The discipline of ‘biomimicry’ takes its name from the Greek word ‘bios’, life and mimesis, which means to imitate.  “Learning to do what life has learned to do” and reminding ourselves of those geniuses in the Natural world, is the great task of the modern world, according to Janine Benyus, the grandmother of Biomimicry.  The practice of Biomimicry asks the question: How has nature already solved many of the problems human beings are now facing?

The story of Biomimicry may be the oldest story, dating back to our earliest Ancestors, 3.5 billion years ago, when life began.  Organisms which are billions of years old had to learn how to evolve and begin to solve the problems of survival, such as, desalinizing water (through the membranes of a certain kind of insect), using CO2 as a building block (the skin of a Galapagos basking shark), gathering the sun’s energy (plants and a whole host of organisms), gathering water from fog (bumps on the wing covers of flying insects), insulating electricity (the eel), reducing drag time (scalloped fins on certain sharks), and utilizing swarm technology to minimize peak power usage-(ants and bees).

The new Mythos of ecopsychology as well as ecosystems technologies are utilizing “Natures Operating Instructions” (Kenny Ausebel, founder of Bioneers), to learn to do what life has learned to do so beautifully.

There is an apparent link in depth psychology, to an understanding of our own instinctual natures.

In “Man and his Symbols”, C.G. Jung wrote:  “Just as the human body represents a whole museum of organs, each with a long evolutionary history behind it, so we should expect to find that the mind is organized in a similar way. It can no more be a product without history than is the body in which it exists. By “history” I do not mean the fact that the mind builds itself up by conscious reference to the past through language and other cultural traditions. I am referring to the biological, prehistoric, and unconscious development of the mind in archaic man, whose psyche was still close to that of the animal.
This immensely old psyche forms the basis of our mind, just as much as the structure of our body is based on the general anatomical pattern of the mammal. The trained eye of the anatomist or the biologist finds many traces of this original pattern in our bodies.”

The nanotechnologies of the past and future are coming together, as we weave new technologies together  and with the the Earth’s ancient Elders.

America prides itself on being a “free” Country, however, we incarcerate more people than any other Country in the World.  While the U.S. make up 5% of the World’s population, we incarcerate 25% of the World’s population.  How crazy is that?  Three Fourths of those we arrest in this Country every year are imprisoned for low-level, non-violent drug possession, and most of those arrested are poor and Black.  Despite higher levels of drug use and possession among whites, 90% of those arrested are poor people of color.  How does the U.S. Drug War reflect democratic values in any way?

The US. Government has spent over one Trillion dollars on a drug war that imprisoned over 45 million people, without any decrease in drug use or addiction.  Despite this tragic endless and meaningless war,  many smaller and poorer Countries have managed to come up with far better, more humane and effective drug policies than our own.

Criminalizing and incarcerating non-violent drug users has actually added to the problem of drug abuse and the drug trade, making both far less regulated and far more violent.  Even more disturbing, our drug policies have turned a non-criminal public health and economic problem into a law enforcement problem.  This fact has created devastating results for Americans and non-American’s alike, as the Drug War Policy has turned the Drug War into a $400 Billion Global Industry.  The saddest part of all, are the communities and families, jobs and livelihoods which have been destroyed, along with their voting rights.

Despite the Drug War’s continued failure, we have done little if nothing to change it.  Maybe the Drug War is actually something else:  a war on communities of color and a lost War on Poverty itself.  Our government has failed to improve the economic disparities which keep getting worse, while it seems we blindly throw law enforcement at these deeper systemic problems, as if we can fix them through brute force alone.

Even more, by criminalizing a symptom, we have deepened the problem,  and, furthered the racial and economic disparities which have lead to more violent and more dangerous drug-related crimes.  Sounds like a vicious cycle to me.

But there are solutions and Countries, like Portugal, for example, have ‘decriminalized’ drug use and drug addiction.  For example, unless the drug user is also dealing in large quantities or engaged in other forms of criminal behavior, no police, court or jail is required.  Those that are found with illegal drugs are are still sanctioned with fines, and community service.  Those that have more serious drug problems are deferred to matching treatment options and needs.  Referrals are made, supporting an infrastructure of health care and related services that provide harm reduction approaches, such as, detox, group support, therapy and eventually housing and job training-not to mention- all for free due to Portugal’s Universal Health Care.As a result of these efforts, long-term studies in Portugal have shown that deferred treatment costs LESS than imprisonment.

In the US, it costs us $40,000-$60,000 a year to send one person to jail;  the same amount it costs to send that person to a University.  It is time we get serious about ending this failed drug war and utilize that nearly one trillion dollars for much-needed public health care, treatment, education, and job creation.

If Corporations are People, How come they don’t feel shame?  If Corporations are People, where is their natural regret, guilt and remorse?  These are direct questions for the NRA and gun lobbyist’s proposing to have more guns in our schools.

Wow, you really have to be kidding!  More guns in our schools!  Fight violence with violence?  Really?!  Deal with gun massacres by increasing guns so they exist visually everywhere for our children to see and fantasize about.  It’s like saying that the adults and parents and teachers are so weak and ineffectual, unimaginative,  and powerless that even they will resort to guns as a  solution to the gun problem.  We “grown-ups” can’t come up with a better more involved solution for our children?  Wow, that really sucks.  And that is the message it will give.

Inside the classroom, the message to students will be:  we can’t handle you; we don’t trust you or ourselves to handle you; you are not entirely responsible for your own behavior so we have a policeman to do it.

For sure, having more guns in our schools benefits Gun lobbies and the NRA, and our Prison, Military Industrial Complex.  But, having more guns in our schools has nothing to do with educating children or assisting our deteriorating educational system.  Guns in our schools will actually do the opposite, creating an atmosphere of fear, distrust and prejudice.  It does not even come close to addressing the deeper problems, issues and hypocrisies that have led to school gun violence, i.e., what is going in inside our children’s minds?  Are they getting enough attention? nurturance, support, stimulation from learning?  Are they being abused or neglected?  Are we paying attention to the signs of a student needing attention?  if anything, we need more counselors, more trauma therapists’, more communication, more mentors, Big Brothers and Sisters’,  and more active involvement by parents as well as teachers.  We need more teachers!  Not policeman!

It is very worrisome but likely to assume that, due to the workload of our teachers, the discipline of our children will be put in the hands of untrained but armed policeman;  classrooms will be turned into military settings, in which learning and fear will become increasingly associated.

Putting guns and armed guards in our schools is a short-term reaction formation, as well as outright violent collusion with the collective wish already ingrained in our youth, ‘that guns will solve our problems’.  Not to mention that not all policeman are the same.

What if a student with ADHD decides to act out and “test” a police officer?  And, what if that police officer handles this by taking out his gun?  What message will that give to students’?  What if  a police officer is biased against certain children or racist and harasses children of color or girls more often than other children?  How do we explain that to our own children? We have no guarantee of the mental health or ethical character of our police officers’ as exemplified by so many profiling abuses and deaths across the Country.

This is not only a short-sighted and deeply flawed idea being proposed by those who have the most to gain, at the expense of the kinds of environments’ that encourage and nurture learning, but it is a crazy idea with very concerning consequences we haven’t even begun to think through.

I say a resounding, earth shattering “NO” to guns in our schools.