What I Like About RC

In order to be able to cooperate with other streams and movements for bettering of humans or humanity or the human situation, it would be good to have clarity about what is unique about RC and what we like best about it. It’s not enough to be able to wave Harvey’s The List. We need to know such a list by heart. Preferably our own personal list. (When we agree with others, it becomes our thinking but not if we just parrot others.) For inspiration, I’ll give you a list. Please, make your own.

1. RC saved my life. I hate to think about what would have become of me if I hadn’t stumbled upon RC.
2. RC stands out in that it’s not a philosophy or method but a discovery. Therefore, it’s timeless and eternal.
3. RC is for everyone and against no one. And the One Point Program should make sure that dissidents are not ousted.
4. The distinction between the Person and the Pattern is almost unique and certainly no other group has ever suggested this difference as radically as RC.
5. RC Theory is developing. It’s not just insights from the past.
6. The only reason RC does not work is when it’s not applied. And the only one to blame is the counselor, never the client. There is great respect for what client are and do, the human brain. No one is “crazy” or “faulty ” for having been hurt and trying to recover from it.
7. In RC, “talkers” learn to listen and “listeners” learn to talk. And everyone is a born leader. There is no division between “important” and “less important” people. RC leaders have extra responsibilities, not are more important or talented.
8. RC tries to get the most oppressed people in a group to lead so that the group often is the best for everyone in it. Leadership is for the group, not the leader. But also a safe ground to learn it.
9. RC is very brainy and still embraces feelings and emotions.
10. RC is against all ways of humans hurting humans.
11. RC’s Theory on Internalized Oppression makes very clear why people stayed oppressed so long.
12. RC reaches out to all people, no matter what their background, position or oppression.
13. The more you do RC (clienting, counseling, leading), the better you’re at it.
14. There is a wealth of Theory. We never need to be lost for good reading.
15. RC Theory sets the bar high. No timid goals. Though, to get there, it advocates taking realistic baby steps or many people cooperating. RC is optimistic.

How do you see RC as very special?

This is Not an Official RC Website

I want to contribute to RC, help continue Harvey’s work, Harvey’s community.

I hope that my input only strengthens the process of what we are doing in RC.

Click HERE to go to the official RC Website (recommended!)

You will never find in these posts any attempt to create strife, a different community or attacks on people. It’s rather all about thinking about RC.

NB: You cannot spread the blog’s content within RC without permission from the leader of the RC Area or Region and RC group within which you want to spread it (class, support group, workshop, conference) or on RC websites. The Guidelines have good reasons for them and are born from lots of experience.

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If you’ll find something useful in my blog posts, enjoy and remember to return. (If you forgot the site’s name and can’t find this site, just remember to google: <dear harvey jackins> or <notmyname2000000@gmail.com>.) If you click the subscribe button, you get automatically notified when new blog posts are published.

Feel free to copy anything I wrote and if you agree with it call it your own thinking without crediting my blog. Feel free to draw opposite conclusions to mine, change anything from it or just be inspired by it without ever acknowledging my indirect contribution.

I kept it anonymous because I neither want the fame nor the blame. I just want us all, myself included, to think harder – and to implement our own thinking. (If you have an idea who I am, please keep it to yourself. I’m not trying to harm anyone – please don’t violate my anonymity.)

July 12, 2019 will be the 20th anniversary of Harvey’s death. I hope that our work for a better life for us and all humans in the 20th year would do him honor.

Love Thy Enemy as Thyself

I heard that Cherie Brown, many decades ago, advocated learning to love people while they still have all their distress in place. Not just to say: Once they’re less distressed, I’ll like them.

You don’t throw out your shoes when some mud got stuck to them.

We want someone (our partner) to change? They couldn’t. But what they can do is to become themselves again. When we love them, they have exactly what it takes to free themselves from old distress. But, when we want them charged, even a little, all they hear is “you don’t love me” and are stuck. So, let’s love them with all they have. Paradoxically, when we love them as they are, they will “change.” When we want them changed, they are stuck.

To forgive people who hurt us – it is said a lot – we can do to free ourselves – from anger, resentment, revenge. Hate may be better than self-hate but we’re still stuck in hatred – a world of violence. (Forgiveness for some of us might be premature when the hurt is still fresh.)

What about more distant people?

Most of us know people we “absolutely” “simply” can’t stand. What do we need to discharge to love them, feel for them, give them a hand, be generous toward them so that we humbly can “be an environment in which healing can take place” (Ram Dass) so that the moment they see us or hear from us, they’ll start discharging effectively, feeling that they are with a friend, someone to trust?

As long as we are antagonistic, they will just hate us back. Then they also can’t stand “people like us.” But more than we could hate their distress recordings, they’d love to get rid of them. Let’s be their allies!

To dislike them, we must feel superior to them. We must think that we are nicer or more proper or more moral or more intelligent – whatever we fancy, not to identify with them and prefer ourselves over them. We need to remember that no one was born to please us, give us a better (a more comfortable) life, to be there just for our good. That means that when we hate, we must work on humbleness more and our integrity.

We don’t have to endanger ourselves to dangerous recordings, but when we’re safe, we can try to get rid of our greatest powerlessness vis- à-vis others. And when we can deal with such people, we can deal with anyone. Getting closer to one person improves all our relationships.

We should not ignore violent patterns. But we should also make a distinction between the person and the pattern. That is fundamental to RC. We can’t expect to be involved in bettering humanity if we only want to be close to certain people. Harvey was everyone’s ally. So can we be.

Learn to Say: I Don’t Know

Schools often shame students for not knowing. They even pretend that knowing or memorizing stuff makes you intelligent. No, it makes you knowledgeable. Discharge makes you smart again.

In science, it is considered legitimate to say, “I don’t know.” It is an unpopular answer but not with scientists. There was even a recent philosopher of science who taught that most progress in science comes from discovering what is not true, does not work.

I once saw a patient explain how it was, to have an unidentified illness for 40 years. He said: Doctors were honest and said: “We don’t know what you have.” That was OK. They didn’t say: “It’s nothing.”

Harvey was always very precise in make a distinction between what he found and what he hoped for. He made  very clear that physical immortality was a possibility, good as a direction for sessions, but not a fact (yet). That was in a different time. Now, serious medical doctors and institution are working on ending all disease and on how to stop and reverse aging. That wasn’t around yet, when he wrote his shortest poem ever, his Anti-Requiem, which I memorized, and you may too: “Why Die?”

After doing and giving thousands of hours of sessions, he built a theory about sexuality. He saw how much discharge was still needed so he didn’t make it a final. (Here, I propose an addition to that theory.)

Sometimes, some people have chosen hiding a lack of knowledge for tactical reasons. To give hope to their audience. I like better, “I hope to know soon.” Harvey would invite workshop participants to ask questions with, “Either I know how to counsel you or I will counsel you until you know.” He didn’t say: “I know everything.”

What’s definitely not OK (for leaders , especially) is to pretend, to bluff for their ego. It is a type of dishonesty and distances between the speaker and the rest.

If you can’t say, “I don’t know,” you’ll end up lying and misleading.

Learn to Say: I Don’t Know – and  smile.

Big Shout-Out to Diane Shisk

It is not true that all leaders have good sessions. Harvey for years, notoriously and to his chagrin had to mention that his clienting was not so successful. (Less experienced counselors too easily project what they need to discharge about unto their leaders. And then, they don’t think about what the leader needs.) Asking groups you lead to counsel you can help. It’s also a nice way to repay the leader for the effort. (HERE are some hopefully helpful hints how to counsel our leaders better.)

I also have seen leaders who are bad clients. Although every client always does the best s/he can, we can still as clients choose to try and help our counselor, not help our counselor or even trouble our counselor. Intimidating our counselors, criticizing them, telling them to shut up, are some of the ways even experienced clients may act. Which, of course, makes their sessions shallow and their progress slow.

I’m relating this to say: it’s not a given that an experienced RC leader has great sessions. Therefore, I want to applaud Diane for being our example of making sure she has effective sessions. How does that show? Well, one Present Times she writes that she is way too hopeless and anxious to lead environmental change and the next Present Time she pens what we need to know, what we need to counsel about and what we need to do to save the planet. In other words: she saw her challenge and took it.

(This validation is only for Diane, not an oblique criticism on other RCers.)

How Does RC Relate to Other Methods of Taming Humans?

In the first decades of RC, we needed to say that there was nothing like it and it’s the best. And that is still a pretty actuate statement. But there are many people who developed and execute different methods for human progress. It would be good to seek alliance with such groups, learn from each other and become one even more powerful gang.

This could also give us a better understanding of our strong and weak points and the true value of what we are calling RC. Only insecure people need to say all the time: We are the best. Ours is the only way.

NB: I do not advocate at all to mix different methods. That’s not the same as learning from each other. But it’ll help us to become humbler, as advocated before, and so, be able to teach more Blue Collar Workers.

We need to quit being so insecure (see also: HERE) that we must be haughty.

What is unique of RC is that it is not a method but rather a discovery of natural recovery processes that in the end, will give people greater mental capacities than anything else ever before. All people must have access to this to become their fullest self. That should be a right like to clean air.

What’s not superior about RC is that it’s, like lots of therapies, a slow process. It may be faster than most therapies but it’s still slow. It may take years before participants get a clue about their chronic distresses (if they’re under 60). This is a bit compensated by our solid Theory (most religions too have better theory than practice) and our Liberation work.

There are methods that are more hands-on than RC. Quick results. But their disadvantages are that they are less inborn and less fundamental.

For instance, there’re methods to learn to communicate empathetically. That gives quicker results in cleaning up bad relationships. One could say that most people learned an aggressive way to speak and listen, and this is then like learning a new language that doesn’t short-sell anyone. Learning speech to relate well is not as fundamental as learning to heal all distress, but both could certainly be applied in tandem.

It certainly helps to have free attention when connecting to people but it can also help to know how to talk and listen in a friendly way.

It reminds me a bit of the old discussion in RC if we should work on our oldest distress connected to sexuality in any way at all or on the most hurtful experience connected to sex in any way at all. The outcome of this “dispute” was: whatever the client prefers. In the end, the rape survivors will also want to clean up the earliest stuff; the early worker will certainly encounter later giant blocks of distress that s/he will be happy to clean up too, maybe even before all the early stuff is gone.

We need RCer who are good at other methods to share their other expertises and compare them to RC. Where they conflict, where they supplement each other, where they says the same thing, where one is better or less good. Lifestyles, religions, therapies, action programs for Wide World Change, etc. We may need to discharge a lot before we can do this, but many of us have done this when we first learned RC.

It is kind of arrogant to say that we only learned to clean up our other knowledge, as if one can only learn one worthwhile thing: RC.

I’ll give you one example. Massage. I asked an excellent experienced professional masseur who also learned RC about it. He told me: “Muscle massage is fooling the brain. You mislead it about the tension in the muscle and then it stops tightening it. But you heal no trauma at all.” Further, I noticed that some RCers claim that “The body remembers trauma. So when we touch, it can bring up old memories for healing.” Well, we know that the bodily cells don’t have that kind of a memory. Rather, our touch sends a signal to the brain and that does the recalling.

In other words, there is a place for massage but not in RC. We do healing of old stuff. After a good session (but sometimes a great number of sessions), no one needs a massage. And restimulating old memories in the client we also don’t do. If you want a massage, get it outside of RC. Harvey was right not to include it.

We can acknowledge to masseurs that they do a great job helping people to feel better. And we can offer them to learn another method not necessarily always instead, to heal all old pain and understand emotional discharge.

What can we learn from Greenpeace? From the AA? From Islam? From Rogerian Counseling? From Danish culture? From the awareness and outlook of Aboriginals? Etc. Some of this we do already in our Literature.

In the medical field there is progress from healing to prevention, new is an ambition to heal all major illnesses, which will no doubt be followed by repairing and preventing of aging and eventually an aim to prevent death. How does this relate to the work we know so well, to heal all distress and even explore the possibility of physical immortality?

What rightful place can RC take in the whole collection of attempts to better humanity and the entire range of human excellence?

Of course, we do not need to embrace what we found already to be outright harmful methods like hypnosis and biological psychiatry.

The goal of these comparisons is only to inform each other, not to pronounce judgment or advocate. Each RCer can draw their own conclusions.

Are we ready to do look at these comparisons and at RC’s place in the whole, to get off our Rational Island? Harvey would be pleased.

Recognize and Contradict the Passive Quieting Agreeable Distress!

Dramatizing is the term we use for someone acting out their distress. The noise was a dramatization of her fear and when discharge started rolling, it melted away. We can tell that someone who is upset tries to get to discharge from the way they dramatize. We might even be able to tell this about ourselves.

By the way, I would like to suggest that we might have another reason for dramatizing than just (subconsciously) inviting others to give us a good session, attention so that we may discharge our distress – although that is a fine reason all by itself.

Maybe we also try to create more safety for ourselves when we dramatize. So, when our counselors are able to show us that they care about us, the drama should shop, is not needed anymore. When we are loud, we pretend to have power and that we can’t be stopped and then we can begin to discharge powerlessness and un-safety from the past.

Anyhow, I want to say that there might be a type of dramatization that we could overlook too easily. The “I won’t say anything” dramatization. An “I’m fine, don’t have any unmet needs right now.”

You know them. People who are always responsible (towards others but much less towards themselves – which is the essence of a Responsibility Recording). Those who are forever attentive to others, friendly, unassuming, generous.

Someone could be the life of the party or an eye-catching leader but still only because others need that. Forever serving.

Now, at first sight, they may look great. People who are calm quiet shy responsible friendly giving or at least not taking. May I suggest that this could be a dramatization too? Give them sessions too, as you would if they were feeling self-important, demanding attention, “overcome” with feelings, being loud or “bothering” others.

If they are a long time in RC and have done lots of sessions, offering them to dramatize wildly might not work for them anymore. But how about inviting them to be “irresponsible” for a moment or be “self-centered” or asking them, “What would you feel and wish if no one else and nothing needed your attention anymore?” or “How are you doing, deep down?” or “What was an early time in your life when being quiet seemed better than being noisy?” or “I had my turn – how about you?”

Counseling is not a tranquilizer, for making people quiet again. It’s for making us flourish, become more our true selves. All of us.

Don’t abandon the quiet ones! As Harvey said: while we were talking, they were thinking. Focus on them, listen to them. It will make RC safer for the Working Class – and probably everyone. And it will make true our commitment that became our One Point Program in RC: to help each other – not just the loud ones – recover our hidden intelligences.

Please, Stop Playing Therapist! But Counsel Your Leaders!

I truly learned most to be a real counselor from working with survivors of the Mental Health System. They would not buy any of my patterned unaware attempts to “treat”/”help” them. (One doesn’t need to be in RC to understand this: Why I Quit Being a Therapist.)

Just Assist

You can only bother or assist, not “save” the client.

Instead of our judgment of the client, what is needed are our respect and trust in them and trust in the process of healing past hurts. When we run out of patience, we can pretend to be patient. The client won’t mind.

As I mentioned before, us having intelligent thoughts while the client discharges is good. They prevent us from getting bored. But they are not to bother the client. The first rule is to have respect for the client’s work.

If we get to do anything specific (besides the general mode of paying loving warm attention with relaxed high expectations) we will still only have assisted the client slightly. The client must be and is the hero of the session. That’s what Harvey believed and always demonstrated – even while he was not timid and was holding that he was the best counselor in the world.

Harvey defined as a session, two intelligences thinking about the reemergence of one. He taught that counseling works best when the client is the expert. Therefore, anything that smells of the counselor trying to manipulate, being arrogance or knowing-better this is not RC. The client is not “off the deep end.” Even if we see something real that our client seems to miss, the client knows so much more about their position than we.

So, how to supply one’s thinking as counselor? A safe way I found is to ask the client if one can say something (after waiting a bit – and a bit more) and sharing one’s thinking. Much like in a Think and Listen.

Last but not least, some respect for discharging would be good. Tears are not a sign of someone being confused. Sometimes, we as counselors would start crying if we really would give our best loving attention or say our best directions or thoughts to our client. Then don’t stop your own tears. They may even inspire or move your client. Don’t try to cry – that is clienting. But also don’t block your tears – that’s dramatizing – even when it gets unnoticed. Know that your tears are not “about their pain.” Everyone can only cry their own tears. But isn’t it moving when your counselor loves you so much that s/he’s willing to discard their own comfort in order to be there for you the most? In any case, try to cry softer than your client.

The Real RC

Here come some different levels of RC as it developed over the years.
I leave out if the client discharged. You may fill that in yourself.

• Basic RC

“It’s cold today. I put on an extra sweater. I hate cold winds.”

“….”

“It reminds me of when I was little. My parents never noticed when I was cold ….”

• Old RC

“It’s cold today. I put on an extra sweater. I hate cold winds.”

“Say again: ‘I hate cold winds.'”

“I hate cold winds.”

“Again!”

• Advanced Old RC

“It’s cold today. I put on an extra sweater. I hate cold winds.”

“Say: ‘I love cold winds a little bit.'”

“I love cold winds a little bit.”

“Say: ‘I completely love cold winds.'”

“I completely love cold winds.”

• “New” RC (For the last 38 years – Benign Reality, Focus Away From Distress)

“It’s cold today. I put on an extra sweater. I hate cold winds.”

“Say: ‘I so enjoy my sweater.'”

“I so enjoy my sweater.”

“Say: ‘I’m glad I brought it.'”

“I’m glad I brought it.”

(Did you notice that patiently listening actually worked best here?)

• For if it would help, let me describe a typical session I give today.

I listen to the client and think with the client. Thoughts I have about what to say, I hold back a bit to see where the client goes, what s/he knows already, may do already, so that s/he’ll feel safe and powerful.

I don’t steer or lead nor follow. Rather, I try to walk up together.

I don’t try to influence the session. Rather, I share my thinking and see what the client can do with that. The client stays in change. This is not since my thinking would not be OK but because the client’s thinking is.

After some time, I’ll try to add to the session, my thinking to the client’s thinking. I may add a suggestion. Not to stop the client or to have influence.

When I have an idea for a new (or old) direction, I’d rather share my thinking than my conclusion. This way the client can think about it too. Like: May I say something? I thought that you could use a little bit more self-confidence. What do you say? And then I listen and then some.

If I suggest a direction and the client can say it beautifully without effort or discharge, I didn’t help. I should wait more before talking again, think some more while listening.

Some of my regular counselors say that I “have a unique way of counseling people.” I disagree. It’s just plain RC as Harvey taught.

Counseling Leaders

But the opposite can also rob a session of its potential.

While some counselors have lots of opinions about what others say, others not so much. The latter just follow what someone says and don’t get excited about many things. The calmness is OK but if as a counselor you tend to just follow, try in your sessions to formulate your thoughts out loud and discharge until you become more “opinionated” – but stay as cool as you were. You need an opinion to add to your client’s opinion, but be relaxed about it still.

Harvey taught us that counseling works best when the client is the expert. But he did not say: “When the client is much more experienced in RC, just let them talk or cry. They know so well what they need.”

He also taught that you don’t need to search for chronic patterns – those are the things all over the client. Don’t say: I can’t get close enough to find out what the chronics are because the client won’t let me. That’s the chronic, acting like a cactus. I would say then: I was thinking: hard to trust anyone, no? Or: It seems lonely at the top. Then listen.

They may have gotten a bad habit of silencing the counselor. Let them say it, welcome their words and “bother” their isolation patterns again soon. Even if just saying what they feel: Hard to client when the counselor tries to client in your time, no? Hard for others to understand you, no? If listening is hard for your client, give them a wink to show that you think along and see and hear them.

Don’t let your expert client do all the work. Chip in. Just like with working with expert Directions like set Commitments. While the client is using these snowplows against all distress, the counselor can add to the session. If only with something like: Way to go! Good for you!

So, don’t be over-active, don’t be lazy and think all the time.

To sum it all up: Your role as counselor is not to just sit there and listen and not to just sit there and come up with brilliant Directions from brilliant insight. Rather, your role is to share your thinking with the client in such a way that the expert (the client) can come up with the best synthesis between what the two of you think so that s/he can connect with the most of the Benign Reality and can discharge the most.

Regaining Humbleness, What Took us so Long?

We’ve worked a lot on Pride. It’s crucial. But Arrogance is very different from Pride and we must do away with any pattern of superiority ASAP.

In the last presidential elections in the US, according to the polls, Clinton was as much hated as Trump (just by different people), by half of the electorate, which no doubt cost her the victory. I can see easily why. To me, she comes across as way too full of herself. No doubt, it’s hard to be a woman in national politics, but arrogance is not the solution. (This is not to blame her. Being a millionaire probably is also not very helpful.)

Since so many RCers live in the US and understand the importance of Wide World Change, two years before the next national elections, learning, teaching and spreading genuine humbleness is most urgent.

Pretense

Harvey created this beautiful commitment against pretense:

“I’m obviously completely inadequate and completely incapable to handle the challenges reality places before me. Fortunately or unfortunately, I happen to be the best person available.”

Memorize the text. Never leave home without it.

(The word “me” should be shrieked and be followed by a big sigh. Jews may add: Oy way. This first part should give most of the discharge. The tone should be as if one is the town’s fool. Don’t forget to take time to discharge on how that makes you feel.)

Let me add a text and some ideas. Nothing written in stone.

“I give up on all prestige and self-respect, which would ….”

Arrogance

(Not my text – just an illustration.)

Having been viciously humiliated by oppression is no excuse to hold on to arrogance. All arrogant people were.

“Better angry than depressed” might be good as a short-term solution in emergencies but not more than that.

Arrogance is camouflaged insecurity, fake self-importance. Someone who really feels secure will not act superior to anyone, will not try to make anyone else feel inferior. Arrogance is isolation. Arrogance is just a pattern.

Don’t attack people who carry arrogance patterns. Get close to them. Show them that you like them. Don’t flatter them which would strengthen their superiority recordings. Rather, just share that you like them. They may not immediately hold you in high esteem but they will never forget you.

Being Humble

A fear of humbleness is of course a fear that we’ll be seen as insignificant as we feel and would stay crushed. But one needs to have a notion of self-worth to feel humble. If we were really inferior, we could never be humble. We would just be worthless. Only those who’re humble show their worthiness and look impressive (though they may be overlooked by the haughty).

Hang out with humble people. Learn from them. Also why they are right to be humble. And how it makes a deep connection with most people.

See their greatness. See their pride. See their power. Power is with the meek masses, not with the puffed-up theorist.

Being Friendly

One more thing that surprisingly seems a non-issue in RC: friendliness. Most people outside of RC seem uninterested in if not outright wary of unfriendly people. With applying RC, people get more jolly, flexible and able to cooperate but friendliness doesn’t seem on the list.

Harvey supposed that bitchiness was just a passing phase between being beginning counselors who can’t speak up well for themselves yet and being not overwhelmed anymore with one’s own distresses. That’s a nice idea but not what I found. Generally, it starts but doesn’t pass.

I dislike in unfriendly people whom I meet their self-centeredness, their arrogance, their lack of generosity, their aggressiveness.

I understand a lack of interest in RC in politeness, which is often just a Classist excuse for not being frank. But that’s different from friendliness, no? Is being friendly not: I see you as not much different from me? That you’re approachable, interested in others, eager to be close, easy to talk to, open to negotiation. To me, that sounds a lot like humbleness.

And then there is friendly condescendingly talking down to people, which is not really friendly but rather fake. Friendly not taking someone seriously is being arrogant too.

We have collectively such important and urgent work to do, have so far been so insecure and disconnected despite all resources consumed, that we’d better shape up quickly and humble down as much as we can!

I’m not more important than anyone else

We can Save the Planet – I Promise

We must make sure that some huge problem doesn’t wipe us all out while we take care of minor problems like war, murder and oppression.

Decades ago such a colossal crisis seemed an imminent nuclear war. We counseled on it while the threat went away. No such luck in sight with global climate change.

Most of the actions that are needed to limit and turn around the disastrous destruction of the environment, imbalance of nature and annihilation of species need to be at national and international levels. (That one of the richest countries, the US, bolted the Paris Accords is a scandal that the American electorate needs to address in its upcoming presidential elections, two years from now.)

Meanwhile, international efforts to reign in pending disaster while implemented new goals turn out too little too late already and all rich countries need to step up the endeavor to set and reach even more stringent targets all the time. Well, being on our toes prevents boredom. And we need to increase public protest and pressure on especially the rich countries to make an even greater attempt for the survival of all. Never before has it been so clear that we’re all in the same boat.

(Not my text – just an illustration)

However, may I suggest that just public protest and pressure are not enough. We need to start at home. We are setting bad examples as long as we just continue eating whatever seems tasty (meat, milk, eggs and transported foods mess op the ecology enormously) in un-thoughtful amounts, commuting for work without looking for an alternative, frequently traveling long-distance to vacation destinations, etc.

It is true that many industries pollute more than most individuals, but how can we teach our children, our friends, our communities, ourselves (!) to stand up for saving the planet while in our own lives we are careless in our choices?

Let us do our next prolonged sessions on ecological health about how to change our private lives. When we start progressing there, our impatience with politicians not moving swiftly enough will follow automatically.

Not just charity starts at home. Sustaining the milieu does too.

I once heard from someone who visited Harvey’s living quarters that he cut open used milk cartons to give them some further use instead of just throwing them out. So, if we start at home, we’ll be in good company.