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From the Editor's Desk
The
Big Picture Looks Good
By Wendy Priesnitz
 Standing in line at the local farmers’ market
the other day, a woman remarked that she was having to cut back on the amount of
organic food she was buying due to the tough economy, so she was picking certain
organic products and saving money by going back to conventional in many food
categories. Organic is an expensive luxury, she said. Actually, I responded, I
see buying organic as an investment in the bigger picture. Her turn came to pay
for her carrots and she moved on, so I was unable to elaborate on that bigger
picture.
A few days later, a
Natural Life subscriber
wrote to complain about the increase in the number of articles about children
and education. She is a retired person, she explained, and has no interest in
educational matters – just in the environment. I explained that education and
the environment are intertwined, that they are integral parts of the big
picture.
That big, holistic picture is increasingly
important to understand. The retired reader should be interested in education
because how we train nurses today will affect the quality of her old age
tomorrow. In the same way, buying organic – especially local organic such as I
was seeking at the farmers’ market – is about much more than keeping pesticides
out of our bodies and therefore staying healthy. It is also about supporting a
system of sustainable agriculture that protects soil health, species diversity
and water supplies; helps combat climate change; enhances local economies; and
promotes community development. To use another example, we cannot create a truly
democratic, sustainable society in harmony with the balance of Nature by making
children and young people attend schools created to serve the Industrial
Revolution. As educational philosopher and writer Ron Miller points out in his book The Self Organizing Revolution,
molding children into compliant citizens and productive workers “is a violation
of Nature no less outrageous than the destruction of old growth forests.”
This is sometimes referred to as “systems
thinking,” a framework based on the belief that the component parts of a system
can best be understood (and its problems solved) in the context of relationships
with each other, rather than in isolation. Systems thinking is the basis of
permaculture, which is described in an article in this issue. And I’ve recently
become acquainted with an exciting twist on the idea called “financial
permaculture,” which is a whole system design for a zero waste economy that
cares for both the earth and its people.
We’re seeing the old systems collapse
regularly now under their own unsustainable weight. The two most obvious are
economic and ecological. But our educational system is not far behind; in fact,
some people – myself included – feel the latter has already imploded. The
challenge for those of us living through this time of rapid multi-system failure
is to see the opportunities for regeneration amidst the panic of those who
benefitted from the old way of running things.
Natural Life Magazine has, since 1976, been illuminating the big picture, pointing out the connections and
describing the new systems that can replace the old. So, in spite of the
temporary, short-term pain as the greed-based dinosaur dies, we’re excited about
the future because it looks a lot greener and more sustainable. There has never
been a time when making life-based choices was more important. Let’s keep the momentum going!
Wendy Priesnitz is the co-founder and editor of Natural Life Magazine,
where an earlier version of this appeared as an editorial in 2009. She is also the author of 13 books and a contributor to many more.
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