The following is an example of my mindstream in recent days. The first video clip below is poignant, clever and a shocking testament to the insanity of excesses popping up in most parts of our lives on this planet.

[Added later: Some reading and discussions with friends after this post had me questioning whether this plastic island was simply a hoax. Unfortunately, it appears it is real, albeit somewhat different than as portrayed, perhaps. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch ]

Like everyone else, I can get paralysed by the enormity and grievous nature of human repercussions on our environment, and our future. We have all seen many, many indications of these harmful trends. Yet we need NOT to be swallowed up by helplessness, shame or despair.

So, the second video is one small but significant example of how shifting the paradigm of our thinking can make a difference – can bring solutions.

The Magnificent Plastic Bag – Mockumentary

Man invents machine to convert plastic into oil

I had seen the first YouTube clip a few days ago, and while I prepared to send it off to a few friends, I realised I would prefer to put it in a blog post. But I had inadvertently sent it before I could switch that intent. Such is the hair-trigger nature of this technology we wield so inattentively at times. Anyway, I then saw the second video last evening, in one of my following rest periods I imagined a huge factory ship gathering up the” twice-Texas-sized cache” of plastic waste out in the Pacific Ocean and compressing it into blocks for building, oil conversion and who knows what else.

More on a related topic – Lynn McTaggart’s book “The Field” – to follow