From this ol'timer's point of view all of these issues, peak oil-climate change-left/right politics-species extinction-deforestation-bee hive collapse [tomorrow's blog]-pollution of all sorts-racism-even war, are symptoms not the disease. Like a fever or cold sores treating the symptoms may or may not make the patient feel more comfortable in the short term but they do nothing to touch the underlying disease pathology and often do damage in that once the symptoms decline or disappear the patient moves on though the disease isn't cured or even changed. Further symptoms are often the outward sign of a bio-unit's inner defenses at work fighting the disease and a successful campaign to defeat the symptoms can thwart the body's defenses from doing their job. Fever is a body's attempt to kill off viruses and bacteria who most often only thrive in a limited temprature range. Global warming feedbacks are simply Gaia's method of doing the same.
Continueing with the health metaphor, a virus may cause a cold sore but what causes the virus to multiply and become a danger? Maybe a depressed immune system, but what causes that? Maybe stress, maybe some other systemic malfunction, or maybe? The same is true for peak oil, what causes it? Overconsumption-overpopulation-greed-shortsightedness-all of them, but what causes them?
'Ask every question-question every answer' is my thesis. We have mydrid individual and planetary problems that can only be addressed by questioning their causes and their causes... until we reach a meta level of primary causation. Of course you'll already know from my articles and blog posts that my analysis so far has led me to the conclusion that a worldview of ourselves as seperate from our environment, as seperate individuals not part of a indivisable whole is the disease.
That first division, from one into two, begins the cascade of causes and effects that ends with us seeing a cold as seperate from the sneezer, left seperate from right, and the environment seperate from us. We are the world, as the song said, and the world is us.
