Adventure 732: Roper's RV Park, Balmorhea, Texas

As soon as we crossed the Texas stateliness, some guy in a wheel chair told us we had to check our pronouns. I did and then moved us to our other lane right beside them and theirs who clearly showed new ownership, but it's up to you to recognize my response to your unfathomable position, governor. After all, beauty is its own creation.  

We left the LC ranch fairly early, but not before coffee, a muffin, and a long sweet hug from our friend, Liz. After that we drove into the sunrise, navigating ourselves through the plains of West Texas, the bustle of El Paso, and and the long dusty trail to Balmorhea. Our hostess, Gina Garlick, better known as GG welcomed us with open arms. We set up Fric and Frac in site number !. I talked with GG for a while. I petted her dogs, nearly sat on one of her cats, and asked her a few Chamber of Commerce questions. She's lived in Balmorhea for forty years, and says, "I'm just trying to make a go of it." She lost her husband two years ago to a heart attack, and her grief sits on the surface like tear salt on a cheek. Her speech is filled with "Yessirs" and I sensed her genuine nature. I know for sure that two years into grief, a person has barely had time to shudder the fear and loneliness away. She must be as shell shocked as those suffering the bombs, grenades, missiles, and death in Ukraine. I'm not sure what I can do but pray. I do know that whatever comes, life is still good, especially today.

Is peace possible in a world where military proliferation is profit driven?

Is health possible in a world where big Pharma is driven by profit to medicate the populace?

Is survival possible in a world where the generator frame is tied to a growth imperative that is fuels the military/industrial complex supporting deranged dictators and a few others so affected by avarice they care for nothing else but their own gain?

If the answer is no, and we do indeed live in a world where a paradigm change is necessary, how can just knowing and talking about issues change anything?

It’s a start.

But asking the right question is important. One way of looking at it says: Here’s the world’s problems, a long list. How can we break them into manageable pieces?

Another way is to ask, “What are the mechanisms that control the fundamental workings of the generator frame?”

Once these mechanisms are understood, something must be done to change the paradigm concerning the growth imperative as it’’s dictated by abstraction, extraction, depletion, and pollution.

Consider this example: What is the value of  a tree? 

Seen through many prisms a tree has value as shade against the bright sun. A tree is its own ecosystem complete with magical photosynthesis. A tree provides shelter for birds and and lives symbiotically with bugs and other living organisms as in the instance of the Palo Verde tree commingling with the Saguaro cactus. A tree provides nutrients both as a living thing and as material decaying in death. A tree removes carbon from the atmosphere. And a tree is also a pleasant sight for the eyes. Some trees, especially the older ones, express a kind of dignity. And forests of trees have always provided mankind an inspiration for a much larger world vision. Clearly, a tree has much value.

Maybe so, but our current world looks at it differently. It looks at tree as a commodity from which the generator frame abstracts, extracts, depletes, and pollutes.

The generator frame of the growth imperative sees a tree in the abstraction as wood. The only question is how many 2x4s can be extracted? That answer generates a single number, a price.

On the largest scale, the demand for wood is directly responsible fo the massive deforestation, which of course is a depletion of the resource. More troubling than the loss of the forests through the depletion of a resource that took hundreds of years to come into fruition are the unknown consequences and further harm to the environment such as floods, erosion, and loss of nutrients. Beyond depletion is the pollution caused by the whole process. Machines, devastate the environment whilst  shearing the wood from the earth. Gas leaks, diesel spills, slag heaps, damage from heavy equipment, endangering the water supply, destroying habitat, entire ecosystems. This approach of abstraction, extraction, depletion, and pollution is not sustainable.

So, what to do? Just knowing is not enough. Action is required to reverse the debilitating mechanisms of the generator frame.

The first action is to create a Doubt Club.

Since the worst actors in this growth imperative approach are the nation states, it’s time for the citizens of those states to start vocalizing their doubts. It’s time to rally the majority to rebel against the tyranny of the few. It’s time to make decisions based on the common good. 

So, in your community begin talking about your doubts. Rally the troops. As Thomas Jefferson said, “When people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

March Madness proves to be a good distraction.

Roper's RV Park: no frills, no worries.

Let's  pray for our better angels.

Amen.