Starting Point Newsletter
“No glitz, just grist – No flash, just fodder.”
What is Starting Point Newsletter?
Each of us is our own starting point. Our particular lives are where we start from and what we have to work with. We also have a common starting point, Earth, or, more accurately, Life on Earth as we know it. On this finite planet, suitable living conditions are provided for us by other living things, by Life itself. When things go well for Life in general, they can go well for us. When things don’t go well for Life in general, they can’t go well for us. Another way of saying that is that on Earth, Life rules, we don’t.
Life rules according to a protocol of behaviors that is born into every kind of other-than-human living thing. That protocol is the starting point for other species. Near universal adherance to that protocol is what permits Life to persist on this otherwise hard-knocks, hard, rock planet. We humans are the exception that causes adherance to Life’s survival protocol to be only near universal. Over the past several centuries we’ve forgotten that Life rules, we don’t. Most of the economic, environmental, social and political crises that afflict us now result from our forgetting. Bi-monthly free, on-line issues of Starting Point will explore the probable consequences and underlying causes of our forgetting and what it would mean for us to remember. Our lives, human life, depend on it.
Why do you want to read Starting Point? It’s not a “news” letter or political blog or real-time response to events. There are plenty of those. It stands, rather in the tradition of Richard Heinberg’s “MuseLetter,” Jan Lundgren’s “Culture Change” and Dave Pollard’s “Saving the World” as a work of synthesis and reflection. Each issue will consider aspects of
- what we humans are presently doing wrong and what some of us are doing right,
- what’s going wrong and what’s going right for Life and human lives both in general and in particular places and why,
- what’s still beautiful and what’s under seige,
- how we can tell the difference and how we can make a difference,
- who we can take our cues from,
- what Life’s Economic Rules for long-term survival on a finite planet mean for us, and
- how we can learn to obey them–together.
Life will last with or without us. But in no small measure, Life as we know it and the human future–ours and our childrens’ and grandchildrens’ futures–are at the mercy of our willingness and ability to learn and obey Life’s rules before Life rules us out.
Check out sample posts to Starting Point here.
You will, of course, have the opportunity to say if you wish to receive new issues of Starting Point or not. You may comment on what you read by going to the Contact Us link here. You may also submit ideas or proposals for articles for future issues.
Ellen LaConte, Editor
