Call for a New Magna Carta

This year we celebrate 800 years of the original Magna Carta; of the 63 articles contained in the original document, only 3 remain still enshrined in English Law. The barons forced the signing of the original document on King John (he of Robin Hood fame) as they had become utterly fed up with the unfair and autocratic manner in which he sought to raise money from them to fight pointless wars in France. In many instances, when payment could not be made, he forcefully took possession of all the defaulting baron’s possessions. 40 years after the signing of the revised and reduced document, in 1225, England’s Parliament came into being in 1265.

The spirit of the Magna Carta that gave birth to Parliament is barely alive today : token lip service is paid to the equal rights of all, and then only at election time when the populace is asked to vote between parties none of which has either the intention or the ability to deliver what is best for the peoples of this land. The equality enshrined in the Magna Carta has long ago been discarded in favour of corporations; business pressure groups; and political manoeuvres aimed solely a keeping any given political party in power, or in getting it there.

We should truly be drawing up a charter that demands that our elected representatives, and the civil servants they are responsible for, should at all times act in the interests of the people of this nation and its next 7 generations. If at any time enough of us feel that government is not adhering to the charter, a mechanism needs to be put in place which will give us the ability to prevent government from proceeding in the manner intended, or, during a transition period, in the manner accustomed.

This new charter between the citizens of the United Kingdom and its, from time to time elected, government would contain provisions including –

  • requiring commercial and industrial companies to minimize the use of natural resources in the manufacturing process and to maximize the useful of life of all their products;
  • not to involve commercial parties in determining safe levels of consumption and the use of ingredients, such as sugar and salt;
  • removing all and any preferences granted to commercial and transnational organisations, including removing the ability of directors of such organisations to avoid liability for their actions;
  • seriously developing a coherent policy on preventative healthcare and well-being, and encouraging the introduction of happiness promoting measures;
  • banning the practice of lobbying, to be replaced by acceptance of well presented and argued submissions for independent valuation by cross-disciplinary and specialist bodies of all claims made for medicines, food products, plastics, etc.;
  • running certain services as genuine public services, where commercial cost-benefit considerations do not apply;
  • encouraging the emergence of an educational system that prepares children to survive in today’s complex society; to know how to think; and gives them the confidence to dream of, and create, a better future;
  • developing new democratic processes in which issues are required to be spelt out clearly, and electronic means give the populace a chance to express its preferences on a continuing basis;
  • accelerating the introduction of genuine service in the financial sector; the reform of existing financial institutions within a social new framework; the introduction of genuine wealth sharing mechanisms, and shifting the burden of taxation to direct consumption;
  • etc.

Such a 21st century Magna Carta would however ultimately only be a bridging measure; in the longer term our party based political system needs to be replaced (see here for a workable idea). Only this way will we ever be able to participate meaningfully in the running and shaping of our nation along true democratic lines.

Die Like a Hero Going Home

The following so well describes how I have sought, and continue to seek, to live my life. It is ascribed to various Red Indian philosophers, elders and chiefs, but mostly to Chief Tecumseh, the great Shawnee leader –

“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.

Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours.

Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things put in your life.

Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.

Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place.

Show respect to all people and grovel to none.

When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living.

If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.

Abuse no one and nothing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.

Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

Sand Shortage in Desert

The first reaction of everybody I speak to on this matter, mine included, is incredulity – “you’re winding me up”. I then became so intrigued that I extracted the salient points from three 2014 German language films addressing this issue. I have created a 4-page PDF summary which you can download from here.
 

At first, briefly, a wave of despair flowed over me (“another example of human ignorance”), this was then quickly replaced by my customary attitude “now that we have identified the problem, let’s find solutions”.

This issue of sand however brilliantly highlights the interconnectedness of everything:

Desert sand is not suitable for concrete. The right sand for building needs to be shaped by water and is mostly created and carried down to sea by streams and rivers from the high mountains. Except, 850,000 dams across most rivers of our planet have now interrupted this natural cycle. As a consequence we are forced to dredge rivers, lakes, beaches and the oceans for sand. This accelerates the flow of rivers, which causes additional damage and flooding. 90% of the world’s sandy beaches are vanishing because of the illegal removal of sand due to the operation of huge vacuum ships just off-shore. Each sucks up as much as 400,000 cubic meters of sand daily from close to the oceans’ shores, which undermines the shelf that keeps sandy beaches in place.

We use 15 billion tonnes of sand each year, which is the equivalent of a convoy of huge trucks reaching seven times to the moon and back. We annually make the equivalent of 2 tonnes of concrete per head of the world’s population. We consume twice as much sand as nature can now produce. Because sand is not to be found everywhere, thousands of sand-miles are added to most building sand as it gets shipped from places like Australia to Dubai. Dubai’s vanity building, the Burj Khalifa, alone required sand that, if carried by a convoy of lorries, they would have circled the world 5 times over (and the building is 90% empty!).

In countries with high rates of homelessness our economic system has encouraged speculators to build homes and flats and keep them empty (e.g. 56% in China; 50% in Mumbai; 30% in Spain).

By 2025 three-quarters of humanity is expected to live along the seaside, which means more sea defences and buildings, which in turn prevent beaches from expanding inland when storms strike and forces them out to sea, where as sand they will be sucked up and lost forever in concrete structures. Morocco offers an ironic lesson – concrete, much pirated from sandy beaches, is poured into hotels designed to attract the tourists representing the 1/3 of us who love holidaying at the seaside – except, the sand has gone and the tourist will either find ugly rocky outcrops, or sand is pumped on-shore at great expense and further undermining the natural balance of the ocean shore.

Sand extracted from the sea causes more damage that dragnet fishing! Sand extraction weakens the fine balance that keeps islands in place – in Indonesia islands are simply vanishing (25 so far), which not only destroys the homes of people, but also creates geo-political shifts as a country’s national maritime boundaries are measured from the shores of its outer-most islands. In the Maldives hundreds of islands have been lost, beaches that were 60 metres wide have vanished and more than 80% of the country is less than 1 m above sea level. Here, almost every grain of sand is of importance.

Significantly one of the films from which I learned about our sand problem was made and shown on Swiss TV. It points out that not only has Switzerland’s extensive hydro-electric industry been a major contributor to preventing sand from reaching their lakes and the sea from the High Alps, but that Switzerland’s leadership in concrete technology has made concrete the preferred building material even in areas where previously sustainable materials like bamboo, mud, timber, straw, bricks and other natural materials prevailed. Recognising this, a number of Swiss research bodies are currently seeking to demonstrate that, for instance, timber buildings are as fire and earth quake resistant as any concrete structure, even in multi-story configurations.

If there was any doubt about using principally sustainable materials for our LightLiving Laboratory, this insight has reinforced the determination to go 100% sustainable. The story of sand helps illustrate our ignorance of so much so well (the pdf or the original films contain much more) that I wish a brilliant film maker would take up the theme and create a full circle, 360 degree visual illustration of how symptomatic the story of sand is for our skewed economic system and attendant ignorance of nature’s cycles. Perhaps there is another symbolism in the fact that as we literally have been building so much of our world and society on sand, we are now being forced to find new materials as our traditional one is rapidly running out?

The good news, as so often the case when given time, is that our mistakes do become apparent and give us a chance to redress them. Paradoxically, in doing so, we are brought back to where we should have been in the first place – in close partnership with nature! The impetus to start building homes with natural materials has just received a major boost.

Another by-product of returning to nature is that using natural materials will impose natural height constraints on buildings, which will prevent little men from compensating for self-perceived inadequacies by building taller and taller buildings. The symbolism of the Tower of Babel reaches way beyond voice originated language!

Peter Rae
http://lightlivinglaboratory.com

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to my brother Michael and the videos he brought to my attention. It is from these that I extracted the information for this quick summary and the longer PDF covering our sand dilemma (all films are in German) –

“Sand, the New Gold” shown on Swiss National Television

‘EF’ in his YouTube Series for ‘Seekers After Truth’, under the deliberately provocative heading “Does Anybody Really Need Sand?”

“Sand, The New Environmental Time Bomb” produced by the German TV service 3sat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPbdL1WVAcA&list=PLTYU4yo6sz3IHU6lglbCFQDCHfLiRmdeD

Remembering the Future

Today is Remembrance Sunday. As I write these words, I am able to hear and see on BBC TV the ten thousand representatives of various military and civilian groups parade past the Cenotaph, in London, in memory of fallen comrades, friends and family members who gave their lives in past and present conflicts. Inevitably the drum-beat that accompanies the left heal of the marchers hitting the ground brings back memories of my own endless hours spent on drill squares learning to precision march.

But overriding the emotions that come from watching those thousands whose mixed memories have brought them on to the streets of cities, towns and villages everywhere in the English speaking world, is a dawning as to why remembering is particularly important in today’s rapidly changing world : in the events remembered today, there was a known enemy, even if it might be difficult to recognise some of these as ‘enemy’ today, then there was a certainty. And this made it possible for ordinary men and women to do extraordinary things, to become heroes and heroines, to come up with unusual ideas and solutions, even to be willing to lay down their lives.

The yearning that exists today is for that same degree of certainty that existed in the past, the certainty that made it possible to know ‘the enemy’. Today’s major enemy is something much more elusive – it is hidden inside each of us and in all our beliefs, practices and institutions. Such an abstract enemy is much more difficult to identify, to go up against. So frustrated we strike out and create ‘enemies’ in banking; big business; transnationals; those of other religions; government; the system; etc. and yet no one of these is an “enemy”. In a world based on a real understanding of Oneness, there are only victims – of immature ideas; wrong assumptions; false ideals; poor understanding of the purpose life; etc. Until we collectively develop a real understanding of what a One World view means, and then develop the skills and courage required to remodel our world, we will go on seeking out the enemy and remember the days in which it was simpler to do so.

I live with the convinction that, given direction, the same dedication and bravery of the past is alive today and available to make the changes the world is clearly calling for. Because there is so much that requires change, movements like Occupy Wall Street (OWS) appear to have diverse objectives. Yet OWS’s diversity reflects the wide range of areas in which change is overdue : the structure of government; a re-definition of the role of corporations and the determination of profitability; the role and nature of banking; the puropose of real education; healthcare v. disease prevention; agriculture in alignment with natue’s laws; an economic theory relevant to this age; etc.

What has yet to emerge is an integrated programme of radical change covering these key areas that shape our world. Those who heroically gave of themselves in a simpler age, will not have done so in vain if we collaborate in creating the future we want, always based on the recognition that we are all in this together. The future will need to be different, no doubt; the danger lies in us believing that it is too complex to try and do anything about shaping our futures, and in letting it just ‘happen’ to us. The big lesson of the past being remembered today is that where there is hope and determnination, there will emerge solutions.

Life could be simple …

I do not know who wrote this, a friend sent it. But I do know that it moved me in many ways. Ah the power of words! My apologies to you, the author, for not being able to acknowledge you. I will happily do so if you get in touch.

QUOTE

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon…
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

UNQUOTE

I love you.