I wanted to post somewhere about the passing yesterday (Oct. 1) of Dr. Jane Goodall. I was certainly saddened to hear of her passing, but also saw such a beautiful, light-filled outpouring on social media for her and her legacy and was so inspired! It filled me with such hope and *reminded me* to focus on thath light and hope. It is now our turn to carry that light forward, for the Earth and all of its inhabitants.
@cc21 I hadn't seen your Goodall post until after I posted something about her in the Path Forward. We are so inspired by her. @lovendures sent me this video about how we can live our lives if we follow her cue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH_APf9Naxc
Wow, wow, wow. This is mind-blowing considering the source. Look at what was published recently by a Morningstar affiliate. (Morningstar is an international financial information outlet and links to their articles come up on the website for my retirement account. The essay is on their Australian site and the author lives in Switzerland,):
Opening paragraph:
This essay was born out of revulsion to an accidental summer reading that paraded progress as virtue and private equity as its high priest. Every paragraph spoke the same pious language of “sustainable improvement,” “societal benefit,” and “long-term value creation,” as though leverage, asset-stripping, and balance-sheet cosmetics had become moral acts. I found myself revolted not merely by the hypocrisy, but by the vacuousness of it. In our hyper-financialized society, we have come to mistake valuation for value, and activity for achievement. The word ‘progress’ has been exploited to justify anything that moves – no matter what it destroys. What follows is an act of refusal to bow to the idea that more money is progress. If this essay has a motive, it is contempt for the trivial slogans that pass as thought, and for the hollow theory that confuses financial engineering with human improvement.
Full essay is at:
Another lighthouse.
@Ana your wonderful article on the history of finance made me think of a remarkable climate book I’m reading by Bill McKibben, one of the most important climate writers of our time. Here Comes the Sun traces how fire once helped build civilization—and how it now threatens it—just as we finally have clean, abundant energy from the sun.
The book is full of hope. McKibben shows how simply switching to EVs, induction cooking, and heat pumps could cut household fossil-fuel use by around 40%, and how we can reach the deeper cuts we need if we move quickly. I loved it so much I donated copies to our library, and I’m happy to pass along my own when we’re done.
Renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels. EVs and hybrids are simpler, cleaner, and far more reliable than gas cars—we’ve seen it ourselves with our Prius and our RAV4. Our induction cooktop boils water in seconds, and our heat pumps heat and cool the house efficiently without polluting the air we breathe.
Once you see this shift clearly, it’s hard not to want to join it. A cleaner, healthier, more livable world is right here—if we choose it.
@bluebelle @deetoo @lovendures @dannyboy @cc21 @Caroline @earthangel @Andy @seaholly @joy @sealion @vesta @tesseract @baba
@jeanne-mayell There are a number of "quoteable quotes" in the full essay-- one that really resonates is:
The financialization of everything is not merely an economic development but a metaphysical one: it teaches us to see the world not as a trust to be tended but as a balance sheet to be managed.
The author is the manager of a private investment firm in Switzerland. If only all financial gurus had his moral compass.
@jeanne-mayell I would really prefer an induction range--maybe the prices will eventually come down.
A local meditation teacher just shared this with me. It’s from The Walk for Peace page, the Buddhist monks who are walking across the states to DC, walking for peace. I thought it was a gentle reminder during these very chaotic, stressful times.
✍️ Some people may ask: “How can I stay peaceful when difficult situations arise?”. We must begin by understanding: we are where we are. Situations happen—often without warning, often beyond our control. We cannot always prevent or change them.
But here is what we can control: the way we respond.
When difficulty arrives, our minds rush forward—overthinking, catastrophizing, creating stories about how terrible things are. We make situations heavier by adding layers of worry and fear on top of what is already challenging.
But if we pause, if we become mindful of our breath in that moment, if we notice our thoughts without getting swept away—something shifts. The situation doesn’t disappear, but we stop making it worse. We create space for clarity, and in that clarity, we can see what we should actually do to help the situation, instead of just worrying and feeling defeated.
In that mindful pause, we might also remember something we’ve forgotten: right now, countless conditions are still nourishing our life. We are alive. We can breathe. We can eat. We can walk. These are profound gifts, genuine happiness—but we rarely see them because our minds are too busy racing toward worry, too consumed by what’s wrong to notice what remains right.
This is what mindfulness offers in difficult moments: not power to control what happens, but wisdom to see clearly what helpful action we can take, to breathe consciously, to remember that even in difficulty, we are still held by life, still capable of responding wisely instead of simply reacting.
The situation is what it is. But we can change how we meet it—with presence instead of panic, with clarity instead of confusion, with wise action instead of helpless worry.
Peace in difficult times doesn’t mean nothing bothers us. It means we stop making everything worse by losing ourselves in our thoughts. It means we stay grounded enough to see what we can actually do, then do it with a calm heart.
May you and all beings be well, happy, and at peace.
#WalkforPeace #BuddhistMonks #PeaceWalk