Environmental Awareness Quotes

When first I arrived in the woods, I became aware of how unprepared I was for what I was about to experience." 

Does it make sense to boycott ourselves? Does it hold water to boycott the fluid course of our life? Is it consistent to commit self-sabotage by destroying wittingly our corporeal and mental structure? Those are the questions thousands of people may ask as they are confronted with the schizophrenic dilemma on the point of smoking, boozing, doping, sexual transgressing or environmental polluting. Many seem to be aware of their problem. Many have decided to stop from tomorrow on. But when tomorrow and after tomorrow come many tend to let slip their vow and their self-sabotage goes on to rule their life. Their dissonant behavior transforms them into social losers or hopeless patsies and depresses them into the class of forlorn pariahs. They realize, as such, that self-handicapping makes no sense, but are not able to protect themselves from themselves since they haven’t got the muscle to live down the spell of addiction. Thousands of people may feel having set the bar too high and recognize they are are failing to find the right angle and are missing sufficient insight to steer their life. If, however, they decide to give it a try they should be aware that the road may be very bumpy and that they have to be prepared for disappointments and regressions, that they might have to deal with very slowly crescent improvements, that they shouldn’t take themselves for a ride and that they could only possibly succeed by focusing painfully on the path to breaking free from the hornet's nest they have got themselves into.

So many people there are so concerned about being socially conscious and environmentally aware, but they don't give a second thought to how they treat the guy washing their car or cutting their grass.

If we do not save the environment, then whatever we do in civil rights will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction.

A loner, by nature, burdens no one with their existence. By avoiding entanglements with others, they cause no harm. We are extremely ecologically friendly, clean, and environmentally aware creatures.

Jack Travis was a novelty in my experience, an old-fashioned man's man. None of the boys I had gone to college with had been anything more than that, just boys trying to figure out who they were and what their place in the world was. Dane and his friends were sensitive, environmentally aware guys who rode bikes and had Facebook accounts. I couldn't imagine Jack Travis ever blogging or worrying about finding himself, and it was pretty certain that he didn't give a damn about whether or not his clothes were sustainably produced.

Try seeing, feeling, and tasting the water you swim in the way a land animal might perceive it. You may find the experience fascinating -- and mind-expanding.

The core of the ecological imbalance and global warming is the exploitation mindset. Nature is not for exploitation but exploration for better living, coexistence, co-caring, and co-growing.

You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it’s too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard. Is my microphone on? Can you hear me?

We must clean ourselves of any impurity. We must clear our cities of any dirt. "For God has not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness." 1 Thessalonians 4:7

It has often been said that our environmental crisis is a crisis of perception. We do not readily see the patterns that would reveal our dependence on the natural world, nor are we commonly aware of the systems within which we are deeply embedded. Our attention, entrained on objects and focused on flat screens, is far removed from the dynamic and animated nonhuman world. We are as good as blind to the wonder at our feet or the daily spectacle of an ever-changing sky.

Earth Citizens recognize themselves as members of a planetary community, instead of as members of a single nation, religion, or organization. And, most importantly, they live that awareness.

It is a pervasive condition of empires that they affect great swathes of the planet without the empire's populace being aware of that impact - indeed without being aware that many of the affected places even exist. How many Americans are aware of the continuing socio environmental fallout from U.S. militarism and foreign policy decisions made three or four decades ago in, say, Angola or Laos? How many could even place those nation-states on a map?

What hurt him most of all, made him feel like a sick child aware of terrible wrongness and yet incapable of explaining it to anyone who might help, was that in spite of the evidence around them, in spite of what their eyes and ears reported-and sometimes their flesh, from bruises, stab wounds, racking coughs, weeping sores-these people believed their way of life was the best in the world, and were prepared to export it at the point of a gun.

We must encourage energy conservation and sustainable development. Young people are the ones who are most environmentally conscious in Ireland, so that to some extent they are educating their parents. They are tackling issues of waste disposal and so on. The schools help, because they put a lot of stress on environmental awareness.

It may sound peculiar coming from an old punk rocker, but I strongly believe that governmental policies are the only viable way to administer our long-term success as a species. I guess you could say that my attitude of 'fuck the government' is still intact. But it's more a criticism of lousy government than a statement of nihilism. The truth is, when it comes to environmental protection, the government is the best way to enact a new social awareness by establishing laws by which industries have to abide.

Man was the last of Creation but was given the duty to care for the Earth and all other created living creatures.

If you care about our living planet, it's time to take part in bringing awareness to our climate and extinction crisis.

We humans have a questionable track record in our dealings with the environment. Recent studies show that complete restoration of Florida’s Everglades could take approximately 30 years and 7.8 billion dollars. There’s a lot of work to be done–but the damage is not irreversible. Together, through conservation and public awareness, we may be able to correct many of these unfortunate trends. Today, it is not enough to just appreciate nature–we have to actively work to protect it.

Switches among identities occur in response to changes in emotional state or to environmental demands, resulting in another identity emerging to assume control. Because different identities have different roles, experiences, emotions, memories, and beliefs, the therapist is constantly contending with their competing points of view. Helping the identities to be aware of one another as legitimate parts of the self and to negotiate and resolve their conflicts is at the very core of the therapeutic process. It is countertherapeutic for the therapist to treat any alternate identity as if it were more “real” or more important than any other. Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision

Human beings possess the gift of personal freedom and liberty of the mind. We each possess the sovereignty over the body and mind to define ourselves and embrace the values that we wish to exemplify. Personal autonomy enables humans to take independent action and use reason to establish moral values. We are part of nature. Consciousness, human cognition, and awareness of our own mortality allow us to script an independent survival reality and not merely react to environmental forces.

When identity is derived from projecting an image in the public realm, something is lost, some core of identity diluted, some sense of authority or interiority sacrificed. It is time to question the false equivalency between not being seen and hiding. And time to reevaluate the merits of the inconspicuous life, to search out some antidote to continuous exposure, and to reconsider the value of going unseen, undetected, or overlooked in this new world. Might invisibility be regarded not simply as refuge, but as a condition with its own meaning and power? Going unseen may be becoming a sign of decency and self-assurance. The impulse to escape notice is not about complacent isolation or senseless conformity, but about maintaining identity, propriety, autonomy, and voice. It is not about retreating from the digital world but about finding some genuine alternative to a life of perpetual display. It is not about mindless effacement but mindful awareness. Neither disgraceful nor discrediting, such obscurity can be vital to our very sense of being, a way of fitting in with the immediate social, cultural, or environmental landscape. Human endeavor can be something interior, private, and self-contained. We can gain, rather than suffer, from deep reserve.

If we would divert to constructive research even a small fraction of the money spent each year on the development of ever more toxic sprays, we could find ways to use less dangerous materials and to keep poisons out of our waterways. When will the public become sufficiently aware of the facts to demand such action?

The mysteries of life include the external and the internal conundrums that each person encounters in a world composed of competing ideologies and agents of change. Conflicting ideas include political, social, legal, and ethical concepts. Agents of change include environmental factors, social pressure to conform, aging, and the forces inside us that made us into whom we are as well as the forces compelling us to be a different type of person.

Sadhana You may have noticed this about yourself: when you are feeling pleasant, you want to expand; when you are fearful, you want to contract. Try this. Sit for a few minutes in front of a plant or tree. Remind yourself that you are inhaling what the tree is exhaling, and exhaling what the tree is inhaling. Even if you are not yet experientially aware of it, establish a psychological connection with the plant. You could repeat this several times a day. After a few days, you will start connecting with everything around you differently. You won’t limit yourself to a tree. Using this simple process, we at the Isha Yoga Center have unleashed an environmental initiative in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, under which twenty-one million trees have been planted since 2004. We spent several years planting trees in people’s minds, which is the most difficult terrain! Now transplanting those onto land happens that much more effortlessly.

Because of the invisibility of any environment during the period of its innovation, man is only consciously aware of the environment that has preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world. The present is always invisible because it’s environmental and saturates the whole field of attention so overwhelmingly; thus everyone is alive in an earlier day.

It is because we feel that we are separate from nature that we also feel it is okay to manipulate it, pollute it, and cause it harm. We project our inner turmoil onto the planet, causing outer turmoil. Nearly all of the disasters of our time—war, famine, oppression, social injustice, environmental pollution, extinction—arise from this delusional belief that we have an existence independent of the world we live in. All of this misery, all of this destruction, all of this pain and suffering, is caused by our failure to realize that there is no separation and that really we are all one.

What happens when those of us living at the pace of fashion try to insert an awareness of these much larger cycles into our everyday activity? In other words, what's it like to envision the ten-thousand-year impact of tossing that plastic bottle into the trash bin, all in the single second it takes to actually toss it? Or the ten-thousand-year history of the fossil fuel being burned to drive to work or iron a shirt? It may be environmentally progressive, but it's not altogether pleasant. Unless we're living in utter harmony with nature, thinking in ten-thousand-year spans is an invitation to a nightmarish obsession. It's a potentially burdensome, even paralyzing, state of mind. Each present action becomes a black hole of possibilities and unintended consequences. We must walk through life as if we had traveled in to the past, aware that any change we make—even moving an ashtray two inches to the left—could ripple through time and alter the course of history. It's less of a Long Now than a Short Forever. This weight on every action—this highly leveraged sense of the moment—hints at another form of present shock that is operating in more ways and places than we may suspect. We'll call this temporal compression overwinding—the effort to squish really big timescales into much smaller or nonexistent ones. It's the effort to make the "now" responsible for the sorts of effects that actually take real time to occur—just like overwinding a watch in the hope that it will gather up more potential energy and run longer than it can.

At birth, they’d been charged by God with the responsibility of growing into total fuckups. Had they chosen this? Was it their fault, as they tumbled out of the womb? Had they aspired, covered in placental blood, to grow into harmers, dark forces, life enders? In that first holy instant of breath/awareness (tiny hands clutching and unclutching), had it been their fondest hope to render (via gun, knife, or brick) some innocent family bereft? No; and yet their crooked destinies had lain dormant within them, seeds awaiting water and light to bring forth the most violent, life-poisoning flowers, said water/light actually being the requisite combination of neurological tendency and environmental activation that would transform them (transform us!) into earth’s offal, murderers, and foul us with the ultimate, unwashable transgression.

We have dangerously warmed our world already, and our governments still refuse to take the actions necessary to halt the trend. There was a time when many had the right to claim ignorance. But for the past three decades, since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was created and climate negotiations began, this refusal to lower emissions has been accompanied with full awareness of the dangers. And this kind of recklessness would have been functionally impossible without institutional racism, even if only latent. It would have been impossible without Orientalism, without all the potent tools on offer that allow the powerful to discount the lives of the less powerful. These tools - of ranking the relative value of humans - are what allow the writing off of entire nations and ancient cultures. And they are what allowed for the digging up of all that carbon to begin with.

I sailed right out through the roof. And hovered above it, looking down. Here was Rogan, checking his neck in the mirror. Here was Keith, squat-thrusting in his underwear. Here was Ned Riley, here was B. Troper, here was Gail Orley, Stefan DeWitt, killers all, all bad, I guess, although, in that instant, I saw it differently. At birth, they’d been charged by God with the responsibility of growing into total fuck-ups. Had they chosen this? Was it their fault, as they tumbled out of the womb? Had they aspired, covered in placental blood, to grow into harmers, dark forces, life-enders? In that first holy instant of breath/awareness (tiny hands clutching and unclutching), had it been their fondest hope to render (via gun, knife, or brick) some innocent family bereft? No; and yet their crooked destinies had lain dormant within them, seeds awaiting water and light to bring forth the most violent, life-poisoning flowers, said water/light actually being the requisite combination of neurological tendency and environmental activation that would transform them (transform us!) into earth’s offal, murderers, and foul us with the ultimate, unwashable transgression.

The authors’ prior experience in clinical research4 had amply convinced us of the possibility of long-term performance enhancement using psychedelic agents in a safe, supportive setting. Though not deliberately sought, there were numerous spontaneous incidents of what appeared to be temporarily enhanced performance during the drug experience itself. These observations led us to postulate the following: Any human function can be performed more effectively. We do not function at our full capacity. Psychedelics appear to temporarily inhibit censors that ordinarily limit what is available to conscious awareness. Participants may, for example, discover a latent ability to form colorful and complex imagery, to recall forgotten experiences of early childhood, or to generate meaningful symbolic presentations. By leading participants to expect enhancement of other types of performance—creative problem solving, learning manual or verbal skills, manipulating logical or mathematical symbols, acquiring sensory or extrasensory perception, memory, and recall—and by providing favorable preparatory and environmental conditions, it may be possible to improve any desired aspect of mental functioning.

It occurs to me that I could learn from this child something about the nature of humanity--and if I accept Harry's pronouncement that I am a born philosopher then this baby could be an ambitious philosophical project! What if I reared it in a cupboard without light? Or in a room full of mirrors? Or Dali paintings? Apparently babies have to learn to smile so what if I never taught him or showed him laughter? No television of course no movies maybe no society either--what if he never saw another human other than me or not even me? What would happen? Would cruelty develop in that miniature universe? Would sarcasm? Would rage? Yes I could really learn something here tho why stop at one child? Could have a collective of children of "family" & alter variables in environment that will govern life of each one to see what's natural what's inevitable what's environmental & what's conditioning. Above all I will strive to raise a being that understands itself. What if I gave child head start by encouraging self-awareness at an unnaturally young age, maybe 3? Maybe earlier? Would need to create optimum conditions for flowering of self-awareness. This child will know a lot of solitude that's for sure.

Almost half a century ago, conservatives blamed a surge in college campus unrest on permissive parenting. My first response (in Chapter 1) was to question the accuracy of that causal link. Another response to their claim, however, might be: “Blamed?!” If there really were a connection, it would constitute a powerful argument in favor of such parenting.4 The political and cultural activism of the 1960s, after all, was defined by efforts to challenge oppressive institutions and restrictive assumptions, to demand equal rights for women and people of color, to oppose war and promote awareness about the environmental costs of economic growth. If a certain approach to parenting really could produce people who devoted themselves to those democratizing struggles, we should be sharing the good news with parents today.

RUSH: Scott in Hampton, Georgia. I'm glad you called, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Hello. It's good to talk to you, Rush. Um, I wanted to make you aware, if you're not already, about an impending environmental disaster. It involves the oceans, and it's being caused by the tendency of the higher-end restaurants to use real sea salt on their tables as seasoning. It's taking too much salt out of the oceans and the result of course is gonna be a decreased salinity of the oceans. That's going to affect the sea life, and I've not heard much about this. RUSH:

Environment? February 06, 2015 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Scott in Hampton, Georgia. I'm glad you called, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Hello. It's good to talk to you, Rush. Um, I wanted to make you aware, if you're not already, about an impending environmental disaster. It involves the oceans, and it's being caused by the tendency of the higher-end restaurants to use real sea salt on their tables as seasoning. It's taking too much salt out of the oceans and the result of course is gonna be a decreased salinity of the oceans. That's going to affect the sea life, and I've not heard much about this. RUSH:

To grow a sanctuary from seedlings takes time. But time has a way of going faster than you realize, and before you're aware of it you'll be rewarded hundredfold for your efforts.

self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of others or by many of the circumstances and environmental influences that limit other people.

Some of the problems that are causing the environmental disasters we are experiencing are easy to fix, while others are more difficult. Ultimately, what humanity needs to accomplish is a dramatic change in our lifestyle. We need to change the way we view the world and the way we interact with it. We must also encourage corporations, governments, and politicians to realize the threat they pose to our environment and change the way they obtain and manage natural resources.

When we do harm to one thing we are essentially harming ourselves. For example when we use poisonous toxins and pesticides to grow our food, we pollute the soil, kill the life of the surrounding ecosystems, decrease the quality of the food supply, which then decreases our health and the level of energy we operate on. When we do this every day on a global scale for several decades we end up with soil infertility, habitat loss, environmental pollution, low quality food, poor health, malnutrition, and a lack of productivity, which is so apparent in today’s society.

The biggest difference between humans is the way that we think. Everyone has a different thought process, but the way we achieve this thought process is the same. We all think the way that we do due to our environmental influences.

possibilities of our nature. Instead of reflecting first, we sometimes rush into thoughtless action. Instead of making a reflective, seriously intended, self-committing choice, we sometimes prefer to follow the line of least resistance and to drift lazily along, long-term consequences be damned. The entire environmental movement is based on these propositions. If it is not constituted by study groups, inquiries, data collection, publications, warnings and alarms, consciousness raising, propaganda, education, and political action campaigns designed, at a minimum, to raise public awareness, what is the environmental movement? If it is not concerned

Due to the dramatic change in the environmental energy of planet Earth over the past few years, it is essential that energy-sensitive individuals gain both a greater awareness of their own personal frequency, and also of their increased tools for navigation. Since the veils are thinner, there is an increase for communication between worlds for those who have crossed over. This also means the astral realms are "busier," especially at the 4D and 5D levels, and this must be considered. —The Keepers, 4.5.2015

After Steve’s death I received letters of condolence from people all over the world. I would like to thank everyone who sent such thoughtful sympathy. Your kind words and support gave me the strength to write this book and so much more. Carolyn Male is one of those dear people who expressed her thoughts and feelings after we lost Steve. It was incredibly touching and special, and I wanted to express my appreciation and gratitude. I’m happy to share it with you. It is with a still-heavy heart that I rise this evening to speak about the life and death of one of the greatest conservationists of our time: Steve Irwin. Many people describe Steve Irwin as a larrikin, inspirational, spontaneous. For me, the best way I can describe Steve Irwin is formidable. He would stand and fight, and was not to be defeated when it came to looking after our environment. When he wanted to get things done--whether that meant his expansion plans for the zoo, providing aid for animals affected by the tsunami and the cyclones, organizing scientific research, or buying land to conserve its environmental and habitat values--he just did it, and woe betide anyone who stood in his way. I am not sure I have ever met anyone else who was so determined to get the conservation message out across the globe, and I believe he achieved his aim. What I admired most about him was that he lived the conservation message every day of his life. Steve’s parents, Bob and Lyn, passed on their love of the Australian bush and their passion for rescuing and rehabilitating wildlife. Steve took their passion and turned it into a worldwide crusade. The founding of Wildlife Warriors Worldwide in 2002 provided Steve and Terri with another vehicle to raise awareness of conservation by allowing individuals to become personally involved in protecting injured, threatened, or endangered wildlife. It also has generated a working fund that helps with the wildlife hospital on the zoo premises and supports work with endangered species in Asia and Africa. Research was always high on Steve’s agenda, and his work has enabled a far greater understanding of crocodile behavior, population, and movement patterns. Working with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and the University of Queensland, Steve was an integral part of the world’s first Crocs in Space research program. His work will live on and inform us for many, many years to come. Our hearts go out to his family and the Australia Zoo family. It must be difficult to work at the zoo every day with his larger-than-life persona still very much evident. Everyone must still be waiting for him to walk through the gate. His presence is everywhere, and I hope it lives on in the hearts and minds of generations of wildlife warriors to come. We have lost a great man in Steve Irwin. It is a great loss to the conservation movement. My heart and the hearts of everyone here goes out to his family. Carolyn Male, Member for Glass House, Queensland, Australia October 11, 2006

Benefits of Going Green The benefits of going green are sometimes not similar to obvious right away. For some people, because of this that going green can be so difficult. They have to see immediate or near immediate results of their green efforts. Unfortunately, some benefits take a while and dedication. Now and dedication can be a good thing about going green in itself. When we become more commited to an environmentally friendly lifestyle we study that lifestyle, the aspects of the life-style that is effective on our behalf and then we study new tips that make the lifestyle much better to create. Other merits of going green can be found especially zones of green lifestyles. Benefits of Going Green at Home Going green at your home is among the few places that green lifestyle benefits are shown quickly or in the next short space of time. The first home benefit that many individuals who go green see, is a drop in utility bills and spending. As people commence to make subtle and full blown changes in the volume of energy they use and the manner they make use of it, the utility bills will drop. This benefit shows itself within the first three billing cycles no matter the effective changes. Spending also reduces. The spending pattern of green lifestyles shows a spending reduction because of switching from disposable items to reusable items, pricey chemical items for DIY natural options and swapping out appliances for higher energy levels effiencent models. Simply not only are the advantages observed in healthier lifestyle options, but on top of that they are seen in healthier financial options. Benefits to Going Green at Work Going green at work is problematic to implement and hard to see immediate results from. However, the avantages of going green in the workplace might be incredibly financially beneficial regarding the business. A clear benefit for businesses going green that is the alleviates clutter and increased organization. By utilizing green techniques in your business such as cloud storage, going paperless and energy usage techniques a business will save many dollars each month. This is a clear benefit, but the additional advantage is increased business. Consumers, businesses and sales professionals love aligning themselves with green businesses. It shows an ecological awareness and connection and it has verified that the green business cares about the approach to life of their total clients. The green business logo and concept means the advantage of a higher customer base and increased sales. Advantages and benefits of Going Green within the Community Community advantages and benefits of going green are the explanation as to why many individuals begin contribution in the green movement. Community efforts do take time and effort to develop. Recycling centers, landscaping endeavors and urban gardening projects take community efforts and dedication. These projects can build wonderful benefits regarding the community. Initially the advantages will show in areas similar to a decrease in waste, increased organic gardening options and recycling endeavors to diminish waste in landfills. Eventually the avantages of going green locally can present a residential district bonding, closer knit communities and environmental benefits which will reach to reduced air pollution. There can also be an increase in local food production and local companies booming which helps the regional economy. There are numerous other benefits of going green. These benefits might be comprehensive and might change the thought of how communities, states and personal lifestyles are changed.

The Environmental Movement’s Retreat from Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization (1970–1998): A First Draft of History by Roy Beck and Leon Kolankiewicz The overwhelmingly non-Hispanic, white leadership of the environmental movement may have felt it was defensible to address population growth as long as the great bulk of this growth came from non-Hispanic whites, which it did during the Baby Boom. But the situation changed dramatically after1972. From that year forward, the fertility of non-Hispanic whites was below the replacement rate, while that of black Americans and Latinos remained well above the replacement rate. To talk of fertility reductions after 1972 was to draw disproportionate attention to nonwhites. Certain minorities and their spokespersons—with long memories of disgraceful treatment by the white majority and acutely aware of their comparative powerlessness in American society—were deeply suspicious of possible hidden agendas in the population stabilization movement. As the Reverend Jesse Jackson told the Rockefeller Commission, “our community is suspect of any programs that would have the effect of either reducing or levelling off our population growth. Virtually all the security we have is in the number of children we produce.” And Manuel Aragon, speaking in Spanish, declared to the Commission: “what we must do is to encourage large Mexican American families so that we will eventually be so numerous that the system will either respond or it will be overwhelmed.” During the twenty-six years after 1972, the non-Hispanic white share of population growth declined significantly from the 1970 era. Thus, by the 1990s, a majority of the nation’s growth stemmed from sources other than non-Hispanic whites (especially Latin American and Asian immigrants and their offspring). Environmentalist leaders—proud and protective of their claim to the moral high ground—may have been reluctant to jeopardize this by venturing into the political minefield of the nation’s volatile racial/ethnic relations through appearing to point fingers at “outsiders,” “others,” or “people of color” as responsible for America’s ongoing problem with population growth.

My argument is obviously anticapitalist, especially concerning technologies that encourage a capitalist perception of time, place, self, and community. It is also environmental and historical: I propose that rerouting and deepening one’s attention to place will likely lead to awareness of one’s participation in history and in a more-than-human community. From either a social or ecological perspective, the ultimate goal of “doing nothing” is to wrest our focus from the attention economy and replant it in the public, physical realm.

In 2000 a group of computer scientists and engineers at Georgia Tech collaborated on a project called the “Aware Home.”4 It was meant to be a “living laboratory” for the study of “ubiquitous computing.” They imagined a “human-home symbiosis” in which many animate and inanimate processes would be captured by an elaborate network of “context aware sensors” embedded in the house and by wearable computers worn by the home’s occupants. The design called for an “automated wireless collaboration” between the platform that hosted personal information from the occupants’ wearables and a second one that hosted the environmental information from the sensors.

16.​Hochschild presents Mike and Donny’s argument about the I-10 bridge as dialogue—how does this capture the Great Paradox? If you could enter the conversation, what would you say to Mike and/or Donny? (p. 185) 17.​What role does memory play in Hochschild’s story of the people she meets with regard to the environmental disasters, the development of industry, and the way things used to be? Looking at Hochschild’s visit with Mayor Hardey, how do industry and local government allow the potential disaster and pollution to re-occur in the name of business? What is it about the residents’ deep story that allows them to be susceptible to “structural amnesia”? (pp. 51, 90, 198) 18.​How does Hochschild explain Tea Party members’ identification with Trump and the 1 percent? After reading Strangers in Their Own Land, are there ideas or stories that you can draw from the book that help you understand Trump’s victory? (p. 217) 19.​What does Hochschild mean by the “Northern strategy”—and how does it fit into the historical narrative she provides? She suggests that the Southern legacy of secession has been applied to social class: it’s not that the South is seceding from the North but that the rich are seceding from the poor. What do you make of this point? (p. 220) 20.​By the end of the book, Hochschild expresses admiration for her new Tea Party friends, mentioning their capacity for loyalty, sacrifice, and endurance. Are there other notable traits you became aware of while reading the book? (p. 234) 21.​Many of the people Hochschild meets are worried about jobs and blame government regulations for getting in the way of jobs. Yet the petrochemical companies in Louisiana are for the most part owned by foreign companies, so the money leaves the state and the jobs are often held by temporary workers from the Philippines or Mexico. How do you explain this disconnect? 22.​Did the book make you feel hopeful about climbing the empathy wall and the possibility of bridging the political divide with people in your own community?

A WHILE BACK, a game designer friend of mine named Phil Fish made a plea on Twitter, “Hey bloggers, no more ‘blank rebuilt in Minecraft’ posts, please. We get it. You can make things in Minecraft. Thanks.” Fish was referring to the popular online game Minecraft, in which players hunt for resources that are used to construct models and apparatuses with the game’s characteristic, cubical visual style. The Internet being what it is, given such tools extreme fans do insane things, like elaborately reconstructing the city King’s Landing from Game of Thrones using nothing but this square matter mined from Minecraft. Seeing Fish’s tweet, an enterprising ironoiac recreated the form of the embedded tweet itself inside Minecraft, a fact that the tech blog VentureBeat then dutifully blogged about, thus completing not one but two cycles of an ironoia self-treatment the environmental philosopher Timothy Morton names “anything you can do I can do meta.”14 In a futile attempt to prevent further metastasis, the blogger concluded his post with the line, “Yes, we’re fully aware of the irony of this post.”15 But rather than satisfying anyone, such a provocation only further irritated the ironoiac itch. Fish tweeted a link to the blog post covering the Minecraft construction of a model of Fish’s tweet protesting blog posts about Minecraft constructions, which one of his followers one-upped by observing the fact that Fish had in fact “tweeted about somebody blogging about somebody making [his] tweet about Minecraft in Minecraft.” Another chimed in, “How long ’til someone recreates that blog post in Minecraft?” Each step represents an attempt to overcome the absurdity of the last by fixing it in a new voice, even though each ironic gesture was evanescent, quickly replaced by yet another layer of buffer from yet another desperate ironoiac. Why do we do it, then? Today, satisfaction is more elusive than ever. In part, the precarity of life after the 2008 global financial collapse and the Great Recession that followed it (and whose effects still linger) makes every transaction with the world feel suspect and risky. We fear that things might turn on us, because we have good evidence that they can, and do. But

What I think I am saying is that phenomenal consciousness - the raw feel of experience - is invisible to conventional scientific scrutiny and will forever remain so. It is, by definition, subjective - where as science, by definition, adopts an objective stance. You can't be in two places at once. You either experience consciousness "from the inside" ([...]) or you view it "from the outside" ([...]). Science can study the neural activity, the bodily states, the environmental conditions, and the outward behaviours - including verbal behaviours that stand for different states of awareness ([...]), but the quality - the feel - of our experiences remains forever private and therefore out of bounds of scientific analysis. I can't see a way round this. Privateness is a fundamental constituent of consciousness.

We act individually to collectively clean our communities.

Meyer is a vegetarian who practices yoga, and in 2005 he cowrote Earth to America, a TBS special that utilized comedy as a vehicle for raising awareness about global warming and related environmental issues.

During one of the CGI panel discussions, I asked Senator Clinton about implementing ACIA recommendations, and her answer assured me that she was aware of the assessment and understood the science. And during various CGI events, I also met fellow Sophie Prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya, who sadly has since passed away; environmental scientist Lester R. Brown; media mogul Ted Turner; and actor Brad Pitt. At the closing dinner, guests were even serenaded by the one and only Tony Bennett. Pretty big deal for an Inuk girl from the far reaches of the Arctic.

Dr. Goodall: I am really grateful for the support of people. This inspires me to continue with my work. I believe that with like-minded people working together, the Earth will be restored to its original state of purity and vitality. Master Cheng Yen: We really ought to have confidence in human beings. Although humans have damaged the environment, we must be confident that humans can also save the Earth. I hope people with the same vision can join together to raise the awareness of environmental protection and save the Earth.

As the Divine within us tunes into the Divine the world over, it makes it impossible for us to exploit it continuously. But only to nurture, sustain and love it.

For me, that connection was revealed in the 1960s, which marked the birth of consciousness. Our minds expanded on a mass scale like never before. Civil rights for minorities, women’s rights, gay rights; a politically active youth movement; the belief that questioning your government was a patriotic responsibility; environmental awareness; expansion of Eastern thinking; the end of colonialism; psychoactive substances; and of course, the Renaissance in all the Arts. That consciousness was founded on a few basic spiritual principles. The first was our fundamental understanding of our relationship to the Earth, and the vast gap between Western and Semitic religious belief, on one side, and American Indian, African, and Asian belief, on the other. Genesis 1:28 says, “And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion.’” What “God” meant by “subdue” and “have dominion” can (and should) be debated, but Western religion took it to suggest man’s superiority over the Earth. Man the conqueror. The other tradition—American Indians, Africans, Asians—did not believe that humans were superior to the Earth; rather, they believed that they were meant to live in harmony with it. This difference affected how we viewed our most essential relationship and contributed to a fundamental sense of alienation. That alienation was the first component of our spiritual bankruptcy. That was the theme explored more deeply on Revolution, but it would overlap with this one.

All we need is to take an climate action now! Environment destruction of our common home increases every day. We need a better rain distribution on Earth, ecological awareness of minners, farmers and industry for the sustainable exploration of our natural resources.

Write down five things that motivate you to take action. Perhaps it’s reading a self-improvement book. Maybe it’s listening to a certain type of music. Or you might feel especially motivated when you spend time with like-minded people. Next, write down five things that cause your motivation to evaporate. This might include eating sugary foods, catering to your perfectionist tendencies, or spending time with pessimistic people. This exercise will reveal environmental influences on your motivation. Once you’re aware of them, you can make sensible adjustments that better serve your longer term goals.

The personal power that comes from principle-centered living is the power of a self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of others or by many of the circumstances and environmental influences that limit other people.

Physical effects, both long and short term, include: Racing heart, headache, nausea, muscle tension, fatigue, dry mouth, dizzy feelings, increase in breathing rate, aching muscles, trembling and twitching, sweating, disturbed digestion, immune system suppression and memory issues. Your body was designed to endure brief moments of acute stress, but chronic stress (stress that is ongoing) can start to cause chronic health conditions, like cardiovascular disease, insomnia, hormonal dysregulation and so on. If the ordinary physical experience of stress is prolonged, the physical effects can have consequences in the rest of your life… Mental and psychological effects include: Exhaustion and fatigue, feeling on edge, nervousness, irritability, inability to concentrate, lack of motivation, changes to libido and appetite, nightmares, depression, feeling out of control, apathy and so on. Stress can reinforce negative thinking patterns and harmful self-talk, lower our confidence, and kill our motivation. More alarming than this, overthinking can completely warp your perception of events in time, shaping your personality in ways that mean you are more risk averse, more negatively focused and less resilient. When you’re constantly tuned into Stress FM you are not actually consciously aware and available in the present moment to experience life as it is. You miss out on countless potential feelings of joy, gratitude, connection and creativity because of your relentless focus on what could go wrong, or what has gone wrong. This means you’re less likely to recognize creative solutions to problems, see new opportunities and capitalize on them, or truly appreciate all the things that are going right for you. If you are constantly in a low-level state of fear and worry, every new encounter is going to be interpreted through that filter, and interpreted not for what it is, but for what you’re worried it could be.  Broader social and environmental effects include: Damage to close relationships, poor performance at work, impatience and irritability with others, retreating socially, and engaging in addictive or harmful behaviors. A person who is constantly stressed and anxious starts to lose all meaning and joy in life, stops making plans, cannot act with charity or compassion to others, and loses their passion for life. There is very little spontaneity, humor or irreverence when someone’s mind is too busy catastrophizing, right? As you can imagine, the physical, mental and environmental aspects all interact to create one, unified experience of overthinking and anxiety. For example, if you overthink consistently, your body will be flooded with cortisol and other stress hormones. This can leave you on edge, and in fact cause you to overthink even more, adding to the stress, changing the way you feel about yourself and your life. You might then make bad choices for yourself (staying up late, eating bad food, shutting people out) which reinforce the stress cycle you’re in. You may perform worse at work, procrastinating and inevitably giving yourself more to worry about, and so on…

The place of women in society has also degraded, and ecofeminist theories have linked the status of women in society with environmental awareness and the nature of our cultural relationship with the Earth. When the planet is honored and respected, women are similarly treated; when the land is seen simply as a resource from which to profit, women’s lives and bodies experience the same treatment. Whether literal or metaphorical, there is a connection between women and the land, and the degree to which culture at large is in balance with one is mirrored by its relationship with the other. It makes sense that we who are seeking Sovereignty do so by taking an accounting both of our inner and outer landscapes—the realms over which we preside.

The trouble with test-based accountability is that it imposes serious consequences on children, educators, and schools on the basis of scores that may reflect measurement error, statistical error, random variation, or a host of environmental factors or student attributes. None of us would want to be evaluated - with our reputation and livelihood on the line - solely on the basis of an instrument that is prone to error and ambiguity. The tests now in use are not adequate by themselves to the task of gauging the quality of schools or teachers ... they must be used with awareness of their limitations and variability. They were not designed to capture the most important dimensions of education, for which we do not have measures.

One way to avoid the design problems encountered by the transcendental meditation researchers would be to keep one of the variables fixed. This could be either the number of meditators or the “target” of consciousness-induced order. Beyond this, as philosopher Evan Fales and sociologist Barry Markovsky of the University of Iowa suggested after reviewing the Maharishi effect, “Presumably, if the material world can be influenced in purposive ways by collective meditation, inanimate detectors could be constructed and placed at varying distances from the collective meditators.”6 This is essentially the approach that we took, although our motivations were based upon a logical extension of laboratory research on mind-matter interactions using random-number generators, and not by the claims of the transcendental meditators. Properties of Consciousness Whatever else consciousness may be, let us suppose that it also has the following properties, derived from a combination of Western and Eastern philosophies.7 The first property is that consciousness extends beyond the individual and has quantum field–like properties, in that it affects the probabilities of events. Second, consciousness injects order into systems in proportion to the “strength” of consciousness present. This is a refinement of quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger’s observation about one of the most remarkable properties of life, namely, an “organism’s astonishing gift … of ‘drinking orderliness’ from a suitable environment.”8 Third, the strength of consciousness in an individual fluctuates from moment to moment, and is regulated by focus of attention. Some states of consciousness have higher focus than others. We propose that ordinary awareness has a fairly low focus of attention compared to peak states, mystical states, and other nonordinary states.9 Fourth, a group of individuals can be said to have “group consciousness.” Group consciousness strengthens when the group’s attention is focused on a common object or event, and this creates coherence among the group. If the group’s attention is scattered, then the group’s mental coherence is also scattered. Fifth, when individuals in a group are all attending to different things, then the group consciousness and group mental coherence is effectively zero, producing what amounts to background noise. We assume that the maximum degree of group coherence is related in some complicated way to the total number of individuals present in the group, the strength of their common focus of attention, and other psychological, physiological, and environmental factors. Sixth, physical systems of all kinds respond to a consciousness field by becoming more ordered. The stronger or more coherent a consciousness field, the more the order will be evident. Inanimate objects (like rocks) will respond to order induced by consciousness as well as animate ones (like people, or tossed dice), but it is only in the more labile systems that we have the tools to readily detect these changes in order. In sum, when a group is actively focused on a common object, the “group mind” momentarily has the “power to organize,” as Carl Jung put it.10 This leads us to a very simple idea: as the mind moves, so moves matter.

One interviewee spoke of the resistance of another major magazine, National Geographic, to publishing his story. From 1971 until 1993, John Francis walked across the United States to raise environmental awareness. For seventeen of these years he did it without talking. Francis, a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) goodwill ambassador, with a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and one of the architects of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, was initially approached by a member of the National Geographic staff to have his story featured in their magazine. In his words, the board decided they would not let a “crazy black person” write a story for National Geographic.17 While his story was eventually published in an abbreviated fashion in the “Almanac” section at the back of the magazine, he also received an apology from another National Geographic fellow for the board’s behavior. For John Francis, the underlying message was not that he was “crazy,” but that he was black.

Policymakers are becoming aware that eliminating poverty and protecting our common environment are inextricably interlinked, because the world’s poorest people are both victims and agents of environmental degradation. The poorest people are often forced to meet short-term survival needs at the cost of long-term sustainability. Desperate for croplands to feed their families, and for fuel, many clear forests or cultivate steep hillsides, where soil is rapidly eroded. Others migrate to the crowded shantytowns that surround most major cities in the developing world.

Policymakers are becoming aware that eliminating poverty and protecting our common environment are inextricably interlinked, because the world’s poorest people are both victims and agents of environmental degradation. The poorest people are often forced to meet short-term survival needs at the cost of long-term sustainability. Desperate for croplands to feed their families, and for fuel, many clear forests or cultivate steep hillsides, where soil is rapidly eroded. Others migrate to the crowded shantytowns that surround most major cities in the developing world.

Policymakers are becoming aware that eliminating poverty and protecting our common environment are inextricably interlinked, because the world’s poorest people are both victims and agents of environmental degradation. The poorest people are often forced to meet short-term survival needs at the cost of long-term sustainability. Desperate for croplands to feed their families, and for fuel, many clear forests or cultivate steep hillsides, where soil is rapidly eroded. Others migrate to the crowded shantytowns that surround most major cities in the developing world.

I believe in travel. I believe that by disorienting us, it rearranges us. Travel builds character and ignites imagination, nurtures independence and humility, catalyzes curiosity and self-examination. It can be a bulwark against stagnation, and a call to action. It widens our worldview and brings us face-to-face with our privilege, as it forces us to reassess entrenched beliefs and long-held concepts. Of course, travel is no magical elixir. I've stopped believing it's 'fatal to prejudice,' as Mark Twain famously declared (if only it were that simple), but I do hold that it's a solid start toward upending our biases and assumptions, because it compels us to see beyond the abstractions of a foreign land to its humanity. But travel has a shadow side, too: there's the environmental impact of flying and cruising, the crowding of our planet's most wondrous places, the littering of sacred sites, the pricing-out of locals. And it has dreadful roots (colonialism, capitalism) and gruesome side effects (exploitation, exoticism, saviorism). I wrestle with this duality. How do I reconcile the damage travel does with the awareness that it profoundly enriches my life; that it is not only my livelihood but also, at time, my sanity? It's another area in which I get hopelessly lost. And while I may never navigate this ethical tangle, I recognize that travel itself is what helps me make sense of - or at least pay more attention to - a world both exquisite and unbearably cruel.

THERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND. YES, IT’S TRUE THAT WE HAVE BEEN IN CONTACT WITH YOUR GOVERNMENT AND HEADS OF POWER. IT IS ALSO TRUE THAT AGREEMENTS HAVE BEEN MADE AND KEPT SECRET FROM YOUR PEOPLE. IT IS ALSO TRUE THAT IN THE PAST SOME OF YOUR PEOPLE HAVE LOST THEIR LIVES OR HAVE BEEN BADLY HURT TO PROTECT THIS SECRET. OUR HANDS HAD NO PART IN THIS. WE CONTACTED YOUR LEADERS BECAUSE YOUR PLANET IS IN GRAVE TROUBLE. YOUR LEADERS SAID THE VAST MAJORITY OF YOUR POPULATION WASN’T READY FOR ANYTHING LIKE US YET, SO WE MADE TIME AGREEMENTS WITH YOUR LEADERS AS TO WHEN YOUR PEOPLE WOULD BE MADE AWARE OF OUR PRESENCE. THIS PART OF THE AGREEMENT HAS NOT AT ALL BEEN KEPT. IT WAS ALSO AGREED THAT IN THE MEANTIME STEPS WOULD BE TAKEN TO CORRECT THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITION OF YOUR PLANET WITH OUR ADVICE AND TECHOLOGY. WE SAY ‘ADVICE’ BECAUSE WE RESPECT THE FACT THAT THIS IS YOUR PLANET, NOT OURS. THEY ALSO BROKE THIS AGREEMENT.

Domestic creatures don’t need to live by their wits. It behooves them to be accepting of their lot, not uppity. Cows and goats don’t seem very alert to their surroundings; they don’t have to be. And neither do the people who keep them. Archaeologist Colin Groves writes, “Humans have undergone a reduction in environmental awareness in parallel to domestic species and for exactly the same reason.” He explains that domestication is a kind of partnership in which “each partner is, to a degree, sheltered by its association with the other.” Groves says security has cost us a certain dulling of senses, explaining that brain changes have caused in humans “the decline of environmental appreciation.

Soil, The Sonnet My skin is the color of soil, My covers are the color of soil. My heart is the color of soil, My blood is the color of soil. Species that forgets the soil, Is a lifeform abandoned by nature. Species that values sales over soil, Will soon be vaporized or drowned by nature. If we have no place for soil in our heart, How can we expect the soil to replenish us! If we have no place for nature in our heart, How can we expect nature to have a place for us! Only soil is real, all else is delusion. Advancement that has no regard for the soil, is but aneurysm destined for degeneration.

Whether in aviation, mountain climbing or other high-risk scenarios, several factors can predispose individuals to lose situational awareness. Broadly, these factors are environmental, psychological and physiological.

people became not just more cost conscious, but also more environmentally aware, health minded, and ethically driven.

the phases, we will be naturally healthy. Good health comes from taking in fresh environmental Qi and good food, dwelling in mental tranquillity, and doing meaningful movements, expressing appropriate emotions, and cultivating spiritual awareness.

Loving the Earth with a fierce devotion can mean that we view the damage being done to nature as attacks on our own family and kinship group. The despair and rage we feel as witnesses to terracide, animal exploitation and the everyday callous disregard for the environment can be channelled into creating awareness, resistance efforts, the earth rights movement, and by rejecting the numbing and destructive values of Empire. By opening our hearts to the Earth in our thoughts, words, actions and cultural life we will find sacred purpose in the co-creation of an earth-honoring society. Our re-enchantment with the natural world is essential for devoting ourselves to eco-activism, environmental healing, earth restoration and rewilding, and the future rests with us!

If we first purify our souls, we desire to dwell in clean surroundings.

The root and bark of life experiences forges our leafy character. We become a manifestation of the stalk of character that we forged while operating in the piney landscape of our environmental demands. What we seriously attend to, how we go about play, and whom we choose as friends and enemies, and other lushes choices that we make in conducting our lives reveals the stem of our character. The most telling of all sylvan experiences are naturally associated with difficult adventures. Conflict brings out budding character traits, its blooming foliage reveals qualities we previously did not know about ourselves. The more challenging experiences we expose ourselves to in life, the more we understand our quintessence, the core of our unique blend of character traits.

Some of us fixate on physical improvement and a so-called healthy lifestyle because eating a restrictive diet and maintaining a rigid exercise regimen are easier than addressing our anxieties and shortcomings or admitting our soul purpose continues to elude us. We hunger for control, and so we manifest that control. I cannot talk about psychics without talking about orthorexia. From the Greek ortho, which means “correct,” and orexia, which means “appetite,” orthorexia is the concept of a “correct diet” or of “perfect eating.” (Anorexia, also from the Greek, translates as “without appetite.”) Orthorexia is not a clinical diagnosis and is not currently recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, but the National Eating Disorders Association defines it as “an obsession with proper or ‘healthful’ eating” and elaborates that “while being aware of and concerned with the nutritional quality of the food you eat isn’t a problem in and of itself, people with orthorexia become so fixated on so-called ‘healthy eating’ that they actually damage their own well-being.” Paging irony! My hyperawareness of nutritional health, physical well-being, and environmental protection (because, no, evidently, I could not pick just one obsession) began with wanting to lessen my carbon footprint by going vegetarian. It seemed innocuous at the time. For

We must engage our sense of self to sensibly deal with environmental stresses in the ever-changing world. Without a strong sense of self and an equally robust ego, I might have expired long ago. Because I possess a brain that is capable of self-recognition and self-regulation, I reserve the opportunity to edit personal behavior. If I can exercise the necessary self-discipline, I can reposition an individualistic and egotistical sense of self-identity. A sense of self can lock us into self-destructive behavioral patterns. If we exhibit an inflexible sense of self, we are predisposed to act in a rigidly prescribed manner. Some of our personal decisions might not support our long-term best interest. The Neanderthals failed to adapt to environmental changes and paid the ultimate price with extermination of their species. I too face the challenge of either adapting to environmental stresses or expiring. My prior characterization of self-identity did not serve me well since it brought me to the brink of self-immolation. Accordingly, I must revise whom I think I am in order to adapt to the challenges of a rapidly changing environment by assessing who I was, determining who I want to become, and developing a disciplined approach to make the transition from what I was to who I seek to become.

Briefly, these imaging studies have shown that there is no single attention center in the brain. Rather, there are multiple distributed systems, including those in the prefrontal cortex (involved in task-related memory and planning), parietal cortex (bodily and environmental awareness), and anterior cingulate (motivation). Also activated are the underlying cerebellum and basal ganglia (habit formation and coordination of movement). That’s all very nice, but it doesn’t really tell us much about how attention works (that’s the trouble with the neural-correlates approach). Fortunately some brain imaging studies have gone beyond this, to reveal some truly interesting things about attention.

We need more environmental awareness and sustainability, sustainable living and sustainable working, in all fields or areas. We need to create a world of understanding, acceptance, respect, tolerance, compassion and consciousness.

To do this, we follow five “R’s”—recognize, respect, regulate, reshape, re-story. Awareness allows us to recognize the autonomic state and accurately name it. We then respect the ways the state has activated in service of survival remembering that the nervous system is always acting to keep us safe. Putting the word “adaptive” before the words “survival response” reminds us that no matter how irrational our behavior in the moment may seem or how crazy our story may feel, a familiar cue of danger has come to life and our nervous system has enacted an old pattern of protection. Next, we bring a bit of ventral regulation and then begin to explore ways to reshape the pattern. Finally, we listen to the new story that is emerging. Through understanding how the autonomic nervous system takes in embodied, environmental, and relational experiences, we become active operators of our systems and authors of our own autonomic stories. Understanding how to find the way back to a ventral state is key to living a balanced life. When we begin to find a foothold in regulation, we can look at any problem with the emergent properties that accompany a ventral state—curiosity, creativity, and the ability to see options and explore possibilities. From this place, we have the autonomic resources to see our experience in a new way, and we often find a path to resolution in a way we never thought possible. A polyvagal perspective on life is not only a theory but a way of being in the world that is experienced from the inside out. Looking through the lens of the nervous system and listening to our autonomic stories, we shape our systems toward ventral regulation, and engage with our systems in new ways. When daily life is lived from a polyvagal perspective, we make a commitment to being aware of our autonomic experiences and becoming a regulated and regulating presence not only for ourselves but also for our partners, family members, friends, colleagues, and the people we naturally come into connection with during a day.