permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 8:54 PM Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Mother Pelican ~ A Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability| Interlude 4 ~
> Radical Self Accountability: An Antidote to Greenwashing  Cara Judea
> Alhadeff  May 2022
> http://www.pelicanweb.org/solisustv18n05page2.html
>
> Earthshaking
> The best thing I have read in years.
>



*”The future enters into us in this way in order to transform itself in us
long before it happens.” — Rainer Maria Rilke For my Mother Pelican monthly
essays, I have recently been writing about digital-technology addiction. I
interrupted those investigations with a few essays on Martin Luther King
Jr. (which I will continue next month), and now I am interrupting that
exploration with this interlude on greenwashing for the month May. Before
we continue our discussion from last month further exploring interspecies
communication/collaboration—how tree-knowledge as tree-living can be
nourished through prayer-as-action—I must address, yet again, the haunting
ubiquity of greenwashing: this time in the context of the month of May.
Across time and culture, May symbolizes transition. Maius, the Greek
Goddess of Growth represents the personification of transmutation. Maia
became an agricultural deity. Rather than thriving in the fertility of
Maia/Maius (transformation), corporate capitalism and it's offspring,
consumer complicity are enraptured by the Hindu version of måyå
(artifice).[1]
<http://www.pelicanweb.org/solisustv18n05page2.html#backtoref01> Måyå
represents “pernicious power and knowledge” that “rob[s] a person of
liberating insight (jnana)( Abington Dictionary of Living Traditions, 1981,
469). Convenience-culture compliants are much more comfortable with the
known, habits maintained through socially constructed comfort and
desire.[2] <http://www.pelicanweb.org/solisustv18n05page2.html#backtoref02>
It behooves fearless cultural workers to reframe the concept of
growth—understanding/embodying growth as alchemy (Maius/Maia) rather than
our cultural epidemic that positions growth as acquisition
<http://www.cara.zazudreams.com/thought/#articles>[3]
<http://www.pelicanweb.org/solisustv18n05page2.html#backtoref03> (måyå).
This paradigm shift requires radical self accountability. We industrialized
humans can re-ignite our spiritual intelligence: our radical (Latin, radix,
radic for “root”) inherent relationship to deep time, land, water, spirit,
and one another embedded in daily life. Because I am focusing on the
imperative of radical care and radical investigation linked to radical
action, this month's installment is dedicated to: Rachel Carson, born May
27, 1907 and Isidore the Farm Labourer of Madrid (Isidro de Merlo y
Quintana) (the patron saint of farmers, peasants, day laborers, brick
layers, domesticated animals, and impovrished peoples and agriculture in
general), died May 15, 1130 The great feast celebrating Isidore and his
love for all animals (including people) is held on May 15th. In order to
illustrate the distinction between Maia/Maius as co-evolution through
alchemy (growth through transformation), a collaborative interspecies
intelligence, <http://www.pelicanweb.org/solisustv18n04page2.html> and måyå
as trickery (economic growth through greenwashing and capitalist
acquisition) this month's installment is also dedicated to unraveling
various manifestations of måyå—the intricacies of too frequently illusory
humanitarian and ecological justice—"care" that may actually divert us from
addressing why care is needed in the first place. Måyå, conditioned by
human ignorance, is both cause and effect. Radical diversion refers to the
systematic erasure of the underlying roots of our entangled crises.*
-- 
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com