The last blog was intended to be a warning about being careful.  ‘Course, how can a fish be careful in an aquarium?

The options seem and are somewhat limited for the fish, that is for sure.  Threats do not seem imminent.  Who hates goldfish?

And even goldfish have little castles.  Worse: outside-the-box alternatives to the aquarium looks like an ‘alien-landscape’.  The living room rug is certainly no place for a goldfish.  To the fish, the management is doing a fine job.

But he is living in a glass house and doesn’t seem aware of it!

Management means change at some point.  Change-by-management.  And the system we live in is not intended to benefit us so much as to manage us.  So, by definition, they (management) will change you.  They will either change you when they manage you and/or they will change you as they manage your environment.

And they are definitely changing our environment.

All change is a shock. It may be something as simple as the aquarium manager simply dumping the fish in a cup and changing the water.  But, regardless, it will mean shock of a kind for the little goldfish.  The manager may add a damn snail or two, maybe even something creepy like a catfish.  Or alter your food supply. Trust me, change happens.  Even to little fish in glass houses.

Sometimes the owner of an aquarium even decides to end the hobby.

Of course, our management (‘they‘) is mostly done to us indirectly by controlling our environment.  Directly it is done most efficiently with carrots (income) and sticks (taxes and rules) rather than just sticks so we are generally pretty pleased with just having our water clean, our regular feedings and our little castle.  Just so long as the food keeps on coming, we are generally a pretty docile group.

And, why not?  A nice environment, a nice house, regular food?

What is not to like?

I like it.

The goldfish likes it.

The problem is that the water is no longer clean, the aquarium is leaking and the catfish are eating all the food and proliferating.  The problem is that the environment is being mismanaged.

And, on top of that, we are not the masters of our own fate, the captains of our own ship, the free and independent people we really need to be to cope with change if we don’t think it works for us.  We, like the goldfish, are captive and we have become too dependent on ‘they‘.

There is an interview with a woman called Fosse who came to a similar conclusion in the 90’s and went back-to-the-land in Ontario.   http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/10/october-27-2011-how-i-prepared-my.html

The blackouts she talks about are hitting the northeast again.  Brownouts are common in California.  The environment is changing.  And almost all things are also changing fast.

The economic playing field is changing.  Pollution is getting worse.  Greenhouse gases are increasing.  Politics are polarizing.  Energy costs are double the impact they were.  Weather patterns and climate are changing.  Governments are staggering under debt.  Hell, even the family and what it means to have a job and have friends is changing.

Look at ‘communications’! Young people talk with their thumbs! There is very little about life in the year 2011 that is similar to what life was like even just fifty years ago.

Things change.  Of course.  But they seem to me to be changing at a faster clip than ever before.  Some of it is good.  Most of it seems bad.  I dunno, call me judgmental.

The point?  We are not the ones changing them.   Not yet, anyway.  But we are being changed by them.  Are you adaptive enough to ‘roll with’ every change?  Remember: it is not the survival of the strongest, it is the survival of the most adaptable that determines evolution.  The good: a lot of people are trying to play ‘catch-up’.  This is very good.  See the following press release:

We either accept and adapt within-the-box (join the OCCUPY Groups) or else we have to be able to adapt and accept what it is like outside-the-box (getting off-the-grid).  Mastering both would be a good idea.

Consider the option of taking more control over your own life from finances to energy, from education to entertainment, from consumption patterns to how transactions are done.  Frankly, I think we even have to take more responsibility for our own health, our own security and our own food production.  We simply have to be more ‘involved’ in the systems that aren’t working well for us or we need to help change them.

You may not wish to get ‘off-the-grid’ in the sense of flipping like a fish onto the living room floor but it behooves all of us to develop more independence, explore some alternative ways, cut the dependencies to the system and sever the umbilicals that hinder our ability to float like a butterfly or sting like a bee.