[Forum] Our political, economic and religious institutions are in crisis and generally dysfunctional as they try to solve today’s problems with the same thinking processes that created them.
Our politicians are largely focused on economic wealth rather than the economic health of the planet.
Politicians equate economic growth with population growth and are blind to the stress on infrastructure and quality of life.
Those most opposed to the Paris Agreement in 2015 were from fossil fuel resourced countries interested only in their short term financial profits.
The financial institutions are focused on ripping out resources from the earth and transporting them through industrial plants and onto markets and consumers as quickly as possible.
Humans are the only species that suffers from unemployment and give back to ‘mother earth’ billions of tonnes of garbage and toxic waste.
The billions of dollars handed out for drought, bush fire, and flood relief, and now adding the billions for Coronavirus relief, will financially cripple the economy for years to come.
Religious institutions have been rocked by sexual abuse scandals and the divisive preaching of fundamentalist pastors.
Where religions are addicted to saving souls for the next life, they become disconnected from the source of our physical and psychological well-being.
Psychologists suggest a new disease, NDD, Nature Deficit Disorder.
We need to learn from our indigenous brothers and sisters to live in harmony with nature, rather than the destructive consumer lifestyles that we are creating.
There are scientists and historians who today suggest that we are moving from the Cenozoic age of the last 65 million years to the Ecozoic Age, when we will rediscover our dependency and inter-connectedness with all species on our sacred planet.
Perhaps now the planet is fighting back and we will learn that we cannot have healthy people on a sick planet.
I am in my mid-70’s and I am excited to live in a time of radical change.
Email, Apr 16
Paul Corkeron, Kincumber