Glocalizing the Earth

Since the sighting of the “blue” sphere swirling through space and rising in our imagination from the unfamiliar moonscape in December of 1968, when humans for the first time saw the hidden face of the other side of the moon, and the magnificent view of the earthrise, the journey of human consciousness expanded outward at a geometric rate, and intensified inward at depths heretofore unknown and unexplored.

We have come to a great turning and saw ourselves homeward bound in a way that allows us to see the familiar with new eyes, turning the previously drab common into the fabulously engaging commons for a new people. We speak of our new village, the planet Earth. That the Obama administration is taking global warming seriously rather than denying its reality witnesses to that turn.

Globalization has been the trend in economics. Ownership of natural resources has shifted in the direction of stewardship, the responsible utilization of resources—natural, human and technological—for the common good. Production can no longer mean the exploitation of labor for the benefit of management. Though workers have been captive to the ethos of consumerism, the search for significant engagement has become the workers’ cry in designing enterprise and engaging endeavors.

The localization of political movements has meant broadening the base of the decision making process, whether it be in the urban ward, or the factory floor, in professional unions and the market surveys of the distribution system.

As economics became global and politics became local, the glocalization of the culture of the glocal village has taken radical and creative turns. The local marine monument of the Marianas is at once a local and a global concern. The global decisions of WTO grievously affected the unprepared and recalcitrant local. The division between the local and the global has since been blurred, and the heart, mind, soul and spirit of every living individual has become the object of planetary definition and influence that is making glocal citizens of us all!

Might that we decide to Beautify CNMI! all year-round rather than being a one day push in April, and Environmental Awareness Month becomes a daily state of being! Wouldn’t we want our schoolyards to sprout gardens again, and our water spouts designed to catch rain and conserve Mother Nature’s gift of abundance to us and rarity to others; that our water runoffs are filtered through flower beds, our soil conserved in contoured terrain, and the lagoon becomes a protected habitat for a significant part of the food chain once more?

Glocalize the Earth! Beginning with our homes and communities into the vast expanse of the continents and its bioregions, we dare create a home where every creature in the created order can belong.