Sunday, May 31, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
WOW the idea index
http://challenge.bfi.org/ideaindex
Welcome to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge Idea Index, a database of entries submitted to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge - the winner of the 2009 Challenge will be announced on May 4th. To read a summary of an entry, just click on its title or featured image. We offer this Idea Index as a source of inspiration and hope, as a trimtab in itself. The goal of the Idea Index is to catalyze and facilitate the support needed to implement truly comprehensive solutions
Welcome to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge Idea Index, a database of entries submitted to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge - the winner of the 2009 Challenge will be announced on May 4th. To read a summary of an entry, just click on its title or featured image. We offer this Idea Index as a source of inspiration and hope, as a trimtab in itself. The goal of the Idea Index is to catalyze and facilitate the support needed to implement truly comprehensive solutions
New Currency
http://challenge.bfi.org/application_summary/462
http://www.berkshares.org/
This is truly a momentous time for anyone who has ever championed relocalization as an alternative to the faceless, harried, destructive global economy that exerts influence over our communities and activities. Sea change is in the air, with collapsing global financial systems, tenuous energy grids, and food insecurity, there is a welcome resurgence of farmers’ markets, renewable energy projects, and buy local initiatives. People are on the lookout for alternatives—sound, sane alternatives
http://www.berkshares.org/
This is truly a momentous time for anyone who has ever championed relocalization as an alternative to the faceless, harried, destructive global economy that exerts influence over our communities and activities. Sea change is in the air, with collapsing global financial systems, tenuous energy grids, and food insecurity, there is a welcome resurgence of farmers’ markets, renewable energy projects, and buy local initiatives. People are on the lookout for alternatives—sound, sane alternatives
Buckminster
“Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.”
“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.”
“Integrity is the essence of everything successful.”
“The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.”
“Out of my general world-pattern-trend studies there now comes strong evidence that nothing is going to be quite so surprising and abrupt in the future history of man as the forward evolution in the educational process.”
“You have to decide whether you want to make money or make sense, because the two are mutually exclusive.”
Richard Buckminster Fuller
“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.”
“Integrity is the essence of everything successful.”
“The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.”
“Out of my general world-pattern-trend studies there now comes strong evidence that nothing is going to be quite so surprising and abrupt in the future history of man as the forward evolution in the educational process.”
“You have to decide whether you want to make money or make sense, because the two are mutually exclusive.”
Richard Buckminster Fuller
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
more Derrick Jensen
This is a radio interview of Derrick that goes deeper than just resistance. Please listen.
http://resistanceisfertile.ca/derrickparasites.html
-Dillon
http://resistanceisfertile.ca/derrickparasites.html
-Dillon
The gift economy
http://www.gift-economy.com/giftpara_eng/giftparadigm01.html
http://www.giftingit.com/
"I have hoped . . . to speak of the inner gift that we accept as the object of our labor, and the outer gift that has become a vehicle of culture. I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or fear, nor those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us." Lewis Hyde
“Love, work, and knowledge are the wellsprings of our lives, they should also govern it.”
Wilhelm Reich
Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.”
Wilhelm Reich
"Gifts economies, in which human beings are worth more than the market, are fundamental to most traditional and indigenous peoples. Here is a case where a just alternative already exists, and has for thousands of years.
In its purest form, the gift economy is about the collective, allocation based on need, and abundance. Behind gifting is human relationship, solidarity, generation of goodwill, and attention to the nurturance of the whole society, and not just one’s immediate self and family. Maintaining economic and social relations outside of the market keeps respect, cooperation, and ethics thriving."
http://www.giftingit.com/
"I have hoped . . . to speak of the inner gift that we accept as the object of our labor, and the outer gift that has become a vehicle of culture. I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or fear, nor those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us." Lewis Hyde
“Love, work, and knowledge are the wellsprings of our lives, they should also govern it.”
Wilhelm Reich
Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.”
Wilhelm Reich
"Gifts economies, in which human beings are worth more than the market, are fundamental to most traditional and indigenous peoples. Here is a case where a just alternative already exists, and has for thousands of years.
In its purest form, the gift economy is about the collective, allocation based on need, and abundance. Behind gifting is human relationship, solidarity, generation of goodwill, and attention to the nurturance of the whole society, and not just one’s immediate self and family. Maintaining economic and social relations outside of the market keeps respect, cooperation, and ethics thriving."
Monday, May 18, 2009
Everything is Waiting for you
Everything is Waiting for You
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
-- David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Press
http://www.davidwhyte.com/english.html
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
-- David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Press
http://www.davidwhyte.com/english.html
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Interdependent realities, health, and symbiotic insainity
I saw Derrick Jensen (DJ) speak last night and I have a few thoughts.
First a quote from some reading on interdependent realities.
From Buddhism and the public sphere:
"Rather than blending and blending in with the limitless, mutual relevance of all things, attention and action rooted in blindness impose a single meaning or set of meanings on things determining what things "are" and "will be." In a world composed of things with essentially fixed natures, this might not be troubling. Determining what things really 'are' and 'are' not is to be able to act precisely and certainly in pursuing our own interests. But in a world in which all things are best seen impermanent or dynamic, in which our own interests are finally inseparable from those of others, and in which the predictable and the unprecedented are configuring our bodies, our lives, and our circumstances. Reacting or responding to challenging situations without clear understanding of their dramatic precedents and consequents the currents of meaning, outcomes, and opportunities that constitute our karma is almost invariably a guarantee of continued, if not intensified, trouble or suffering."
Hershock 2006 pg45
The Domination reality is as Totten puts it:
“The patterns of power and submission are inscribed on the bodies (or rather through the experience) of its members, through the ways we are taught to use, (experience), and treat our bodies from infancy onwards.” Totten, 2003. pg47
We are swimming in the reality that we wish to resist, we are that reality, we are the very thing we are seeking to resist. The Jail Cell, the government, our minds, our lives are in a symbiotic interdependent insanity loop that is inseparable by normal means. Any "way" that comes out of the reaction to any end of this loop is actually bound for further destruction of the biosphere. This is the difficulty of my solution, it requires a radical shift in perception that is not from the location of "doing, thinking, reacting, changing through more neocortical responses." No I am not suggesting a magical newage response, nor a passive response, nor a violent over throw. Yet anything that comes out of our imagination at this point in history will only repeat all that is historical and thus continue the symbiotic interdependent insanity loop. We are seeking to live in primitive ways, yet we are too far gone from this and any attempt to force this will result in furthering the domination of all living things. We are trapped!
Yet what we are trapped in; this box, this jail cell is completely and totally able to mutate, to reform, to fall off, to shed. But the efforts required to do this are great and the location is currently missing from our imagination as a collection of historical nervous systems strung together by family and passing on the historical trauma's of multiple generations. We are the edges of our species, no other time has a better way to deal with what is on our plate right now, so solutions must come not out of our insanity loop, but rather out of our interdependent mutual growing, maturing, creating, and reaching into the present vital moment, like nature, like play, like rage, and love that is in service to our mutual evolution and into the intelligent heart brain. No this is not some fantasy. It might seem like a fantasy especially since our species has collective amnesia to this vital organ, yet this organ like all the organs in our body have the capacity to be perceived, physically, emotionally, and somatically. This is why most responses to our global human situation will not include this organ, because it has been forgotten and to return to it will take effort. Not effort in doing or thinking, but rather in not doing, but in feeling. If we fail to feel our way through this time we will all play in some way or another into the symbiotic interdependent insanity loop and perpetuate the domination of all life.
This is a time for a new response, one that has never been an option and one that is difficult to see its fruit, except through how our values-intentions-actions create either virtuosity, interdependent connectivity, creative ever present awakening, and radical new ways to interact with the complexities of our reality or further to birth the domination reality that we swim in.
Simultaneously to these thoughts, I have a great understanding in my heart as to what he speaks, our human tragedy, our planet and our home. I too am terrified and feel a powerful rage at our situation. Yet I too feel called in the face of DJ's thoughts to mobilize for a radical shift in how we understand, respond, and relate to our predicament. First I must understand my place in all things, I must connect to the vital breath of life, and take ownership over making more creative interdependent beauty to relate, to return to my senses, and make actions based upon consciousness.
First a quote from some reading on interdependent realities.
From Buddhism and the public sphere:
"Rather than blending and blending in with the limitless, mutual relevance of all things, attention and action rooted in blindness impose a single meaning or set of meanings on things determining what things "are" and "will be." In a world composed of things with essentially fixed natures, this might not be troubling. Determining what things really 'are' and 'are' not is to be able to act precisely and certainly in pursuing our own interests. But in a world in which all things are best seen impermanent or dynamic, in which our own interests are finally inseparable from those of others, and in which the predictable and the unprecedented are configuring our bodies, our lives, and our circumstances. Reacting or responding to challenging situations without clear understanding of their dramatic precedents and consequents the currents of meaning, outcomes, and opportunities that constitute our karma is almost invariably a guarantee of continued, if not intensified, trouble or suffering."
Hershock 2006 pg45
The Domination reality is as Totten puts it:
“The patterns of power and submission are inscribed on the bodies (or rather through the experience) of its members, through the ways we are taught to use, (experience), and treat our bodies from infancy onwards.” Totten, 2003. pg47
We are swimming in the reality that we wish to resist, we are that reality, we are the very thing we are seeking to resist. The Jail Cell, the government, our minds, our lives are in a symbiotic interdependent insanity loop that is inseparable by normal means. Any "way" that comes out of the reaction to any end of this loop is actually bound for further destruction of the biosphere. This is the difficulty of my solution, it requires a radical shift in perception that is not from the location of "doing, thinking, reacting, changing through more neocortical responses." No I am not suggesting a magical newage response, nor a passive response, nor a violent over throw. Yet anything that comes out of our imagination at this point in history will only repeat all that is historical and thus continue the symbiotic interdependent insanity loop. We are seeking to live in primitive ways, yet we are too far gone from this and any attempt to force this will result in furthering the domination of all living things. We are trapped!
Yet what we are trapped in; this box, this jail cell is completely and totally able to mutate, to reform, to fall off, to shed. But the efforts required to do this are great and the location is currently missing from our imagination as a collection of historical nervous systems strung together by family and passing on the historical trauma's of multiple generations. We are the edges of our species, no other time has a better way to deal with what is on our plate right now, so solutions must come not out of our insanity loop, but rather out of our interdependent mutual growing, maturing, creating, and reaching into the present vital moment, like nature, like play, like rage, and love that is in service to our mutual evolution and into the intelligent heart brain. No this is not some fantasy. It might seem like a fantasy especially since our species has collective amnesia to this vital organ, yet this organ like all the organs in our body have the capacity to be perceived, physically, emotionally, and somatically. This is why most responses to our global human situation will not include this organ, because it has been forgotten and to return to it will take effort. Not effort in doing or thinking, but rather in not doing, but in feeling. If we fail to feel our way through this time we will all play in some way or another into the symbiotic interdependent insanity loop and perpetuate the domination of all life.
This is a time for a new response, one that has never been an option and one that is difficult to see its fruit, except through how our values-intentions-actions create either virtuosity, interdependent connectivity, creative ever present awakening, and radical new ways to interact with the complexities of our reality or further to birth the domination reality that we swim in.
Simultaneously to these thoughts, I have a great understanding in my heart as to what he speaks, our human tragedy, our planet and our home. I too am terrified and feel a powerful rage at our situation. Yet I too feel called in the face of DJ's thoughts to mobilize for a radical shift in how we understand, respond, and relate to our predicament. First I must understand my place in all things, I must connect to the vital breath of life, and take ownership over making more creative interdependent beauty to relate, to return to my senses, and make actions based upon consciousness.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
bodymindy meets natural world
"The Pullitizer Prize, Harvard biologist, Edward O. Wilson, observes that "Only in the last moment of human history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world. Preliterate peoples were in intimate contact with a bewildering array of life forms." By contrast, as citizens of Western civilization we spend, according to Cohen, "an average of over 95 percent of our lives indoors, cloistered from nature. We live over 99 percent of our adult lives knowing nature through detached words, stories and pictures." This detachment of our psyche from its biological and psychological origins stressfully and hurtfully estranges us from creation, from nature's supportive, non-verbal wisdom, spirit and love within and about us." This loss creates the insatiable wants and greed that underlie our disorders. We become psychologically addicted to rewarding technologies and relationships that often have destructive side effects. The consequences of our alienation from nature manifest as the myriad of lasting personal, social and environmental problems which beset the modern world." Common Futures Magazine
Depressed? Go Play in the Dirt-
http://www.livescience.com/health/070411_happy_bacteria.html
"Sun exposure is perhaps the most important source of vitamin D because exposure to sunlight provides most humans with their vitamin D requirement. Ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun trigger vitamin D synthesis in skin. The seasons, geographic latitude, time of day, cloud cover, smog, and sunscreen affect UV ray exposure and vitamin D synthesis... Industrial pollution, which increases shade, also decreases sun exposure and may contribute to the development of rickets in children with insufficient dietary intake of vitamin D. It is important for individuals with limited sun exposure to include good sources of vitamin D in their diet."
More on urban gardening
http://www.wiretapmag.org/rights/43579/
Go Barefoot! Barefoot parks-
http://www.terraplana.com/news/go-barefoot-trentham-gardens-and-adventure-play-barfuss-park-barefoot-walk/
Learn how to make a bee garden- help the threatened honey bee and yourself! Did you know insect pollinators are responsible for 1/3 of our food crops' success?
http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens/
Depressed? Go Play in the Dirt-
http://www.livescience.com/health/070411_happy_bacteria.html
"Sun exposure is perhaps the most important source of vitamin D because exposure to sunlight provides most humans with their vitamin D requirement. Ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun trigger vitamin D synthesis in skin. The seasons, geographic latitude, time of day, cloud cover, smog, and sunscreen affect UV ray exposure and vitamin D synthesis... Industrial pollution, which increases shade, also decreases sun exposure and may contribute to the development of rickets in children with insufficient dietary intake of vitamin D. It is important for individuals with limited sun exposure to include good sources of vitamin D in their diet."
More on urban gardening
http://www.wiretapmag.org/rights/43579/
Go Barefoot! Barefoot parks-
http://www.terraplana.com/news/go-barefoot-trentham-gardens-and-adventure-play-barfuss-park-barefoot-walk/
Learn how to make a bee garden- help the threatened honey bee and yourself! Did you know insect pollinators are responsible for 1/3 of our food crops' success?
http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens/
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
From Wikipedia on defining emergence:
In philosophy, systems theory and science, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
In philosophy, systems theory and science, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Derrick Jensen
An Evening with Acclaimed Author and Activist Derrick Jensen
Derrick Jensen is an activist, philosopher, author, and a leading voice of uncompromising dissent. He is the author of "Endgame," "A Language Older Than Words," "The Culture of Make Believe," and "What We Leave Behind."
Time
Friday, May 15
7 p.m.
Fraser Hall 4
Admission
Sliding scale: $2-10 WWU students w/ ID, $4-20 general
And then if you're interested in something a bit more radical there's -
http://squattheplanet.com/forum/where/events/6823-deep-green-resistance-05-15-bellingham-wa.html
Derrick Jensen is an activist, philosopher, author, and a leading voice of uncompromising dissent. He is the author of "Endgame," "A Language Older Than Words," "The Culture of Make Believe," and "What We Leave Behind."
Time
Friday, May 15
7 p.m.
Fraser Hall 4
Admission
Sliding scale: $2-10 WWU students w/ ID, $4-20 general
And then if you're interested in something a bit more radical there's -
http://squattheplanet.com/forum/where/events/6823-deep-green-resistance-05-15-bellingham-wa.html
Friday, May 8, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
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