R.E.M. has a song that says, “It’s the end of the world as we know it… and I feel fine”

This summarizes the idea that being positive in an overwhelmingly negative world is possible. It is probably the best option to take, as only belief in hope and change will motivate the needed actions that make improvements.

Most people now recognize that the world is in serious turmoil and sustainability has become a critical life issue. The divide between struggling and super wealthy has become much wider, and people are feeling the global affects of shortages, famines, war, tyranny and corruption. In the year 2011, however, social networking led to an uprising of many  overthrows of tyrannical oppressions in what was called “The Arab Spring.” Things are not all just hunky-dory now, in the middle east, or anywhere, but widespread thirst for justice is not going to just fade away.

There is a very great difference between denial and positive energy toward problems. If you do not see, or feel, on a very deep level that there is much to be improved upon, then that is denial, and there is no cure for it but the coming plagues, wars or slow decay of the unsustainable world which is now fading out.

The opposite of denial, is affirmation. One can affirm there are real problems, and this is always the first step toward confronting, and eventually correcting them.

When people can admit they helped create situations, they can be empowered by the knowledge that they can influence their own lives. Acknowledging that people have addictions is always cited as the first step toward solutions. Without acknowledgement that the world is addicted to trashing and over-harvesting parts of the world, there is no movement toward finding other healthier economic strategies.

One such strategy is to go back to the old days, but there is only one way to both keep technology and its gifts while still taking the best of the past lessons from great grandparents. That is, to move back to smaller economies of scale and allow people the freedom to have community again. There is a vast movement in local eating for example. It allows that people are more in touch with the origins of the food, the facts of its production and the people who make it possible.

In smaller, local community, people have not only more sustainably harvested materials, but they also have more security and foundation of belonging to humanity. Without becoming horrifically nationalistic or racist, people can return to being interdependent and also capable of creating, manufacturing, producing and belonging all at the same time. It is the loss of human connection to the earth and each other that has resulted in people living in so much crisis, with so much suffering.

Yet in sustainable systems, such as which humanity evolved within, the dangers of disproportionate wealth and exploitative conditions are much more self correcting.  People are aware of what is around them in the natural world, how to appreciate and protect it.

There are ways to take the best of all lessons learned from history and to pass through this bottle neck of so much endangered life on earth, to emerge brighter and better on the other side. It does not require magical optimism, or wishful thinking. It requires people to just see they can and do, influence their daily lives.