Collapsed Civilization. Leadership. Harmony.

Posted on 07/12/2014 by J. Morris Hicks

There are examples of all three in “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.”

Dawn-of-the-Planet-of-the-Apes1Yesterday, I was among the first hundred people on the East coast who watched Dawn of the Planet of the Apes—enjoying it in a plush theater at 10 o’clock in the morning in 3D. (Don’t worry, no spoiler alert necessary here.)

Why did I want to see it? Last week, I watched an interview of the movie’s producers and realized that not only did it contain a powerful social message, it had other things in common with Avatar. Turns out that the producers met with Avatar’s director, James Cameron in addition to the great Steven Spielberg, collaborating with them on technology and ideas for their movie.

It would appear that those consultations with the greatest two movie directors of all time—paid off handsomely for the viewers. It is a masterpiece. In the paragraphs below, I will try to describe the valuable “take-aways” for me in the movie—without giving away the plot for those of you who have not yet seen it.

Of course, on the morning of 7-12-14, that would be over 99% of the world’s total population. Here are those three powerful examples that I saw:

The apes see the first human that they've seen in ten years.

The apes see the first human they’ve seen in years.

1. Harmony. The first scenes of the movie were set at John Muir State Park north of San Francisco and featured a large colony of highly intelligent apes who were living their lives in complete harmony with the planet.They hadn’t seen a human in years and were thinking that their species may no longer exist.

Later in the movie, the few surviving humans of San Francisco realized that, unlike themselves, their perceived enemy—the throng of apes north of the city didn’t need electric energy or fossil fuel like they did. In fact, they fully understood that the apes didn’t need anything to survive—just mother nature.

Alpha male Caesar in the foreground

Alpha male Caesar in the foreground

2. Leadership. Shortly after the movie began, I noticed the powerful “leadership” example in the alpha male ape who went by the name of Caesar.

Without giving away the movie’s plot, this special creature exhibited the wisdom of Job as he strived to orchestrate a peaceful coexistence for themselves and the planet’s remaining humans. I should point out that one or two of the humans exhibited exceptional leadership as well—but not quite enough to prevent unnecessary loss of lives on both sides.

In the past year, leadership has been my primary focus. As a corporate headhunter for the last fifteen years, I have essentially been operating in the leadership business. That experience has taught me that we should never doubt the incredible miracles that can occur when the right leadership is in place.

That’s why I continue to serve my client (all the children of the world) as I relentlessly search for that one powerful leader we need to help move us rapidly in the direction of living in harmony with nature.

Downtown San Francisco, one of the world's most beautiful cities---before the collapse of civilization

Downtown San Francisco, one of the world’s most beautiful cities—before the collapse of civilization

3. Collapsed Civilization. Lately, as I write about the almost certain collapse of our civilization before the end of this century, I realize that it might be difficult for most people to visualize what that might look like.

This movie does a great job of painting a very graphic picture of a completely collapsed and fragmented civilization. With no electronic communications, the San Francisco survivors have no way of knowing whether there are other pockets of survivors around the world.

What was in it for me? Without a doubt, the three examples so clearly illustrated in the movie, further strengthened my resolve to continue my search for that one powerful leader and a few caring billionaires. Many people continue to tell me that I’m wasting my time—but I have decided not to stop until I am convinced that there is another, more viable path to preventing the collapse of our civilization during the lifetimes of my six grandchildren.

Three reasons for my optimism

  1. We only need to find one powerful leader. Then, he/she brings in the few caring billionaires. In all likelihood, that leader is not now “fully aware” of the importance of our food choices. But if he/she truly cares about the future of their own grandchildren AND has an open mind, it won’t take us long to bring about the conversion to a Caesar-like leader who is ready to give his/her all to save our civilization. And that leader will URGENTLY begin to sell the idea to billions that moving rapidly toward a mostly plant-based diet—is by far the single biggest step we can take—doing more for sustainability than all other possible steps combined. Consider that, right now, NO PROMINENT LEADER anywhere is fully committed to getting that done. And most are completely unaware of the possibility.
  2. I don’t think any other approach is going to work. We simply don’t have enough time. As a business executive and corporate recruiter, I know a thing or two about the miracles that can happen when you have the right kind of fully committed leadership. I’m talking about a leader who fully realizes that we are now facing the most important issue in the history of humanity—and is willing to make it his/her TOP PRIORITY: 24–7–365. This is not the job for a half-hearted, “meatless Monday” or “sustainable beef” kind of person.
  3. Understanding mission and recruiting leadership is what I do.  And I have concluded that it’s the single biggest contribution that I can make personally—leveraging my unique combination of engineering & business experience, skills and talent to the greatest extent possible. I have already made some headway with a few potential “candidates” and have a few others that I am pursuing. I will not give up.

The Bottom Line. Go see the movie and be on the lookout for those three examples that I mentioned. One more thing, like Avatar, Rocky and many others—there will be more sequels to this remarkable film. Enjoy!

You're going to like Caesar, the kind of leader we need.

You’re going to like Caesar, the kind of leader we need.

A few other blogs on this topic:

The following five books and one DVD can be purchased on Amazon for a grand total of less than $60—and will enable you to understand the overwhelming challenges we face—along with the single most-powerful solution of all.

Six-Pack from Hicks—for health, hope & harmony on planet Earth

  1. Healthy Eating, Healthy World, The “big picture” about food (our book)
  2. A life changer for millions, including James Cameron. Forks Over Knives DVD 
  3. An essential scientific resource: The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell; the primary book that influenced Bill Clinton to adopt a whole food, plant-based diet.
  4. What have we done to our planet? Full Planet, Empty Plates by Lester Brown
  5. A horrifying wake-up call for leaders. TEN BILLION by Dr. Stephen Emmott
  6. Food choices are the primary cause of our environmental problems, yet our world leaders, scientists & experts are Comfortably Unaware, by Richard Oppenlander.

Why should we be eating mostly plants? The “big picture” in 4 minutes.

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Survey. It takes 2 or 3 minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

International. We’re now reaching people in over 100 countries. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter or get daily blog notices by “following” us in the top of the right-hand column. For occasional updates, join our periodic mailing list.

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

To order more of my favorite books—visit our online BookStore now For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, visit our 4Leaf page and also enjoy some great recipes from Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen. Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com. Or give me a call on my cell at 917-399-9700.

—J. Morris Hicks, board member since 2012; click banner for more info:

Nutrition Certificate

 

Posted in Activism & Leadership, Sustainability | Tagged | 2 Comments

Consensus or Confusion on Climate Change?

Posted on 07/10/2014 by J. Morris Hicks

Team Consensus wins by the super-lopsided score of 97 to 3. 

Google Logo 2About a year ago, I programmed my Google News account to alert me to all articles about climate change, water scarcity and world hunger. Since then, I’ve probably been alerted to upwards of 10,000 articles. One of them was the scary article that I read on the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch website yesterday (reviewed later in this post).

But first the consensus discussion. No, I haven’t read all ten thousand articles, but I frequently scan the titles, particularly making a mental note of the number of “believers” and “skeptics” when it comes to climate change. Surprisingly, there seem to be as many articles denying that climate change exists as there are legitimate articles aimed at raising the awareness and the resolve to take action.

One might naturally think that the equal number of articles from each camp suggests that the expert opinions on this crucial topic are about 50-50. This false assumption might lead the innocent, not-too-well-informed reader to just not worry about global warming—since even the experts can’t agree on its existence, its cause and what, if anything, we can do about it.

nasalogo_twitter_400x400And that’s exactly what the vast number of conservatives in the climate change skeptic crowd wants—and that’s why they’re spending so much money challenging the FACT that 97% of the world’s climate scientists agree on the following consensus statement on the NASA website (See link below):

Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.

Marketwatch-logoSo, what’s the problem? The problem is outlined beautifully in a July 9 article posted on the WSJ’s Market Watch website. The article by Paul Farrell is entitled: 4 reasons why conservatives love global warming, and why they won’t stop it. (See link below). He leads off the article:

All efforts to stop the deadly impact of global warming will ultimately fail. Yes, fail. Our leaders are destroying us from within…America’s leaders are failing us, will never act, till it’s too late to plan for an economic catastrophe. We have lost our soul. He lists the four reasons: 

  1. Overwhelming opposition by the GOP, conservatives and capitalists
  2. Our blind failure to see our planet cannot feed the 10 billion people predicted by 2050.
  3. Our addiction to “more is never enough” consumption.
  4. The irrational, unscientific and ultimately self-destructive belief of capitalism in perpetual economic growth, on a planet of finite resources.

He elaborates on the first reason: Conservative opposition is everywhere, emanating from the economic fears of the energy industry, Big Oil, coal, gas, other polluters. They fear regulation and taxation of carbon emissions will have a major negative impact on their corporate earnings, shareholder dividends and will increase production costs, limit access to resources.

They spend hundreds of millions lobbying politicians and it works. California Gov. Jerry Brown says there’s “virtually no Republican” in Washington that accepts climate science and most GOP governors “openly deny climate science,” despite widespread scientific evidence.

Farrell sees no viable solution in sight. Even so, I recommend that you read the entire article. While depressing, it points out the need for a quantum leap when it comes to the required paradigm shift regarding the leading cause of climate change—and the easiest and quickest to address.

Promoting health, hope and harmony on planet Earth

Promoting health, hope & harmony on planet Earth—with the “Save the world” diet.

To me, the necessary solution is a “blinding flash of the obvious.” We simply need to change what we eat—and we need to do it quickly. I explain the solution succinctly in my 4th of July one-page recipe for saving our ecosystem.

While Farrell does mention the fact that we won’t be able to feed our ten billion residents by 2050, he never acknowledges the relatively simple process of changing what we eat.

If we all just replaced 75% of our animal-based calories with plant-based, we’d feed all the people, free up half the land devoted to agriculture, and reduce the #1 cause of global warming by 75%.

Farrell ends his piece by quoting Australian Ethics Professor Clive Hamilton:

After resisting the truth about climate change, the planet enters “a chaotic era lasting thousands of years,” a time when human beings may no longer be “a force on the planet, nor even survive,” but a “time when “one thing is certain: there will be far fewer of us.”

Sources and related blogs:

The following five books and one DVD can be purchased on Amazon for a grand total of less than $60—and will enable you to understand the overwhelming challenges we face—along with the single most-powerful solution of all.

Six-Pack from Hicks—for health, hope & harmony on planet Earth

  1. Healthy Eating, Healthy World, The “big picture” about food (our book)
  2. A life changer for millions, including James Cameron. Forks Over Knives DVD 
  3. An essential scientific resource: The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell; the primary book that influenced Bill Clinton to adopt a whole food, plant-based diet.
  4. What have we done to our planet? Full Planet, Empty Plates by Lester Brown
  5. A horrifying wake-up call for leaders. TEN BILLION by Dr. Stephen Emmott
  6. Food choices are the primary cause of our environmental problems, yet our world leaders, scientists & experts are Comfortably Unaware, by Richard Oppenlander.

Why should we be eating mostly plants? The “big picture” in 4 minutes.

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Survey. It takes 2 or 3 minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

International. We’re now reaching people in over 100 countries. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter or get daily blog notices by “following” us in the top of the right-hand column. For occasional updates, join our periodic mailing list.

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

To order more of my favorite books—visit our online BookStore now For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, visit our 4Leaf page and also enjoy some great recipes from Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen. Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com. Or give me a call on my cell at 917-399-9700.

—J. Morris Hicks, board member since 2012; click banner for more info:

Nutrition Certificate

 

2. Out-of-control population is the biggest driver of global warmingThe United Nations predicts global population will exceed 10 billion by 2050, adding three billion more human beings in one short generation, on a planet of rapidly dwindling resources. Plus science is already warning us we cannot feed everybody. In his new book, “The Countdown,” Alan Weisman, author of an earlier bestseller, “World Without Us,” asks the taboo question no politician can ask: “How many people can our planet hold?”Weisman’s answers are deadly: What if science confirms that a “sustainable population is even less than the 7 billion we already number … how do we design an economy for a shrinking, and then a stable one, meaning, an economy that can prosper without depending on constant growth?” Weisman also offers a solution: “Social objections aside, if the entire world adopted a one-child policy” then by 2100, we’d “be back to 1.6 billion, our population in 1900.” But politicians will be silent … till it’s too late.

 

Posted in Activism & Leadership, Climate Change | 1 Comment

What about the ensuing economic chaos…

Posted on 07/05/2014 by J. Morris Hicks

If everyone switched to 100% plant-based overnight?

After reading my 4th of July post about INDEPENDENCE from our grossly unsustainable lifestyle, a reader writes with this question.

Hi Jim, I was talking to a friend about your work and she asked, “Wouldn’t the economy fall apart and create major havoc if on a large scale people switched quickly to a plant-based diet?” Do you have any writing to answer this concern? Best to you. -Denise.

In just the USA, we torture and kill ten billion animals a year for our dinner tables.

We humans must learn to live IN the Earth as a part of nature—not ON the Earth and trying to control nature. These kinds of human activities are not sustainable.

I wrote back. Hi Denise, Your friend’s question is a common one. And yes, the economy would collapse if EVERYONE switched to plant-based overnight. But that will never happen. 

Even with a MASSIVE global awareness campaign, the change will take 5 or 10 years at best, not 5 or 10 days. And the world markets will have no trouble responding and reinventing themselves. Markets will always deliver what consumers are demanding. And, like smoking, some people will never change until it becomes a capital offense to produce animal-based foods, a law that will someday become a reality.

Sure, jobs will be lost, but jobs will also be gained and the savings in healthcare can be applied to the estimated $18 trillion needed to finance a twenty-year project to replace fossil fuels with renewables. And that effort will certainly create millions of new jobs.

And a LOT MORE of THIS.

Giving Mother Nature a hand…

And then there’s the new industry of reforesting those billions of acres of land that were cleared to raise livestock and/or grow feed for them. 

All of the above will be a beautiful thing to witness—and I hope to be spending my golden years doing just that. It will be great fun to hear about the steady improvements in all the environmental indicators as well as the news about the plummeting cost of healthcare along with the fairly rapid end of world hunger.

As Charles Eisenstein says in his book, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible—will gradually start to become a reality in our lifetimes. I am reading his book now and have found it to be very enjoyable and thought-provoking. He talks about the need for the human species to learn how to live IN the Earth, as a part of nature, instead of living ON the Earth and trying to control nature.  Be well, Jim

91GtBIoMVPL._SL1500_

A special thanks to my friend Marlin in Germany who told me about this book.

I have not quite finished reading this book yet, but have read enough to recommend it. He doesn’t single out our food choices but says that virtually ALL human activities are contributing to climate change and ALL of the other environmental disasters we are witnessing. Click here to purchase on Amazon. I have it on my iPhone Kindle reader and plan to finish it later today at the beach.

One hour later. Still haven’t finished the book, but found this passage from the chapter entitled REALITY. After talking about the despair that all activists eventually experience, he talks about the way that realistic vision can become a reality. It’s been said that if we can conceive a solution, then it can happen. Although I feel despair at times, I continue to believe in a real vision for the future of humanity. Eisenstein writes:

Charles Eisenstein

Charles Eisenstein

The first step in creating change, then, is to receive a vision that feels true. The second step is to heal the wounds and doubts that that vision illuminates. Without doing that, we will be conflicted, simultaneously enacting both the new story and the old one that accompanies the wounds. The third step is to bow into service to that which wants to be born. This process is not linear. Usually, the vision comes more and more into focus as we heal the doubts that obscure it; that, in turn, allows us to enter more deeply into its service.

Deeper service, in turn, brings up new dimensions of the vision along with deeper wounds. The path of service is a path of self-realization. When we are in service to something that is real, when we speak of it our words have power. Others can feel its reality too. That is why some people have the seemingly magical ability to speak things into existence. When they say such-and-such is going to happen, everyone believes it is going to happen, even if its happening depends on everyone believing it will happen.

Recent blogs on this topic:

The following five books and one DVD can be purchased on Amazon for a grand total of less than $60—and will enable you to understand the overwhelming challenges we face—along with the single most-powerful solution of all.

Six-Pack from Hicks—for health, hope & harmony on planet Earth

  1. Healthy Eating, Healthy World, The “big picture” about food (our book)
  2. A life changer for millions, including James Cameron. Forks Over Knives DVD 
  3. An essential scientific resource: The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell; the primary book that influenced Bill Clinton to adopt a whole food, plant-based diet.
  4. What have we done to our planet? Full Planet, Empty Plates by Lester Brown
  5. A horrifying wake-up call for leaders. TEN BILLION by Dr. Stephen Emmott
  6. Food choices are the primary cause of our environmental problems, yet our world leaders, scientists & experts are Comfortably Unaware, by Richard Oppenlander.

Why should we be eating mostly plants? The “big picture” in 4 minutes.

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Survey. It takes 2 or 3 minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

International. We’re now reaching people in over 100 countries. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter or get daily blog notices by “following” us in the top of the right-hand column. For occasional updates, join our periodic mailing list.

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

To order more of my favorite books—visit our online BookStore now For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, visit our 4Leaf page and also enjoy some great recipes from Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen. Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com. Or give me a call on my cell at 917-399-9700.

—J. Morris Hicks, board member since 2012; click banner for more info:

Nutrition Certificate

Posted in Biodiversity, Environment, Sustainability | Tagged | 6 Comments