strategy was created and put it into action, combining initiatives from environmental NGOs and their campaign messages, in particular Jane Goodall’s Message of Hope. Catchy phrase, slogans and memes (e.g. Human Destiny is Ours to Co-Create) were crafted to empower people and further promote, publicize, and market ERA Constitution on mainstream, alternative and social media.

Pitted against the disconnections, cynicism and apathy rooted in the dominant 2020s culture of hatred, war, injustice and ecological devastation, more and more people were reached. They became open to hope using ERA as a mediating process for engaging in action. This led to the further formation of People’s Councils in all regions, at all levels of society, in all sectors.

ERA Constitution became a structural template and moral compass for organizing, being applied through all levels of activism: citizens (consumers), reformers, rebels and social change agents, with a common focus and the widest of reach, including everyone on Earth. Protests were constantly occurring throughout the world demanding Environmental Social Change; people working inside the system responded with their abilities by making openings for change to happen within; citizens started to evermore live ERA values, behaving, spending and consuming eco-response-ably; with social change agents communicating and linking to people and processes for ever-greater reach, organizing to help people get evermore deeply involved in on the ground actions.

Politics arose to answer the call, with progressive politicians adopting ERA Constitution and the public learning to trust them and vote them into power. The British Royalty embraced ERA as a matter of utmost importance with King Charles III and later, King William V implanting ERA in the ideological heart of their reigns, reaching around the world through the Commonwealth. The UN embraced ERA as well; instead of resisting change and fighting over details, more and more countries embraced ERA, and started taking as many steps and initiatives as possible while setting the bar ever-higher, encouraging others to keep on going and do evermore.

 

Each nation took ERA up in it’s own way, with the ethics of hope, trust, care and devotion driving the efforts of each and all. Love started to replace hatred and peace eventually overtook war as equitable ethics defined new societal values and norms. Societies began moving from the baby steps characteristic of late 20th and early 21st century response to the environmental crisis to giant leaps forward, finally leading to cooperation, peace, love, respect and Eco-Response-Ability as the values that drive decision-making, organizing and deep transformation of all manners of social structure and individual and collective behavior.

Technological innovations were achieved through ending the use of fossil fuels and the implementation of a vast variety of renewal energy alternatives and the integration of deep green design principles, including Biomimicry to help us reconnect with and emulate the natural world.

Green architectural and engineering redesign of our urban, rural and transportation infrastructures was achieved, including using all rooftops as green spaces, community gardens or solar and wind power generating sites. Green Economics, including Donut Economics, informed the deep redesign of trade and industry. Agricultural systems were radically redesigned, with Permaculture and Eco-villages, dominating the rural landscape. Hemp became a dominant crop for nutrition, fibers, textiles, paper and building materials. Trees were no longer harvested for their wood and forests began to regenerate. Slowly but surely human societies approached near-zero waste, with the recycling of organic wastes, reuse of garbage for energy and the creation of new building materials.

The workforce shifted to be more connected to land with new jobs emerging with eco-restoration efforts, and green corps cleaning up waterways and riparian zones, working with Earth’s natural resiliency to foster nature’s abundance and flourishing.

Health improved from people exercising more and changing their diets to be mainly vegan, and eating synthetic meats from a variety of new sources, including algae and bacteria. Pollution diminished drastically, Biodiversity began rebounding as ecosystems reestablished themselves, and the climate started stabilizing as the atmosphere began cooling.

As the 2030s and 2040s progressed, local decision-making started to become increasingly the norm, respecting social diversity, safeguarding equality, honoring and applying traditional teachings; there was evermore uptake and cooperation in upholding and applying ERA Constitution. There is a great depth to the plethora of positive changes implemented during the last few decades and an abundance of fascinating details etched within its history. In 2050 it was globally declared that after decades of focused dedication to the deep transformation of our societies, our structures, our systems and ways of life that humans have managed to regain balance with Nature and have succeeded in our momentous efforts to achieve living in Harmony with Life and All Relations. Humanity is doing well and the Earth is thriving!

In 2024 I stopped fearing the Anthropocene.

24 years earlier, when the Y2K bug failed to end the world, maybe it was the coining of the term “the Anthropocene” at a little-known meeting of eco-scientists in Mexico that was the watershed moment in the first year of the new millennia. The chemist and botanist who invented the word knew full well that the current geological epoch was called the Holocene, but they felt they needed a term that expressed to those observing their presentation that humanity has even more influence on planetary systems than forces of nature, like the sun. The SUN!

Now, in the year 2050, we have accepted the transition of the 4,200 years of the Holocene to the Anthropocene – the Age of Humanity. But for many years the word was an attention-getting nickname, and indeed a derogatory self-accusation of our exploitative relationship with our Mother Earth. And if the Holocene was indeed over, when did it end? An Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) was formed to evaluate our ecological “Wall of Shame,” and in August of 2024 they determined that humanity took the wheel in 1952 when the first tests of the hydrogen bomb spread plutonium isotopes around the world. 

“Hey, now,” said the climate scientists. “Surely the invention of the steam engine in 1784 steered us off the rails, billowing smoke, ash, and chemicals into the atmosphere in ever-increasing intensity, ushering in The Industrial Revolution. By 2024, climate scientists had well established that climate change was a real phenomenon, that it was exacerbated by humans, and was threatening life as we knew it. Decades earlier, the climate movement formed around a conviction that our “anthropogenic” impact was primarily our carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, and the climate crisis could be overcome by vigorously phasing out that one harmful sector while maintaining all other industries.

Surely, the Agricultural Age that preceded it was 10,000 years of agrarian benevolence. How much damage could a mere million human beings do with axes and plows? Well, another one of their tools was fire…and it only takes one person to start one of those and burn many miles of forest.

At the same time as the AWG leveraged the Atomic Age anxiety of mutually-assured nuclear annihilation, a paleoclimatologist proposed an Early Anthropocene Hypothesis which recognized that ten centuries of neolithic agriculture was far from benign, having deforested and desertified and emitted more carbon into the atmosphere than three centuries of burning fossil fuels. 

Sure, this discovery suggested that our bad land use practices meant that we emerged as nature’s enemy #1 a lot earlier than we thought (while still other anthropologists marveled how the mass extinction of megafauna coincided with the spread of hunter-gatherers over the past 50,000 years). 

But was it all bad news? If that much carbon was historically taken out of forests and fertile land, how much carbon could be sequestered if they were rapidly restored? It took an unreasonably long time before we concluded that our deforestation started the Anthropocene and therefore reforestation activities could stabilize it.

Climate mitigation of carbon dioxide was not going well – not only were the fossil fuel cartels and corporations powerfully undermining the political will necessary for the phase out, construction of a global power infrastructure based on renewable energy would take decades. Even weak, insufficient carbon targets seemed doomed to fail. 

Eco-anxiety was becoming unbearable, and the climate movement needed a win. Mitigation of other greenhouse gasses needed to be reprioritized, and more than one industry would have to be phased out. 

Surely not agriculture. We gotta eat! Still, there were sectors within the food production industry whose impacts were known to be exponentially worse than the others. 

The previous agricultural revolutions first domesticated bovines in particular for draft power, but with the event of gas powered tractors cattle became the product of a global flesh industry. Their political lobby was every bit as thuggish as those for oil, and while most people didn’t care what generated the electricity that powered their refrigerator, they cared deeply about what food they put inside it. Persistent myths had been devised to promote meat and dairy as not only desirable, but essential.

Among the interdependent “too big to fail” industries of banking, pharmaceutical, chemical, entertainment, tech, and military, animal agriculture had inefficiencies that made it the weakest link. Were our addictions to nonessential animal flesh and secretions sufficient to maintain the perverse subsidization of industries harmful to public health? The COVID-19 shutdown revealed the fragile supply lines of the slaughter industries, raising doubt about their resilience in an uncertain future. 

By 2024, more than half of the world’s population lived in cities, and the livelihood of rural agricultural centers was in feeding their increasingly meaty appetites. As breeders of the animals grown for food, farmers were dismayed at emerging plant-based trends for heart and habitat. It took some time to realize that the liberation of “their” animals also unfettered their next generation of children from the ritual desensitization the slaughter industries required. 

Farmers found themselves on the front lines of climate impacts as growing seasons became less and less predictable, and dry and wet seasons more extreme. Among their evidence-based decisions was rejecting the climate-denying narratives of farm bureaus and Heartland think tanks and embracing opportunities to transition to “future-proofed” growing of plant-based foods.

The mechanism to transform their industry was already in place – the supports for feed crops and the slaughter industries needed only to shift to “future-proofed,” plant-based food production for direct human consumption. 

To accomplish that political shift the population would need a revolution in how they think about food – do we eat to live, or live to eat? Modern agricultural systems had eliminated food scarcity, but food governance failed to distribute to almost a billion people. In developed nations, the poor tended towards obesity more than the rich, and commercial culture set “pleasure traps” that prioritized indulgence and “foodtainment” over nutrition and public health. 

Though in 2024 I was already vegan for almost a decade, I was dismayed to see that the “meatification” of Western society was being exported to the rest of the world. Would countries that wanted to expunge colonial influences from their borders continue to be tantalized by the cruel indulgences of industrialized meat, dairy, and eggs? Would cultures remain artifacts of inflexible ritual, or adapt to serve a joyfully thriving future? After all, culture should serve the best interests of its people, rather than the other way around.

It turned out that the antidote to the Anthropocene came in the form of another word. This one originated around 4000 years ago, in the Vedic era of ancient India. “Ahimsa” is a Sanskrit word that embodies the morality of nonviolence towards all living beings, and represents the core spirituality of Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and Buddists. 

When the vegan movement that arose in the most cosmopolitan cities was exposed to the power of this word they imagined the social evolution of homo sapiens, (“wise humans”) to homo ahimsa, (“peaceful humans”). 

Still, coming to see ourselves with clarity can be a rude awakening. Every new activist in any justice movement may have moments of doubt that humanity is worth saving. We sometimes long for the days when we lived in blissful, willful ignorance of the selfishness, greed, and apathy demonstrated by our species. The cultural resistance to compassion, generosity, and equity is often overwhelming, and the seeming inability for humanity to make the necessary choices sends many to despair. 

The Anthropocene: The Age Where Humanity Drove Off The Cliff.

To my surprise, those dark moments ended for me in 2024.

Part of what encouraged me was that we had put a name to both our affliction and its cure. The Anthropocene embodies all human addictions to power and flesh, yet acknowledges our inherent ability to choose our destiny, if we find the humility to fit ourselves into a “safe living space for humanity.” 

An “early Anthropocene” began in an age before we could even write our history, eliminating an ice age with an ambitious project called agriculture, which sprang up rather simultaneously across continents. By the second millennium we could imagine what was possible when we stop using technology to thwart Mother Nature and instead become her Thermostat Species.

Ours was the character arc of the prodigal son. Our behavior was not wicked, but wayward, and in the process we learned our way back home. Our addiction to destructive behaviors were an adolescent phase, the immortal confidence of youth that eventually matured to modest responsibility. 

In 2024, I looked at all of our systems of commerce, education, employment, agriculture, and governance, all relics that seemed sensible in the Industrial Age. Following the wisdom of changemakers of the past, I stopped fighting the old systems, and started building the new world that makes the old one obsolete.

In just a few years we curbed our appetite and the market for flesh dwindled; fewer people had to inseminate animals and the global herd diminished. Subsistence farmers flourished while the producers and workers of the slaughter industries adapted to the most sustainable, plant-based food systems. The dairy market collapsed first, and the remaining cows were retired to sanctuary grasslands. The egg industry followed, and the hens that weren’t accommodated by sanctuaries were kept on fallow lands, which they fertilized for future cultivation. Land trusts anticipated the death knell of ranching and the right-sized cattle herds joined the bison on natural grasslands. What was once forest became forests once again when land owners cash in on incentives to grow carbon sinks.

The urgent regrowth of the world’s forests becomes the dominant human effect on the biosphere.

The Anthropocene retained its status as the geological epoch where humanity exercised more power than forces of nature. However, moved by principles of ahimsa, we gravitated to a responsibility of healing rather than harming. Instead of dominating our ecosystems, homo ahimsa used technology to measure Mother Earth’s fever, and prescribe the regenerative healing of the planet. In the year 2050 we have fully become the thermostat species for all nine planetary boundaries of climate change, biodiversity, land and freshwater use, the ozone layer, acidity of the ocean, and fertilizer management, optimizing a safe living space for humanity and thriving habitats for the rest of the animal and plant kingdoms.

In retrospect, was it something we accomplished, or something we witnessed as a participant? We neither revoked the Scientific Revolution nor returned to a preindustrial society. We had no more choice than a caterpillar contemplating becoming a butterfly.

I have no vision of how the earth came to heal. The best I can do is to relate how I came to eat for climate health, and what I have learned since then. Part of my answer is that just as I came upon this path, I know I  am part of a larger movement that is growing towards healing the earth.

 

I have cared passionately about the earth since the 1980s, when I became more aware of pollution at different levels.  I tailored my lifestyle as well as I could, taking public transportation, simply not going out if not really necessary, eating more carefully, etc. I had been vegetarian before I knew there was such a word, beginning in 1968.  But for health reasons, I was not able to sustain it for more than a few years at a time. I would do it for as long as I could, then painfully, revert for a while. Nevertheless, much of my adult life I have been vegetarian.  I avoided leather products.  However, I am a knitter and a spinner, and I try to buy wool that I feel was raised by people who care deeply for their sheep. I have read and seen enough to know that there are many people who raise sheep who are sensitive to their needs, unlike some huge farms around the world. These people make a very modest living, and are not in it for the money.  The animals are not exploited, but are a loving part of their lives. These animals would not have tasted life if it were not for this industry; they generally live a good life, protected and cared for. These days more and more shepherds plan their farms for sustainability; the animals are part of the cycle, grazing on rotated pastures, eating weeds that would otherwise be an ecological problem; even their hoof pressure on the ground works into the dynamic equation.

 

I am relatively new to eating plant-based. (I have been mostly whole food for fifty years.) First, I had always needed some animal protein, or I would get lightheaded and could fall or faint.  Furthermore, the word “Vegan” had negative connotations for me.  It was associated with dogmatism, protests, and with the sense that I would be required to act in ways that I did not like.

 

I began to eat whole food plant-based after some weeks in Sailesh’s Bhagavad-Gita course, in the fall of 2023.  For a while I was not able to stay completely plant-based, for physical reasons, but I find now that I may be easing into it.

 

Since beginning to eat plant-based, I gradually became curious about plant-based versions of various foods.  I don’t recall what I was looking into, but I came upon a website by a young woman named Sam, from Canada. Her name is Sam(antha) Turnbill; her website is at https://itdoesnttastelikechicken.com/about/.  Her story, rather than her recipes, were what drew me.  She shared how she (abruptly) became vegan, being raised in a family of hunters and meat-eaters. She sited the two films that strongly affected her, Forks of Knives, and Vegucated. I watched them, and learned.

 

The title graphics of Forks Over Knives did not look promising, and did not prepare me for the serious, amazing research and people we meet in this film. It opened a world to me.

As I watched it , I looked up online accounts of Dr. Colin Campbell and Dr. Cauldwell Esselystyn, then Dr. John McDougall, and from Vegucated, Dr. Joel Fuhrman.  What impressed me more than the research, was that each of these people still are vital and look wonderful after many decades of living whole foods plant-based; they range in age from mid-70s to 89 and 90. And their wives also looked wonderful.  I saw an interview with Ann Esselstyn, when she was 87 (last year).  She said that people in her immediate family died young from cancer (and maybe heart disease).  She said that she had bad genes, but seemed to base that only on experience; her genes might, in fact, be great. Regardless, she is vital and lovely at 87; that is good enough for me.

 

There is a one-to-one correlation between each person eating whole foods plant-based – AND no oil and for some, no seeds and nuts –  for much of their adult life, and being healthy and vital in later years.  (I’ll have what they’re having.)  While the sampling is miniscule, the success rate is one-to-one; each person who ate well is healthy and vital. I find that compelling.

 

All this relates to the original question, in that while watching these various videos and interview and reading vegan blogs, I became aware of how this vegan world has grown in the last ten, twenty years.

This gives me hope that the time has come for a major shift.

 

My husband, rest his soul, was from Turkey.  I was recently talking with our niece who lives in Eastern Turkey, a mostly rural land.  She told me that her two sons, in their twenties, studying in the more metropolitan Western Turkey, are both vegan!  She became a vegetarian a few years ago, and she says she is planning to be vegan soon.  This is more food for hope.

 

As I was preparing a meal today for a Day Center (Soup Kitchen), feeling a bit stressed about time, I began to sing to calm myself (I never did this before for cooking, and only rarely just sing).  I sang the wonderful canon Dona Nobis Pacem.  Then I remembered the movie from long ago, Like Water for Chocolate, a film from Mexico, in which the heroine, Tita, is a magical cook. Her food is special not only in taste, but her feelings are in her food, and people who eat her food take on her feelings.

 

I will try to sing songs for good, and for inner peace, as I prepare meals for the Day Center, and for myself. Maybe it will contribute to the healing.

 

Thank you for opening this door for us to consider the question.  I would not have dreamed of dealing with this a few weeks ago.  Be well.

It is currently 2050 and the Earth is a cooperative place.  How that came to pass is a very multilayered, nonlinear inquiry, yet I can recall significant events that I felt powerfully in awe of as I experienced them in ‘real time,’ as I do still today.  I am grateful to have the opportunity to reflect on that with you.

 

Instantly I am taken to February of 2024.  Perhaps that is coming through as a starting point because at the time it felt like an ending point.  Intense change was not only on the horizon, it had arrived.

 

Since mid-2022 I had been residing in Troy, NY – a Hudson Valley city of about 50,000 people.  I had moved there from across country based on a cursory YouTube review and intuitive feel, but I grew up in northern New Jersey so east-coast living was familiar.  For about a year after the move I embodied the Hermit archetype, largely remaining alone with two cat companions in a one-bedroom on the 3rd floor of an 1840 building I felt blessed to inhabit.

 

In or around November of 2023 I felt from within a rather spontaneous and unusual desire to attend local public meetings.  Consciously I was unaware as to why the gravitation and aware as to feeling carefree about it.  I felt trustingly open at the opportunity to more intimately connect with the community of Troy.

 

All the while, there had been a societal vision concretizing within my mind – a gradual unfoldment of a reality that at times felt more ‘real’ than what appeared in physicality alone and at all times felt bigger than me.  It presented a different structural landscape through which relationships and resources flowed with innately guided agency.  I had begun drafting a vision board on Canva if only to reflect its abstract, potential nature through concretized art.

 

I had several names for this vision that I would intermittently use when referencing it – ‘project,’ ‘idea,’ ‘direction.’  Here I’ll call it the ‘seed.’  I felt very protective and, at times, obsessively attached to this seed.  I would let it go, perceiving it too idealistic or otherwise impossible to capture.  And back it would come, often with more vitality.  I became exceedingly good at dancing the tango with this seed as both an objective observer and subjective experiencer.

 

Back to February of 2024 – only several days after Pluto made an ingress into Aquarius for approximately 19 years.  What an incredible period to say the least.  We’re now experiencing Pluto’s transit through Pisces which has powerful energy all its own, but the residual nature of Aquarian transformation remains today with an acute intensity.

 

February of 2024 was when I experienced the inner shift away from disempowered chasing to empowered movement.  I called my parents on the day of Super bowl LVIII.  I remember that specifically because my dad had informed me then that he had accepted an offer on the family business, which was for sale after 90 years in operation.  It was bittersweet for the family, my dad especially, who had taken over running the business from my grandfather almost 10 years before that.  My dad, as far as I know, had never planned to run the business.  The catalyst that changed his trajectory, and the family dynamic for years to come, was the suicide of my uncle and the decline of my grandfather’s health.

 

In all my life until making that call to my parents, reaching out to anyone for support felt untenable.  Engaging in gradual yet arduous shadow work for several years eventually illuminated why.  I had to experience and process certain patterned thought akin to a five of pentacles in Tarot over and over and over again until my cognitive understanding aligned with an energetic innerstanding that I was, and am, worthy.

 

From that empowered sense of self, I released the fear in asking for support.  I was so grateful when it was immediately given, clearing the way for me to more attentively focus on an opportunity for which I, too, felt very grateful – an essay contest.

 

The essay contest came at a perfect time.  Soon after I had started attending local public meetings, I met and became friends with the consultant for the Rensselaer County Industrial Development Agency (RCIDA).  In our first several weeks of communication, we frequently discussed RCIDA initiatives that he hoped to bring me in on.  It wasn’t until in or around early February of 2024 that I realized within myself that the initiatives of the RCIDA as it was internally organized at that time felt aligned with neither my sense of integrity nor direction.  The realization hit me like a ton of bricks because it became clear that I had been chasing after what ultimately felt hollow.  I could sense my newfound friend felt similarly.

 

I had described the seed to him in general terms periodically since we had met, but it wasn’t until early February of 2024 that he suggested I connect with the CEO/Operations Director of the Tech Valley Center of Gravity (TVCOG).  The TVCOG is a non-profit makerspace and education center in downtown Troy for community members to explore their creativity.  I had walked by this space numerous times, always impressed and curious about its offerings.  So, it was of great delight to me when the CEO quickly responded to my email that we meet, which we did soon thereafter.  He gave me a tour of the two-story incubator and we talked about why I felt a desire to experience its energy.  I told him what I saw in my mind’s eye and I remember him listening very patiently and intently.  I could hear his wheels turning, no doubt correlated to his engineering background.  There was a pulse of electricity in the air – a heartbeat – pumping through the seed and activating its life force.

 

As suggested during this brief yet meaningful conversation, I reached out to the Director of Sustainability at TAP, Inc – a non-profit neighborhood design and planning center also in downtown Troy.  Generally, I wanted to learn more about ‘smart cities’ and ‘digital twins,’ and specifically I wanted to explore any such attempts made in Troy.  These concepts speak to the seed’s blueprint, which prior to my meeting at the TVCOG had existed in unformulated notion only.  I loved the possibility of connecting with a local community member intimately knowledgeable and associated with both the concept and the neighborhood more broadly.  I had a strong sense that the soil was harmonizing to securely house the seed.

 

At the same time this connection with TAP was brewing, so too was the grant from the Arts Center of the Capital Region – also in downtown Troy.  The Operations Director of the TVCOG had also suggested this source of financial support, but quite honestly, I initially felt hesitant to apply.  The program was intended to empower local ‘artists’ to create innovative works that would contribute to a sustainable and expanding economy.  But was I an ‘artist’ as they had been more traditionally understood?  I also felt within myself a strong boundary against the potential imposition of demanding requirements.  Well, those hesitations were almost immediately quieted with a divine finger snap.  As it happened, the day after I toured the TVCOG the local newspaper published a story highlighting the Arts Center’s grant program and two recent recipient stories!  I reached out to one of the recipients named in the article to inquire about her experience post-grant.  I wanted to know her perspective, because maybe it would shift mine.  And boy did it.

 

This all brings me back to why the timing of the essay contest was so perfect.  For several years I had an unclear sense of direction due to an inner compass that was seemingly erratic, variable, and ambiguous.  I can largely thank Uranus transiting my natal Sun sign, Jupiter, and Mercury in the 6th house for that.  But in February of 2024 a map was starting to clearly develop, at the same moment I became aware of the opportunity to express this beautiful lucidity to an open and listening audience.  In other words, it met me at a beginning where a cycle’s end connected.

 

And from that moment until the present, a dream has been coming true beyond what was imagined.  We have seen a social landscape transformed through the collaborative development and integration of a locality’s superimposed digital ‘twin.’  This ‘twin’ representation decentralized and streamlined access to information that had long been hidden, fragmented, and privatized.  It did so by focusing attention on the social infrastructure existing ‘subconsciously’ within the neighborhood’s ecosystem.  I partnered with local community members and multidisciplinary consultants to observe and illuminate social patterns of various scale.  This joint effort allowed the neighborhood body to come into a more conscious, intimate relationship with its edges and their transcendence.

 

Pivotal to this transformative shift was my initiative to deepen awareness of response-ability within the context of personal infrastructure.  I had a sense that practices of self-learning and self-love were significant in revealing the collective’s ‘subconscious’ patterning.  I encouraged the creation of safe spaces to deeply and compassionately explore the aspects of oneself hidden in the shadows.  Toward this end I organized an experienced team to facilitate experiential learning of astrology, tarot, enneagram, gene keys, human design, and more.  Sharing in and witnessing the emergence of wise self-empowerment came to root a social network in intergenerational trust, patience, gratitude, security, fulfillment, and charm.  Home and family life became more inclusive, relatable, and meaningful almost as an effortless byproduct.

 

Through access to subconscious patterning, both individually and collectively, we gradually began to see a shift in power dynamics.  ‘The people’ innovated systems of a regenerative nature centered on balance and unity with one’s sense of innate authority and liberty.  The people’s conscious awareness and embodiment of self-love did not rely on ‘externalized’ authority or technology to satisfy perceived needs, but opened to collaborative partnership with it to realize its desired prosperity.  Each sovereign being became grounded in their capacity to self-regulate, no matter the conditions of the moment.

 

As we have seen in Troy and beyond, embodied empowerment uniquely expressed within a collective body is the social fabric providing warmth to a diversely cooperative, cohesive life.  There is so much further I could detail, and should there be interest I would be greatly honored to share more.  I feel incredibly humbled to have had the opportunity to share even this – the illustration of a seed’s germination.

The Chain-Book Phenomenon: A Grassroots Game Changer
25th Anniversary Celebration & Retirement

As most of you know, I am retiring on this, the 25th anniversary of the publication of my flagship book, Castles. I leave my entrepreneurial legacy in the hands of my daughter whom you all know quite well by now. I have nothing but the utmost faith in her, and in you, too. Without everyone doing their part, you out there especially, we would not be where we are today: celebrating a cooperative world built on the interconnectedness and sacredness of everything and everyone. By taking a moment to reflect on how we got here, we honor our collective journey to this point, comprised of the sacred individual journeys each of you traversed yourselves.

Twenty-six years ago, in 2024, a good friend of mine, Suzanne Taylor, held an essay contest. The essay was to describe how we saved the world by 2050. I had been envisioning and dreaming of a better world my entire life and I settled on working on myself and on my neighborhood as my contribution to that better world. Although there was a generous prize, the true reward was the act of the writing itself, as the essay led to the book – blueprinting the adage from Mahatma Gandhi, “If you want to save the world, first start with yourself.”

You all have heard me repeat, know your purpose. I’ve always known mine; I was born to write, to write and to speak. I knew from a young age that I would become a writer and a life coach or motivational speaker, if you will. But, as Morpheus tells Neo in The Matrix, “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” Failure after failure, I finally let go of knowing the path, and naturally and unknowingly, I began to walk it. I began to participate in the world instead of projecting my knowledge and expectations onto it.

This participation allowed me to see myself mirrored in the world I experienced as well as partnered with the world in the future we collectively created. The nature of my participation depended on how well I plumbed my depths of old wounds, misguided beliefs and unhealthy behaviors. Before my participation truly began, I had to begin deeply healing myself. And to begin deeply healing myself, I had to clearly see myself.

It was during young adulthood that this clarity of sight began to emerge. At the age of 21, as you all know, I experienced my first healing journey. A scene from a movie – Pretty Woman – triggered repressed memories of two sexual assaults during college, and the existential crisis and questions that followed sent me on an underworld journey to heal. Synchronistically, the world participated in this wounded healer journey, as my college classes suddenly included prerequisites on philosophy and religion, which would be the cause of my later matriculation to California Institute of Integral Studies from where much of my material is sourced. For over a decade, I worked at healing myself in therapy and in school. After graduation, I worked for a non-profit, working with the severely mentally ill and homeless, and every night, I slept well because I knew the work I did during the day – serving others from 9-5 and then doing therapy from 5-6 – made the world a better place.

It was during my 9-5 that I realized I had also healed myself of the PTSD from the assaults. There were two incidents that confirmed this healing. First, a man in a wheelchair grabbed me and pulled me onto his lap, and I immediately fought and got away. Afterwards, I realized I remained embodied the entire time and I had responded with full cognizance. Second, I was writing a letter on behalf of one of my clients. I advocated for him with full strength and deep compassion. It occurred to me that this client had been guilty of serial rape, and yet my eyes saw past his charges to his humanity. My history didn’t cloud my ability to have compassion. If anything, the journey I had made in healing myself had enhanced my compassionate nature.

I was walking the path.

I realized it was time to share my story with the world, and I began writing. My first article, “Cold Hands, Warm Heart,” was published by the Journal of the Peace and Justice Studies Association. I then tried to write Castles, but it just wouldn’t come. I had too much space for my creativity; I needed more structure in which my creativity could play. Then, thankfully, Suzanne’s essay contest came up and it provided me with the structure to take my next step. I was one of the winners, but what was more important than winning was the turn in my life that occurred as a result of winning. A series of fortunate events, and more importantly, relationships, birthed. My longtime editor, Sarah, who was working at a midsize publishing house at the time, found me through Suzanne’s friend. During our first talk, Sarah had the vision to see the potential impact of Castles and signed me right away.

Sarah knew exactly what I needed. She gave me deadline after deadline for just the right amount of pressure to help me produce. She gave me pushback when I offered complacency. She asked me questions when I presumed acceptance. In one day, we could be arguing all morning, shouting and gesturing, huffing and puffing, and by night we’d be eating dinner, laughing, and celebrating the outcome of the argument. She was my support, and she was my opponent; and, if I had to choose, I am more grateful for the latter than the former, because the latter was the one that made me better.

My relationship with Sarah was the perfect accompaniment – she was the perfect midwife – for Castles. You all know that in that book, I write about how to heal yourself and your relationships with others, how to find forgiveness and compassion within, and how to reduce othering in favor of partnership with your seeming adversaries. That was the easy part. The hard part was being brave in asking my readers to do the chain-book.

It’s one thing to share with the world my story of going from rape victim to a forgiveness and compassion advocate, but it was a whole other thing for the little girl inside me to come out and share her dream of a global chain letter turned book.

For those of you too young to remember, way back in the day, chain letters were sent in the postal mail on paper, and if you were lucky (or unlucky) to receive one, the letter asked to be copied several times and sent to several friends of yours to receive a windfall. If you didn’t send it – if you broke the chain – you’d get bad luck. It was through conversations with Sarah that my courage to start a chain grew. In the book, I confidently asked the reader at the end, that if they felt moved at all my book, to please buy 2 more copies and to gift one to a friend, which was the easy part, and to gift the second to an adversary or someone whom they “othered” in some way, as a gesture of bridge-building.

When the book was published, I began traveling to do book tours and the occasional workshop. I continued my legal day job, working in my midwestern city advocating for mental health diversion, rehabilitation and restorative justice over incarceration. My focus remained: one small step in my neighborhood each day toward a better world for all.

Little did I know that, while I was busy working with my local indigent population, readers were not only gifting copies to friends and “others,” but they were starting book clubs. The members of those book clubs were, at the same time, inspired by my story to undertake their own hero’s journeys. Those that never thought of doing therapy sought counselors and began exploring Jungian analysis and depth work. Those that denied their childhood wounds explored codependency groups and trauma recovery support. Those that battled depression and anxiety booked mental health services and compared mainstream pharmaceuticals with plant based therapies. Not only were the book clubs a place to discuss the book, but clubs became sharing circles where individuals shared the turning points, obstacles and victories of their hero’s journeys. The members delighted in each others’ celebrations and learned from each others’ tribulations. The Universe spoke through them to each other, and when any of them felt they just could not go on any longer, they could not explore any deeper, they could not transmute any more darkness into light, the perfect message would come through to them so they could carry on. The synchronistic moments began to multiply exponentially so that practically every step of their journeys became imbued with magic and divinity.

Victims let go of their victimhood and became their own heroes, finding forgiveness and compassion for those that wronged them and peace within themselves. Enemies let go of the antagonism in their relationships and partnered with their opponents in process-based approaches. Abusers let go of insatiable need and tended to their deep, internal wounds.

Little did I know, but one of these book clubs was founded by a famous member – Taylor Swift. I was the last to know. I returned from court to the office one fateful Monday and my coworkers looked at me wide-eyed while I tried to see who was blowing up my phone. It was Sarah – the chain-book hit critical mass because Taylor Swift made it go viral! I became a global celebrity!

Do you know what I did? I went back to work. Many people ask me why I did that. It was for two main reasons: first, I was already happy with my life, as happiness is a state of mind and a state of being, not a consequence of fame or any external thing; second, change is scary, even change for the good. I tried holding on to my day job as long as I could, but the media attention was too disruptive. I gave in and my publisher pulled out all the magic they had and surrounded me with a team to help me handle the newfound spotlight of global fame. There were rumors about a Pulitzer, even the Nobel Peace Prize. My publisher expanded my tour and added a program that helped ignite the artistic flame in my readers. Workshop participants came together and created a renaissance of artistic expression, now ritualized in the annual, country-wide DAMS Festival – the Depth Arts & Music Storytelling Festival, where festival goers in every major city share song, poetry, spoken word, art and dance in collective healing concerts, bringing with them the darkness they dug up during the year and working it into light and gold for all to enjoy.

I also had multiple meetings with my old bosses on how to best capitalize on this attention to serve the public. As readers were bridge-building new relationships with others-turned-partners all over the world, the Democratic National Committee and I strategized on how to turn this light onto the dark world of politics. Without their platform, I’d have never run and won the 2nd US Senate Seat (D) for the State of Missouri.

During my term in the Senate, I partnered with the Republican Senator on prison reform promoting rehabilitation, restorative justice, and mental health diversion. The prison population is now 33% of what it was at inception, and arrests are down by 77%. I reached across the aisle again to draft META, the Monopoly Ending Trust Act of 2034, from which local, small businesses are flourishing while big multinational companies have been dismantling themselves slowly and transparently. I sponsored the MKS Act, the Mental Knowledge Saves Act, where mindfulness, meditation and mental health skills are taught in all public schools. Without the local support in piloting this program in the midwest back in the late 2020’s, we wouldn’t have gone 20 years so far without a school shooting nation-wide.

The success of these initiatives won high ratings and reelection for the public officials who supported them, and this encouraged other legislators to jump on the boat. I held a series of workshops in Washington specifically tailored to them. There, the new relationships and new way of thinking helped former adversaries come together to pen the Bamboo Instead of Plastic Act, where plastic manufacturers slowly shifted to bamboo production with major tax incentives over the course of a decade, and now we have a country free of plastic. With the seeds of newfound partnership and friendship blossoming in D.C., I completed my term and then, with the Secretary of State, UN delegates and other diplomats, I traveled to the Middle East to meet with heads of state and conduct workshops there, for the government bodies and for some of the masses. Without the help of Israeli, Palestinian, and Christian masses who helped pressure their governments to settle on a 3-state solution, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to help guide them in the collaboration that birthed the Abrahamic Tripartite Cooperative Council. We still need more access of thought to our future friends in Russia, China and states in Africa, but I hear readers are sending secret copies of Castles to them to overcome the ban on my books. The chain grows! It won’t be stopped! It’s only a matter of time before the entire world finally sees with clarity that underneath this world of illusory separation, we are all one – one energy, one consciousness, one being, one love.

It is with the utmost honor and humility that I leave you now, to retire and to formally receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Go out on top, they say; and, so, I am. You, the readers and participants that remain steadfast in growing a new world from the ground up, remain as steadfast to your purpose and all will be more than well. A new crop of leaders to guide you has emerged and my team and I have trained many of them. As promised, the first initiatives on deck are the free energy transition, the basic universal income program and the global health care system. I know that some of our nation-state governments are opposed to these. We have more work cut out for ourselves, but, as the past 25 years show, together we can accomplish anything. Let’s make these ideas a reality the same way we have made so many others real: by reaching out to those opposed to us and building a bridge with them to a new world, brick by brick, hand-in-hand.

So the genocide continues, and western governments continue to fund and arm Israel, and our mainstream media continues to churn out Israeli apologist and anti-Palestinian propaganda. Our government leaders aren’t going to stop it, so it’s up to us. How do we do it?

Here are a few ideas:

Boycott

Let’s boycott these Israeli products and spread the word. One thing our leaders listen to is money so let’s get them where they feel it.

How do we put financial pressure on the government of the USA that continues to fund and arm Israel? Any ideas?

Media

After the Putin interview, do we feel like we’ve been lied to by mainstream media? Well, we should. And, when we realize we’re being lied to, we need to ditch the liars and find reliable sources of information.

That can be tricky with so much mis- and disinformation out there. Here’s a good place to start: Consortium News. I have never seen them get their facts wrong, and have seen them vindicated years later for being the only news source that gets the story right. What news sources do you count on? Are they reliable?

We owe it to ourselves and to the world to at least get our information straight.

What I do each morning is spend about five minutes perusing the headlines of my national broadcaster (CBC) to see what is — and what isn’t (think the numerous demonstrations and actions in support of Palestine going on all over the world) — being reported.

Confront Political Leaders

Online and in person, let them know that you want Israel’s violence against Gaza to stop. Some politicians where I live have caved to the pressure. Here’s an example.

Share, Share, Share

Via social media, email, in person, let people know what you know. And it might cost some relationships, I can say from experience. We’re talking genocide here. As they say, if you wonder what you would have done during the holocaust in Nazi Germany it’s probably what you’re doing right now.

And if you see a particularly effective action, share it all over the place. We need to inspire each other to do the best we can to stop the genocide that’s taking place.

And if there are effective movements being developed, let’s all get on board. We have to do something to stop this.

Keep On Taking It to the Streets

Let’s get out there and stay out there until this horrible slaughter ends.

* * * * *

If we can’t stop this genocide that is being broadcast all over the world, what kind of a society are we living in?

We also need to be aware of the huge environmental toll all this bombing is taking on our environment. Here’s a long but very informative recording that lays it out.

Sadly the environmental community, at least here in Canada, has been pretty quiet about the genocide taking place. I wish that would change. We need solidarity right now. Perhaps it’s a funding issue. If so, individuals can speak out on their own behalf against the horror taking place in Gaza.

We need to build a global movement of movements if we want a sane and caring society on a liveable planet.

If you send me particularly effective actions and ideas, I commit to sharing them weekly until we stop this senseless slaughter that Israel is committing against Gaza and that western governments are supporting by sending money and weapons to Israel.