Thank you, everybody.
So let's move and look at the purpose.
The purpose of the Awakening the Dreamer,
Changing the Dream Symposium, which is on the screen now,
is bringing forth an environmentally-sustainable,
spiritually-fulfilling, socially-just human presence
on this planet.
And now when you look at this and that we're committed to all
of those, it may at first seem like these
are three separate issues.
But what I think that you'll come to understand
is that they are not separate.
They are actually intricately interwoven.
They're part of a whole.
And what you'll find is that there's no way
to be able to sustain any kind of progress
if you only focus on one and ignore the other two.
So they are very much connected.
And we know that by the end of the day,
by the end of this symposium, you'll be even more deeply
aware of that connection.
And I think we understand that some of you
have been committed in action in these areas
for a long, long time, and we acknowledge
that and thank you for that.
And in that context, maybe today will occur as an opportunity
to deepen your understanding, explore some new perspectives,
and perhaps expand and strengthen
your own commitment to what you're already engaged in.
And so how we are going to go through these,
the flow of the symposium, is through a series of questions.
So the first question is, where are we?
Given that we're bringing forth an environmentally-sustainable,
spiritually-fulfilling, and socially-just human presence,
where are we are in relationship to each of those areas?
And it is very important that we have some shared knowledge
about that because that will be a foundation
piece for our work together.
And then the second question is, how did we get here?
So this is a very, very important question
because rather than-- generally after we
hear where we are in any problems,
the natural instinct is to run to fix it.
But we need to slow down and figure
out, how did we get here?
So we're going to have a special kind of analysis
that we'll get to be involved in to look at,
what is the root cause?
Not just the superficial behavior,
but what is really underneath this, so
that we can make other choices?
And then the third question is, what is emerging now?
What is happening?
What is possible?
Not only what is possible, what is already emerging through us,
around us, throughout the world?
And then the fourth and final question
is, where do we go from here?
And probably this question is the most important
of all because then we're asking ourselves, what are you to do?
What are you to be?
How do you fit into what is happening?
And what are the actions that we need to take
to create the new dream?
Thank you, so let's start with the first question.
And the first question is, where are we?
And we'll examine where we are together at this moment in time
through the three lenses of the environment, of society,
and our own personal and spiritual concern.
This is not meant to be new information.
I think most of us have heard a lot of this information.
And what too often happens, though,
if we've heard a lot of this information,
we can actually become numb to it.
As you watch this video about where we are now,
I invite you to let it all in deeply
and listen with your heart as well as your mind.
Letting in the scope and impact of our current global crisis
can be disturbing, and it takes courage to face the reality
of our present situation.
But it's important to let yourself feel
and not distance yourself from it.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
Given that our purpose is bringing forth
an environmentally-sustainable, spiritually-fulfilling,
and socially-just just human presence
on this planet, the first question to ask
is, where are we?
In other words, what kind of world is our modern way of life
actually producing?
Answering that question and confronting the realities
it reveals may not be comfortable, but as we'll see,
it is an essential first step to revealing
what may be the greatest opportunity
any generation has ever faced.
One place to begin is with the dramatic changes that have
occurred in human population.
For thousands of years, human population on Earth
remained relatively steady.
Then about 200 years ago, at the time of the Industrial
Revolution, humans learned how to harness
the energy of fossil fuels.
That allowed agricultural productivity
to increase dramatically, and human population
began to grow exponentially.
Since then, we in the modern world
have attempted to meet our needs and wants
through an ever-expanding process
of extraction, production, consumption, and disposal
of natural resources.
Gross Domestic Product, GDP, is supposed
to be a measure of everything.
It puts a value on everything that's
been produced in an economy within a year's time.
But what that doesn't measure is the fact
that in order to achieve that gross domestic product,
there's also a lot of destruction of natural wealth.
And one can in fact say that the greater the GDP of a country
is, measured conventionally, the more
natural wealth either in that place
or globally has been destroyed.
This current industrial model requires
continuous economic growth.
But is that growth sustainable?
According to the United Nations, sustainability
is the ability of the current generation
to meet its needs without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet theirs.
In many ways, the mass-consumption dream
of the modern world has been a nightmare
for the global environment.
The Earth's forests are shrinking.
Soils are eroding.
Water tables are falling as a result
of over pumping of aquifers.
Fisheries are collapsing.
Grasslands are turning into desert
as a result of overgrazing.
No civilization has ever survived
the ongoing destruction of its natural support systems,
nor will ours.
In fact, the world is rapidly approaching a number
of tipping points, thresholds beyond which dangerous trends
will become irreversible, threatening the existence
of life as we know it.
One such tipping point is the end
of cheap, plentiful petroleum, what is known as peak oil.
The academic researchers, who are much more likely to be
independent and hard headed in their analysis
outside the oil industry, believe
that peak oil probably in the area of 2010, 2015,
something like that.
And after that, we begin to see a reduction in the supply,
but an acceleration of demand.
It is impossible to believe that will not happen.
It is going to happen.
Humanity has been continuously increasing its resource demand
to the extent that by the mid '80s,
we've started to use more than what nature can regenerate.
And by 2007, humanity used about 30%
more than what nature can renew.
So we have been in global overshoot.
Overshoot can be thought of as living off of your credit card.
You know, humanity is living off its ecological credit card.
If we use more than nature can keep up with,
we actually start to erode natural capital
that life depends on.
Currently, if everyone on Earth lived as North Americans do,
we'd need five Earths.
For everyone to live as Europeans do
would take three Earths.
In other regions, people are living beyond the capacity
of one Earth as well.
China and India are presently living just
under the one-Earth level, but given
the rapid industrialization and economic growth
of both countries, that's sure to change.
We are fast approaching a number of tipping points
related to the increase of carbon dioxide
in the Earth's atmosphere caused primarily
by the burning of fossil fuels.
The scientists around the world have come together
to tell us that climate change is actually
happening at a much faster rate than they
had first anticipated.
The signs of this are the cataclysmic storms,
the extremes in weather.
The polar ice caps are melting, and it
means that the entire ecosystem is in peril.
Tipping point means, in the context of climate change,
that after a certain temperature rise and certain other impacts
on the global ecosystem, certain things change
that cannot be moved back.
If the glaciers disappear, then they
will no longer be able to supply the lakes and the rivers.
As they are melting, you have more water around, flooding,
and lakes are full.
But once they disappear, then that's it.
Then there is no more.
While people are becoming increasingly aware
of the effects of climate change, what's
not as well known is the impact we are having on other species.
We are in the midst of a mass extinction,
but the news has not reached the general public.
They are utterly unaware that the sacred
and talismanic and heart-breakingly-loved
companions of ours on this Earth are about to disappear forever.
They will not return.
African lions are on the absolute verge of extinction.
There are only 20,000 left.
That's down 90% in the past few decades.
Every species and subspecies of tiger on the planet
is on the absolute verge of extinction.
Elephants down 90% in the past century, 90% of all large fish
are gone from the oceans.
Half of all species of life may be extinct in 50 years.
Nothing this destructive has happened in 65 million years.
Why is that not our central concern?
It's overwhelming.
No one imagined it could happen.
So suddenly, we're confronted with this fact,
and we don't really know how to respond to it.
I think that's beyond most of us because we haven't deepened
our hearts in a way that would make possible the grief that
is wanting to be felt.
[END PLAYBACK]
So I invite you to take a breath.
And very often, we run from information like this
or start to think about what we could do,
analyze the situation.
But I invite you right now just to check in with how you feel
and pay attention to how you feel confronted
with that information.
Take a moment with that.
Close your eyes if that helps.
And as you come back to the front of the room,
know that we'll find a way of turning our emotion about this
into an impulse for action.
We're going to move on and start to look
at the second of the three lenses
and ask ourselves the question of where are we in relation
to the creation of a socially-just world?
And what is a socially-just world, anyway?
Maybe a socially-just world is a world in which everybody
is treated equally, everybody has a voice,
and perhaps where everybody has equal access to the resources
that we have in society.
Maybe it's a world in which the differences of race or class,
age, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability
no longer separate us.
And to move to a place beyond that separation,
to move to a place where we recognize
and even celebrate our diversity,
perhaps we need to look at the legacy of hundreds of years
of oppression that still exists with us today
and also look at and see how the playing
field is still tilted in favor of some of us
at the expense of others.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
We've seen the impact that the dream of the modern world
is having on the environment and other species.
But how is it affecting the human family?
One of the primary expectations people
have of the modern industrial system
has been that by growing the economy,
life will get better for everyone,
that we are continually moving toward a more
socially-just world.
But is this true?
When I was growing up, I always thought that, of course,
the world will become more equal.
There will be more people educated.
People will get jobs, and, you know, we'll all be better off.
We'll all be more prosperous.
However, what has that happened in the last 20 years or so is
the world has become more unequal.
This idea that the poor will be kind of helped to come along,
even though the rich get richer, this hasn't
actually worked out to be true.
We all know that a great disparity currently
exists between rich and poor.
One way to understand this disparity
is to think of the Earth as a community of 100 people.
Although significant progress has been made in addressing
issues of social justice, systems of power and privilege
still perpetuate injustice throughout the world.
Much of humanity continues to suffer
from the legacy of centuries of colonialism,
imperialism, and racism.
A socially-just world is a world
in which if you had to draw a lot
and it would put you anywhere in that society,
you would feel perfectly confident.
You wouldn't be worried because you knew whatever lot you drew
would be a good lot.
It doesn't mean that everything is equal.
It just means that every single person in that society
has a decent shot at living the fullest life that they can.
But if you close your eyes and you to think yourself,
you know, there's no more racism, all this racism stuff,
that's in the past, close yours eyes and think to yourself,
would you want to be black?
Would you trade places?
Well, if you wouldn't trade places,
then there's work to be done.
People around the world are starting
to realize that climate disruption, pollution,
and other environmental problems will soon have
an impact on the way they live.
But for millions of others, it already has.
The movement to address this has a name, environmental justice.
Environmental justice is the belief
that no community should have to bear
the brunt of a disproportionate amount of environmental burdens
and not enjoy any environmental benefits.
And around the world, that is something that you see.
In many parts of the world, especially once colonized
countries where local people still
have no control over their natural resources,
the industrial world's demand for oil, minerals, and timber
is having devastating effects on the land, air,
water, and people.
An example is the Niger Delta of Nigeria, where hundreds
of millions of dollars of oil have been extracted
and exported, yet most of the people
live in poverty on less than $1 a day.
What we do not understand is that we humans are
only part of this ecosystem.
And when we kill part of this system,
we are killing ourselves.
I think for a lot of people who are born in privilege,
there's a sense of what a friend of mine
calls the right not to know.
I don't have to know about poverty.
I don't have to know about racism.
I don't have to know about environmental degradation
or environmental justice or injustice because it's not me.
I've got my life, and I've got my family.
And I can do what I want.
But the world is not forgiving of that much anymore.
Pollution carries.
Water runs out in rich places, too.
The forests are coming down everywhere.
The fish in the sea are depleting.
It's hurting us all.
Yes, it's hurting the poor first,
but it's very, very difficult to go through life
anymore and not see it and not feel it at some level
personally.
Those of us in the modern world have had access to more money,
more food, more comfort, more entertainment,
more travel, and more communication than any people
who have ever lived.
But has all this made us happier?
The idea that material gain leads to personal fulfillment
has been demonstrated not to be the case.
Although incomes have skyrocketed
in economically-advanced countries,
study after study has shown that levels of reported happiness
have remained the same or even declined.
There is a great loneliness of spirit today.
We're trying to cope in the face of what
seems to be overwhelming evidence that who we are
doesn't matter.
Meanwhile, we're yearning for connection with each other,
with ourselves, with the powers of nature, the possibilities
of being alive.
When that tension arises, we feel pain,
and then we cover that over with anything that we can use
to disconnect and to go away.
The reason that people are into this mass consumption nightmare
dream is because people are lonely.
And people are hurt, and people really
believe that more income, more stuff, more consumption, more
things, the relationship with things,
will fix the hunger in the human heart.
And it will never work.
This is not the best of all possible worlds,
even though it appears that way on TV and advertisements.
I think people in their most poignant and honest moments
will admit this is really hard right now for everybody.
The anguish we feel for what is happening to our world
is inevitable and normal and even healthy.
So pain is very useful.
Just don't be afraid of it because if we
are afraid to feel that, we won't feel where it comes from.
And where it comes from is love, our love for this world.
That's what is going to pull us through.
[END PLAYBACK]
Now, if you would, please lower or close
your eyes for a moment.
Please notice your breath going in, going out.
And now just sit quietly, noticing
how you're feeling right now, not what you're thinking,
not what needs to be done.
There's time for that later.
For now, see if you can allow yourself
to just feel in your body your response to what you've seen.
When you're ready, please take a breath and open your eyes.
Thank you.
[MUSIC PLAYING