Both are entirely possible. One of them has been set into cement for generations, still fuels  the Military Industrial Complex economy, and has been growing fast in the last two years: Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center, 45 minutes SW of Bloomington, its total acreage “larger than Washington, D.C.,” and direct employer to 4000 Hoosiers. What a job factory, eh? The war economy, the economy that most of us do not realize we are complicit in. We can’t afford to find out! Our economic lives depend on weapons manufacturing and all its attendant industries — banking, academic, medical, pharmaceutical, security, infrastructure and support services for those 1000 bases world wide . . .

But how, we ask, can we feed and house ourselves and our families unless we “go along”?  We simply have no choice but to compromise our principles for profit, or at least, for survival. Right? Extricate all the tangled threads of the cancerous military industrial mycellium, and what would be left?

Well, guess what? A lot would be left. In fact a lot is already germinating up within that old, destructive tangled, tumorous mass, a new type of mycellium that is both organic,  local, and not cancerous. And notice, here, today’s front page news in our local paper: two stories above the fold.

The larger story is not the fact that the Defense (Offense) Secretary is to visit Crane. No. The larger story, by far, is devoted to the One World vision of Jeff Meese, the employer of my housemate Brie, the man who gifted us with our new outdoor sink — to wash the produce for our new CSA.

It turns out that this sink is part of what had to go when Jeff Meese decided to expand his material manifestation of his One World vision. And we’re not talking about any New World Order here. Nothing top-down. Rather, an intensely local, networked, sharing economy.

The Herald-Times piece was good.

One World Growth

But this one from the Limestone Post is juicier, including direct quotes from Meese. The man’s expansive perspective beyond the “bottom line,” his cooperative attitude, and his practical capacity to actually put his time, energy, and money where his mouth is, are breathtaking!

New Business Model Opens Doors for Start-ups

Here’s Brie’s take on the news, and its write-up:

That on today’s front page the local Herald-Times chose to make its story of the new, local, One World vision larger than the usual p.r. that extolls the old, centralized, destructive, New World Order (Crane) is telling. I consider it symbolic. And extremely hopeful.