Eco-heroes and Hope for the Earth: El Caracol

This is an essay I wrote for a class at the evergreen state college in olympia, WA. The class is called Eco-heroes and Hope for the Earth, and our final assignment was to create a personal template for being eco-heroes in our lives. I focused my essay on emotional, spiritual, physical, environmental, and social sustainability (HA! not too narrow of a focus here...) in conjunction with my interpretation of the symbolism of THE SNAIL (EL CARACOL). enjoy!

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El Caracol

In my life, the key to living happily is living holistically. As much as no one is truly free while others are oppressed, no one part of my being can be healthy while others are sick. Our planet’s health depends on how much respect we show it; in the past few centuries, humanity has been overstepping nature’s threshold of acceptable treatment. I feel that in the time we live in, the earth is in flux: she is healing herself. If we look at the earth as one large organism, humanity is a mental illness in the midst of constant change – we are an agent of foresight and transformations. It seems that we have been using our gift of human foresight for short-term gain rather than long-term sustainability, and I believe that we as a species are evolving to balance our minds and hearts to fulfill the latter prospect. Although the state of the world may look dismal, grassroots networks of fully conscious humans are growing and blooming to live out our mission: to set right the wrongs. To do this, each individual must begin within to heal oneself by unlearning habits of self-destruction and replacing them with holistic livelihoods that move closer and closer to the brink of infinite perpetuity. Sustainability of every sort is intrinsic in springing forth into this space: social, emotional, material, and spiritual sustainability must function as a whole if any one form is to succeed.

The Snail (El Caracol in Spanish), the symbol of the Zapatista autonomous community in Mexico, represents the necessity of slowly building inner peace and passion within oneself while spiraling ever outwards to spread light into the universe of beings. To me, this means that I must maintain awareness of the importance of taking care of myself so that I may help others grow. All relationships and intimacy with others greatly influence my emotions, so I need to make sure I am staying true to myself and to my friends and family in this quest for emotional sustainability.

No human is alone! Doing this life thing alone is not an option – to be human is to be related to other humans, and to exist is to be interconnected with everything. Togetherness is the key to overcoming social oppression. Social sustainability functions through the formation and maintenance of relationships that build trust, respect, and love; foster communication and honesty; and uphold openness to weaving webs of social interdependence. I believe that humanity as an organism is evolving rapidly – in fact, with exponential acceleration – to become an increasingly spiritually aware being. Buildups of synchronous events and earth changes have led me to believe that a fundamental shift in cultural values is under way and gaining momentum. As more and more people shift from identifying with the personal ego to identifying with the infinite source of being, endless possibilities of ways of living more freely will make themselves apparent. Compassion is the essence of this change: love guides the way towards the light. The Snail also represents an ancient Mayan tradition of blowing air into the conch to call people together.

My commitment to the universe is as follows: I will throw my whole being into being. I will move with the positive forces that propel holistic growth. To constantly renew my commitment, I must nurture my spirit. One way to do this is by spending ample time outside and with people and minimal time in front of electronic screens. When I feel my spirit waning, I like to remind myself of where I am in the cosmos, physically, in relation to Earth and to other celestial bodies, to rejuvenate my inner child. The self-perpetuating cycle of spending more time in natural settings and with natural materials leading to an inner desire to practice this more guides me in a great outwards-spinning spiral that moves in a positive trajectory. A spiritual sustainability fashioned in this way is an essential element of my life as an eco-hero: a renewable passion for the environment urges me to protect that which is not renewable.

Matter is a concrete way of describing our universe. As societies progress, they tend to move from the solid to the more abstract. The abstraction of physical labor to financial obsession has dramatically shifted the way we relate to natural cycles. The profiteer mentality that holds economic wealth as a golden mark of success restricts environmental and human health (which are one and the same). When money moves linearly from the labor of the poor to the whims of the rich, oppression and poverty abound. Linear thought systems and actions are unsustainable; ample evidence exists to support this statement. Look at the destruction of the Amazon ecosystems and cultures in the name of mining for silver and excavating oil. Take for instance WalMart's refusal to provide a living wage for those it employs: and it is, indeed, an “it.” Corporations are made with the intention of profiting, and nothing more. When corporations align with government organizations, however, a power structure mounts that leaves 97% of the world at the mercy of these international globalized groups. Corporate personhood allows business entities to overtake actual humans' interests in state and federal decision making processes due to their exorbitant financial assets that can be pumped into lobbying efforts. For example, in the Clean Water Act of 2010 case, oil companies had dozens more lobbyists arguing their profit-motivated, environmentally harmful motivations than any other kind of lobbyist present. In my life, I am an eco-hero by joining forces with other like-minded individuals in combating the corporatocracy.

The snail also represents the fight against globalization in favor of the slow pace of traditional sustainable livelihoods. I fight the dehumanizing powers that be by making choices that debilitate them. When I want water, life’s essential elixir, I never buy the bottled beverages that are packaged with toxic chemicals and taken en masse from watersheds; I drink from the tap or make juice. When I want food or other resources, I buy from locally owned stores and co-ops to support community economic growth. Ideally, I will raise food in my own community with others who strive for food sovereignty. In the short-term, this summer I will volunteer with Garden-Raised Bounty (GRuB), Phoebe Farm, and Food Not Bombs. Working with Phoebe Farm and GRuB will promote my personal spiritual sustainability because getting my hands dirty nourishes my very being. Contributing to GRuB’s effort to educate community members about how to grow their own food will nourish social and physical sustainability in endless ways: food sovereignty frees villages from dependence upon the global food market, being physically active feeds the body and soul, and engaging in sharing this very fundamental human right to nourishment brings people together.

My personal physical health is intrinsically deeply connected to the earth and to every other facet of my being. In light of this, I make decisions in my daily life that encourage my holistic health. Instead of taking antibiotics, I will make rosemary tinctures and share them with whoever needs them. In place of alcohol-based lotion, I make coconut oil creams. I don’t want to poison my body with fluoride, so I make baking soda toothpaste to clean my mouth. These decisions are examples of how I support a physical sustainability within my own body; I will do my best to educate other interested individuals about how to care for themselves without resorting to allopathic medicine. I will grow and wildcraft herbs that the earth provides to heal humans, express gratitude, and use the herbs as plant medicine.

Another way to promote sustainable community development is by advocating the expressive arts. Theater, dance, writing, music, and visual art, among other forms of expression, have been passions of mine for my whole life. This summer, I will expand my love of music to include other people more often in my melodic adventures. Playing music with people certainly releases endorphins. The act of performing music in public can inspire people to do the same, or at least to remind them about the infinite possibilities of expression in public settings. Art can inspire hope, spread messages of revolution and evolution, and bridge perceived gaps between people of all varieties.
Physical sustainability relates to the care for our earth's endangered bounty. What once sounded like an idealist's vision now rings true as a necessary growing reality: modern social structures of separateness and “financial independence” are disintegrating into community interdependence rather than reliance on corporations. We must localize to produce the materials we need for sustaining human societies, with food, water, and shelter at the top of the list. We can use clay and hay to build. We can grow food on small farms. We can clean up our ground water and stream water so it may once again run free to support healthy ecosystems that include humans. If we organize community knowledge of primitive skill sets, we can break the linear function of financial power over the human spirit. This original, unfettered version of specialization of labor lends free time to be creative and joyful.

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Any comments? questions? how do you feel about the concept of eco-heroism?
maybe you'd like to write your own personal eco-hero template ;)

i'm gonna delve more into the concept of specialized labor & write a non-college essay about it when the moment strikes.