Words to a friend who is organizing ‘the black ribbon’ campaign, in response to Canada’s black marks in Copenhagen: visit Rik Logtenberg, on Facebook and Twitter

We need to be very clear and hard--headed in the whole approach we take. I noticed when I listened to Michelle Mungal, our MLA, the other night, whom I love a lot, that she came across to me as enthusiastic, optimistic and naive..She kept saying things like “All Canadians care about the climate change, “ and I thought, “Well, Michelle, clearly that is not true, because I have friends that don’t even know what Copenhagen is..”

I don’t know if you are familiar with the work of Joanna Macy..it would be good to read some of her work, because she has been working for the last 15 years on helping to awaken people and mobilize their resources for skillful action in taking care of our environment.

Joanna talks about how we flip flop back and forth between despair/ numbness and rage...What I heard you saying on the phone yesterday was very inspiring: That we can support each other in tackling both sides of this issue: 1) the changes that I can begin making in my own life
and 2) the ways that we collectively can begin standing up to the corporations.

I do have a feeling that many people are ignoring the issue because they cannot actually deal with their own feelings around what is going on.

It seems to me that we have become incredibly passive, and have totally forgotten that we are living in a democracy of some sort, even now..This passivity is very strong in North America...a friend of mine from England mentioned it to me the other day..She was talking about the new Harmonized Sales Tax, how we have had it imposed on us without any choice at all, and that if everyone was clear that it was unacceptable, it wouldn’t be happening. People get out and scream and yell and demonstrate a lot more in Europe.

WE GET IN LIFE WHAT WE TOLERATE. I’ve been saying this to a lot of my clients recently..Of course there are many things we have no choice about...and if we are not clear about the difference, then we get stuck in deadness and passivity, instead of radical acceptance and skillful action.