Recently, I have been going back and re-reading some of the same things that I had read when I joined the Green Party.  Prior to that, as you might know if you had followed California Greening, I had been a  Republican something of the mold of Pete McCloskey or John Rhodes, men of good moral character and a sense that Conservative and Conservatism had the same root meanings.

One of those sources was Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher who was credited with coining the term "deep ecology."  In simple terms (Wikipedia) "Næss averred that while western environmental groups of the early post-war period had raised public awareness of the environmental issues of the time, they had largely failed to have insight into and address what he argued were the underlying cultural and philosophical background to these problems."  Now, I might conclude that it is like looking at a platform for a progressive political party without understanding the entire philosophical foundation or the emotional attraction of the contents of that platform.  The result is that we are manipulated by the events that surround us and the memes that others use to explain them.
 

It was only after digesting Naess that I decided that action must be political.  It leads to the same conclusions that were voiced by Petra Kelly. "If we have a future, it will be green."  I note that unlike Kelly, Greens how seem loathe to initiate action.  Sure, we all join in when others protest, whether it is at Standing Rock, or with BLM, or on Earth Day, or at a local anti-war protests or just tweeting an expression of revulsion with 45's own tweets. But only a few seem grounded in a philosophical understanding of what the end would be like or what the next steps need be.  If we all were then we should be moving toward positive ends fulfilling the vision of a new society that we are bringing into being. 


I am not sure where I will take this, but perhaps it will best be done if I breathe new life in California Greening.

What we leave behind.

I read an new quotation from a familiar writer today.  It is worth repeating as the start of a new series of posts.

'Maybe I've been influenced by the old Quakers who believed it was a moral question always to consider what you're leaving behind. Why not? It's not a bad measure of a man - what he leaves behind".
William Least Heat Moon
Blue Highways: A Journey into America

One part of what I will leave behind is this blog and I either need to make better use of it or I need to move on to other methods of communication. 

So give me some encouragement if this is a useful platform or we will close it down.