New Routes
Tina Sapphire Berry
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Today, in my current state of now, I rediscovered an essay I wrote almost exactly a year ago as measured by 21st century Americans. The essay, “My Vision for the Future,” I wrote as part of my capstone class at Penn State University just before graduating as an Environmental Economist. After graduation, I left Woodland Beach, Delaware with my Cultural REcyclists tribe to cycle across America exploring, learning, and sharing joy, sustainability, and love. Six months, 1,000,000 smiles, and dozens of states later I find myself back in West Chester inside my parent’s basement preparing to fly out to Alaska, a land of arctic abundance, I can’t wait to explore. Here I shall share my energy educating groups visiting Kenai Fjords National Park about the invasive, and native species now living in the area. I intend to see the destruction of the Alberta tar sands, cycle back to San Francisco, and visit Costa Rica by the end of this year. Now, that I have set my context a bit, please enjoy my recently edited and expanded version of “My Vision for the Future,” renamed “New Routes.”
During my limited years on spent within this body and personality, I uncovered constant hypocrisies, manufactured consumption conditioning, and institutionalized hatred for the rest of our species of Homo Sapiens or "wise men." Modern humans seem to act far from wise, especially the men perpetuating a dominating capitalist society rooted by institutionalized patriarchal hierarchy thriving inside a system of debt, militarization, and fear. Would wise men allow the balance of interdependently connected systems, relationships, and resources, that miraculously breathe life into these wise men, decompose by their own hand causing their own extinction?
Humans around the world increasingly wake up to a reality where all humans have more similarities than differences. Technology holds much promise for a better future even considering its multitude of side effects. By overcoming our dominating belief that competition for resources, money, relationships, and life guide the path we must walk in this life, we could thrive holding each other together with a global network of mutual aid. We can strengthen our local and global communities, exercise our empathy muscles, and thrive as a decentralized network rooted in solidarity striving to express the inner joy of all beings.
I studied environmental economic policy at Penn State University in University Park, PA. It was my goal to aid in reconfiguring our market economy to value the intrinsic qualities of life over profits. Before any practice becomes monetarily profitable, it must first be rooted within sustainability rather than infinite commoditization of finite resources, the enslavement of wage labor, and imperialistic occupation of the wild, fellow humans cultures, and our minds currently exemplified by the United States of America. I advocate for the triple bottom line of social justice & equality, environmental responsibility, and economic viability during our transition to ideally a fully gift based “economy”.
We must learn to accept that infinite economic growth translates to infinite consumption and extraction that is impossible within a finite system. I will contribute to the incitement of: the adaptation of our American consumer culture, the transition our global and domestic institutions, and the need for mutual aid amongst all beings before true justice and freedom among humans can be realized.
Having extended my energies within the human rights, labor, peace and justice, climate, and environmental movements, I envision more integration between these movements into a mass movement over the coming decade striving for a globally aware network of local communities, a healthy built as well as natural environment, and an outpouring of joy for the abundant wonders understood or incomprehensible that give our eternal, collective, and divine souls the gift of life on Earth.
The route to how I will collaborate with others to accomplish these goals is unclear. However, for now, I look forward to turning the Cultural REcyclists into an official non-profit, acquiring a bus for the RIDE NOW (Reach Inside Discover Everything Nomadic Outreach Wonders) project, and learning more skills. Over the past year, the Cultural REcyclists took a semi-spontaneous route across the country exploring, learning, and sharing transitions towards joy and sustainability. Some REcyclists continue to cycle, currently in New Mexico, while others take a different route working on their own projects.
The time for mere words and discussion over the woes of the world must transition into a time of action. We have the knowledge. We have the capacity. We have the motivation. All we need is to stop the bickering, rise above our conditioned personal self-interests, and join in solidarity to jump-start simultaneous radical, or root, action at all levels of society! Just as ions or molecules or atoms or the roots of matter are considered radicals before creating something new during a chemical reaction, many people in history have stood out as radicals before creating a new way of living, or thinking, or anything that we tend to take for granted today.
We live in a time of extremism. Extremes in wealth disruption, extremes in quality of life, extremes in consumption, extremes in climate changes, extremes in violence, and many other extremes have come to define recent history. We must rise up to be radicals, pulling out the roots of these problems instead merely cutting back the symptoms allowing these problems to emerge again in a few seasons later. We need to come together as individuals (atoms and ions) or as families, collectives, grassroots organizations, and communities (molecules) to create the world we want to live in.
I don't have all the answers or modes of action that can successfully accomplish these goals, but I am ready, full of peace and joy, to learn, listen, and collaborate in order to make this vision a reality now. Maybe this could lead to the break down of socialized borders set by states, nations, religion, racism, sexism, economics, formal education, and other institutions reinforcing human differences paired with a fear of those differences. Maybe this could lead to a respect for all fellow humans, or all fellow sentient beings, or all fellow forms of energy. Whatever world we choose to create, just remember at our base level each one of us consists of a decentralized network of communities containing 50 trillion self-sustaining cells composed of radicals.
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