Pamela's Blog 43

Published on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“Letter To Michael Reynolds”

[see OnTheRoadLog 7, Thursday, 08.20.09

...And see the quote from:Earthships Vol. 1 in Waking Up]

by Pamela Satterwhite

August 15, 2009

Michael Reynolds
Earthship Biotecture
P.O. Box 1041
Taos, NM 87571

Re: Earthship Curriculum

Dear Michael Reynolds,

On page 218 of the book I am enclosing with this letter (I apologize for hand-writing it, but I’m traveling, perhaps in Taos as you read this), I describe how I first heard about you, and Earthships.

The idea moved me then. It moves me even more now, now that I see it in much broader terms, perhaps even than you see it yourself. Because the Earthship is simultaneously a way of learning how to work with the earth, its truest realization must be as a curriculum for children, so that we can, across culture, begin recreating ourselves culturally, enabling the willingness of we who do the work to reclaim our world.

In your Earthships books, you argued that we have a system wildly out of sync with the earth itself. In Waking Up, I am arguing that this did not occur by happenstance, but that, on the contrary, a small, organized elite is invested in the belief that the absence of any rational economic planning serves them…and without rational economic planning we are spiraling down into inevitable chaos. I agree with Erich Fromm that:

Only in a planned economy in which the whole nation has rationally mastered the economic and social forces can the individual share responsibility and use creative intelligence in his work. All that matters is that the opportunity for genuine activity be restored to the individual…We must replace manipulation of men by active and intelligent co-operation, and expand the principle of government of the people, by the people, for the people, from the formal political to the economic sphere.” (The entire quote is found on page 78-9 of Waking Up.)

An Earthship Curriculum would put the earth first, beginning a long-overdue process of restoring balance not just in ecological terms, but in political, economic and historical terms. Earth-connected peoples have gotten a raw deal (to put it mildly), our stories have been removed from the “civilization project.” We are misrepresented in the official story as brutally as we have been mistreated in the political realm.

Our children are being taught to view nature as object rather than as “the heart” of our human connections. What is most exciting to me about the prospect of an Earthship curriculum is its potential for releasing the creative problem-solving energies of children, and all of us. It offers a different way of looking at the earth, and the challenges facing us. By definition it requires an activist stance, a stance of inquiry. It encourages our children’s power and works with their native longing to “figure things out.” They have answers that we, who have been too well schooled in ways of thinking that demand subservience and authoritarianism, cannot see.

I am writing to ask that you consider the ideas proposed in this letter, and consider the possibility that the Earthship as a lifeboat for all human beings, the dream that you envisioned decades ago, will be actively subverted unless it is actively fought for.

I am hoping to meet with you and discuss these ideas. I am in New Mexico and could meet with you in person, if you are willing, or by phone if that is preferable to you.

Whatever you decide, writing this gives me the opportunity to thank you directly for what I believe is a critical contribution to global healing and the advancement of human culture. This is not hyperbole.

Looking forward to our future freedom,

Pamela Satterwhite
P.O. Box 3952
Berkeley, CA 94703
510.506.0080

email: nas2endwork@gmail.com

http://www.nas2endwork.org

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Nas2EndWork "Pamela's Blogs":

Pamela's Blog 43

Published on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“Letter To Michael Reynolds”