Abundant Future
There Is No Profit in this World. There’s Only Life
Tribute to Kay Sara, a young, indigenous actress from the Amazon. We are completely crazy. And it’s time to stop the madness.
“This madness has to stop.”
— Kay Sara
The words from Kay Sara ring in my ears.
Madness.
Madness.
Madness.
We are crazy. And we’re too busy noticing it. Running to the supermarket. Making busy phone calls at work. Being in meetings that serve one purpose: flattering the ego of the one who shouts loudest. Checking off to-do-lists. Being as efficient as we can be.
Time is flying. Space is filled.
And all this time we forget about life.
Sacred life.
Antigone in the Amazon
Kay Sara is a young actress from the Amazon, who performed at the opening of the Wiener Festwochen.
She was supposed to shine in the performance Antigone in the Amazon, directed by Milo Rau. It was canceled because of the Coronavirus. But she did give her opening speech.
And, wow, what a speech!
Against Integration, it’s called. Why should indigenous people be integrated into our way of consumerist living when we are killing the planet with our ways?
Why aren’t they allowed to find their own solutions? They might be better solutions anyway…
“The problem is not that you don’t know that our forests burn and our people die. The problem is that you have become used to this fact. But we haven’t.” — Kay Sara
You can watch the full speech here. Please do. The video is in Portuguese (I guess) with English subtitles.
Problems of the Amazon
The Amazon rainforest killing has two major causes: mining and (industrial) agriculture. And if you look further afield than just South America, these problems have their root in our global economy and greedy consumerism.
And while we’re at it, we are killing the lungs of our planet. The essential trees to mitigate climate and give us breath. Oxygen. What are we, humans, without oxygen?
(Il)legal Mining
Illegal gold mining is an issue. In this image, made by Planet Labs, you can see its progress in Peru. The “La Pampa” gold mine has grown quickly. And has now arrived south of the Malinowski River, illegally entering the Tambopata National Reserve — a protected forest.
But legal lithium mining is an issue as well. We still think that our solutions lie in windmills, batteries, and a Tesla on our porch. Well, keep on dreaming, American, European, and Australian people. These solutions will not solve anything and even bring us further from our goals.
For windmills and all batteries for that matter, lithium is needed. And the lithium mines are destroying the ecosystems of Chile. This article by Logic Magazine is very enlightening on the subject.
(Industrial) agriculture
The other major cause is products like food and paper. Local (often small) farmers burn trees because they think it’s the only way to produce food for their own families.
Then there are the logging companies. They cut down trees for the paper industry or to clear big fields for industrial soy farming (monoculture) for instance. The soy is exported as animal feed and we eat the animals.
Circle closed.
And in the meantime, the rainforest has become a dangerous place for the indigenous people. They are often killed if they stand in the way of these greedy loggers with dollar signs in their eyes.
Money has become God and we no longer have respect for all sacred life. That’s our biggest problem.
Art as Activism
Kay Sara is right. We know all these things. We just don’t want to know. We close our eyes. It’s too overwhelming to even think about it. It’s far-from-our-bed. Has nothing-to-do-with-us…
But that’s not true.
We’re connected. We feel it all. We just hide it deep within so it can’t touch our souls, we don’t have to feel it. But that’s temporary. Our souls know all.
WE have been the cause of this destruction.
WE can also create this other world.
The beautiful, next one. The one we want to live in.
We need a mind-shift.
And as soon as we take our heads out of the sand. As soon as we stop being an ostrich, we can make a difference. How?
- First of all: get your head out of the sand
- Become aware of the world problems that are caused by consumerism
- Shop with awareness. There are alternatives for tree paper. Stone paper. Grass paper. We can stop using packaging. And there’s so much more…
- Eat with awareness. We can stop eating meat, we can eat meat raised on local feed. And we can eat vegetables and fruit, grown on healthy, living soil that restores water cycles. Regenerative farming…
- Make a radical choice to simplify your life
- Experiment with the boundaries of comfort and luxury for you
- Start living a life of meaning, of experiences and compassion
- Take a stand. Speak your truths
- Support people like Kay Sara by sharing her story and raising awareness
And finally: be like Kay Sara. And become an artist-activist.
We are writers, poets, artists.
We are creators.
We move hearts and souls.
And we can raise awareness while educating ourselves on these subjects.
Not by being judgmental, not by bashing others who are not there yet. No, just by changing the people on the edge close to you. Making them a little bit more aware will change a lot. They will infect others, etc.
And in the meantime, don’t think we already have all the answers. It is exactly as Kay Sara says:
“So now it’s time to be silent. It’s time to listen. You need us, the prisoners of your world, to understand yourself. Because it is so simple: there is no profit in this world. There’s only life.” — Kay Sara
And if you want to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or my website. Or somewhere being silent. Deeply listening to sacred life and writing poetry…
