National Public Radiators

All this long week
of early spring head colds
our National Public Radio informants
and performers,
speakers and listeners,
have been about the business of raising capital investments
preferably in their corporate direction,
to support further public broadcasting
for the benefit of our children
and their children,
and so on.

While this has often felt like a guilt-inducing headache,
I was drawn into a list of statistics about NPR listeners.
Contrasts between those who do listen
and those who do not,
and,
most likely,
those who send in dollars,
and those who do not.

At first the list seemed random.
More likely to recycle,
to attend live theater,
go to the symphony,
grow gardens,
bake their own cookies,
read bedtime stories to their kids,
read anything at all.

And then I realized we are looking at social capital;
growing and re-investing in social capital.
What a permacultural designer would relabel
and spread across endangered soils and waters and souls
as eco-capital re-investment;
re-investment in ourselves
in each other’s talents and ideas and skills
in Earth’s re-creative abundance.

The economic thing sometimes not noticed
by cooperative eco-civilization re-investors:
high consumers tend to also be high producers.

So, while they didn’t say so,
I have heard it said elsewhere,
NPR listeners also list and lust heavily toward higher education

And rabid to-the-roots,
Straight White Male Privileged Victory Or Die,
Republicans know what that means.

Why isn’t eco-capital investment as robust
in traditional Republican neighborhoods,
as in more multicultural Democratic necks of woods
and urban forests?
Or is it?

While there may be as many answers
as there are MAGAs who do not invest in NPR,
I suspect those Republicans who prefer to NPR listen,
rather than RightWing AM Rant,
also find this positive correlation between deeper learning
and active eco-civilized re-investment troubling
to their centrist nurturing instincts and orientations.

It seems difficult to listen to an International Public Cooperative Economy
while simultaneously expecting positive outcomes
from partisan egocentric and anthropocentric
nationalistic success is divinely inspired
by God’s Invisible Hand of Independent Might Makes Right
caste preservation strategies
intentions
without public venial mentions.

While it seems harsh and judgmental
to speak cooperative prophecy to competitive strength,
we might do well to remember
with Paulo Freire
that teaching is best practiced as mentoring,
and mentoring always prefers cooperative,
more than competitive, learning
and deep listening relationship.

Political mentoring relationships that work,
whether you are part of an academic research community,
or part of an architectural design and implementation team,
or part of a cooperatively owned and self-governing corporation,
require YangStrength of balance
to fall on the side of harmony,
healthy resonance,
both-and nutritionally inclusive and diversifying wealth

Rather than snarky narcissistic capital disinvestment
through autonomous competitions,
in a monocultural assumption of EitherGod/OrEvil fundamentalism
where Earth’s historically polyculture-preferred evidence
more resonantly broadcasts Both/And
eco-civilized re-investment.

Love powers refine
political power of Win/Win cooperativity,
Fear powers define
mistrusted Win v Lose competing disempowerments

We could not have healthy and reliable growth
of empirically-supported and verified public information,
much less wealthy faith re-investment economies,
unless the power of positive eco-capital investment
overwhelms and absolves powers of negative ego-decapitation
independent capitalistic disinvestment.

But then,
I am one of those Earth-patriotic Public Broadcasters,
so sometimes my multicultural balance
can become as useless as a soap box
without two feet planted
on sacred organic ground,
not not double-bound

Starting with a head cold
and ending with an overheated brain.