Revolutionary Earth Manifesto Launched at www.EarthManifesto.com .
HANNIBAL , MO. --- June 1, 2010
The wide-ranging understandings of a revolutionary Earth Manifesto have been launched into the public arena. This compendium of ideas, insights, and progressive perspectives could make a far-reaching and salubrious impact on the policies and actions of the United States and the world.
Perilous times require Big Ideas and higher purposes and broader perspectives and more responsible actions. Earth Manifesto essays grapple with the most important issues that face our nation today. They provide clearly articulated farsighted understandings and Big Picture worldviews. They coherently and creatively combine economics and politics with philosophy and psychology, spiritual illumination, progressive thinking and common sense to providentially propose positive ways forward.
The Earth Manifesto contains highly specific plans for improving our country and the world by making our communities healthier, our economy more stable and sound, our societies saner, and our actions more likely sustainable. They also propose good ways that we can sensibly protect the environment and the resources that support us. These ideas are contained in Part Four; see Three Bills of Right: A Triumvirate of Responsible Actions for the Greater Good; and One Dozen Big Initiatives to Positively Transform Our Societies; and the Progressive Agenda for a More Sane Humanity.
Part One of the manifesto contains the most recently written observations and ideas. These Big Picture perspectives involve a wide variety of topics, including a biography of Mark Twain, and they simultaneously identify the most significant challenges facing humanity, and suggest achievable solutions to these problems. These solutions transcend partisanship and ideology, and could thus override the rancorous political paralysis that grips our nation. The reasonable force of these ideas may well streak into human awareness with the potent power of a visionary revelation, like a shooting star speeding into Earth's atmosphere and illuminating a fiery trail of essential understandings.
The Earth Manifesto.com website has been published online for many years. It evolves every month. The fifteen essays in Part One include the following:
(1) Gaia's Geological Perspective: Episodes Since Genesis.
(2) A Quite Curious and Illuminating Biography of Mark Twain.
(3) A Feminine Vision of a Better World.
(4) The Common Good, Properly Understood.
(5) Existence, Economics, and Ecological Intelligence.
(6) Common Sense vs. Political Realities – An Anatomy of Dysfunctionality.
(7) Profound Psychological Perspectives and Prescriptions for Trying Times.
(8) Revelations of a Modern Prophet.
(9) Inspiration, Imagination, and the Deep Well of Human Impulses.
(10) Comprehensive Global Perspective – An Illuminating Worldview.
(11) A Peaceable Proposition – The Golden Rule Greening of U.S. Foreign Policy.
(12) An Open Letter to Barack Obama.
(13) A Second Open Letter to President Obama.
(14) A Real Memo to Rachel Maddow.
(15) An Interlude of Ridicule for the Rapture.
The Comprehensive Global Perspective is the magnum opus of the Earth Manifesto. It is a manuscript that represents one of the most expansive and widely inclusive collections of understandings ever compiled. It includes perspective and analysis and a synthesis of ideas from many authors, philosophers, visionaries, scientists, luminaries, politicians, spiritual leaders, and historians. It consists of 121 Chapters that have been designed to help people make sense of the biggest issues facing the human race. Some chapter titles are: “The Astonishing Parable of Nauru”; “Morality and Right Action”; “Searching for Wisdom in America”; “Seductive Sirens”; “A Vast and Rash Uncontrolled Experiment”; and “Redefining Progress”.
The extensive writings in the Earth Manifesto are organized into Seven Parts that are presented roughly in the reverse order of their evolving genesis, with the most recent writings first. “LIFO, like!” The Seven Parts are:
PART ONE . Observations, Introspection, Illumination and Revelation . This section includes the fifteen essays enumerated above.
PART TWO. On the Cusp of the Obama Era (Sept. '08 - Nov. ‘08). This section includes six essays about the tumultuous economic and social turmoil of the year 2008.
PART THREE. Soliloquistic Expressions – A Feast of Ideas (Nov. ‘06 – Oct. ‘08). This section contains sixteen creative, entertaining and important essays. One of the best is Tall Tales, Provocative Parables, Luminous Clarity, and Evocative Truth: A Modern Log from the Sea of Cortez .
PART FOUR. Overarching Considerations -- Enlightening and Transformational Ideas. This section includes vitally important ideas in: (1) Three Bills of Right: A Triumvirate of Responsible Actions for the Greater Good , and (2) One Dozen Big Initiatives to Positively Transform Our Societies, and (3) Progressive Agenda for a More Sane Humanity .
PART FIVE . A Marvelous Miscellany. This section includes a rough draft of an Earth Manifesto Film Script. Note that assistance is needed to make this into a vibrant and compelling film. Also in this section is a list of Recommended Reading for a Broader Understanding and Appreciation of the World , as well as Twelve Delicious Recipes for Good Health and Gourmet Appreciation, with some very healthy and tasty recipes.
PART SIX. Evolutionary Understandings from the Blue Period (October 2004 – Jan. 2006). This section contains 32 essays concerning a wide-ranging variety of topics.
PART SEVEN. The Original Earth Manifesto . This manuscript began more than a decade ago as a passionate and philosophical outpouring of Big Ideas expressed in calligraphic form. This original Earth Manifesto consists of 121 separate Soliloquies, each one a single page that explores its own compilation of ideas. These Soliloquies offer fresh, cogent and far-sighted perspectives into the dominant worldviews of today, and into the state of our culture, society, economics, politics, psyches and souls. These Soliloquies still represent a comprehensive and enlightening synthesis of broad-minded understandings and insightful ideas and ecological truths. All of them are interspersed with actions that are achievable which could help make human societies fairer and healthier, as well as more propitious to people in future generations.
To gain the best understanding of these extensive ideas, review the titles and the descriptions of the essays on the Earth Manifesto.com Home Page, and read one of the links that strikes your fancy. Or start from the beginning, and read the essays in the order they are presented.
Some of the most fascinating of the writings are found in Part Three, including a very entertaining and informative story titled Tall Tales, Provocative Parables, Luminous Clarity and Evocative Truths -- A Modern Log from the Sea of Cortez . John Steinbeck would have approved! There are also cogent perspectives in such essays as Tyrants and Damsels and Associated Incisive Insights. Important foreign policy understandings are contained in Reflections on War.
General Observations
It has been almost 234 years since the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 17 76 . In many key aspects, the years from 2001 to 2010 have been an economic and political fiasco for the United States, so this is a good time for us to consider how to assure that our nation helps to foster and preserve civil liberties and individual freedoms and human rights and social justice and ecological sanity and intelligent planning priorities and fiscal responsibility and good governance.
The well-being of life on Earth is being threatened by economic desperation and wasteful consumerism, as well as by profligate resource exploitation, aggressive militarism and the impacts of rapid human population growth. Profoundly unsettling risks are being created through habitat degradation, industrial monoculture agriculture, and the production of large quantities of garbage, toxins, and greenhouse gas emissions. Our disregard for the healthy condition of Earth's ecosystems arguably must give way to an every-day-is-Earth-Day attitude, and to behaviors and policies more considerate of the general good and long-term prosperity.
“Change you can believe in” is being subverted by the powerful impetus of the status quo in our change-averse political system. Our economic institutions must be restructured to eliminate wrong-headed policies and subsidies that have been instituted to benefit narrow constituencies in our lobbyist-driven political system. Our democracy itself must be re-invigorated to purge it of the dysfunctional aspects that give overweening power to big corporations and the influential wealthy. We must reduce bureaucratic regulations and implement intelligent incentives and laws that are designed to foster the greatest good for the greatest number of people over the longest period of time. The essential criteria for determining what contributes to the public interest and the common good should be honest assessments of what is fairest and most likely to be sustainable.
One particularly compelling line of thought that underlies the ideas in many of these writings is that the human race is ill-advisedly “fleecing the future” with our short-term oriented and unsustainable actions. Powerful interests strive to convert our natural resources to cash as quickly as possible. But we should be treating our home planet like a thriving and lasting concern, not like a business in liquidation!
We are acting as if we are collectively unaware, or in denial, or lacking in the most basic tenets of conscience and morality. Must we not tread on the Planet more gently? Must we not treat other people more fairly? Would we not be wisest to strive with more determined and sustained commitment to finding ways of protecting our Constitutional civil liberties? Must we not tenaciously demand that our business and government give greater consideration to the common good and to the well-being of future generations?
General Douglas MacArthur once said, “I believe that the entire effort of modern society should be concentrated on the endeavor to outlaw war as a method of the solution of problems between nations”. Should we not give great weight to these words, and reflect it in our public decision-making and foreign policies? Should we not dedicate ourselves to creating societies that are more mutually secure by making the world more just?
The Earth Manifesto also commemorates and celebrates the wonders and beauty of our home planet. It strives to advance a vital revolution against the subtle madness that characterizes the world in its compulsive busyness, wasteful consumerism, laissez-faire exploitive capitalism, bubble economics, harsh inequities, stimulated fears, externalized costs, uncontrolled population growth, reactionary religious fundamentalism, and the aggressive policies that incite terror and encourage militarism in response.
We must look beyond the ‘good old boys', and beyond the conflict between the ideologies of conservatives and liberals. We must look deeper than the cultural conflicts between stereotypical strong, authoritarian, discipline-oriented, dominant paternalistic father-figure paradigms and the more cooperative and protective maternal ideals which are oriented around empathetic understanding and fairness. We must look directly to the important principles set forth by our Founders.
Our true American values are those that have been cherished since the United States declared Independence from Great Britain in 1776. Colonial imperialism by the British had given our forebears a powerful motive to establish a new representative democracy in which everyone has a voice. A new nation was brought forth upon this continent to be governed by a Constitution and a Bill of Rights which embraced idealistic and humanistic principles of Liberty , Justice, and the promotion of the General Welfare. These documents included strong protections of free speech for all people, and freedom of worship and other guaranteed rights, and they reflected a valid distrust of abuses of power, so they included a robust system of checks and balances in the government.
In the many years that have passed since the Constitution was ratified, a multitude of progressive advances has been made that protect citizens from the worst characteristics of ruthless capitalism. Laws and regulations have been established and reforms have been made that create important protections of privacy, civil rights, public health, food and drug safety, workers' rights, and our surrounding environment.
These progressive advances stand above the opposing influence of entrenched interests that are vested in the status quo, and their purpose has been to remedy the corruption in our economic and political systems. Misleading information, deceptive spin, propaganda, unethical dirty election tricks, institutionalized bribery, and a dominant paradigm of harmful ideologies and inflexible conventional beliefs work against these progressive advances. In particular, the fears and insecurities of Americans have been manipulated and their prejudices and ignorance and nationalistic impulses have been exploited by Neoconservative ideologues to advance a regressive and repressive agenda in both domestic and foreign policies.
Business, consumer and investor goals have been given too much influence, and more important “good citizenship goals” and long-term prosperity have been subordinated to greed and narrow drives. Too much power is given to corporations, investors, speculators and short-term-oriented profiteering. This negatively affects our communities and workers and the environment. These wrong-headed outcomes are promoted by political expediencies, accounting gimmicks, misleading GDP measures, irresponsibly shortsighted objectives, and most recently the Supreme Court's decision to allow unlimited campaign expenditures for corporations and unions.
Fairer policies must be cultivated that wholeheartedly embrace honesty, true justice, real democracy, genuine freedom, healthy community, openness, balance, moderation, peace and ecological sanity. Faith in reason must prevail. This faith must be tempered by smart priorities and wisely empathetic understanding and good neighborliness and proportional responses to risks and threats.
The author of the Earth Manifesto is Dr. Tiffany B. Twain. She writes with optimism and a cheerfully bemused but vigilantly concerned tone. She provides scathing insights into the unjust and foolish aspects of human societies worldwide. She professes to be a ‘Depth Assessor' and a very indirect descendant of the famous author and humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain. She asserts that what the world needs now is a greater clarity of perspective and a deeper connection to ancient human roots, and a greater respect and appreciation of the natural world.
“Want Affinity?,” Dr. Twain asks; “Anyone who has rafted on the mighty Mississippi, or gone for a long walk in the woods, will recognize that at the core of our being, intimate to our souls, deeper than conscious awareness, and beyond aesthetics and philosophical speculation, there lies a basic healthfulness in our communing with the natural world, and in our willingness to protect it.”
Such observations -- and many, many more far-ranging ideas -- are explored in this lengthy manifesto. Readers are urged to think for themselves about the ideas it contains, and to do their own part to contribute in some way to the improvement of conditions in the world.
We can, indeed must, do better!! As Dr. Seuss' Lorax said, ‘UNLESS someone like us cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not!'
For more information, contact Dr. Tiffany B. Twain at [email protected] . Feedback is welcomed!
