Hi.
Thanks again to everyone who came out to the Sea Change launch event last Thursday. And a particular thanks to Nahamani Yisrael, and Marco Cannon of Studio 107, for a fantastic panel discussion. If you’re mindlessly doomscrolling this week, you might want to check out the livestream recording of my talk and our discussion (four separate links). One of them has a strange camera angle, but that’s because the Studio 107 crew had about 10 cameras going. Short of the ceiling, I think they got every possible angle. Stay tuned for the full edited video soon.
Since then, however, things are a little on the crappy side, nationally and personally. Nothing big on the me front; I have a bad dermatitis flare up going. Not threatening, but unpleasant and super distracting. And doomscrolling goes way too well with a holiday week where everyone seems to be not working except the extrovert who list of overdue projects is way too long.
So…. ugh.
I did come across something this morning that gave me a little hope, though:
Bee colonies are apparently making a comeback.
Maybe we can fix our messes, after all.
I often worry that my focus on long-term trends and indicators of how we can use those trends for good sounds pollyanna-ish, especially in the face of all the things that are going wrong right now. I wrote a week or so ago about Jane Goodall’s Book of Hope, and the basis for her sustained activism — and persistance — in the face of everything she has seen. Two of the reasons for hope she cites are the human capacity for problem-solving, and the resilience of nature.
Both of those seem to be working for the bees.
I don’t know how long it will take to un-screw up the things we have screwed up, and some things may never be the way they should be. And other things that we, collectively, have screwed up may directly hurt people who should not be hurt, and we have to fight for them as hard as we can.
But maybe Jane, and the bees, are telling us something.
In the talk I linked above, I noted that when you see something in society that looks like a regression, take a closer look at how much energy, time, money, risk it takes to win that regression. What have the regressive move’s supporters sacrificed to get it?
Are they swimming against the tide?
No one can swim against the tide forever.
And while we are impacted by the tide, we can also be part of the tide ourselves.
That’s where our deepest power lies.