Shall I put money out for what could create a revolution?
Get inspired by David Suzuki
It had been 10 or maybe even 15 years since David Suzuki had been in the public eye when he came back with the bang I sent you last week in a cross-post from another Substack, where this feisty guy I have admired for decades added his great cache with the public to the cries of the Collapse chorus, saying the fight against climate change has been lost.
And I’m with him, saying, “I’m not giving up in the sense of not doing anything, but Trump’s election was the dagger in my heart. Trump’s win was the triumph of capitalism and neoliberalism, and he’s going to wreak havoc...We need a revolution.”
One thing that would prevent that revolution would be people not knowing how dire climate change and overshoot are, and, in the do what you can do category, I keep it in mind to inform people. I could see Earth as a giant classroom of students and teachers where those who know educate people who don’t. I wouldn’t have expectations that MAGA people are going to get the lesson, which would be for us pissed off chickens. Then, we can embrace them. It’s back to my idea about Pep Talks for Humanity, like the stirring one David Suzuki delivered, flooding the Net to get us informed.
There’s something fitting in this a time of contradictions, that Suzuki, who suffered massively when humanity turned against itself in World War II, has become a Paul Revere to get us going in the right direction. A third-generation Japanese Canadian, the government sold the Suzuki family's dry cleaning business, then interned Suzuki, his mother, and two sisters after his father was sent to a labor camp. His sister, Dawn, was born in the internment camp.
Here we are, the most awesome species on Earth, the only one that can reflect upon itself and build upon itself, and we are not able to get beyond conflict to where cooperation would be our m.o. Up against a wall, where destroying ourselves is a real possibility, I think about fairy tales where the princess gets put to sleep and only can be awakened by a kiss of pure love. What, for us, would that kiss be? Could there be one?
Where we are desperate for being kissed awake, I’m thinking about another contest looking for what could do that. I could put up prize money for it, as I did last year, when people wrote essays as if it was 2050, when the world was working, to say how we’d gotten there. The finalists are here, with #9 and #21 being my favorites.
A new essay contest could be for what could get us our Berlin Wall, where Germany’s separation suddenly ended and a united country was born. What could birth a new America? With more people all the time being mad as hell and not wanting to take it anymore, and with the threat of humanity going back to the stone age, what could our Kiss of Life event be?
The human heart can go the lengths of God…
Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.
Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise is exploration into God.
Where are you making for? It takes
So many thousand years to wake…
But will you wake, for pity’s sake?
― A Sleep of Prisoners, Christopher Fry
I urge you to have a look at comments I’ve made in Substack Notes to get immersed in the point of view I argue for.
Suzanne Taylor’s Now What? is looking to a revolution. You could say an evolution, to a next phase of consciousness where we act from our interconnection as one humanity. Please help get it seen.
Like this post. Click the heart. Substack is counting!
Comment by clicking the thought bubble.
Share it by clicking on the arrow pointing up or to the right or on SHARE.
Cross-post it for your subscribers to get it in email.
Restack puts it in Notes, Substack’s social networking. This is great for Substack writers to do!!! Click the 2 arrows around in a circle.
For a onetime thing Substack writers can do: Recommend Now What? to your subscribers. From your Dashboard click Recommendations → click Add recommendation → search for Suzanne Taylor’s Now What?
As a Canadian, it's great to see David Suzuki, a true Canadian hero, spotlighted! Thanks Suzanne! The CBC once ran a contest to find the greatest Canadian ever and he came 5th. Interestingly, Kiefer Sutherland's grandfather, Tommy Douglas, the founder of Universal health care in Canada, came first.
Thanks for sharing the video clip of David Suzuki. Yes, we can't wait for the government, corporations or elites to be our warrior leaders. We need to create our own. I think there are many out there. Look at all the NGO working on so many things. The issue is the lack of alignment and focus. Read Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken. We don't need to be one big organization, but we need a North Star to guide us all and some priorities. Have you gather any other council members? We need organization!