If you're not part of the problem, you can't be part of the solution.

Dave Pollard writes a heartfelt commentary on Bill Moyer's recent speech accepting the Harvard Medical School Global Environmental Citizen award. Dave includes the entire speech and it is an important speech. It is worth reading more than once.

Dave's commentary is also important reading as it builds on his ongoing weblog of stimulating and informative discussions of problems and solutions. But in this commentary he adds the following challenge to Moyer's comment that we need to "fight for the future we want:"

Get out there on the front lines so you see for yourself what our civilization is really wreaking on this planet. And then join us. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

This idea, that you're either with us or against us, is the thinking that has led us to this place where we think of ourselves as separate from the natural world. The idea that we can separate ourselves from the others and thereby build a better world is the same thinking that divides us always. It is a dead end. There is not a world of problems and a new world of solutions. There is just one world. The only reason that we can see problems and solutions is that we are participating in making the problems. This interdependent participation also gives us the knowledge of what has been done, and what practicable solutions might be.

I know this doesn't sound like enough, but it's all I have right now.