Presented at Sustainability: From Vision to Practice, a conference held at Sirius Community, Massachusetts, on August 8, 1998.
I think we all recognize that the major reason why we have the situation we have today -- why we have a world which is full of conflict and strife and inequity, and why we have a system which is not sustainable, is because humans have gone off on a tangent. We've lost our connections with the earth and with the higher power. So I would like to try to invoke that higher power and invite spirit in to be with us and guide us this morning. And I'd like to do that by starting with a centering exercise. If I could ask you to join me -- close your eyes -- we're going to take three deep breaths, and I'd like to do an "Omm" (chant) for just a few minutes.
And when we do the Omm, let it come out very gently at first, and let's make it a rolling chant -- you don't all have to start at once. And if someone can time us and let us know after we've gone a few minutes. So settle yourselves down, relax your body. We'll take three deep breaths and then start the chant. ....................... Ommm .....
That should get some energy moving.
Friends, I bring you a message today; it's a message of both warning and of hope. You may not agree with everything I say--and that's as it should be. You're all intelligent people, and I expect you to check things out for yourself. What I ask is that you listen with an open mind and try to entertain some possibilities that I'm going to suggest and see if they resonate with you. I'd like to start with a little story. I made this up.
There was a woman who had arranged one day to meet a friend and take her shopping. Her friend lived on the other side of town, so she went and picked her up. The husband, wonderful, heroic man that he was, agreed to stay home and clean the house and take care of the kids. So she and her friend went shopping and spent a good part of the day doing it. Much later in the day as she was driving back home, as she neared the corner of her street, she noticed it was barricaded, and there was some kind of commotion with police cars and a lot of people around and the smell of smoke was in the air. She parked her car as close to the barricades as she could and she started walking down the street.
Pretty soon she saw her husband and her two children coming toward her. As they came together, her daughter jumped up into her arms and said, "Mommie, mommie, our house has burned down." The woman all at once felt a mixture of feelings--shock, fear, distress, sickness in the stomach, and at the same time, relief to see that her husband and children were alright. After they had settled down a bit and had a chance to get their bearings and adjust to what had happened, they realized maybe this wasn't such a big disaster after all. People had come forward with offers of food and clothing and temporary lodging, and they realized the house was insured and they would have everything they needed to rebuild. And the old house -- they had outgrown it anyway. It was an old house and it was having trouble with the plumbing and other problems, and the electrical system was downright dangerous. So here was an opportunity for them to build a new house, a better house, one more suited to their needs.
Now, just suppose these people had known ahead of time that their house was going to burn down, and even though they were not in a position to stop it from burning down, they could have taken some measures to prepare for the eventuality. Well, that's the kind of situation we face today. I'm not going to say a great deal about that at this point; we will talk about it more a little later on.
Our present way of living is about to pass away. The elaborate systems and structures we have put in place, that we all depend on and take for granted, are going to crumble. The question for us today is what preparations should we be making to, number one, assure our survival, and number two, to make sure we can thrive in the aftermath, that we can create a sustainable way of living and not one that replicates the errors of the present. Now, this conference is all about sustainability. Why should we even need to have a conference on sustainability? Well, we know that the present order is not sustainable, is not sustainable politically, socially, economically or ecologically. Now, I think we all have some understanding of why it's not sustainable. But we'll be able to share our different points of view on that and discuss our different perspectives later on today.
So this present order cannot continue. Among the questions that come to my mind are, How will we the change come? Will it come sooner or later? Will it be smooth and painless or will it be catastrophic? Will it usher in a golden age of peace, prosperity, freedom, or will it degenerate into an order of oppression, conflict, repression, and destruction? Is it possible for us to influence the outcome? And how much of a difference can we make in shaping the future? Is it possible for us to arrive at come kind of consensus about the kind of future we would like to have?
I had the good fortune of being able to work a little bit with Willis Harman during the last couple of years before he died. And Willis often posed the question, "What in the Universe is trying to happen? How can we align ourselves with the underlying force of evolution? And what role can we play in helping that new order to evolve?" Well, this morning, I want to share with you some of my own observations and thoughts, and pose some possibilities. Probably all of us have been working on trying to change things. Some of us have been doing it for quite a long time -- with little apparent effect. The materialistic juggernaut keeps coming on, and coming on -- it seems to get stronger. We wonder if we have any impact at all in what we do. I know I've certainly felt at times like "a voice crying in the wilderness," and especially in the early days when I started doing this work, I felt quite separate and apart and often alienated. My family didn't understand what I was all about. I was a college professor, I had a tenured position. I resigned it. "What's this guy nuts?" And I know other people have done similar things -- dropping out. To pursue what? -- a dream? Yes, a dream. People would say, "Oh, there goes Greco again, complaining about pollution, the ozone hole, adulterated food, unsustainable economies, usury, class structure, inequitable economics, tra-la-la. Well, I've been called a crank and a crackpot, and maybe you have been, too.
By, the way, E. F. Schumacher once said, "I don't mind when people call me a crank. A crank is a very elegant device. It's small, it's strong, it's lightweight, energy efficient, and it makes revolutions." Well, let's be cranks. The fact is, when I reflect on what has happened over the last twenty years or so, when I see the movement and how it's evolved -- and I was really inspired last night when I went to hear Wendell Berry over at the NOFA conference, to see the number of people there, to see the energy, the enthusiasm, and the excitement. I was involved in NOFA in the early years. I was involved in organizing the New York State Chapter, and I attended a NOFA Conference. I believe it was at Johnson State College in Vermont. That was a long time ago. It was a good Conference. We had a lot of energy and, I thought, a lot of people, but the number of people we had then in the mid-eighties was quite a bit smaller than the number I saw last night. So there has been considerable progress. I can see this movement continuing to grow.
Last year, Paul Ray published the results of a research study he did. He called it The Integral Culture Survey. What he did was to survey the values and worldviews of a large number of American adults. The subtitle of his report was called "The Study of the Emergence of Transformational Values in America." He discovered that there are three sub-cultural currents. They are the traditional, the modern and the transmodern, and he labeled people who are associated with these subcultural trends as heartlanders, moderns and cultural creatives, respectively. Now these are just labels, of course, and any particular person is more complex than a label. I generally think of myself as a cultural creative, but I also have things in common with the other two groups as well. But we're talking about general patterns here. Let me describe just briefly how he differentiates these three groups.
The heartlanders he describes as believing in "a nostalgic image of the return to small-town religious America, corresponding to period 1890 to 1930. I have some sympathy for that. I look back nostalgically, although I wasn't quite born in that period, but not long after. And I think of the time when there were steam locomotives, and I would hear the train whistle in the distance and I would ride the train through the countryside and see a lot more open space and a lot more woods. It seemed like a better time in many ways. And I often yearn for a return to those days.
The Modern sub-culture is carried on by a group called "Moderns." Ray says that this current emerged in Europe about 500 years ago. It may be seen as an overthrow of authoritarian political and religious controls. It was about 500 years ago that people started to rise up and throw off the domination of the clergy and the royalty and aristocracy, and so this modern subculture has been emerging for a long time--and it is the dominant culture and has been for quite a while. It has led to the rise of the modern economy, the nation state, science and technology. And he says the dominant values of that group are -- and we see them all around us -- personal success, consumerism, materialism, and technological rationality. It's the modern's that give shape to our modern world.
The trans-modern current also goes back quite a ways. The earliest origins are in the esoteric, spiritual movements of the Renaissance, but it was a sort of back-water or background current. It is informed in the modern period by the New Age Movement, by the Humanistic Psychology movement, by the Green Movement, and by the Women's Movement. So, it has really begun to come on strongly within the last twenty or thirty years.
So, Ray found there was some conflict in the world views among these three different groups, but it wasn't as severe as he expected it to be. He said that, "while the differences in values are strongly tied to life experiences, they are not closely related to religion or national origin." So this trans-modern sub-culture transcends religious backgrounds and ethnic backgrounds. It includes a diverse assortment of people.
I won't try to go into too much more detail about the findings of this study, but I do want to emphasize two conclusions. Ray found that:
(1) there is, indeed, an emergence of transformational values in America today, and that
(2) there is a sizeable group which is evolving the trans-modern sub-culture.
And, just let me put some numbers on these things. The heartlanders, he said, constitute about 29%. That's about 56 million adults. The moderns, about 47%. And the cultural creatives, about 24%. That's 44 million adults in America. That's a sizeable group. Now, I dare say that we, by and large, are cultural creatives.
Ray sees two possible scenarios coming out of this cultural transformation. One is what he calls the "Fall of Rome" scenario -- which we can all imagine what that would amount to; and the other is the "New Renaissance." This is what we hope to create. Now the strategic questions that this suggests are, number one, How do we promote the spread of trans-modern values and stimulate the evolution of the integral culture? And, secondly, How do we inform and empower the cultural creative group and mobilize them to effective action? If we are the trans-cultural vanguard, how can we promote the spread of trans-modern values and stimulate the evolution of integral culture? And how can we inform and empower the cultural creative segment and mobilize its effective action -- action which will ameliorate the negative effects and destructive tendencies of the dying world order?
Now, Ray suggests that the cultural creatives together can spearhead this cultural revitalization movement, but as cultural creatives, we have to become aware of ourselves as a group. He uses a comparison of a group of people in the audience who are all facing the same direction. They're not aware of themselves as a coherent group. He says what we have to do now is to circle around and become aware of ourselves as a force and begin to take coordinated action so that we're all pulling in the same direction. How to do this? He says that we need to build communities and restore ecologies. He says that the restoration of families, communities -- faith communities and local communities -- and ecologies that have been wrecked by modernist economics -- this will be the major task of the integral culture. And with that, I fully agree.
I have a friend who passed away a couple of years ago whose name is Don Werkheiser. And Don used to talk in terms of embedded games and grand games. He says we're all trying to function within the grand game of domination. That's not the terminology he used, but that's basically what it amounts to. To try to function, to try to create a different kind of game when you're embedded within that system is very difficult. But that's what we have to do. We have to play a new game. We have to move from the dominator game to the partnership game. And people like Riane Eisler have started movements of this sort. There's something in Tucson, and I guess, in other places called The "Partnership Way," which is attempting to educate people in this new way of relating. We have to get away from the dominator mode, which is what we have been immersed in for decades, if not longer, and move toward a partnership way of relating -- partnership between ourselves and partnership with the Earth.
Now, the change must come at every level. It's been said, you can't change one thing, you've got to change everything. And you cannot separate economics from politics or social relationships. It's all merged together. We have to do this holistically. We have to work on the level of systems rather than separate parts. We need a vision. We need a vision that is profound enough and powerful enough to inspire that kind of change.
Now, we're talking about change at the personal level, change at the interpersonal level, change at the structural level, and change at the biological level, even. Personally, we have to get our own house in order. There's a verse in the Bible about taking the beam out of your own eye before you can see clearly to take the mote out of your brother's eye. So we have to change personally -- we have to open ourselves up to be changed by the Spirit. And I'm sure everybody in this room has done a lot of personal work of one kind or another. Then we have to get our relationships healed. We have to find a way to transcend disputes and differences, to be able to accept one another as we are and relate to one another in compassion and love. Then we can start looking at the structural level and create structures that are consistent. I think also it's not too far-fetched to say that we're being changed biologically as well.
So the vision of metamorphosis -- let me just describe what I know about this--I'm no expert on this by any means, but I have looked into it a little bit and studied it. I was first introduced to this idea by one of my colleagues in Tucson, Larry Victor, and then, later on, in a book by another friend, by Norrie Huddle, a book on butterflies, and, lately, Elizabet Sahtouris has been writing about this. She and Willis Harman wrote a book together before Willis died, that should be out later this year. Well, what we know about nature can help us understand, I think, what is happening to us -- what is happening in the world.
The physiological process which we observe in nature, for example, the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly, has its socio-political counterpart, and I think it's an apt metaphor -- but it's even more than a metaphor, it's really what I think is happening. It starts with the egg. A mature butterfly will lay a tiny egg on a leaf. And, then, when the conditions are right, that egg will hatch. A tiny little caterpillar will actually eat its way out of the egg, will eat the egg shell and then it'll start to feed on the leaf. It will eat the rest of the leaves off the plant. Now in the caterpillar or the larva stage, the caterpillar has one need, that is to eat and eat and eat, and grow and grow and grow. That's what the caterpillar does. But this doesn't go on indefinitely. But, while it is eating, the caterpillar can devastate the host plant. I saw direct evidence of this just a few days ago. We have some pepper plants in our back yard, and a friend who lives next door -- she came over and she said, "Look at that plant. All the leaves are gone!" We went out to look at it and found two tomato horn worms -- you know what they are? They're the big green ones about as big as my thumb. We only found two of them but they had devastated that plant. They had eaten almost every leaf off of that plant -- overnight. It was a hot pepper plant, and they ate the hot peppers, too. It's really amazing.
But at some point, the caterpillar stops eating and stops growing. An interesting thing happens in the caterpillar stage. The caterpillar skin does not grow along with the caterpillar body. The caterpillar has to go through a process called molting. When the skin gets too small, it breaks open, and the caterpillar crawls out of it complete with a new skin. This molting process will happen four or five times. But at some point, the caterpillar stops eating and stops growing. Cause nothing can grow forever. Somebody ought to tell our economists that.
So, what does the caterpillar do? It attaches itself to a twig, and it spins a protective shell around itself, a cocoon, a chrysalis. And what happens in the next phase -- it's called the pupae stage -- is a miraculous process. It seems like nothing's happening, but, in fact, a lot is going on inside the shell. The caterpillar body disintegrates, turning into a nutrient soup. But in the caterpillar body there are, and there were from the very beginning, what is called "imaginal buds," or "imaginal disks." I think what these are is clusters of cells, and they contain, or are, the embryonic butterfly. Now, these imaginal buds were in the caterpillar body all along, they were dormant through the caterpillar stage. Now they become active and start to grow and to play out the butterfly program. This may take a period of days or even weeks. Again, when conditions are right, after the butterfly body is formed, then the chrysalis breaks open, the butterfly crawls out, spreads its wings and pumps blood into its wings. It may take a couple of hours for it to dry out, then it flies away. This is called the "imago." The butterfly is the imago stage. It is the adult, the mature adult. What does the mature adult do? It reproduces, it sips nectar, flies around, and pollinates plants. Contrast that to the caterpillar. The caterpillar devours plants . The butterfly helps the plants to reproduce.
Now, lest we be too judgemental about this, the caterpillar as destructive as it seems was preparing the nutrients for the butterfly. You know that pepper plant? It's sprouted new leaves; it's coming back. We lost the peppers but we've got a couple other plants. So, maybe this is a stage that we have to go through. Maybe it could not have been any other way. We are voraciously consuming resources. It looks like we are destroying the planet. And maybe there is a possibility that we will destroy the planet. But, then again, maybe we're destined for something else.
So, where are we now, socio-politically and economically? I think we're those imaginal buds. We're becoming active, we're becoming aware of ourselves, we're being nourished by the accumulated resources of a dying culture. We're becoming ever more powerful. Yes, the worm continues to devour. But it won't for much longer. The butterfly will form and emerge, and there will be a new world order. Now, I think metamorphosis is more than a metaphor for us. I think it's a reality that we can live. So, what do we do?
Reiterating what I said before -- we need personal transformation, a rebirth, if you will, then we have to heal our relationships and our communities. On a personal level, if we are the imaginal cells, each one of us, in our own time, must wake up to our true nature. We have to tune into the butterfly program, connect with the whole and fulfill our destiny, and lose ourselves in the unified body of the whole human. So this personal transformation is the first necessity. When we open our hearts and our minds, we can bring about profound changes in our values, attitudes and beliefs. Values, attitudes and beliefs are the essence of Spirit at the personal level. Then we start to heal our relationships. Healthy relationships in functional communities provide a stable platform from which we can examine the adequacy or inadequacy of the structures we have created, economically, politically, and so on. Then we can see their adequacy or inadequacy relative to our new identity. We can abandon those which are flawed and dysfunctional, and beyond repair, and we can create new structures which are more consistent with humane values and support the greater realization of the human potential. So, the new world order will not emerge from a single "cell." There won't one person that's going to come and save us and say, "This is the Way." The way should be revealed by the Spirit, and it will be revealed to everyone.
So let me go to the structural level. I've identified five basic areas that are in need of restructuring. They are money, banking, and finance; land tenure and ownership; taxation and public revenue; government and law; corporations and centralization of power. There are probably others that you would name. These seem to me the most urgent that I have been able to identify. And let me say, by the way, that we have a website. I'm Director of a small non-profit organization called the Community Information Resource Center, and there are some flyers about it on the back table along with some descriptive literature about my books.
Community Information Resource Center, (CIRC) has a website, and we have a number of, I think, useful things on that website. The website lists these things and a number of questions that need to be asked in these areas which we're going to talk about now. The website is azstarnet.com/~circ. That is on the flyer.
Well, over the years I've become aware of serious problems in each of these areas, and also, important new thinking in each of these areas -- and we have links on our website to some of the more useful links I have found in each of these areas.
With regard to money, banking and finance -- and this is the area I have been most active in, with analyzing the defects in the existing monetary system and devising alternative moneys and local currency and exchange systems. That's what I've written most about. Some of the questions that need to be asked are: How should the exchange of value be mediated? Is money obsolete? Just what is money anyway? How should value be measured? How should value be stored? Typical definitions in a money and banking course say money is a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a measure of value. That's an absurdity to try to define all those functions in one. And I talk about that in the third part of my Money and Debt book.
How should economic activity be financed? Just briefly, there are two kinds of investments: equity and debt. And what I'm trying to do is move away from debt, at least interest-bearing debt, and toward equity investments. How should advances in productivity be shared? How could money, banking, and finance be changed to support quality of life as opposed to quantity of consumption?
The next area is that of land tenure and ownership: Who should own the land and natural resources of the earth? What material rights does each living person have by reason of birth? What is our birthright? What rights, privileges and obligations does land ownership entail? How can earth be shared to assure that everyone has what they need? How can the needs of other species be assured?
"Nothing is sure but death and taxes" is the old adage. But, why? Death, maybe. Why taxes? Why can't governments run on voluntary contributions? If you like what it's doing, you support it. If you don't, you don't. What's the proper source of public revenue? At what level should government revenue be assessed and collected? I tend to favor local collection -- collected at the county level and then send to the Federal government what we think they ought to get. How should public revenue be collected and distributed?
Government and Law: Where does sovereignty reside? This is a big issue. And there is a movement, called the Sovereignty movement. And they are raising this issue. They tend to include some rather zany types, but, you know, they have a point. The saying is that politics make strange bedfellows. Maybe we need to climb in bed with some people that we ordinarily wouldn't associate with to get the job done. Who has the power to govern and under what circumstances? What is the proper role of government anyway? Who should have power to make laws? What is the basis for law? What's the difference between criminal law and civil law? How many people know the difference? It's very important to know the difference between criminal and civil law. Who's bound by which laws and under what circumstances?
And, finally, Corporations and Centralization of Power: We have used this corporate form as a way of advancing the industrial society. Limited liability is the primary feature of a corporation. It says, "Put your money in this entity, and, if it doesn't succeed, that's all you lose." Creditors cannot come after your personal assets. Well, this is a two-edged sword. It has a good side and a down side, as we all know. Look at what happened to the asbestos problem. The companies declared bankruptcy, and the people who were hurt by asbestos had no recourse. The same thing may happen with the tobacco companies and other companies in distress. Now, why do we have such rampant pollution? Because it's hidden behind a corporate veil. Now, David Korten is one of the people I always mention. He's done some really good work in this area. He wrote a book called, "When Corporations Rule the World," and he's coming out with a new book, which I was asked to review a few months ago, called "Envisioning a Post-Corporate World." It should be out later this year. Excellent. Also, Richard Grossman is doing some good work, and I have a link to his material, as well. He lives in Massachusetts, by the way.
So, we need to challenge the assumptions of the institutional status quo. We need to break taboos which have prevented open debate on all of these issues for quite a long time. You know, the power structure would have us believe that all the pertinent questions with regard to these things have long since been settled satisfactorily. That's not the case. Let me just suggest a couple points that come to my mind. I've been playing around with the idea of a Declaration of Economic Independence. Now, I think it's time for a new enlightenment. Just as the Declaration of Independence challenged the existing political order of 200 and some years ago, we need to challenge the legitimacy of the existing economic order.
Let me share with you my ideas about a Declaration of Economic Independence. How about this:
We hold this truth to be self evident, that all natural persons have an inalienable right to sustenance and an equal claim to the resources of the Earth and to our common cultural heritage. Those persons who claim ownership of more than their fair share of land and natural resources have an obligation to compensate those who are excluded.
Think about that.
As the institution of the nation/state loses its power, and it is very quickly losing its power, unfortunately to non-democratic corporate structures, but that maybe temporary also, because the corporation is, after all, a creature of the state. People of the world, as we begin to recognize that we are one human family, we should forge a new constitution, for not a "United Nations," but of a "United People of the World." Let me share with you my idea -- I"ve only gotten as far as the Preamble, but maybe we'll finish the rest of it. How's this:
WE THE PEOPLE of the world, in order to form a more perfect society, establish justice and equity, insure peace and harmony, provide for our necessary sustenance, and promote the general welfare while insuring the rights and freedom of each individual natural person, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United People of the World.
Now, maybe some of us can get together later in the weekend and continue to work on it.
Well, we humans have built this elaborate structure. In many ways it's wonderful, and in many ways it's terrible. It's given us a lot of material abundance. Oh, there are some things I like about it. I actually like computers. They're a useful tool. It's also a fun thing to play with. And I like my car. I like being able to get in my car and go where I want to go. But all these things have negatives aspects. The car pollutes the atmosphere. It uses up fossil fuels and puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but that doesn't mean that being mobile has to be that way. Anyway, we've created this elaborate structure, but it is flawed. It has been flawed from the very beginning because it was based on human ego, and the spirit that propelled it was the spirit of self-seeking -- self-seeking and greed. And that used to be moderated to some extent, but it seems, in recent years, all of the stops have been pulled out, and it's become unbridled greed that is running the show.
So, we deny God, we rape and pillage Mother Earth, we oppress and rob our brothers and sisters. Those among us who are most acquisitive and seek rulership, have put in place a vast array of structures, systems, ordinances, laws that are designed to tighten their control and enhance their wealth. They've done it with our agreement, so we need to withdraw our support. What we need to do -- we need to put in place a system that is inspired by a finer spirit. We need to acknowledge that there is a higher power, that there is a human oversoul, which unites us all, the holy spirit, if you will, and we need to conform to a new ethic -- an ethic of service, fairness, fellowship, personal freedom, and cooperation. Not that there's anything new about that. All of our religious traditions have advocated that.
We are going through a phase in our evolution, and we have, first of all, the quickening, then the opening, and the birth. One last story, then I'm done. I can remember very distinctly -- I was about eight years old, and my mother, my sister and I had gone to visit my grandmother, who lived a few blocks away. Somebody else had come over to visit -- a woman who was pregnant, and pretty far along. On the way home, I asked my mother, "You know that lady had a baby inside her belly. How does the baby get out?" Now I was just beginning to learn a little bit about female anatomy and I just couldn't imagine it. And she said, "Well, it comes out through an opening." I thought, "What opening could that be?"
It's a miracle, the miracle of birth. It's not something that anybody can do, but it happens. It's a lot like the Bible story of the Israelites coming out of Egypt. They went down to Egypt because there was a famine in the Land of Canaan. And over a period of some 400-odd years, they became slaves to the Egyptians -- metaphorically, slaves to materiality. And then it was time for them to be released from their captivity. After ten plagues, Pharaoh said, "OK, you can go. Get the hell out of here." So they went, and there they were -- up against the Red Sea. Pharaoh changed his mind, so he sent his army and chariots after them. So there they were, "between the devil and the deep blue sea." What happened? The impossible happened. The waters parted, and they went through. It's the same way with birth. The impossible happens. The opening opens up. So that's what we're getting ready for.
Now, this afternoon's session is going to focus on something. I've often wondered -- how are we going to stop this juggernaut? How are we going to be able to move through this industrial-dominated culture into a new world? I couldn't for the life of me imagine until about eight months ago. You know we hear about global planet change, we hear about unprecedented sunspot activity, there's a meteor shower that's going to occur in November of this year, and again in November of next year, that will probably knock out some satellites and communication systems like the one that went down a couple of months ago that knocked out cell phones and ATMs for a couple days. We're going to see that on a much larger scale in November. But, those are, sort of, mostly in the indefinite future.
But, we have another situation that is developing. I call it the millennium crisis; others are calling it the millennium crisis, as well -- generally referred to as Y2K -- the y stands for year, two is two, and k is the abbreviation for thousand -- the Year Two Thousand. This afternoon's session is going to focus in detail on this, so I wont say too much about it. But, suffice it to say that this phenomenon is forcing us to rethink everything we're doing. The sustainability movement is going to have to shift its focus from ameliorating long-term negative trends to dealing with the immediate necessities of survival and getting ready to implement the new structures. We're no longer working toward some far-distant deadline. We now have a fairly precise deadline. In fact, things may start to crumble before January l, the year 2000. So, we need to mobilize the troops. In Tucson, we're organizing Y2K preparedness groups. So we need to mobilize the troops. We're, in Tucson, organizing the Year 2000 group. We're going to try to mobilize the whole community, everyone in Tucson, preparing for this situation. We're welcoming Y2K as a gift, speaking of the gift of Y2K. It is the opening we've been waiting for.
Thank you.
[Applause.]