Earth Citizen: Recovering Our Humanity

Earth Citizen

Recovering Our Humanity

ILCHI LEE

6560 HIGHWAY 179, STE. 114

SEDONA, AZ 86351

WWW.BESTLIFEMEDIA.COM

1-877-504-1106

COPYRIGHT © 2009 BY ILCHI LEE

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED OR

TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL,

INCLUDING PHOTOCOPYING, RECORDING, OR BY ANY INFORMATION STORAGE OR

RETRIEVAL SYSTEM WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER

FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION: JULY 2009

ISBN: 978-1-935127-25-3

In a sense, each of us is an island. In another sense, however,

we are all one. For though islands appear separate, and may

even be situated at great distances from one another, they are

only extrusions of the same planet, Earth.

—J. Donald Walters

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION:     A Simple Proposal for Change

CHAPTER 1:    A Big, Beautiful Blue Marble

CHAPTER 2:    A Personal Search for Meaning

CHAPTER 3:    The Persistent Power of Hope

CHAPTER 4:    Earth Citizenship and Earth Management

CHAPTER 5:    You Are Your BOS

CHAPTER 6:    The Great Expanding Universe

APPENDIX I:    Earth Citizens in Action : The One Dollar Enlightenment Project

APPENDIX II:   International Brain Education Association (IBREA) Foundation

INTRODUCTION

A Simple Proposal for Change

People call this era the information age for good reason. The world is chock-full of information, and new information is being generated faster than lightning.

If you want to find out what’s going wrong in the world, you’re in luck. All sorts of books, films, blogs, and other media can tell you all about the world’s problems. Pickup a newspaper or flip on the evening news, and you will be bombarded with information from innumerable experts telling you that the biosphere is crumbling, the economy is on thin ice, and our educational system is failing.

This little book is also about information, but it will tell you very little about the world’s problems, and it offers little in the way of facts, statistics, or academic expertise. I figure you already know enough about those. Rather, this book is about changing one very simple and basic piece of information about yourself—your citizenship status. Today there are hundreds of different labels of citizenship—American, Canadian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Zimbabwean, Brazilian, and so forth. However, I believe that there is really just one true classification of citizenship— Earth Citizen.

Of course, we can go on having our different governments, separate currencies, and distinct cultures, but these are of no lasting consequence if we cannot first acknowledge the most powerful entity ever known to humankind, the entity that governs the ebb and flow of life—planet Earth itself. Human beings need to acknowledge that their greatest allegiance should belong not to a human-designed government but to the power on which their very existence depends. People must identify themselves as Earth Citizens before any other designation of identity. Through this simple, painless shift in thinking about ourselves and one another, I believe we can make great changes in the world and its destiny.

I am a person who is not satisfied when I hear people resign themselves to the current human condition, chalking it all up to the inevitabilities of human nature. I think that all of life, including humankind, is either growing and thriving, or declining and dying. To say Poverty will always exist or War is just part of human existence is to accept and contribute to the decline of humanity. Life is meant to push onward and upward, always evolving to a higher, more well-adapted form. So, too, humanity must evolve upward. To stagnate, to stay stuck in the quagmire of our current habits and beliefs, is to succumb to our own inertia.

That is why for many, many years I