- CONSTITUTIONAL ECOLOGY? 2025 add-ons

Sustainable ecology as a constitutional right.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1106222/13366779

LEARNER full text (2024)

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1106222/13381922

APPRENTI texte integral (2024)

Transcript

WORLD WAR COVID
From WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld
Learner, begin

- CONSTITUTIONAL ECOLOGY?

“Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.” Cree Indian Prophecy taken from Mutant Message, Marlo Morgan “Two Hearts,” MM CO., 1991.

It sickens me to watch stuffed-suit sociopaths cannibalize what is left of our only oxygen works. Here we are, packed aboard the only submarine we know about (the micro-bubble human habitat), cruising the black depths of outer space without a chance to “surface.” 

Like idiots, they are shooting vital components of that unique system out torpedo tubes into the depths. They reward each other for their brilliant achievement with shiny bits of metal and crisp green waste paper printed with lots of zeros. How unwise! They are riding a ruthless race to perdition.

And to think, more than two thousand years have elapsed since the Christ child was born. What tremendous progress we’ve made!

We cannot rely on the American Constitution’s protections as enforced at the dawn of this Third Millennium AD. Its Bill of Rights doesn’t even mention clean air and water. How can we cleave to “original intent” interpretations of this Constitution? Its authors worded things to proclaim all men equal and preserve slavery!

Face it. The U.S. Constitution is obsolete as currently enforced. It was an outstanding document two centuries ago, in the age of horse and sail, of correspondence by goose quill and sealing wax, of unlimited free land as against the land monopoly of nobility. Like other revolutionary instruments, it required active defense by disinterested authorities supposed to bring it up to date on a regular basis, in accordance with its own provisions. But we cannot regulate it properly if under the dictation of special interests that disdain the common good.

The coffin of American freedom was sealed shut by two recent laws: 

·      “Citizens United,” approved by a reactionary Supreme Court that could not have left its citizens more disunited. It grants legal personhood to mere corporations and legalizes unlimited and anonymous political bribes; and

·      The Defense Authorization Bill of 2012, legislated by an equally vile Congress and signed by a Weimar Republic President. It authorizes the indefinite detention or execution of American citizens by military authorities without due process. In short, it cancels the Magna Carta's Writ of Habeus Corpus (a keystone law). 

American equality under the law just waits for  burial by some Hitler mimic favorite son and his pack of last-ditch Repugnants. There lies Trump, crawling back from under his rock: the latest prototype.

Sinclair Lewis said: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

In Great Britain, Magna carta Common Law got muddled during the Enclosure Movement, during which communal rights to Britain’s pasturage, forest resources and shared fields were sacrificed to consolidate large plantations for the rich. In mimicry of this distortion of traditional Anglo-Saxon values, sovereign property rights were crammed into the American Constitution. 

Native American Indians were dumbfounded by this legal definition of ownership. Such claims were based on little more than elite-certified paperwork and enough firepower to back those more often groundless claims. The outcome was genocide for former communal owners more accustomed to collective conventions of usufruct accepted for ages. Less arbitrary, personal and debatable, those conventions were more dependable and akin to their intuitive way of thinking, thus easier to enforce in peace by common consent. 

In our transition to PeaceWorld, this topic will be very important. Learners will abandon brutal regulations that promote the interests of minority elites, and replace them with regulations enforced by peaceful means of mutual trust and near-universal consent.

In truth, the peasants of what became Great Britain were just as astounded as New World Native Americans, by the haughty felony of their betters — backed by overwhelming firepower and eagerness to abuse it.

“Usufruct: The right to … enjoy the profits and advantages of something belonging to another, [in this case, God], so long as the property is not damaged or altered in any way.” Webster’s II, New Riverside University Dictionary. 

Our contractual titleholders must over-exploit their private property to defray outlandish weapon taxes. They accrue profits and advantages from this degrading exploitation despite negative outcomes and perhaps because of them. Most of those weapon taxes should wind up in the social security cash drawer of PeaceWorld or be left in the hands of private owners to reward their good stewardship.

Econologicians refuse to honor sustainability, even though it is the first requisite of good stewardship and the foundation of legitimate use. It is the best way to accelerate our flight from misery, much more practical than elite fantasies “in the pursuit of happiness.” Neither the challenges nor the rewards of ownership will diminish under usufruct law, but sustainability will surely benefit.

Like concentric waves radiating from a pebble tossed in a pond, we radiate expanding rings of delegated authority. From birth on, we delegate preset affiliations of family, religion, culture, education, business and government. An outside agency cannot “grant” us these liberties, privileges, responsibilities and obligations: at best, we can only delegate them in a manner that seems convenient and attractive to us – at worst, on WeaponWorld, less terrifying. 

Several ideas, neglected in the past, should govern the way we delegate this authority: 

·      Personal Prerogative: a healthy, mature individual is personally responsible for their authority and right to privacy. It is never some institution’s to grant back as a “privilege” or withdraw as a source of profit. At worst, the individual must consent to it for the record on a case-by-case basis, especially if an invasion of privacy is involved. The release or use of private information to harm an individual without their consent would be a chargeable offense. The sole exceptions: certifiable psychopaths and convicted sociopaths who will wind up on permanent probation.

·      Institutional Limitation: instruments should limit themselves to issues they have proven they can handle well and delegate other problems to task specialists. 

·      Directed Service: past priorities will be reversed: instruments will honestly serve a popular function, not rich special interests through stealth hypocrisy..

Learners will amend the Constitution to grant equal rights to those who pledge allegiance to it, not just geographical Americans. This will include those who wish it well but refuse to swear , as well as those would who rather honor another text – the Koran or the Bible, for example – provided they cooperate in peace. That will merit near-unanimous approval by the consensus of good conscience. 

Soon, political dogfights will swirl around proposed Amendments to the Constitution; one set drafted by reactionaries to perpetuate weapon management; the other, more progressive, endorsed by Learners. As usual, the former will accuse those latter of its own abuse of power and the latter will accept that blame in silence..

Learners will leave “the pursuit of happiness” to individual talents and personal conscience, where it belongs in the first place. Valid legislation will accelerate everyone’s flight from misery: something our weapon governments block with grim determination. They’d rather abuse select prey in pursuit of happiness for unrestrained elites. 

Government cannot know what happiness is. It is too subjective a topic to handle honestly. On the other hand, misery is something a government can easily count, analyze and reduce through routine procedures any rational adult could recite with their eyes closed: the provision of clean air and water, good nutrition, clothing, housing, education, freedom of speech and assembly, justice (shelter from corruption), etc. Like other institutions and individuals, government should do what it is good at, nothing more and nothing less.

Learners will recognize personal rights to life, freedom of choice, justice and withdrawal from misery. In addition, they will honor the following self-evident rights, namely: the right to cheap, high-quality survival necessities; the right to wholesome soil, air and water; the right to superior health care from conception to expiration; and the right to pursue Learning to one’s utmost ability. Current rights, mercilessly narrowed under weapons rule, will expand under peace rule.

For example, (taken from the Rapture chapter):

Slowly but surely, people began replanting Eden. They discovered they could plant groves of Scotch Pine (Pinus sylvestris) in the bare laetrile soil of the tropics where rain forests once grew. Those new groves attracted birds and beasts and their seed-filled dung, at which point the jungle grew back spontaneously. Millions of such groves sprang up, as conceived by the Gaviotas community.

In every region first humans once called home, sacred oak groves were replanted. Acorn paste had been the staff of life from the start of the Stone Age through the Bronze. The ancient Greeks and their earthly contemporaries, and later, primitive monotheists, cut down and burned their enemies’ oak groves. In the name of weapon loyalty, everyone committed as much environmental desecration as they could get away with. That act of vandalism, then mass enslavement and mass murder, those pretty much defined WeaponWorld from the Bronze Age up to the now.

On the other hand, the headwaters of rivers large and small were repopulated with native beavers. In highlands upstream of arid plains, these beavers built their dams to renew animal, vegetable and aquatic life. Their protected nesting areas, naturally spreading without any other human support, attracted more and more rain, growth and other advantages. Drought and floods decreased downstream. Farmers and property developers, previously suspicious, became enthusiastic supporters of increased agricultural return. With minimal help from us, the natural world, apparently destroyed beyond repair, restored its lush fertility as if by miracle. 

Apparently, regional ecologies we had exterminated may restore themselves if we replant a carefully tailored package of key species in that region. Ideally, this package would include microbes, insects (ants and termites), tunnel and dam building rodents. Migratory birds and animals can take over from there.

Soon, industrial applications of terra preta took the place of chemical fertilizers in agriculture and restored much of the Earth’s fertility.  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100810122030.htm.  Microbiological colonies were studied and optimized in agriculture and forestry.

Clean, safe Thorium technology replaced every unsafe Uranium power reactor.

 Around the world, the poor discovered they could build dependable, cool-in-summer, warm-in-winter, and earthquake-resistant housing from sun baked, earth-brick Domes of Rumi, on their own and literally dirt-cheap. Nobody had to go homeless, now that the house wreckers had Gone and Nader Khalili had shown us the proper way.

Weary travelers could knock at any door and expect welcome and the offer of a good meal and clean water. Everywhere on Earth, a farmer could raise organic crops with sweet water no longer tainted by human error.

In How to Think about War and Peace, Mortimer J. Adler writes:

 “The simplest test of a true conception of human happiness is that it should be attainable by each individual without in any way impeding or preventing an attainment of the same goods by others. Anyone who regards the pursuit of happiness as a competitive enterprise …” [suffers from a fatal delusion]. 

I recommend this book.  

A rationalized world government will assemble thousands of the planet’s top biologists (the majority in that venue) with chemists, physicists, technologists and industrialists ‒ along with their brightest acolytes who will get philosophical free reign should they stray from their stick-in-the-mud superiors. They will assemble for new a Manhattan Project # 3. Project #2: photosynthesis in human skin. Project # 1: the atom bomb.

Each will receive a study copy of The Knowledge (Lewis Dartnell, The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch, The Penguin Press, New York, NY, 2014). 

Then they will get these tough marching orders: 

“Let drop everything you just read. That technology cannot be sustained on this planet at our level of population – neither by luxuriant Twentieth Century standards nor by those much more austere of the post Apocalypse. Come up with more durable ones by slavishly biomiming natural systems. Start with the basics and work your way up. Nothing is sacred but the survival of human civilization, even if it must transform itself beyond recognition. Scrap and replace every technology that stands in your way. 

“Notice: fire is a very special tool to be used very sparingly and usually deep underground or in industrial isolation in outer space, otherwise long ago and far away from the affected object. Likewise, the competition and destruction of living things should more often be secondary to cooperation and growth. Especially in human relations with key ecological species: predators, tunnel or dam rodents, insects (ants and termites), and microbiotic habitats. 

“Don’t come back until you are satisfied with your preliminary findings. “Hurry!”

… 

COMMENT?  markmulligan@comcast.net