Monetizing Good Sense.

Be forewarned, you will be asked for money before this post is over.
In the realm of ideas, we have been witnessing the bullies getting all the cash, all the attention, all the press, even though they are an extreme minority we let them guide not only public discussions, sometimes the very definition of terms we use to speak but they also guide our policies as well. I have noticed that in all my days, the bullies have invariably been wrong, about everything. From the "importance of sport", to the equating the stock market and the economy. From the dog-eat-dog world they theorize to the competition for scarce resources. they all stem from a lack of awareness about physical reality and what actually exists. The vast majority of people I meet are co-operative, curious, compassionate and are, generally speaking, trying to make the world better or at least they hope to not make it worse. In fact, many have a deep and sometimes unexpressed self-loathing because they know our systems are prearranged to make some forms of harm unavoidable. Think, for instance of the number of times you have felt a pang of guilt or regret when you realize you left the water running, or let it continue running as you watched it run down the drain for no reason. Perhaps you are one of many hundreds of millions who would want to carpool if you knew a co-worker or co-shopper who lived along your route to the store or work. Maybe you're one of the people who never washes clothes unless the washer is at maximum capacity,perhaps you ar eone who still line dries clothes or who hangs shirts out in the yard to wear a second or third day. Whatever your ecological awareness leads you to do or to "know" about has interesting ramifications, if/when you are willing to learn. This message may seem far from the talk of bullies, but they are right here, in the blind spot of our discussion. So much is it the rule that bullies are the oddities, we often stand dumbfounded when they spout their strange ideas. In essence yeilding the floor to them because their ignorance and blindness. What we know to be true, is so far from their reality that they seem to be coming from a distant planet, so we stare in utter disbelief blinking and questioning, "Did they really say that?" The vast majority don't even want to call people out for stupid comments or the expression of misogyny, racist hate or anti-whatever-the-case-may-be. Inhumanity. It is obscene. Flat-out, unquestionably loathesome, but we stand there, with our mouths hanging open, wondering where to start.

I have often wondered how many steps back we would have to go to help educate and inform someone who already thinks they know it all about one person or another based solely on their sex (or how they express it) their creed or color, yet it happens. Usually we given it some quarter, regrettably. This is how a tiny percent of the population can have out-sized voice and control over our culture. Remeber, they already know that they are right. (Otherwise they wouldn't say it.) We even tell them that they ar e"right" with terms like we use in The U.S. of America, right-wing, conservative...terms that sound authentic and which reflect being right and good. There was a time not that long ago, when Democrats, or the "left-leaning" party, made room for the racists in their tent. I get it, thinking the balance is so precarious that you hav eto enlist the fringe to get your way... My grandmother was a staunch Democrat who left the party when the Southern Democrats (racists) made their play for power back in their heyday. Again, regrettably, there are still a few of those racists among various "liberal" causes. We need to turn the corner on bullies, call out their "Competition is god" mentality and remind them that human beings, like the rest of nature are stronger and have a higher quality of life when we work together insted of estranging over half the population, as misogyny does, or demonizing and or isolating ourselves from other groups. Most anyone with a lick of sense will agree, every human being loves their children the way we do. Every love, no matter how you think it is being "expressed" is not an attack or reflection on you. None at all. All moral objections you may have about what others do in the privacy of their own bedrooms, closets or kitchens for that matter are none of your business and fall flat when yo urelize that your judgements ar etearing a tthe fabric of humanity. Demeaning others, de-moralizing them and/or trying to shame them is not adaptive in any way, it burdens not only the person being bullied, but our entire human race. This is where the rubber hits the road my friends, I am calling everyone to expect the unexpected, when you least expect to be burdened by bullies, be ready, perhaps even practice what you will say the next time you hear a blithering idiot trying to tear down someone else with their harmful rhetoric, their blatant disregard for the truth and prejudicial statements. Or just practice saying, "This is where it stops." That will give you time to collect your thoughts and decide what the best words are to say, "No, you are out of bounds." and "This is why." Peace Warriors is the rough translation of shanti sena, a term used by the Rainbow Family of light and Love to describe our common responsibility. A concept that is rarely taught but essential to living without the yoke of capitalistic dogma that servitude is righteous is to know that we cannot have true freedom without ultimately paying the price of responsibility. If you cannont bear the costs of your own behavior, you certainly should not be allowed to foist your shortcomings on others! Surely, we can all agree with that! Finally, our group, ECO-Tours of Wisconsin, Inc. works constantly to bring about awareness regarding the give-back, otherwise known as the give-away. Reciprocation. Just this week, we shared a resource of our organization with another not-for-profit that will be able to sequester several, perhaps many tons of carbon in their soils using the equipment. The people involved with that non-profit are working to bring a heavily impacted, eighty-acre parcel back to health and although it is just a tiny place in the middle of other severely impacted areas, it will be an outdoor school, working to re-train humans to be part of, not estranged from, nature and the natural world around them. Thousands of people are starting new ventures that honor the Earth and her people, the creatures we share the land with and the natural cycles of energy, water, carbon and nutrients. None of them came to that awareness because they listened to bullies. They did it because of what they learned is actually true, not someone's opinon. I have done everything in my power to keep this site from falling behind a paywall, but it does cost something to put these posts together. I pay nearly constant attention and it takes time to clarify my thoughts on these issues. I'm a slow typist so it takes time to translate my ideas to words and getting the money to purcase an occasional new piece of equipment or upgrade/continue internet services all cost money, so this is the blatant pandering for money that I try to avoid. Checks and cash can be sent directly to ECO-Tours of Wisconsin, Inc. at 522 Acreview Drive, De Pere, Wisconsin 54115, our temporary home until we find our post-covid place. You can send contributions directly to paypal using my e-mail address, which is also our account number for them...tnsaladino42@hotmail.com. You can send contributions directly to the gofundme page, https://gofund.me/52fa3b77 where we are raising money to purchase land to create our own outdoor school, or you can send directly to our ECO-Tours of Wisconsin, Inc. account at Capital Credit Union using Zelle. We can make the change we want to see in the world, we have both the right and the responsibility to make it happen.

Upcoming Class Near MPLS

Next week, we will be having a day-long biochar class. It will be held near Osceola, about an hour Northeast of Minneapolis. I can be reached for more information, by e-mail at: biocharmaster@gmail.com Contact me to reserve tickets.

DE-stabilization of Servoglobe

Since WWII, there has been a proliferation of Western thinking dominating and colonizing the planet. The idea that Plato and Socrates were special, or that the apex of human intellectual activity was centered around people whom they believe looked quite a bit like themselves. We have sold the human race short if we do not honor the fact that the great figures we tease out of history are only able to be pretty much like us, for other parts of the planet were not even "discovered" in their time. Intact human cultures with great schools and scientific enquiry had been established even before those greats, but they were from other races and places. The edge of the known world even today is amorphous, changing based on who is telling the stories. Our culture is based on a finite, shared knowlege and what had become a variety of distinct, culturally unique and relatively stable sub systems. In days of old, since vast regions and cultures could exist far beyond the edge of the "known world", it became easy to be self-absorbed and functionally fixed in our specific and unique pattern language, our definitions and our own understandings, shaping our perceptions. A person of five hundred, or fifteen hundred might not even be able to conceive of people from Asia, Africa or the Americas, but in each of those locations, great thinkers were present, ancient engineers with a gifts for their necessary science. For a sobering insight into world knowledge, study the early libraries and what happened to them. Our archaeological history is replete with astronomic and geographic awareness beyond what modern humans typically even imagine. Exacting scientific awareness brought to the ancients by trial and error, asking rigorous questions, making hundreds, even thousands of experiments and observations, appreciating the results of multiple trials. Apart from publishing their results, pretty much all the styeps involvedin our refuined science to this day. We now know that at least nine thousand years ago, people were making anthropogenic soil from virtually pure carbon, made pretty much the same way charcoal is made today. The process is still fascinating to modern humans even though we have lost much of our daily contact with fire, it still stirs our primal spirit. Why wouldn't the ancients thrill to a fire the same way we do in 2021 or two or ten...? There really is not better symbbol for the cleansing, re-birth possible when all that stored energy gets thrown off in a raging inferno! The Westrnization of thought has taken us all the way to confronting the very limits of the planet. Our atmosphere, drenched as it is with carbon dioxide is the direct result of linear thinking and exploitation of all resources with little regard for the cause and effect relationships between our actions and what they unleash on the world around us. The concept of Servoglobe is not new, like the "Twittering Machine" of Pual Klee, our fragile, and broadly applied systems have been contrived in the idyllic world of Autocad and Newtonian Physics. Disneylandesque flow charts and diagrams in real life trying to standardize and mega-size everything, without regard for the planet. What we have not planned for is resource limitations, the end of fossil energy and continuing and prolonged disruption of global trade. The tiny and widely spread gearboxes get ornery when their preferred energy sources are withheld. Much like asking a thoroughbred racehorse to pull a gypsy caravan over a mountain range without food or water, the tools of our daily trades are giving up the ghost without fuel or the throughput that they normally require for daily operation. Even the throwaway workers, have been retiring at record rates. They know life is more about experiences than things. what is life without time to enjoy it? As supply chain impacts continue, there will be continuded loss of functionality, whether it is from large scale truck assembly facilities, not being able to get computer chips, to daycares, elder care facilites and schools that can't get enough food to feed children, students or elders, even down to tire stores and places you would normally get your windshield wipers. None of the things we used to take for granted are for sure in the unique time we are living in. Who really knows what product we will be told is about to be in short supply next, leading to runs and price gouging. Fortunatelty,we can turn our technologically advanced communications system to work bridging gaps and making connections. I know that my ability to teach biochar classes has increased a hundred fold over having to get people to attend in-person classes. Outside the one-size-fits-all approach there exists a large array of systems that co-create, enlist the help of one another, co-operatively own or manage properties and other resources. The more humane, smaller is better groups are often the most efficient and it is with that reality firmly in my sights that I say, we do have the power to step off the fragile and fracturing old-way systems in favor of a new paradigm. That is why ECO-Tours of Wiscosnsin continues to fund-raise for our outdoor school, to have a large enough facility to host class events for dozens of students, possibly hundreds. Our growth has been organic and slowly growing, as most natural things are. This is the qualitative opposite of plopping a franchse store from a national chain in a town. Though our organic growth, we have taught many hundreds, perhaps thousands of people to create biochar. back in th eday, we planted sixty thousand native trees and many tens of thousands of native plants to help stabilize the soils and rebuild a maor natural environment in our wake. The real stability comes when we take these management strategies that value the give back or give away into practice in th ereal world. As we see modern structures failing, it is natural to look to the way we did things before, but we also need to take the valuable tools we have available today and turn them to good uses. That is what we teach on our ECO-Tours.