Many of us believe that change comes from the marketing of a faster, bigger computer, a product that comes over us like a soft tsunami. More billions of us believe that the most basic change must come from a fundamentalist God, who will kill us or resurrect us. And so we live our personal lives resigned to these great forces. We assume that these forces are running history.
Another force, one that we have not noticed, was always creating most of the change. It has surprised us by refusing to remain hidden, and now it is taking over history. As this new era becomes "the way things are," it is clear that we as individuals are being offered a much different kind of role in the making of history. It will take some getting used to. The application for this citizenship is coming at us like a surprise Natural Law, recited in a terrifying harmony by all that is indigenous. It feels like science fiction but it is actually happening. The whole thing has come as such a surprise that we don't have a traditional name for it yet. Is it "all of life?"
All the things with roots and wings, the rocks and invisible odorless life too... have taken over the old role of the gods and monarchs and technologies. And what are they saying? All the life that isn't the human kind is flamboyantly reporting to us the impact of what we have done. The "feed-back loop" of the stately rising gasses of climate is also looping messages to the humans living here. Life doesn't seem to ask for guilt, doesn't have time for our tragic embarrassment -- it wants a direct response. It is making it simple for us. It is showing the way. This feels like a new kind of citizenship. You could call it a democracy with the earth as the government. We can vote by how we live.
This utterly reverses how we usually look at ourselves through history, or say, in the news. How we lived was never historically crucial. Not like this. Now the smallest, closest and most everyday things we do must receive the glorious importance once reserved for the great Waterloos and Hiroshimas and moon landings. The human foreground, within our sensual range, the things in our hands, must be subject to the most careful deliberations. This includes everything, from our loving and communicating, to how we travel and clothe ourselves... How we live radiates out to history.
"Great men," and the new solves-everything product and the gods with the swiftest swords - these actors will still struggle to hold their old spotlight in history. But the diary of a person who has this new citizenship will decide what is on that stage. Our personal reports about living add up to our history. Changing history was never like this. And -- our growing participation in this democracy of life hopes to make a future. It is happening now as the old commercial media dies out. With the new discoveries of how we can live, many practical communications are rising up and going out that change others who are also changing how they live and so they are changing us in return... "How are you living?" "How are you living?" "How are you doing it?" - that will be the main signal between political states.
So, if change comes from how we live, then what a time to be alive! Everything we do matters. The old history never respected us like this. The earth gives us an outlandish storm and the storm passes and the sky and the sea are quiet again, awaiting our response. We stand there, our mostly-water bodies, and we make our first move. Is it a thought? Is it a step? Is it a caress? What we do changes our history. It is immediately written down in the water that flows to the horizon...
(photo by CQ)