BD Essays

# **This is where BoomerDreams Essays reside:**

## **A Collective: Forming a Whole; Combined**

* **Process: a continuous action, operation, taking place in a definite manner.**
* **Enterprise: a project undertaken, especially one that is important and requires boldness and energy:**

In order that there be a Collective Process, when all interactions of our lives/cultures, individual, family and village governance are open and permeable, and another's needs and gifts are an open movement within the actions of the whole (Community) there must be a collective understanding of that process is, and the scope of that commitment, necessary for its continuation, movement - growth.

This precludes the idea that just because 'I' want, think that I may want to live in this process - therefor it will happen.

I am certain that at some time in our history, principally until the 1500's this idea of being there for the other, together we stand was fairly well implicate within village  - and then began eroding through the 1600s, measurably from the late 1700's[1] onward - and has been  complicating continually into the “I, Me, Mine”[2] culture of today.

In these times we have a great desire - a hunger for this village, tribe, community process, scrambling on many fronts to come to this collective place again.  If we are to realize this “need” we do have to figure out how to live again within the process that we have evolved from, from which life on Earth - all of it – is based on, a collective, collaborative process, with respect (balance, acceptance) for the next generations - of Everything.

Our challenge is to grow together the historic imperative of village with the reality of our postmodern era. The grist of the challenge is that we have forgotten much of what the process of collectivism entails, especially when we attempt to recreate/invent it within the context of any artificial grouping as in age class economic parameters, education advantage and.....

Jeremy Rifkin in his thinking of the “The Empathic Civilization”[3], expresses both the challenge and the cultural 'tools' that are evolving from the homogenizing – disillusioning of our human family.

There are necessary factors that must come into play if we are to pull together the millions of years old model that have brought us to this juncture with this reality of the biosphere, commerce and human society crises that we face.  We have come to a crossroads when we are called to a humility, an understanding of the awesome gift that 'life' is and the responsibility we are called to wake up to in order that we (humans) may continue in this billions of years old blossoming complexity.

Through observation of how life actually evolves here on our Earth Home we can see the collaborative fabric that connects to every element of earth, there is NO expendable portions, and that is part and parcel of our arrogant response to 'natural resources'.

Implicit in this observation is the historic manner in which we have gifted our children with our total attention, for it is they that are responsible for the next phase of the blossoming.

We now are into the 5th generation of us that have not had intergenerational relationships and elder mentoring, where the principal source of nurture is not predicated on love, rather it is driven by how much market share can be wrung from our lives, how much profit can be garnered from our labors.

A solution that presents itself, simply stated, is to be in Love with each other, with the ALL!  We say in these times that it can't be done, there is too much pain, too much GREED.  I ask – do you have another way - is it working?

[1]Luddite Movement:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8UDKW9l2dw

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I\_Me\_Mine  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01UipbZL3ww

[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy\_Rifkin