Where to go, what to do?

Though there is still, and will long be, plenty of grey areas in the world and how we see it, we are, nevertheless, standing at a metaphorical fork in the road. We're faced, believe it or not, with an essential and existential choice.

If we simply follow what appears to be the main road that we're on, we're doomed. You can call me a pessimist, a cynic, a nay-sayer, a doom-and-gloomer ... it doesn't matter what ... but we'll be out of here soon. It's no joke that we're destroying the environment; it is an established fact that we are contributing significantly to global warming; it is inevitable that sea levels will rise another meter in the next 100 years, driving hundreds of millions of people further inland; we have definitive proof that fracking and transporting sludgy sand across thousands of miles of farmland and aquifers is going to poison our water; we know that the casino capitalism we are practicing is not sustainable and another, even worse, financial disaster is inevitable and imminent; we can see that growing income inequality will have drastic, most likely violent, consequences. There are so many things that we know and that are clear and so many things that too many are too willing to do too little about. In other words, our current social, economic, technological and political trajectory is toward disintegration. We have it within our power to commit collective suicide or to allow ourselves to be murdered by the irrational believers in post-modern ideals.

When we stop to reflect on what we're confronted with, it becomes very apparent very quickly that these are not just decisive, dividing issues, they are inherently divisive: take the earth apart for its oil and minerals; divide crops into specialized areas and regions in order to industrialize; industrialization is the breaking down of a whole process into its lowest manageable units; poisoning the ground water cuts us off from one primary essential for life; capitalism is founded upon the idea of taking more than one needs even, or especially, at the cost of others. In other words, these are all rational activities and approaches, but in the end, they are destructive and deadly. The ultimate division, course, is the separation of life from the body, which we call death.

On the other hand, we can change. Though time is running out, it is not gone. There is still hope that something, that a wide variety of things, can be done to avoid catastrophe. The clock is ticking though, so we really don't have a lot of time to just sit back and think about it. We must act, and each and every one of us -- as I have been repeatedly emphasizing -- is required to take part, to get involved.

One option has been taken from us: the option to do nothing at all. In not acting, or in choosing not to act, we, by default, will be moved along the destructive path we are on. To choose is to choose to act, to do whatever is within your power, the scope of your creativity, the breadth of your knowledge. And here's the important point: it doesn't matter what it is. As long as you include in your action the benefit of at least one other human being, you will, in all probability, be on the other fork in the road.

If you don't believe me, try it, and find out.