A Global Cafe

Walked in to Barnes and Noble and bought a Unique Media map of the world. Saw it and today I decided I needed to buy it. Not that I had a reason, just a whim.  I also bought a couple of other maps: one on Guatemala (where I had spent two years a long time ago) and a second of Scotland and Edinburgh (a family destination some years ago). Some days I suppose one imagines and travels.  At checkout, the young woman asked if I intended to travel "to the World." I appreciated her early morning gist and smiled. If only my destination were more at peace I suggested.

But our conversation had me thinking and questioning and pondering. And so it goes as I opened my Sunday morning, NY Times as I climbed in to my car I realized that the planned "renovation" or re-launch, of their magazine had happened this day and the front cover focus revealed what they described as a 2015 "sense of life on Earth."      

I suppose "Global," should be my focus this day. Sort of presumptuous for sure, naïve even more so, but the time has come for sovereign nations to tackle the need for action, a collaborative work of art to invoke a future vision and an embedded strategy to sustain a diverse World. Many would cry foul in a past vision of subsistence cultures that in essence (and their local Worlds) continue to meet their needs. My contention is that what has come before is now without precedent: a technological Saran wrap that is re-configuring our very lives, our communities, and our World.      

Simple effort for me to share my catalog of concerns, but it is exemplified by the climate change and/or warming scenarios.  We alter atmospheric chemistry at one scale, we alter local landscapes at another, but reality is that we, in cultures across the world, need to re-design the future with an eye toward our biological underpinnings. Collectively, we have common ground in sharing basic human needs for shelter, food, water, and air that qualify as requisites for our human condition to continue on Earth. 

I am not looking for a global government per se, if only to avoid what is anathema to many.  Perhaps, it is a "Global Café," or in a post-World War II context, it stems from the United Nations. Yet, a commonsensical approach should be common ground that we need to work together within some structured roundtable.

But, in final thoughts, that what may be common sense to some is impractical for others. With that in mind my personal faith calls, that we will increasingly see major impacts over the near term. My guess is that these should occur over tens of years, but if my destiny serves me well then perhaps these may be sooner rather than later. For our very existence holds expectations that in each of us that we search for meaning and method to life. The days ahead may carry a story, a story that has beginnings in long ago, but that the ending is as of yet unwritten.

Visions of a Sustainable World - http://youtu.be/FS7o4g5kzMM

Sincerely,

Samuel R...