Old Paradigm--New Paradigm: Occupy Wall Street or Occupy the Land?

After a holiday of satiation, frenzied shoppers, and hopefully thanks, readers might be interested in the following article I ran across this morning while pursuing a link on the "America 2 Point 0" mailing list at Yahoo. For myself at least, it has always been too tempting and too easy to slip back under the spell of the cornucopian eternal consumption and growth delusions created and marketed by the dominant global business class. This despite having realized for at least two or three decades that a growing population size of a country or world coupled with consumer growth culture, is on an unsustainable resource ravaging road that leads to social and ecological collapse. When looking at social phenomena, like Occupy Wall Street, I've tended to pop right back into the old endless growth paradigm instead of viewing them through the lens of sustainability. This article by Jan Lundberg of Culture Change helps to bring the Occupy movement into proper perspective and focus when viewed through a sustainability lens.
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How The Occupy Movement May Be Off-Base, and How It Can Evolve ("Occupy the Land")

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What folks in "poor" countries have always understood is that their power and survival lie in possessing their own land. Land reform in many parts of our increasingly crowded world is a burning issue. Many people live and die for the struggle for their right to live on their ancestral lands. A movement in the U.S. for the masses to take back the land from the few is inevitable.

Better late than never; many decades have passed during which the importance for consumers of being close to the land was greatly diminished. Real wealth, the land, was given up for wages and cheap petroleum's technology explosion. Population growth has happened so fast that a new generation didn't know it was inheriting a world less and less free and no longer abundant in life-giving resources ("ecological services").

But as the sun sets on the system of vast, false monetary wealth and on the oppression it has wielded, nature may first wake us up rudely, before people in the U.S. can go about land reform. If so, after societal and possibly ecological collapse, there may be quite a bit of land available and to share after the population has diminished sufficiently in size. This was the case in Europe after the 14th century plagues took their toll. However, in no way should such drastic "solutions" be pursued.

"Occupying" the heart of cities today does mean something in today's world of artificial environments, material culture, and middle class values. But instead of occupying the cities, the movement should be about running away from cities. Instead of occupying Wall Street, run away from it: abandon it, abandon the system, abandon consuming, and embrace simple living on the land. This ought to be the prime goal, rather than a stampede today or tomorrow. . . . .

Read entire article HERE.

See also Update from DC: Occupy, pepperspray, peak oil, sail power, Congress, and Culture Change for more articles.