Rescuing my digital art

The time has come to migrate my art work out of Facebook. You may take a peek on the Digital Art tab or experience all of it on my new dedicated website .

Zeitgeist Movement’s stripping of personal identity has dire consequences

Although I applaud and support The Zeitgeist Movement for being a serious and honest alternative proposal to the current dysfunctional and unsustainable socio-economic system, I disagree with its typical left-wing belief in forcing all social groups into a massive amalgamate. Such effort to universalize people persuading them to give up ethnic, religious and cultural identities has proven wrong throughout history. Prime example being the socialist and communist states, which failed miserably.

I agree with the intent behind such call to universalize human beings which I believe is for the noble purpose of valuing our common humanity over our differences. The need for such goal is particularly relevant in a time where differences are being exploited by nefarious political and financial powers to manipulate people, dividing them across the aisle at superlative personal and social costs. However it is ignorant, irresponsible, disrespectful and ultimately counterproductive to strip people from their identity as the means to give them a universal identity.

I agree that as humans we need to be part of a tribe, and ultimately we need to identify with the tribe of humanity. But we cannot force people into groups bashing their sense of individuality and the specific identities that create such individuality.

I was born and raised in Madrid but have lived and worked in North and South America. Subsequently I do not think of myself as just a Madrilian or a Spaniard but European, North and South American. I embrace all those geographic identities equally. In the same way, embracing two continents does not prevent me from feeling a citizen of the human race, identifying with and caring for humans around the world. Also being a heterosexual agnostic male does not prevent me from feeling in the same way with people of different of creed, ethnicity, race or gender.

We are all human and I cannot emphasize enough how much I defend our common humanity. I then believe those who promote the stripping of people’s’ individual identities even as a means to a critical goal such as global sustainability or social justice, are making a huge mistake that goes against nature and universal justice. A mistake which keeps people subjugated, indoctrinated and emotionally wrecked. We need a new movement to restore the sacredness of identity.

2030-2045 Phase of petrol vehicles: Salvation or eco-hype?

 

Despite the latest pontificating by governments and companies on the phasing out of petrol fueled vehicles, I am not impressed. here is one of several posts commenting on such initiative. My response to those who cheer this seemingly grandiose strategy we may not have a hospitable planet by 2030!

If we dare to be realistic we realize that one to two decade time window is too narrow to prevent climate change and overall environmental degradation from taking us to irreversible global humanitarian crisis and natural ecosystem collapse.

We need more intense measures to deal with the level of risk we have created in this planet. What is despairing is not that we lack the ability to implement such measures, even at the eleventh hour as it is now, but that we believe to have the time window that would allow us to avoid a global catastrophic crisis. And we believe we have such luxury of course in our current slow and gradual transition to our culture and technology.

In light of the current environmental and cultural predicament where we have passed several tipping points in the disruption of our planetary life-sustaining system while we lack the urgency to cleanup our human infrastructure, I believe the highest priority is to develop solutions to save as much life (human and non-human).

Such approach would solve the long-held dilemma between adaptation and mitigation. I would put 60 percent of the efforts on adaptation and the rest on mitigation. If our strategy for adaptation sets the design foundation for a truly sustainable human infrastructure, 100% of our work will ultimately have resulted in mitigation.

The Age of Trump

IN 2017 THE UNITED STATES ELIMINATED ITS ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY. MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS REIGNED FREE FROM REGULATION AND POLLUTED INDISCRIMINATELY. IN MERELY 28 MONTHS THE WORLD EXPERIENCED AN ENVIRONMENTAL AND HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS.

We are living at a time when this could be the introduction to the next sci-fi book or film but also the news based content. This type of crises is no longer an exaggeration. It could very well happen tomorrow.

The Fallen

Exploring sustainability with sci-fi art and film

After several years of sustainability work through technology and advocacy, I am researching a mostly undiscovered and far more subtle strategy to shift consciousness, art and entertainment.

I am the currently using photography and computer imaging to develop visions of a potential dystopian and utopian futures that would help generate the story.

In addition to my work sustainability science and technology I plan to grow this cli-fi art work into a future sci-fi film that will entertain the public while raising environmental consciousness.

 

Futurists refuse to see the elephant in the room

Everyone from regular politicians to pundits, from environmentalists to technophiles and transhumanists, avoids the biggest elephant in the futurist room, population growth.

There is no way to save our civilization and prevent the devouring of the natural world without a plan to stabilize our exponentially increasing numbers in this planet! Why is everyone so afraid of identifying such paramount issue? What is the reason for such denial?

I keep on reading futurist projections where they imagine the unimaginable in terms of trends and technologies but no one will address a planet soon to surpass beyond 9 billion people with an ever increasing (exponential) growth acceleration in the consumption of resources and the degradation of our life sustaining system.

Here is a great example of such projections. 

The power of complexity theory raising environmental awareness

A fascinating article illustrating how advanced systems thinking and complexity science in particular can lay for us a calculated strategy to spread environmental awareness or any kind of transformative awareness.

We can use our scientific and technological might to consume the planet or regenerate it. The choice is ours.

Understanding of reality as a complex system. Photo by http://www.slate.com

Hear the cry of a trillion sentient beings wasted by our industrial machine

This article is another opportunity to understand that Nature is not just an industrial feed stock but intelligent sentient life just like us.

Internalizing this objective fact makes us develop an emotional connection with life no different than what we have for our fellow human beings and our pets. Empathy, affection and a sense of care are the emotions that build up such connection.

It is this emotional awakening that will eventually help us recover our lost link to the natural world. Until such emotional re-connection can take place we will not be able to achieve the shift in our perception of reality and our overall attitude toward ourselves and nature required to make our existence sustainable on Earth.

Art can greatly enhance and expedite this indispensable psychological and cultural process. That is the core objective of my current work in art, psychology and sustainability.

Amazon rainforest deforestation. Photo: worldwildlife.org

Photographing Climate Change

If you leave in Southeast Michigan and you are interested in Climate Change, I encourage you to check out my new meet up.

Unsatisfied and overwhelmed by the system driving modern society? Lucky you!

“…if there is any testament to the plasticity of the human mind, if there is any proof of how malleable human thought is and how easily conditioned and guided people can become based on the nature of their environmental stimulus and what it reinforces, the world of COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING IS THE PROOF.”

This chilling quote is from the documentary, ‘Zeitgeist: Moving Forward’. Dare to watch it and it may help you wake up and unplug from the mental programming all of us are subjected to.

Whatever little time you spend unplugged realizing the actual reality of society and the planet, it will be worth every second. It will most likely make you unplug again and ultimately empower you to find true freedom from the socio-economic system, from the programming which provides the meaning of life to every consumer and in the process, literally devours our life-sustaining system.

If you have had the courage and intellectual stamina to watch the whole film, I have something to share with you. As brilliant and comprehensive the analysis this film does on modern civilization and the natural environment that supports it is, I am not naïve enough to believe the suggested resource based solution alone will make civilization sustainable.

The big elephant in the room is human psychology. This documentary puts all its faith on a premise that history has proven wrong, that science will bring integrity to human actions and decisions just because the scientific method is objective, rational and prejudice free. Just because science is inherently honest does not guarantee the use of it will be so.

There are myriads of examples of so-called sustainable technologies that are used both with a beneficial and a detrimental environmental impact. The best modern-day example is renewable energy which has been an overall success in Germany.

The fact is that when you promote sustainability within the very industrial paradigm that you are trying to correct, you will miserably fail because you will be subject to the same unsustainable core believes and behaviors created by this incumbent monetary and market system.

Science must be infused not just with ethics and values but with a true sustainability consciousness, if we want to make sure it will have a positive net impact. Beyond universal morals and prioritization of life we need a complex systemic mindset to effectively understand reality. It is not technology but us humans, each of us individually and collectively that will kill or save our civilization and the environment that keep us alive.

Science and technology are just tools. If we lack the critical mass of consciousness, there is no technology smart enough and resources plentiful enough that will let us reach sustainability on Earth.

So the underlying question is what will bring such level of human psychological maturity, development and self-realization. The course of history has shown us we have achieved impressive material progress but we have made little if any progress at all when it comes to consciousness. We can be as emotional, aggressive and destructive as 200,000 or 2,000 years ago. The Israel-Palestine unresolved conflict illustrates such condition.

Humans just like the rest of our sister life forms seem to gain consciousness and evolve when challenged enough by their environment. Biological evolution beautifully shows this scientific fact. It then makes me hopeful when I realize the phenomenal global challenges we face today have the power to shift the very consciousness that drives our perception of reality, values and behaviors which ultimately make our terrestrial existence sustainable or not.

The global crisis offers the potential to raise the critical mass of consciousness required to live in harmony with each other and nature. However the chaos we will be subjected to will make it difficult to have a smooth global transition to the desired paradigm. If this new order results from the developing crisis, it will emerge fragmented in an ocean of environmental, economic and social disruptions as the lingering order based on the global market and monetary system breaks down.

Anticipating such scenario the best strategy I have so far is in the short-term to empower communities around the world to become self-reliant. In the medium to long-term I believe we need to implement ways to re-educate us in a new life-centered and life-honoring human existence in this planet.  We must embrace such paradigm if we ever dream of re-establishing our species in the planetary ecosystem and become truly and permanently sustainable. The foundations of such education are already here under the general umbrella of deep ecology.

In the film Elysium the super rich live in an exclusive space station that orbits the over-crowded earth.

Processing reality through art

“One goes to a work of art a little bit more opened and also the interaction is one of immersion. For a while there you are living other people’s lives and you are paying attention to it with an empathy. Especially with books you have to imagine it yourself and you imagine what was it like to be in the Napoleonic wars and what did it feel like? Not the facts but the feeling. So it’s a very emotional business and once you get to the emotional level, you begin to process in a different level than when you are reading the news in a more cognitive sense.” (Kim Stanley Robinson)

The risk of conventional economic thinking

As environmentalist Tony Jupiter explains in his lecture What Has Nature Done For Us?, “no matter how clever our financial systems, impressive our rates of economic growth or sophisticated our technology, there is no place to move if should we degrade our biosphere to the point where it can no longer meet our needs and sustain our economies.”

Hello Wall Street, wake up from your 300 year dream! The economy you live in and worship is a proven delusion but also very dangerous fantasy that is risking the actual infrastructure of the economy and by the way the planetary system that is keeping you alive.

My question is how can we cure such a serious mental epidemic?  How can we bring these schizophrenic individuals and society back to sanity?

Natural and human history have shown that when a species expands so much that it exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecosystem, depleting the ecosystem’s resources and overwhelming  its ability to provide living conditions (clean environment and waste recycling, etc.), the species will either become extinct or radically evolve to survive readapting to the new living conditions.

Which fate will we humans experience? I bet on the latter.

Sources: http://abcawesomepix.com/ (left), STR/AFP/Getty Images (right).

Nature shaping our human infrastructure

This architectural concept is the kind of disruptive creativity that I believe we need to escape the limitations of current sustainable design.

Let folks get scandalized and outraged. It is a necessary evil in our urgent transition to permanent sustainability, resilience and the ultimate integration back in the natural ecosystem.

We need to ‘play and plug in’ our brains the unthinkable concept of Nature shaping our human environment. This is a fascinating way to give do her but if you can only appreciate the pragmatic side of ecology, such approach may become critical in the re-framing of nature and our place in it that we so urgently need.

Source: http://www.evolo.us

The Story of Water

In the same cartoonish but highly effective format of Story of Stuff, this documentary can educate the masses on the hidden reality behind our water system and the crisis that we are facing. Enjoy!

Why on Earth would you celebrate Earth Day?

Why do we celebrate Earth just one out of 365 days of the year?

I may sound radical and against tradition but one day of Earth remembrance is just not enough. Our home planet is not just a celebrity whose birthday we remember or another mundane holiday or shopping day like Halloween or Valentine’s Day; not even the honorable causes that gave us Martin Luther King or Veteran’s Day. No, the Earth’s significance is far beyond any tribute we may pay to any past human hero or cause no matter how magnificent.

With all due respect the very organism that gave us life, everything we enjoy and keeps us living, our Earth, deserves our homage, care and devotion every single day in the calendar. I think we need more than an Earth Day.

An Important Message from Naomi Klein

A very inspiring message and example of how we must learn to take advantage of the shifts we are experiencing today and turn them into opportunities to advance sustainability and resilience. I am proud we were just discussing this hot topic and strategy at the AMPY monthly meeting on Monday.

Adaptability, out of the box thinking and positive opportunism are becoming indispensable skills to survive and thrive in our exponentially shifting world.

Let’s replace dooms-day consciousness with creative emergence consciousness. No matter our intellect, the world will continue to be shaped by our most inner experiences. Never before have crisis and opportunity been so intimately close. I must admit they are becoming my favorite and most fertile couple.

Today’s Unsustainable Paradigm: A Dysfunctional Home

My latest reflection on sustainability came to me in the metaphor of a dysfunctional home where every member is stuck inside with every other. We no longer live in harmony with each other. There is nowhere for anyone to escape, insulate or be free from the others. We have become too many in this ever shrinking house. The personal space we once had is gone.

We can no longer trash the place without creating complaints and smelling the waste we leave behind. We can no longer say “this is my place and if you don’t like it get out of here”. It is no longer our own place but everyone’s, and as such we must learn to share it no matter our differences or dramas.

We are divided on Earth in the same way a family is divided. We wished but cannot afford to put order the way we would like; we bite our tongue and hit the table to channel the outrage of injustice and avoid fighting; we exert self-restraint because without it, we will have an all-out war we will all regret and will ultimately assure our collective destruction.

We must learn to live with all of our family members despite our countless irreconcilable differences. Nature gave us a single tiny oasis where we could safely inhabit in a vast but hostile universe. If we have overpopulated it and trashed it and we no longer can bear one another, it is solely our problem. We must step up to the plate and create harmony whatever it takes to ensure we will keep the most precious side of our existence, our HOME.

For those who may find not this post is not objective enough I should point out the etymology of the word ecology. Created by German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, his original term was Ökologie which derived from the Greek oikos “house, dwelling place, habitation” and logia “study of”.  Ecology thus became the branch of science dealing with the relationship of living things to their environments.

Source: everydaylife.globalpost.com

Climate Change Strategy Needs Upgrade

In response to Guernica’s article God’s Creation Is Running a Fever, being a non-believer does not prevent me from having the highest respect for someone as devoted as Katherine Hayhoe. I would however be placing as much emphasis on climate change adaptation as on mitigation. I understand mitigation may prevent a further destabilization of the planetary cycles but at the same time even if we stopped all our emissions and metabolic activity tomorrow – something virtually impossible, we would still experience Climate Change.

Now we need to adapt to the new conditions of a change in the planetary ecosystem as it finds a new equilibrium after its anthropogenic disruption. If we just wait for society to act on emissions, we are going to loose our opportunity window to prepare for the growing global disturbances we are already experiencing.

Climate change is already here. We cannot afford to spend precious time debating “democratically” with the skeptics. If we do so, we will give into their stalling tactic and lose our opportunity to save considerable life and resources.

Temperature data from four international science institutions. Source: NASA.

Defying gravity or evolution

This is the kind of innovation Detroit needs to seriously look at. Humans and technology are just another ecosystem subject to the same laws of nature including gravity and evolution. No matter how superior we may think are we cannot defy either of them. Our automobile paradigm is unsustainable and therefore it is a matter of time before it becomes extinct. This futuristic concept is rightly called Horizon.

Source: Inhabitat.com

Scarcity is as false as the system that created it

Dr. Fritjof Capra told us in his book The Web of Life our global crisis is a crisis of perception. I would like to build on that brilliant conclusion. Our consumption driven social and economic system dis-empower us by creating a warped perception of scarcity where we are led to believe we never have enough and we are never enough. We are not wealthy enough, not good looking enough (not enough boobs, butt or muscles), not successful enough, not courageous or free enough.

Global capitalism creates an illusion of inner vacuum which can never be filled. It was an amazing economic breakthrough, a Perpetual Motion Machine for the market moved by the ever thirsting egos of billions of consumers; an inexhaustible voltage of wants; an unbridgeable gap between we are and where must be. Most if not everyone who will read these lines can relate to the compulsive search to fill the vacuum we fill in our guts when we count the hours to complete our work day to the frantic weekend.

We try to fill this undeniable vacuum with that new car, next vacation, new extreme adventure, our dream home, possibly that new romantic partner or the marriage that will follow. Perhaps we will fill the vacuum when have our first born? Or will it be when we retire and we have more time to indulge in many more of these diversions.

Materialism and capitalism despite the progress and the quality of life that have brought to humankind, have also come at a very high toll: the disintegration of the world inside and outside of us from the processing and fragmentation of our food to the fragmentation of our psychology. All life on Earth including our very own species is was conceived and developed in a cradle of unlimited relationships, most of them synergistic. In fact if you want to look beyond the laws of biology and ecology, you can ask a physicist what is the essence of the universe. He or she will respond with more or less mathematical detail it is a dynamic flow of relationships.

Such notion of reality is in complete opposition to the ever fragmenting world the Cartesian-Newtonian materialism we are still abiding by. The compulsive categorization and break down of reality driven by such paradigm has divided the world into more and smaller compartments. Such event has literally fragmented the notion of our universe and our very selves. It is this culturally imposed sense of separation that has created countless disconnections between our believes, knowledge, emotions, our bodies, our fellow human beings, our sister life forms and the rest of the planet outside the lonesome voice of our ego, all of which used to be seamlessly connected sometime before we started looking at the world as a machine, and by default at ourselves.

Life is very complex and theories come and go but I am completely certain our prevalent profit and control driven notion of reality is fundamentally false. It is a psychological program designed to enslave us all. The future of humanity if it has one, is to overcome the current perception of ourselves and the world in which we have been imprisoned.

I highly recommend this article from Resurgence and Ecologist magazine. It offers a great insight on this topic.

Image source: ‘Why Do We Like to Watch Rich People on TV and in the Movies?’