Not an Activist

It's one of the greatest ironies of the 21st century that the world's largest online megastore is named after the most vital ecosystem on Earth whose exploitation makes our addiction to materialism possible. It's as if there's a big red flag waving in the wind, the truth so glaringly obvious that we ignore it.

I must live on another planet. On my planet, let's call it, "Alternative Earth," the rights of nature reign supreme, and no government or corporation would even consider making a coffee table out of a Kapok tree. The "Regular Earth" has its problems, that's for sure.

Our economy is based on endless growth while we cut the forest down. But what is there to be said in the face of such insanity? This is a monkey in the Amazon, being all like, "So, wait, what?"

These photos are all from the Amazon (yes, the one where the giant trees grow and there's lots of rain; not the one that offers a Prime Membership).

My partner and I stayed at an eco-retreat center for a week outside Quito, Ecuador. This was almost ten years ago, and I shudder to think how drastically the landscape has changed since then. When we were there, already the oil corporations were encroaching ~ little by little, like a frog in a boiling pot of water.

These images are just a taste of the biodiversity we glimpsed while we were there, but what amazed me most was our native Kichwa guide who had an uncanny sense of the rainforest. He knew it like the back of his hand.

One night, our guide, Rodrigo, led us on a hike in the pitch dark. Before anyone shone a flashlight, he would catch sight of the most astonishing creatures crawling around. I carried my semi-pro camera equipment with me, and got some amazing shots.

As an American peeking into this secret world, a new appreciation dawned on me that the front lines in defending Mother Earth are at least as much on Amazon Prime as in the Amazon Basin.

We are all enablers.

Materialism and consumerism are addictions, and I believe we need to develop some kind of Twelve Step Program to change those behaviors. When will the "intervention" come? When we hit rock bottom?

I am not an activist like the Munduruku people or the Kichwa people defending their homelands, but I don't bury my head in the sand, either.

I choose to live a minimalist lifestyle ~ at least by today's standards. I still own more things than the average American did a century ago, and certainly, there are people today with far fewer possessions than me.

Everything in moderation is a good motto. We've come so far in the so-called "first world" that we seem to have lost touch with what being "moderate" means. It boggles my mind that we continually produce bigger and bigger vehicles.

I don't think going on a rampage about the facts of life in the First World is going to save the Amazon. We need to change our behaviors and our lifestyles and break the cycles of addiction we're trapped in.

If I say any more, I fear I would just come across as preachy. The solutions are obvious. We just have to do them.

Gandhi used the word Ahimsa, which means "non-violence." The symbol for Ahimsa is a hand known as the Hamsa which seems like it's right up in your face, saying, "Stop! Talk to the hand!"

In a world of over-consumption, "non-participation" in consumerism can be a revolutionary act. Let's get off the hamster wheel of over-consumption and over-production. Only non-participation can ultimately save us and get us to the "Alternative Earth" we really want to live on.