My next book

Here is the beginning of the new book I am working on now:                           

A PERMACULTURE OF THE HEART

                                    Cultivating, Nurturing, growing our Best Selves,

        Our Societies, Cultures, and the World

PROLOGUE

Listen, there is hope for us, for the human race and for our beautiful living Earth.  That is what this book is about.  But I want to remind us here of the heavy assault of negatives we commonly encounter everywhere everyday, that we must be cognizant of and name in order to convert them and realize what Charles Eisenstein calls in his  eponymous book “The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know Is Possible.”

Every time we turn on the news of the day we are confronted by sheer horrors, human beings murdering, maiming and torturing each other – in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia, in our own country, our own city, town or countryside.  What is wrong with human beings?  Are we fundamentally flawed?  Are the perpetrators a different breed from ourselves?

As of the moment I write these words I have lived over eighty seven years in this same world, studying our humankind, anthropology, our histories, philosophies, religions, politics, economics, our cultures, folklore, literature, music, fine arts, and for the past forty year I have been a counselor, trying to understand and help people understand and deal constructively with their personal problems.   I have also been a teacher at various time of children of all ages from elementary school through college and beyond, and I have been a child care provider far children from birth to school age.

I have found that, with all our differences we human beings all share certain fundamental qualities that are apparent from birth or from very early in the first years of life.  I realize some babies who have experienced trauma in uteri or in the birth process carry special challenges, but that does not negate the truth I propose here that all human beings are, from conception, basically good.  The difficulties, the challenges we carry, all arose from events that occurred after conception, and for most people after birth.

Here is who we are, fundamentally, based on my observation.  We are curious, we want to know the world around us, and we set out to discover it as soon as we are able.  E are joyful, full of fun and love to play and to laugh.  We are aware of sensations and feelings and seek to express them immediately.  Unless we have been restricted and limited by fear, we let the world know just what we are feeling.  We are also caring.  This feeling develops gradually, first as we become aware of our mothers and of our reliance on them, for food, touch, warmth, and attention.  A child raised with no mother or mother substitute, institutionally, will not be robust, will languish in health and growth, and if they survive it will take time and special attention and caring for them to form the attachments that all human beings need, to learn to love themselves through the love of another.

Human beings need closeness with other human beings.  We need each other.  Our essential being fives and takes from others we are close to, and through them we change and heal each other.