Last weekend a few of us Environmental Studies got free tickets to the renowned Bioneers Conference, courtesy of our lovely school! The conference was comprised of influential speakers from environmental and social justice movements all over the world. The mood was distinctly directed toward rejuvenation. It wasn't just about hearing news and learning technical information. It was about convening with like-minded, like-valued people who you could connect with professionally and emotionally. It was so inspirational for me to hear such a diversity of people with such immense experience share their deepest concerns and hopes with us. There was much that I took away from the conference, but I think these principles pretty much sum it all up:
1. Turn to nature for inspiration and guidance (for example, nature allows no waste).
2. Exposure to diversity will lend you perspective and adaptability; be willing to collaborate with anyone.
3. Empathize with and preserve the rights and dignity of all that lives.
4. Health of body, health of mind, and health of environment are all interrelated.
5. Life, including your own, is reproductive and regenerative of itself.
6. Realize that the current status quo is in its infancy, and that it is in drastic opposition to most what preceded it.
7. Study and have respect for the values, wisdom, and ecological knowledge, our ancestors developed in ages past.
8. Bring global ideals to local arenas; generally speaking, no good is universal.
9. Understand that each problem has ten thousand causes and ten thousand victims - it takes cooperation and integration across disciplines and movements to aid them all.
10. Don't blame yourself for what this world has done to you, and be compassionate for what the world has done to others.
11. Nature is within us, and if we are unjust to nature (or even to each other) it is because we have been alienated from it; alienation causes suffering within the self.
12. Know that change is coming; all the innovation and determination we could possibly need is already out there.
During the course of it all, I wrote down many quotes from my favorite speakers (they're well worth looking up: Bill McKibben, Fletcher Harper, Gabor Mate whose books I bought...) but the most eloquent and on point was probably Marina Silva, an associate of the late Chico Mendes (you may have seen her carrying the Olympic flag in London this past summer). I think this motley pile of her poignant words describes the direction of twenty-first century activism very aptly:
"If the current model cannot be universalized, it cannot be defended ethically... This is a type of activism that is at the altar of the self... It is a leadership that is multicentric... People no longer want to be spectators of politics; they want to be the protagonists."
I for one certainly feel this way, especially after the conference. How about you?
