The New Year

                                                                                   written 24 December 2023

                                                                               published 31 December 2023

  

            The Winter Solstice and Christmas mark the return of light and hope, and the New Year is a time for aspirations and resolutions.  I want a habitable planet for our descendants, and I resolve to work to make that happen.

             A month ago, Randy Howard, the general manager of NCPA, Ukiah's power provider, informed the City council that the State of California has a goal of decarbonizing the economy by 2045.  This ambitious push to stop adding more atmospheric carbon recognizes a hard reality many still deny: our current energy system is killing the planet. 

            Locally, the 2017 wildfires changed minds, giving us tangible evidence that everything we now take for granted, can disappear overnight.  The climate is a non-linear system, while humanity lives in a linear mindset.  In the beginning, a linear change and an exponential change look the same.  But eventually, exponential systems begin rapid acceleration.  For example, this summer Greece experienced 21 inches of rain in one day.  Acapulco expected a tropical storm, but the next day a category 5 hurricane damaged or destroyed every building in the city.  

            Some feel it is already too late, with human extinction in a few decades, while other feel the climate issue is just a partisan hoax.  Some books suggest massive expansion of nuclear power and trust the corporate dominated "free market" will save us, while others imagine a planet with only a billion humans.

            I still live between the extremes, envisioning a maturing species, shifting from furiously burning through our dwindling inherited energy savings, to living sustainably within our energy income.  How fortunate that when we need to change our entire energy structure, we can now capture free energy and store it, on a scale and efficiency never experienced before.  The problem is not HOW to do it, but WILL we do it.  I admire California for stepping up to the plate.

            In order to replace all the fossil fuels, decarbonization will require three times as much electricity as is now produced, and all this will have to be produced carbon free.  There are three parts to this plan: producing more renewable power, shipping it to where it is needed, and expanding the local distribution system to handle the increased power.  

            This is a big deal, requiring rapidly changing an energy system that has evolved slowly.  Because of the decades of delay, funded by the fossil fuel industry and their short-sighted greed, the climate situation is now changing rapidly, so the time pressure is intense.

            The growth of renewable production is increasing every year, and big money is already investing to make this happen.  NCPA is responsible for shipping the power from where it is produced to where it is needed.  Ukiah has the responsibility of planning and building out our distribution of the increased power within the city limits.  

            But the existing transmission grid infrastructure, as currently managed, is barely able to handle peak loads at our current power levels, let alone beginning to ship significantly more power.  NCPA, nor any other power provider, has yet to manifest any viable solution for this issue.  However, they are beginning.  

            NCPA has told Ukiah it must begin planning to produce 15 percent more of our power locally, avoiding adding to grid congestion.  Ukiah consumes an average of 300MWh per day, so we will need to produce another 45MWh a day, which will require about 11MW of solar array.  NCPA and the City utility have begun discussing possible locations, including at the airport, which could support about half the array needed.

            All Ukiah City facilities, including the sewer and water systems, consume a average of 17MWh per day.  This push from NCPA, combined with significant grant funds coming from the Federal IRA, means Ukiah has the opportunity to do strategic design, moving the city toward increased power resilience.

            For example, the sewer and water systems now have fossil fueled backup power systems, sunk investment, unused most of the time.  By installing sufficient solar and storage at each of these locations, not only would Ukiah help satisfy the need for increased local power production, but these essential services would become power resilient.  This same kind of planning could be applied to other essential City services, such as emergency communications.

            Now is the time to envision a resilient Ukiah, ready to survive a turbulent 21st century.  Let's begin building for a habitable planet for the future.

 

Thinking Outside The Box

                                                                                   written 17 December 2023

                                                                               published 24 December 2023

            According to the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, a measure of disorder, always increases, the so-called arrow of time.  We see things fall apart.  Everything ages.  But the full statement has a precondition, usually unmentioned, that "in a closed system" entropy increases.  When my car breaks, I can fix it.  When the battery in my drill motor runs out, I can recharge it.  The question becomes, is my current situation within an open or closed system?

            Albert Einstein said "problems cannot be solved with the same mindset that created them."  Our mindset includes unexamined assumptions, usually culturally implanted before we are even conscious, that define our perspective.

            One of the limitations in western science is the assumption we live in a closed system, where matter is the ground of reality, and consciousness arises only within complex matter, specifically the human brain.  The arrogance that only humans have consciousness means the rest of the world is just dumb matter.  When we believe we are separate from all other life forms, we can abuse them with impunity, which bleeds over into abusing weaker members of our own species, when it benefits the more powerful.  Consequently, our civilization tolerates vast inequities and is indifference to suffering.  But such flawed thinking is eventually challenged by fundamental failures, such as the climate crisis and the tragedy of endless wars.  

            For centuries, matter has been defined by the four dimensions of space/time, but it is only an assumption that consciousness is also so limited.  Quantum mechanics now demonstrates the non-locality of matter, reacting to patterns beyond the space/time continuum, so consciousness may be non-local also.  What if consciousness is the ground of reality, as eastern science and indigenous cultures have known for centuries?  What if all life, including human, is an interconnected material manifestation of higher dimensional consciousness?  Let's consider what evidence might support this perspective. 

            DNA is responsible for much of how our bodies manifest.  Humans share 99.9 percent of their DNA with other humans.  However, we also share 90 percent with cats, 84 percent with dogs, 70 percent with slugs, and even 50 percent with trees.

            Plants have been living on Earth hundreds of millions of years longer than humans, mostly solar powered, yet, after only a few centuries, our culture is already being threatened by our own toxic wastes.  We could learn from our plant relatives.

            Australian aboriginal "dreamtime" allows effective communication across space and time.  The perspective of reincarnation suggests some aspect of consciousness persists past material mortality, as does ancestor worship.  All psychic phenomenon supports the awareness of information unbounded by the limits of space and time.  Biologist Rupert Sheldrake postulates morphogenic fields, existing beyond space/time, affect the cellular manifestation of growing organisms, and information systems.  His book "Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home" suggests that animals have transtemporal awareness.  Battlefield reports indicate that even a few seconds of awareness of future events can save a life.  The founders of Findhorn established meditation communication with the "over soul of the vegetables", which helped them grow fantastic produce and gain worldwide recognition.  

            Even within orthodox western science, we find that consciousness, as defined by awareness and volition, exists in many other species.  Trees communicate and cooperate for mutual survival, even outside their individual species.  Over 50 years ago, The Secret Lives Of Plants described evidence of plant sentience.  Elephants like to listen to, and play, music.  

            The Institute Of Noetic Sciences first cataloged documented cases of spontaneous remission, where people with lethal diseases survived without medical intervention.  The resulting medical field of psychoneuroimmunology is now well established, exploring how what we think affects our health.  The placebo affect is real, showing that our belief can heal.  The reverse is also true, as our fears can kill us.  

            If humanity was to begin relating to the entire world as conscious, living organisms, kin to our human species, think what a difference that could make.  We know the way to improve our food production system is to build healthy soil, where 200 trillion living organisms inhabit each cubic foot.  We could restore a healthy climate, removing the thousand billion tons of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, by aggressively cultivating phytoplankton blooms in the ocean, while feeding the other ocean species.   Working with life, rather than dominating it, is the answer. 

            This will require changing our way of thinking, and learning humility.

 

A New Story

                                                                                   written 10 December 2023

                                                                               published 17 December 2023

  

             We have a tendency to look to the past for guidance, which can work when things are changing slowly.  But we now experience rapid, and fundamental changes, which means tomorrow is unlikely to be like yesterday.  Our world is shaped by story, and our current story is inadequate, no longer able to serve.  Winter Solstice is coming, with Christmas a few days later.  These are times of renewal and hope, time to look forward, setting our intentions.  Time to consider new stories.

            I have often mentioned that the world is whole, but we live in a cultural/economic illusion of absolute separation.  Endless consumption and the corporate competitive economic model dominate our current story, shaping everything to fit that limited paradigm.  The result is overpopulation, social inequity, wide spread pollution, resource depletion, and the climate crisis.  This has all the wisdom and insight of biological yeast, which grows until it exhausts all resources and then dies in its own toxic wastes.

            But what would a new story look like?  Life offers an example in our own body.

            A healthy human body is a collective of trillions of unique, wildly differentiated cells, all working in harmony, which endures much longer than the life of any individual cell.  There are fundamental structures of this successful model that could be applied to human civilization.

            Every cell has core needs for survival: shelter, energy, nourishment, waste disposal, communications, and purpose.  If any part of the body lacks any of these essentials for very long, that part begins to die, and if left unaddressed, eventually the entire body dies.  Consequently, the structure of the body is organized to satisfy those fundamental needs.  This is biological socialism: to each according to its needs, from each according to its abilities.  

            Blood circulation includes every cell, with few exceptions, delivering energy and nutrients, while removing waste, all for free.  One system covers the entire body, a blood monopoly.  But the "profit" from this system takes the form of continued existence, not some fictional fiscal concept.  Some cells get more blood and energy, if their purpose requires it, but not because of any inherited entitlement, or class distinction.  

            However, the system is not minimalist, having multiple redundancies for operational resilience and damage control.  In addition, the lymph system is a parallel waste disposal system, servicing the entire body, adding further redundancy to this important function.  

            Most cells are connected into the communications of the nervous system.  This allows the entire body to be aware of information from each part, and coordinates wholistic responses.  This is also a monopoly, offered free to all cells, unhindered by competitive rivalry which causes unnecessary delays, confusion of information, communication deserts, or deficient service capacity.

            Every cell has a purpose within the larger body.  Some cells perform their function every minute, while others have a purpose that is only needed on occasion, but are kept healthy, even when not "working".

            The overall organization is designed to be sustainable.  While the first years of life involve relatively rapid accumulation and growth from new born baby to adult, growth then stops.  Once mature, the system focuses on maintenance and repairs for the rest of life.  Unlimited growth within such a system is the definition of cancer, and generally leads to death of the body.  Even the slower accumulation, described as obesity, adds stress and strain to the body, producing a generally shorter life span.

            If our society operated from the same inclusive holism the drives our body's organization, all human lives would be nourished, without regard for "earning" the right to live.  The wealth of the society would prioritize distribution to insure every person has adequate housing, food, energy, communication, education, and health care, recognizing that when some part suffers, the whole system is threatened.

            This same consideration would be extended to the larger biological community, recognizing the fundamental connection of all life forms.  When the planet thrives, everything living on the planet thrives as well.  Instead, we are now experiencing that as more and more of the life of the planet is sacrificed for the short-term financial gain of a small portion of humanity, the entire planet suffers, threatening the viability of even the supposed "ruling class".

            Such a reorganization might seem impossible, but life has figured out how to make it work, our bodies are living proof.  The real question is: are humans wise enough to survive?

 

Money Addiction

                                                                                   written 3 December 2023

                                                                               ublished 10 December 2023

     

            While some claim that Christianity is the American religion, our core devotion is really money, and "the love of money is the root of all evil".  Of course, the people feeling the evil impact are rarely those making the money.  Consequently, we see people with little compassion or empathy gravitating toward positions of economic and political power.

            Money is a symbolic concept.  While some forms of physical money have limited material value outside their monetary value, these days most money has little physical form at all, existing only as electronic data.  Yet, obsession with this money concept is everywhere, as is the destructive impact.  

            After World War 2, "citizens" became "consumer", to avoid a post war recession, and the advertising economy boomed.  But advertising requires making people dissatisfied with their current situation, and then selling them something that will make it all "better", creating a constant need for new things.  However, real happiness comes from peace of mind, so joy from having "things" is transient, at best.  In 2023, advertising revenue exceeded $300B in the US.  Despite the promise of happiness, depression in the US costs over $300B each year, and suicide rates keep climbing.

            The entire social media world is dominated by algorithms designed to hold a viewer's attention, while presenting them with strategically selected ads, just to increase revenue.  The sites earned over $200B in 2023, but adversely affect viewers brains, with increasing disinformation, social bullying and suicide rates.

            Honesty is a casualty of the money obsession.  While lying about money transactions is still a crime, lying to enhance a commercial product is common practice.  Industry also lies to cover up product defects, sometimes with lethal consequences.  The tobacco industry led the way in post war America.  After decades of health concerns, scientific evidence began to build in the 50's showing tobacco is lethal.  Industry response was to deny everything, criticize the research and the scientists doing the work, and bring court challenges against any attempts to limit their deadly, addictive product.  Although smoking rates have declined over time, 480,000 Americans died this year, and industry revenues were over $100B.

            The fossil fuel industry has taken a similar path, even using the same PR firms the tobacco industry used.  Starting in the 70's serious concerns were raised about the climate impact of fossil fuel emissions.  Industry researchers confirmed the problem, but the corporate response was to close down the research, and fund climate denial, using the same playbook as the tobacco industry.  The stakes are higher, with annual global revenues over $4T, and insured US climate costs of at least $150B per year, with estimates of externalized health cost in the trillions.  As an added bonus, the increasingly erratic climate makes global economic collapse more likely, even risking human extinction.

            In the medical industry, Perdue Pharma made millions producing and aggressively distributing opioids, touting their safety, while actually addicting millions and killing over 500,000.  In the automotive world, Ford decided against paying for a cheap fix for their Pintos with exploding gas tanks, as it would cost more than settling the death cases in court.

            Political corruption is another consequence of the money obsession.  After decades with a growing middle class, the Republicans began destroying it, by legalizing political bribery.  Nixon appointed a tobacco lawyer to the Supreme Court, which began a program where corporations and billionaires take over the country.  In 1976, the Court declared that money is "free speech", injecting a tsunami of cash into politics, making it legal to "buy" politicians.  In 2010, the Citizens United ruling declared there was no evidence of corruption, and opened the door for anonymous "dark money" into politics.  We now know several Supreme Court Justices have profited for decades from "gifts from friends", and that Court is currently poised to prohibit the government from putting any financial limits on business. 

            Studies show that a certain level of financial benefit is necessary for a quality of life, but after that point the beneficial increases decline.  Yet we are still obsessed with getting "more".  Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos (among others) show what happens when a few crazed billionaires are running the show. 

            The "evil" done is wide spread and socially destructive, and the profits are increasingly concentrated.  Will greed destroy us before the climate collapses?  Or will humanity mature?  The odds are good that those alive today will get to see the thrilling conclusion.

 

Spiritual, Not Religious

                                                                                   written 26 November 2023

                                                                                 published 3 December 2023

             

            I am spiritual, but not religious.  To me, spirituality is awareness of being part of something larger than myself. All religious organizations have a spiritual root, which is then described, and codified, as rules and cultural strictures.  

            Spirituality is an experience, and religion is a concept.  Experience only happens in the moment, the eternal NOW.  Remembered in the past, or planned for, or worried about, in the future, concept is never in the moment.  In brain physiology, experience favors the right brain and concept favors the left brain.  Ideally, both are in dynamic balance.

            Without the childhood burden of an imposed religious structure, feeling part of something larger has led me to a lifetime of spiritual exploration, inspired first by quantum mechanics, and then Buddhism, eventually appreciating the spiritual truth within every religion.

            When I first encountered quantum mechanics in college, it felt like a recipe for getting from here to there, without much description of the landscape one traveled through.  The fundamental paradoxes are mind boggling.  For starters, depending on how one is looking, matter is either a wave or a particle, each with very different measurable qualities.  Matter can become entangled through interaction, with subsequent changes made non-locally, without regard for space or time. 

            Physicist Richard Feynman is credited with saying, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."  Yet the rules of quantum physics have been understood well enough to successfully create the technologies of semiconductors, computers, the Internet, and cell phones, which have transformed the entire planet in just a few decades, giving validity to the underlying theory.

            Matter is energy (E=MC²).  Every speck of matter represents a huge amount of energy because the speed of light (C) is so larger.  For example, the mass energy equivalent of a bottle of beer is 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear device that destroyed Hiroshima.  But physicist David Bohm stated there is energy present even when "empty" of matter: vacuum, or zero-point energy.  Further, he calculated the quantity of this energy, within each cubic centimeter, is the enormous mass energy equivalence of the entire universe.

            This means that all matter, despite representing significant energy in itself, is really only a very small local increase over the background energy, much like a wave at sea is only a small additional amount of water relative to the ocean depth below.  

            While we can identify individual ocean wave peaks, describing each one uniquely in space and time, we know there is no absolute division between one wave and the next, because we can see they all arise from the same ocean.  Within material reality, we don't see the ground energy common to everything, so we are misled into believing the illusion of absolute material separation, and everything goes downhill from there.   

            However, spiritual leaders throughout the ages, have pointed toward the deeper truth of fundamental unity in life.  Aldous Huxley did a survey of all spiritual traditions, looking for common denominators, and found a version of the Golden Rule everywhere.  "Do unto others as you would have done unto you".  This speaks directly to unity.  Since you and I arise from the same ground energy, "other" is only relative.  

            When individuals "get it", they share with others, and help them "get it" too.  Over time, religious structures grow up, writing down guidance, which becomes sacred texts.  As political and economic power accrues, the entire organization can get distracted from the original inspiration of unity.  A finger pointing toward the moon can be helpful guidance, but when people get too obsessed with the finger, or the person pointing, they soon lose sight of the moon itself, and begin to fight with others who are following a different finger pointing at the same moon.

            This error of separation has dominated human history for thousands of years.  But we are growing up, increasing both our population and material power, and generations of unresolved rage and resentment are destroying not only other people, but the very planet we all inhabit.  Our challenge, if we wish to survive, is to acknowledge our hurt and trauma, and begin to heal within.  We can no longer follow hateful leaders into the collective suicidal illusion of endless rounds of hating each other.

            This won't be simple, and will require fundamental changes in our culture and economy, in order to experience the full potential of being human.