Mannahatta was the name given to the lush green island shown in the top half of the picture above.
The word means “island of many hills” in the language of the Lenape people, who lived on the island for around five thousand years before it was “discovered”, in the early seventeenth century, by genocidal, profit seeking europeans.
Not content with “claiming”, raping and utterly destroying the land, the invaders also stole and mutilated the name as well.
So now, it is Manhattan, which I’m sure many will recognize as the lower, and I use the word advisedly, half of the image.

On the higher island, there was clean air and pure water. There was abundant animal and plant Life, which sustained a thriving native population, providing them with all their needs. They were stewards of the land, who never took more than they needed and never intentionally destroyed the ecosystem in the name of profit. In return for their compliance with natural law, they enjoyed a self-sustaining, self-regulating and self-contained biosphere that supported them for thousands of years.
These “godless, primitive savages” were well informed in terms of the knowledge needed to sustain themselves and their environment. Individuals were educated from birth in what was necessary to ensure the survival and well-being of their society. They learned that cooperation, sharing and placing the best interests of society before self were crucial to continued survival. What they were NOT taught was how to exploit each other and the environment to the points of death and destruction.
Who knows what “civilization” might have eventually developed had this society not been obliterated by the lust for profit and power?

However, you can’t stop progress.

On the lower island, there is no natural, potable water and the air is barely breathable. There is no plant or animal Life present that could provide long-term sustenance for the population, even if you count pigeons and rats. There are not sufficient, naturally occurring materials that could be used to provide shelter and likely no one there who would know how to use them if there were. There is constant manipulation, deception and betrayal in the quest for power and “success” and very little voluntary participation in activities intended to benefit all the members of the populace.
If the modern island of Manhattan were cut off from the rest of the world, the population might be unfortunate enough to survive a year or two.
The conquerors have managed to destroy, in less than five hundred years, a vibrant, thriving and bountiful ecosystem that the primitive, unschooled and ignorant aborigines managed successfully for five thousand.

Now I know there will be many who scoff at such a point of view, who will wax eloquent regarding the great “progress” that the city of New York epitomizes. They will site the unmatched “culture”, “art” and “opportunities for success” that exist there. They are entitled to their opinion and I will not debate them.
They won’t talk much, however, about the stress, crime, poverty, filth, pollution, disease, oppression and desperation that are the main hallmarks of that city and most others of its size and character.
As Mick was wont to say, “Go ahead, bite the Big Apple. Don’t mind the maggots”.

There were doubtless many flaws in the society of the Lenape. However, genocide, gratuitous hatred, pathological self-interest and unrestrained destruction of Life-sustaining resources for profit were apparently not prominent among them. Such traits would not have been attributes of a five thousand year success story.

Below are two pictures of the same part of town, Times Square, then and now.
In which neighborhood would you prefer to live?
Must it be the one or the other?
Is there no way, given what we know, our incredible technological capability, our innate propensity to cooperate and to work together for a common goal, that we can strike a balance between these two worlds?

Yes, there is.
Peace is the way.

It can only be achieved by putting an end to greed, which will put an end to the need and consequent lust for profit, which will put an end to war, which will allow us to apply our abilities to learning, fully understanding and abiding by the highest of laws; the laws of Nature.
The only way to end the avarice that presently holds sway on Earth is to provide for a fully informed populace, not misinformed, not uninformed, not deceived or misled by dogma inculcated.
Education, the provision of true and useful information, not indoctrination and propaganda, is the key to knowledge.
Factual, pragmatic knowledge for all, not ideology, not faith based conjecture, is the root of the tree of understanding.
Peace is the fruit of that tree.

There is nothing other than individual, pathological self-interest that prevents humanity from using its marvelous inventive capabilities and technological proficiency in compliance with the natural laws that govern the universe.
The very scientific and technological skills we have abused in the creation of cancerous tumors like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and many others are the same that have taught us so much about the rules of our existence. If we are wise enough to abide by those rules, it may yet be possible for us to achieve continued existence as part of the interdependent system that sustains Life on Earth. If not, our demise is certain.

It is physically impossible to take more than there is.
If there is only taking and no giving back, there will come a day when there is nothing left to take. What part of this do we not understand?

Below we see Foley Square as it would have appeared around four hundred years ago and as it presently exists.
Must we return to the “primitive” living arrangements pictured on the left? If we stay our present course, we will be fortunate to live so well.

For some of us, the choices we make in the next few years will decide the fate of our children, for others it will be grandchildren. They need not live in thatched, dirt-floored huts without electricity, plumbing or access to “modern conveniences”. They could in fact, occupy an environment much like the one pictured on the left. They could live there in comfortable, even luxurious, modern homes. Those homes could be energy independent, ecologically integrated and permanently linked to a global network of similar communities all working together and sharing the resources of Earth equitably and sustainably.
What they must not do is continue to live in and create negative environments like that pictured on the right. Such population centers and the “economies” that motivate them are not sustainable. They are self-destructive and, in their cancerous spread, equally destructive to what remains of the system that allows Life to exist on Earth at all.
Our scientific and technological abilities could produce the first option, our greed and lust for artificial wealth the second, the choice is ours.
The imaginary “wealth” of Foley Square 2009 is neither real nor sustainable. The only real wealth that exists is the bounty of Earth. Clean fresh air, pure potable water, abundant arable land, diverse and plentiful flora and fauna, the entire cornucopia of natural resources provided by Gaia are real and absolutely essential to our continued existence. This is wealth created by no business or corporation and is not to be owned by greedy individuals but to be shared and husbanded wisely by an informed and educated family of humanity.

In the emergent universe, learning is an endless process that leads to the acquisition of practical knowledge. Pragmatic knowledge is the source of understanding. Understanding is the path to Peace.

Sources for pictures, information and inspiration are National Geographic and The Mannahatta Project.