Restoration Towns
I was skeptically listening
to a retiring social researcher,
and problem-solving imaginer,
from the American Enterprise Institute;
An Institute
I usually find more destitute
of bicameral consciousness than not,
and thereby with less healthy resonant imagination
than more pathological dissonance.
But, I found myself agreeing with him.
He is retiring,
in part,
because he is tired of preaching to a choir
that has not yet learned the beginner's importance
of listening to each others' voices
for harmonies
and what may sound off healthy key.
He opined that this USA
used to be a democratic space
others,
from other political and economic places,
felt good about having around
as a healthy beaconing neighbor.
A place inspiring inclusive dreams of cooperative hope
for ourselves
our families
and local WinWin dominant communities
of educated problem-solvers.
I'm not entirely sure
Martin Luther King would have shared this view,
nor slaves
nor indentured servants
nor widowed mothers
nor prisoners
nor even cooperative adolescents of all creeds and colors
wise beyond their non-enfranchised years.
The U.S.,
he said,
used to be a place composed of communities
with Yankee ingenuity
and Southern charming hospitality.
A democratic
local problem-solving place,
where people knew they need not agree with their neighbors
but we are obliged to listen carefully with each other,
in public discernment spaces
where diversity of images
and density of combined imaginations
derive both RightBrain healthy metaphors
and LeftBrain wealthy analogies,
therapeutic systems
and healing models
for cooperative WinWin co-governance
CoArising communities invested in local integrity
to multicultural faith in combined wisdom
of each other,
like seeds in one loaf of multigrained nutrition,
deriving BothAnd inclusively imaged designs,
Both implementation
and evaluation
cohering cooperative enterprises,
Both redesigners of healthy ecopolitical cycles
and of deeply sacred ecological wisdom future-seekers.
I could have been reading into
his more straightforward time-bite.
We were once composed of communities
that could solve our own problems,
at least with those allowed in empowering rooms.
We were a successful creolizing experiment,
back in more agrarian democratic nurturing days
and quieter starlit restorative nights.
We were more effectively self-governing
back before incorporated complexities
of distant shareholder owners
hiring CEOs
whose job is to grow
grow
grow
quarterly profits,
even at sometimes necessary expense
of long-term employees
and their healthy and secure families,
conservers of ethics
and aesthetics,
beauty and truth
of good neighbor practices,
natural and spiritual.
Corporations v flighty local customers,
too often distracted by competitions,
Either us, Or them
unfortunate necessities,
norms of self-righteous justification,
values of tough-love discontent
and anger management
about ZeroSum WinLose realities
of unkind natured
and spirited lives
and dying
and death.
But now,
in this post-millennial time,
post-industrial rabid growth of fossil fuel-based irrational conclusions
and post-global competitions between capital-harvesting incorporations,
now climate-forced to turn
toward more locally owned health-investing communities,
some already growing therapeutic cooperative cultures
and restorative WinWin guilds
and co-investment networks,
We still search for livelier locally-owned solutions
to what have become global disinvestment
away from healthy local subclimate issues,
concerns informing polypathic
creolizing
deep ecological WinWin solutions.
How can my small New England community
solve our problems of dirty air
polluted water,
sterile and messed-up soil?
We nutritionally fade from all five senses,
fake food and piety,
false fascist patriotism
and toxic anti-nutritional cultural choices.
We are each one among many,
local ownership and investment fading,
increasingly noncompetitive,
Loser communities of EarthSoul dismay.
Communities surrounded by MeFirst nationalistic thinking
and lack of local-global dipolar consciousness of wealthy cultures,
now setting aside rabidly competing nationalistic MiddleMen,
Corporate CEOs,
we reclaim ownership by families and households
building up local and bioregional enterprise,
owned by those who work here as co-investing neighbors,
trained in healthy-ego
wealthy-eco
balancing consciousness.
We are no longer manageable by distant CEOs
or Boards of Competing to HoardPrivateProfit Directors.
We do already own local Boards of Health and Education
representing informed share-holders,
co-investors who are, at our best,
love infested,
usually not from afar,
often from inside our bioregions
and nearby towns,
grateful for long-term bottom-line
slow nutritionally grown
health-wealth profits.
We might enjoy health
with local cooperative democratic control,
with producer and consumer balancing co-ownership,
with WinWin ecosystemic bilateralism
acting locally
inside global consciousness,
setting aside monoculturing ecopolitics
whereby local communities remain stuck
in LoseLose globalizing issues
that no one community can problem-solve,
resolve,
isolated from local health-investment opportunities
severed from outside national
and international dis-investors
devoid of local learning,
knowing,
experiencing
my community's EarthSoul
Our emerging cooperative consciousness;
Global climate health restorations
of all green polyculturing co-invested communities
WinWin together
Our towns could,
and might,
Great Health-Transition together.
Local US communities
no longer enjoy the envy of EarthTribe.
Positive psychologists might suggest we have become WinLose
RightBrain under-educated and ill-formed
regarding EarthSoul's polypathic history
of outflowing love
in communities
of Sacred MotherEarth Creation Stories,
FirstNation Thanksgiving Pledges,
Positive WinWin locally owned
and grown
and designed
and implemented
and co-investing Attitude
of Sacred Ego-Ecological Gratitude.
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