Chuck Perrin

My friend hipped me to the sobering facts: in the next year we will reach 7 BILLION people living on this planet. He fears that we’re getting close to our sustainable capacity. There is little question that our world is in turmoil. 3.6 million human beings are starving and homeless in Somalia, and another 12 million more are facing famine and violence because of severe droughts in Ethiopia and Kenya. The horn of Africa is a sweltering mess! Nearby, Syria is in upheaval and people have taken to the streets en masse to protest in Israel. And they’re burning and looting in England – for god’s sake! Socio-economic unrest bubbles up like boils everywhere you look.
Meanwhile, here in the land of the free, where the stock market ping-pongs and profit is king, young people face school fees and tuition that continue to burgeon out of reach, and unions and special interest groups elbow for control as benefits and retirement plans evaporate. Even Mother Nature seems to be going a little crazy (could it retaliation?) with 100+ degree temperatures in the summer and tons of snow and unbearable cold in the winters, not to mention the unrelenting wind, tornados, torrential rains and flooding. Our throbbing planet is showing signs of stress as it wobbles and reels thru the solar system; and so, it seems, are its inhabitants.
It’s weird, but I personally don’t buy into the hopelessness and gloom. I learned long ago that it’s a waste of precious time and energy to worry about things I have no control over. I try to live according to the philosophic system I carefully defined for myself in my youth. Now, I just follow the groove.