#315 / EcoMind

Frances Moore Lappe will be speaking in Santa Cruz County this evening. She will be discussing her newest book, EcoMind.

Tickets are probably still available for what is likely to be a compelling presentation. The event is at the Crocker Theatre at Cabrillo College, and begins at 6:30.

I'd bet money that Lappe is in favor of ending the "infinite growth paradigm," but her book is concerned with "thought traps" that prevent us from taking effective action to surmount the environmental crises we face. The first one she mentions is "Thought Trap 1: No-Growth Is The Answer!"

"Focusing on growth as the problem - or as the solution," says Lappe, "keeps us from probing to the root of our global crises: the patterns of power over decision making that we ourselves choose, consciously or not... I'm suggesting that we can utterly shift our vision to the goal of aligning our practices with nature, including all we now know about human nature. Together we can then get on with creating the context - the social and ecological relationships - that enable all of us to flourish..."

"Aligning our practices with nature" sounds like good advice to me. And that means that the human world that we create must respect, above all, the world of nature and its limits, for our world is dependent on that one.