Primate Change? Or Climate Change? You Choose! – The Blogal Village Voice

PRIMATE, I GO APE! IF YOU ARE HOMO SAPIENS, THE THINKING SPECIES THAT I THINK YOU ARE, BEFORE YOU FINISH READING THIS, YOU WILL TOO.

In my primate mind’s eye, right in the forefront of country-to-country efforts to mitigate Global Warming, I envision Blogal Warming, a rise by 2 degrees Celsius in the body temperature of primate bloggers all over the world to the level of passion in their advocacy for A Greener World, greener & cleaner. Personally, only last month, I found that a damn good reason to write more ardently, not the least to blog more arduously, to fever-pitch. Normally, before this, I had been held prisoner by other primal interests.

Primates of the world, unite: You have nothing to lose but your chains!

Consider this Frank Hilario’s Blogal Warning, a 3-decades-delayed response to Al Gore’s Global Warning: We need to change perspective about Climate Change. Houston, we have a problem. The Global Village is fact in that the electric impulse connects us all through the Internet, as Marshall McLuhan predicted, yet the Global Village is fiction in that the connection is divisive and not distributive, elitist and not equitable, devoid of commitment to community, without a shared vision. Whose fault is it? THE PRIMATES, THE GREAT THINKING APES – THE US.

If the billions of us Primates will not change, the one single Climate will change us!

For love of the great apes, I have been thinking of inviting people to join in the grand adventure of The Late Great Planet Earth – it’s late but not too late to be great. Global Warming, The Beast is yet to come, even if Al Gore warned us 30 years ago. Just remember one thing: If we can’t be great this time, we can’t be. With finality, Hamlet’s soliloquy haunts us: ‘To be or not to be, that is the question.’

Now then, I present here what I have defined as 7 Primal Instructions for sapient primates to build the Second Noah’s Ark, to inspire sagacious primates to their late (hopefully not their last) great act of kindness to the planet and therefore to themselves:

(1) Visit the Global Village.
(2) Make out the Blogal Village.
(3) Take the road not taken.
(4) Choose the high road.
(5) Speak of reason.
(6) Declare your faith.
(7) Wage peace, not war.

Come see that you are part of it and can’t be an outsider even if you want to. Come realize the bloggers’ village. Come see about making a difference. Come see the need for ideals. Come see the need to be rational. Come see the need to be hopeful. Come see the promise of peace and the premise of war. Come one, come all!

(1) PRIMATE, COME VISIT THE GLOBAL VILLAGE.

If you’re not with me, you’re against me. Looking at the Internet as a global network of electronic structures and systems designed for unlimited interactions through messages sent back and forth, I see irresistible Promise, but I don’t see intense Practice in terms of translating the Global Village from virtual to verifiable. I see the Internet denizens still have to get their acts together to make the Net a major tool for thinking global, thinking local, acting global, acting local. As of today, it’s more scenes than sense, more bravado than brave, more sex than sexy, more invites than inviting, more tease than ease, more disarray than array. The Net is still as daunting to use as it was in the beginning – and ever shall be?

More, in the McLuhan sense, in the Internet, I can see that the Medium is not the Message yet. The ideal social relationships coming out of the electronic interactions are imperative but not empirical; they are more theoretical than practical. The experts are simply talking to fellow experts or addressing themselves. So, we know that the Internet is too serious a matter to be left to the experts alone! So, we know that the best of the Global Village is yet to come.

Another way of looking at the Internet is that the medium is not one single message but many conflicting messages. As old as of 24 BC, Babylon meant ‘the gateway of the gods’ (Wikipedia) – as young as of 24 years ago, the Internet is simply the modern Babble-On, the gateways of many gods with many tongues, some forked. In the Internet, there are too many people talking at the same time without trying to see each other’s point of view. And multitudes are trying to hurt each other by words, short of the sword.

Notwithstanding, because of the Internet, it is much easier for you and me to realize that we are members of a global tribe called Mankind. In the early 1960s, decades before the Internet came into being, Marshall McLuhan saw whom he called Tribal Man and called this virtual community Global Village. McLuhan saw that radio and TV interconnected man to man by sights and sounds, some of these interactively. In a TV broadcast on 18 May 1960 aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the interviewer mouthed McLuhan’s thoughts, saying by way of introduction:

Touch a button, the world is yours. You know, they talk about the world getting smaller?

Everyone is now our own neighborhood. The world is now a global village … a global village.

Reading again McLuhan’s little big book Understanding Media: The Extensions Of Man (1964, 13th ed, New American Library, 318 pages), I agree with William Stewart (2006, livinginternet.com/) that McLuhan effectively predicted the Internet (the Net), saying: ‘Marshall McLuhan’s insights made the concept of a global village, interconnected by an electronic system, part of our popular culture well before it actually happened.’ I see the Net as the global network of networks of computers. With the invention of the World Wide Web (the Web), the Net exploded in the 1990s. I see the Web as the global network of publications online. And therein lies a great promise, a hidden power. Primate, let us discover it.

(2) PRIMATE, COME Make out THE BLOGAL VILLAGE.

I see the Internet as a publisher, The Universal Publisher, and I revel in that thought. With McLuhan’s eyes, I can see that from the Web has arisen the Phoenix of Unpublished Authors in the form of the blog. I see a blog as an uploaded, instantly & automatically approved, published musing, sometimes amusing. There are millions of blogs out there in cyberspace, and millions of bloggers. That computer-generated world I now want to call, in honor of the one and only Marshall McLuhan and the millions of bloggers: The Blogal Village. I love it! I have written a few hundred blogs myself since 04 October 2002 when I posted my first pair of blogs. Now then, paraphrasing Alfred Lord Tennyson, I have become a part of all that I have writ. (And passionately, if not magically. Even as a Muggle, in 30 days, I have written and published in the American Chronicle alone 3 long feature articles on greening the world: ‘The Yankee Dawdle’ 04 Feb, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ 26 Feb and now 03 March ‘Primate Change.’)

Not only blogging, I take to writing like a turtle takes to water. I take it seriously, even when I’m funny. I learned it all by myself, almost. In the mid-1950s, I began to teach myself to write, encouraged by the Reader’s Digest. I began to blog earnestly in 2005, encouraged by my son Jomar. I learned to upload images to my blogs late last year and, a few weeks later, to link the source to it. Interestingly, I called my first blogsite iNNOViSiON (set up 2002 at blogger.com), a pun on innovation, and now, 5 years later, I get an error message when I click ‘View Log.’ Some passions last, some innovations don’t.

From what I’ve seen and heard, the voice of the blogger is largely that of a lone wolf crying in the wilderness. But I am undaunted. I do not write just to count how many will read me afterwards; rather, I write either because I have a new or different message, or I have an old message that I know it would be of value to express in my own way.

I am Blogger, and my name is Legion. Ah, to think of the awesome power the bloggers can exercise as one Village Voice if only they will! I wrote this because I want them to realize that, because they haven’t already. Let the Blogal Village Voice rise in symphony with the stars!

I propose that the Blogal Village Voice be the Global Village Voice. To speak to Primates for Primates. To espouse Primate Change to moderate Climate Change.

Now, what can we expect of the Blogal Village Voice? To speak of the road not taken. To speak of the high road. To speak of faith, of reason, of peace. Never mind if the Village Voice will be one crying in the wilderness of the Internet.

(3) PRIMATE, COME TAKE THE ROAD NOT TAKEN.

So how will the Blogal Village Voice move the Global Village to act?

I now call on all bloggers: Remembering that we are primates ourselves (assuming Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is correct), let us blog to bring about primate change to bring about climate change. Be warned that it is a lonely road; it is the road taken by one in a million primal bloggers.

Precisely! A few of us can make more of a difference, more of us can make small worlds of a difference. For inspiration, I offer these verses from one of my favorite Yankees, John F Kennedy’s personal choice of poet laureate, the earthy one of San Francisco (born 26 March 1874) and New England:

The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost (1915)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler; long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Remember, primates: If we don’t make a difference today, we won’t make a difference tomorrow. Remember, Big Brother Global Warming is watching!

(4) PRIMATE, COME TAKE THE HIGH ROAD.

Primates all, we have refused to acknowledge the fact of global warming until it is this late. WE HAVE SEEN THE ENEMY, AND IT IS US. So, in trying to defeat the enemy within us, let us defeat evil not with evil but with good.

So, primate bloggers, allow me to offer you what I wrote 19 months ago, ‘The (Real) Ten Commandments Of Blogging,’ published 15 Feb 2006 in my blogsite Blogging Rights (braggingrights.blogspot.com/). They are reality-based and clearly patterned after The Ten Commandments of God. There are other Ten Commandments of Blogging out there but none of those sets are created equal, that is to say, the commandments in a blogger’s ten are not mutually exclusive of each other, even as they are convenient lists of ten things to do or not to do. In my case, I wanted a real group of ten memorable, practical, Bible-based commandments to help bloggers become constructive rather than destructive, creative rather than critical, based on my own writing experience of 50 years. So now, dedicated to a higher good, I give you those ten commandments that I have retitled and rewritten as my contribution to the Blogal Village Voice:

The Ten Commandments Of Blog

I.

I am the Lord, your Blog; thou shalt not have strange blogs before me. Don’t write blogs that are ambiguous, indeterminate, hazy, fuzzy, muddled. Follow the 4 Cs of communication and be clear, concise, comprehensive, coherent. And: Be convinced that your fight is right, in this instance, that the only way to combat climate change is primate change – man has to change his attitude, from one of indifference to concern, and from concern to concerted action, about greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere that deflate the ozone layer and cause global warming. If that primate change has to begin with you, just do it!

II.

Thou shalt not take the name of your Blog in vain. Be serious, but do not swear when you blog. To be funny or ridiculous? You choose. Be productive, but don’t lie, don’t fabricate, don’t exaggerate, don’t obfuscate, don’t prevaricate. Above all, remember that as a blogger, you have a high moral duty to not make a joke of it at the expense of others.

III.

Remember the sabbatical, to keep it holy. Sabbath is a day of rest. To be creative, learn to relax even as you write your draft, as you revise what you have written. Refresh and give yourself long breaks and weekends from being critical. Enjoy the masters of thinking like Ray Bradbury and his theory of association, Edward de Bono and his theory of lateral thinking, Howard Gardner and his theory of multiple intelligences, even Robert Pirsig with his motorcycle & art of Zen maintenance. Don’t write as if you are always in a hurry. Write a draft; after finishing a draft, set it aside and do something else; then go back to that draft the following day. If you want to write well, learn to revise well, and that takes time. Take it from me. I find that I am very happy with the results when I have 1 draft and 4 revisions of that draft. Starting to write this 01 March, I will publish only after the 5th draft.

IV.

Honor thy fodder and thy madder. Think well and do better. Think fodder, to remind yourself about the need to put food on the table: you have to eat, your family have to eat. Think madder too, and remind yourself along these lines: Do not get mad, do not get madder, do not get even – get religion!

V.

Thou shalt not kill. Be stout of heart as you wrestle with big or unwieldy theories, but entertain no murderous thoughts. Do not abort unborn infant ideas; instead, let them be delivered unto the world; be a good parent to them. Do not oppose the delivery of babyish concepts and constructs; instead, expose and offer them as sacrifice to the minds of the world and let The Great Wind Of The Survival Of The Greatest run its course. If you do that, you will be traveling the road to healthy, invigorating creativity. Let me be the judge of that!

VI.

Thou shalt not commit adulteration. Be pure of heart. Be honest. Do not contaminate your attack, or defense, with any ad hominem, argumentum misericordiam, non-sequitur or any of the other defects of debate. Argue logically, beautifully; convince imaginatively.

VII.

Thou shalt not steal. Learn more. Stop, look & listen. Read & revise, not plagiarize. If you have to copy ideas, cite your sources. To avoid embarrassing quotation marks, learn to extract the essence of what you read and put them down in your own words. With software, you can cheat on Grammar & Spelling (click the icon), but you can’t steal vocabulary; to be able to write well in your own fashion, you have to increase your stock of words. Use the Thesaurus – how do you think I wrote this one?

VIII.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor. Build, not destroy. Do not manufacture evidence; do not misinform, do not twist facts. Be truthful and tactful. Do what the Romans do in Rome following Saint Paul: As much as possible, be at peace with everyone.

IX.

Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s wile. Admire, not desire. Let him have his own gimmick, stratagem, ruse, device, ploy or contrivance. Learn from it if you can. Be original, think up your own artifice. Or get ideas from the Bible – Shakespeare did. Get ideas from the Internet – I always do. And yes, learn from marketing, such as to transform a negative into a positive.

X.

Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s gods. Remember: Love of money is the god of all evil. Use but not amuse yourself with wealth. Trust your heart on what is the true treasure, the higher value, the utmost ideal. Finally, primates, following Saint Paul, be seekers of whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there by any virtue, and if there by any praise, dwell on these things.

If you like, call them ‘The Ten Commandments For Primates To Love.’ But: What if primates can’t follow The Ten Commandments? Let the primates do their best anyway – only their best is good enough.

(5) PRIMATE, COME SPEAK OF REASON.

It may be that even at this point you’re not convinced global warming stands to reason. Where’s the proof? you ask. I say: We don’t need proof.

If you ask for proof, you’re asking for the testimony of science. ‘A solid understanding of the world is the first step for improving living conditions of all people throughout the world,’ Gene Shackman says (2006, gsociology.icaap.org/). You need science for that. The theory is that we need to be certain, if not know for sure, before we can wisely act. But that has been the paradigm of the world since the invention of the scientific method as early as 1600 BC; from that time on, the steps of the scientific method adapted had been: examination, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis (Wikipedia).

And where are we now after 3,607 years of the application of science to life? We are in after the beginning of global warming. That is The Inconvenient Truth.

You still doubt that there is global warming? Then the Hollywood stars are more discerning than you are – the members of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences have just bestowed the 2007 Oscar for ‘Best Documentary’ on Al Gore’s The Inconvenient Truth. Read the news, watch the film! This is a film that substantiates the claim of global warming with evidence from around the world and conclusions of scientists & experts after much deliberation & debate. Oh, it’s a film I myself haven’t seen but have believed. Didn’t Jesus Christ say? ‘Blessed are those that have not seen but have believed!’

Earlier, the United Nations came out with a report that global warming is a fact (‘unequivocal’) (for more details, see also my other American Chronicle article, ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ In response (to the UN Report, not to my article), European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas was reported to have said (William Echikson, 1 Mar 2007, nasdaq.com/):

I am deeply concerned at the accelerating pace and the increasing extent of climate change that (the UN Report) shows. It is now more urgent than ever that the international community get down to serious negotiations on a comprehensive new worldwide agreement to stop global warming.

The EU has been urging the US to agree to a unilateral cutting of greenhouse gas emissions at least 20% by 2020. But the United States is not about to be persuaded. That is because US officials are convinced that unilateral cuts of gas emissions will result in a damaged economy for the US (AP, 2 Feb 2007, foxnews.com/). What is bad for General Motors is bad for the US.

We need the Blogal Village Voice to say that the Yankee explanation for the US Government’s refusal to order public and private cuts in greenhouse gas emissions is damaged reasoning. We primal bloggers need to keep faith with the people if the politicians will not.

(6) PRIMATE, COME DECLARE YOUR FAITH.

Man is the creator of the Internet, the Web, the email, the chat, the blog – and primates see that it is good. Something tells this primate we have an intelligent species here, truly Homo sapiens, a sapient human, a thinking species. I have faith that the Blogal Village Voice can help the fight against global warming that threatens the global village if more primates open their mouth.

Fortunately, all bloggers are driven; unfortunately, millions of primate bloggers are driven by selfish motives: they blog only for self-expression or self-aggrandizement. That is why I write: To raise the consciousness of Blogal Villagers from being parochial to being pivotal, from being insular to peninsular, from being narrow-minded to broad-minded, from being present-thinking to future-thinking.

The voice of faith calls for the Blogal Village Voice, that is, US BLOGGERS, to use the medium of the Internet to get the message across. And we need teamwork so that we can conduct not sporadic, uncoordinated efforts but a Village Voice Campaign – and if it’s a campaign, it must follow the AIDA precepts for the diffusion of knowledge that graduates into a clarification of theory which must precede a determination of practice:

Awareness – First, we need to raise the consciousness of the people from the ground up as well as from top to bottom, about climate change. By awareness, I refer to an alertness or watchfulness on changes in environmental conditions prevailing over certain periods of time: temperature, wind, water of all forms everywhere: rain, clouds, snow, iceberg, irrigation water, evaporation, transpiration, groundwater.

Interest – Next, we must further raise the consciousness of those who are already aware into the level of curiosity, further to lead them into desiring to do something about it, whatever they can where they can with what they have.

Decision – Then we must be able to convince those who have expressed desire to select a path for them to take and then to make the decision and go ahead and do what they have to do.

Action – Above all, we must get our acts together. There must be a corporate plan in the first place. We will need to have a common vision, a common mission to achieve that vision, and a common goal to carry out that mission.

My primal goal in this article is not to provide the practice (what to do) but to promote the theory (what to think before one has to do what has to be done).

(7) PRIMATE, COME WAGE PEACE, NOT WAR.

In all that the Blogal Village Voice must do, it must be the voice of peace. The premise of war is that it is for peace – a contradiction. I know this is almost impossible for primate bloggers who equate primal freedom with primeval license, but primal blogging must follow AJ Muste’s dictum: ‘There is no way to peace; peace is the way.’ Now, in this planet where every movement seems to point to violence, how can we bloggers blog in the name of peace? At this point in time, I can think of no primal guide but this prayer of St Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Primates, unless we make a paradigm shift to love, in time Planet Earth will make a parabola shift and launch us in a well-deserved orbit either toward the sun (fire) or away from the sun (ice) – then Robert Frost’s poem ‘Fire And Ice’ will finally show us poetic justice.