Lifting Up My Eyes
There are a whole lot of people here...
How many iterations of the pattern are there here? What is the pattern of our lives? How do our actions impact the planet and all life on it? As the subtitle mentions, we are many here on earth and our population is still growing, although that rate of growth may be slowing.
I’m thinking about this quite a bit as I go through the experience of being alive here in 2026. We need to be mindful of the impacts of our choices and how we might mitigate the negative effects on the planet through the use of our technologies.
I have had discussions about these matters with a range of people here on Harrowings. I’ve curtailed my Harrowings Podcasts lately as I have an unstable schedule at the new gig. I may restart it in time. I believe we have to talk with one another about the actions that we are taking and everything is connected to everything else. We need to think about how we can be good ancestors.
I choose these images of Eris, the Goddess of Chaos, to grace my posts since I believe that she is the source of much of our history. She’s the wild card, rolling that golden apple into the celebration of the gods and setting off our history with the Trojan Wars. Those events are spilling over into the present still.
Reading a bit about the period of the Trojan War and the Iliad has me thinking about the way in which our species has stumbled upon just about every experience that any of us have ever had long ago and, again, I find myself thinking of that article on Time-Binding that I wrote some time ago.
We have such capabilities. We have such a great opportunity in front of us. Are our young people thinking in these ways? I hope so. I hope they’ll move the needle further and faster and keep up with what we can achieve. We certainly need to mitigate the damage that we’ve been doing to the planet. There are points of light out there. When I was a kid, for example, we used leaded gas. Just about everywhere you went, people were smoking - and while I realize that people still are, it’s not as prevalent as it was.
I’m sure there are other things to which I could point which would give us reason for hope for the future. I could probably link up a few too, but right now, my fingers are just flying over the keyboard in hopes that someone will pick up what I’m laying down.
What a great platform for this Substack is! We can amplify these signals through cyberspace. We can help each other wake up. That’s what Harrowings is really all about. First, it’s to wake myself up and to help encourage me to raise my vision. Then it’s to help others be heard as well. I’m now thinking of Giulia Cassarà, PhD, Everyday Junglist, Lee Penman, The Intrepid Editor Press, Dr. Gabriella Kőrösi, ORIGIN, Camilo Zambrano, Jessica Alpha, Jessica Ann. Then there are the “heavy-hitters” like 𝐌𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐇𝐨𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐳, Patti Smith, Jesse Paris Smith, David Gans, Rosie McGee and the list goes on…apologies to anyone I missed citing here.
Anyway, it’s another day in the bonus round of the game of “Beat The Reaper” for me.
Onward!