Category: People

What on Earth to do?

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it involves the future. Niels Bohr

I have seen a number of versions of this quotation from Niels Bohr but no matter the inference is clear. My way of putting it is that the future has a habit of observing the law of unintended consequences!

This gentle immersion into today’s muse is on the back of two events. The first was the reading of Guy McPherson’s book, Walking Away from Empire, that I reviewed last week. The second was watching a fascinating presentation about reversing climate change.

Just stay with Guy McPherson for a moment longer. He is of the very firm opinion that we face imminent environmental collapse and the collapse of the industrial economy. His bet is that the environment is already in the grip of ten feedback loops that guarantee making the environment unsustainable for the majority of species on this planet within a couple of decades. If you want more then take a mouse click across the Guy’s blog Nature Bats Last.

So, given that one embraces this prediction, free of the clouds of delusion that it couldn’t possibly come to that, then what? (I’m assuming that you have the basic motivation to get out of bed in the morning!)

The natural response is what on earth to do?

That’s where Allan Savory comes in!

WikiPedia introduces him as follows:

(Clifford) Allan Redin Savory (born September 15, 1935) is a Zimbabwean biologist, farmer, soldier, exile, environmentalist, and winner of the 2003 Banksia International Award and the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. He is the originator of holistic management.

Savory had begun working on the ancient problem of land degradation (desertification) in 1955 in Northern Rhodesia, where he served in the Colonial Service as Provincial Game Officer, Northern and Luapula Provinces. He subsequently continued this work in Southern Rhodesia first as a research officer in the Game Department, then as an independent scientist and international consultant. When in exile, Savory worked from the Cayman Islands into the Americas introducing his new discoveries about both the cause of desertification and how to reverse it using increased numbers of livestock.

He subsequently wrote up this work in the book Holistic Management: A New Decision Making Framework, written with his wife Jody Butterfield and published by Island Press (1989; 1999 2nd edition).

In 1992, he co-founded the Africa Center for Holistic Management with his wife Jody Butterfield and, in 2009, the Savory Institute, headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, which he currently heads. The Savory Institute works globally with individuals, government agencies, NGOs, and corporations to restore the vast grasslands of the world through the teaching and practice of holistic management and decision making.

The institute’s consulting and training activities are turning deserts into thriving grasslands, restoring biodiversity, bringing streams, rivers, and water sources back to life, combating poverty and hunger, and increasing sustainable food production, all mitigating global climate change through carbon sequestration. In 2010, Savory and the Africa Center for Holistic Management won The Buckminster Fuller Challenge.

In a 2012 address to the International Union for Conservation of Nature World Conservation Congress, on the urgent need to bring agriculture and conservation back together, Prince Charles lauded Savory’s nature based approach.

OK, enough from me. Watch Allan Savory’s fascinating and potentially life-saving idea, as presented to the TED2013 conference.

Love in the Present Tense

And now for something completely different!

Jean and I were looking for something to watch on Wednesday evening and, as is our want, took a browse through the latest films on Top Documentary Films.

There was an intriguing title under the recently added list – People in Motion.

This was how the film was described.

We were hunters and foragers. The frontier was everywhere. We were bounded only by the earth, the ocean and the sky.

Today we go about our business, unencumbered by the frontier. Society guides us, it gives us permission to drive on roads, to stop at red lights, and go on green.

But something is not right.

It often feels as if something is missing. As if the life society has allowed isn’t quite enough. We spend so much time planning for the future it seems we’re forgetting how to live in the moment. How to feel deep and profound satisfaction with life.

It was this feeling that led us to watch people in cities, trying to understand what drives them. They typically did the same three things: walk, sit and shop.

People in Motion is a film showcasing the potential people have to move through time and space. The film is shot in true slow motion edited using a composite technique which illustrates stretches of time in an instant.

Now before you watch the film, and I really hope you do, just reflect on our closest animal companion; dogs. As is stated on the home page of Learning from Dogs,

Dogs live in the present – they just are! Dogs make the best of each moment uncluttered by the sorts of complex fears and feelings that we humans have.

One of the many wonderful ways that dogs enjoy the present is through play.

Rain had raised the flow of water in our creek and earlier on that Wednesday we had given the dogs a run in the rain. Of course, they went immediately to the creek to play in the rushing waters. The top picture shows Sweeny doing just that, Pharaoh equally having fun as below.

Play is so important for humans as well as dogs.

Now watch the film and be amazed – the music is pretty cool as well.

Published on Dec 31, 2012

Music by…
* Lindsey Stirling:
** songs: Crystallize, Transcendence

* Niklas Aman:
** songs: Stirred Up, Momentum, Up A Storm

* Michael Marantz:
** song: Earth – The Pale Blue Dot

Directed by: Cedric Dahl
Produced by: Bennett Hoffman
Staring: Paul Whitecotton, Brian Orosco, David Agajanian, Lonnie Tisdale, Jacob Siel

Finally, after you have watched the film you will enjoy this interview with film director Cedric Dahl. But watch the film first!!

Going beyond the self.

Further reflections on reality and delusion.

I closed yesterday’s post with this quotation from Carl Sagan, “It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.“

So easy to write. Nay, a thousand times more easy to trot out than to embrace. Even that word embrace is too warm and fuzzy.

I’m sure that the human psyche lives in a bubble of delusion. Clearly, if the level of delusion is abnormal then we can’t function properly as social animals. Just take a moment or two to muse over the ways that you ‘shelter’ from reality. Trust me I don’t exclude myself.

However, there are times when reality with a capital ‘R’ smacks us in the face. Death of a loved one, unanticipated break-up of one’s marriage are two that come to mind. Undoubtedly, there are others.

In yesterday’s post where I wrote of my experiences from reading Guy McPherson’s book, Walking Away from Empire, I freely admitted the struggle of embracing the truth, the Reality of where we are; ‘we’ as in industrialised man.

Reflect on the relationship that hope has with reality. Aristotle wrote, “Hope is a waking dream” and that comes from over 2,300 years ago!

More recently, the aforementioned Professor wrote of hope:

With respect to the question, I spoke and wrote about hope way back in August 2007, when this website was launched. In that long essay — the bloated, unedited, transcript of a presentation I had delivered a few days earlier — I described hope as follows:

I view hope as the left-brain product of love, analogous to democracy as the product of freedom, or liberty. Notably, Patrick Henry did not say, “Give me democracy or give me death.” Like the rest of the founding fathers, Henry knew that freedom was primary to democracy; without the guiding light of freedom, or liberty, democracy breaks up on the shoals. Love keeps our left brain in check — that’s the message of the world’s religions. But our right-brain love creates the foundation for hope: love for nature, love for our children and grandchildren, love for each other. Without love to light the way, hope breaks up on the shoals.

Staying with Guy McPherson for a tad longer, over on Transition Voice there was an essay from him under the title of Sadly, extinction is no laughing matter.

Picking up on the Carl Sagan quote again (“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.“) McPherson writes:

Many people disagree with Sagan, choosing delusion over reality, believing we can have infinite growth on a finite planet with no consequences for people or other creatures, other life forms, other organisms. The people in this latter group seek hope, and many of them disparage me and my actions for inducing despair.

Finally, though, I’ve concluded that hope is hopeless. As Friedrich Nietzsche pointed out, “Hope is the most evil of evils, because it prolongs man’s torment.”

To put Ed Abbey’s spin on it, “Action is the antidote to despair.” So, even though I no longer think my actions matter for humans, I’ll take action.

A worthy pity party

Near-term human extinction is a difficult pill to swallow, as is economic collapse. But ignoring ugly truths does not make them any less true. Despair is an expected and appropriate response to this information. Recognizing, accepting, and moving beyond despair are important subsequent steps.

But first, let’s despair.

Ed Abbey’s idea that action is the antidote to fear reminds me of a recent essay from Alex Jones over at The Liberated Way. (If you haven’t previously come across Alex’s writings trust me you will be inspired!)

That essay was How to change the world published on the 28th February last. Here’s how it opens:

Changes to self acts as ripples of change to the world.

Throw a rock into a pool it creates ripples, eventually the pool grows still again. Like the pool nature will move to a state of harmony if given the chance.

We all know that humanity and this planet suffer many challenges. Many feel they need to change or improve the world. Those people fail to realise that nature knows where the state of harmony is, and is attempting to get to that state of harmony, therefore one has no need to change or improve the world.

The reason those words jumped off the page at me (OK, screen!) was the key message that letting go of what man feels compelled to do and allowing the natural forces on this planet to reign supreme is the answer. The message that we have to go back to the natural way of doing things. Right back to the harmony that early man had with the planet before farming corrupted our values.

Alex’s essay continues:

The problem with the desire to change the world is it becomes a form of control, attempting to force others to do something they have no desire to do. One of the problems of humanity is control, everyone trying to control each other, self and nature, which ends in conflict where nobody but the strongest wins. The problem with control is choice, liberty and creativity is taken away from those being controlled, and there is no opportunity to gain wisdom from mistakes.

I have spent too many years of my life trying to change or improve the world. I won some battles, I lost others. Worse, I became sometimes no better than those I fought against. Often control made the situation worse. I am reminded of the Greek legend of King Sisyphus who was condemned to roll a boulder up a steep hill only to see it roll down again, an activity he was condemned to repeat for all of eternity. Trying to change or improve the world was my equivalent of King Sisyphus.

The answer is to be a ripple of change to the world by doing our own thing. By changing ourselves, by living our dreams, setting an example, we emanate ripples of change into the world. We transform the world by transforming ourselves. Remember that stone that splashed into the pool? We are the stone, our activities in making ourselves happy, healthy and abundant becomes the ripples of change into the world. We force nobody to do anything, since all our efforts are focused on ourselves, we show by example which others may copy. People will follow our example since they see what we do works.

It is hard to let go, but let go we must. Change is inside rippling outwards.

It’s the old adage about change. It first has to start from within. As I warned in yesterday’s post, “When you read this book brace yourself for what you see staring out of the mirror back at you. There will be no room left for delusion.”

Ironically for a post that carries the title of ‘Going beyond the self” going out of oneself is the only way to see reality, to brush away delusion. From which place one can then allow change from within to occur.

I shall close with a quote from one of my favourite authors Aldous Huxley:

“Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.”

Walking Away from Empire; a book review

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Arthur Conan Doyle.

Ten days ago, I finished reading the book Walking Away from Empire: A Personal Journey. It had been sent to me by the author.

Let me explain how this came about.

A few weeks ago, I published an item under the title of Doggedly seeking the truth. I included the video “The Twin Sides of the Fossil-Fuel Coin: Developing Durable Living Arrangements in Light of Climate Change and Energy Decline.“ That video was a presentation by Prof. Guy McPherson.

Subsequently, during an exchange of emails with Prof. McPherson there was an offer to receive a free copy of his book, Walking Away from Empire: A Personal Journey. Naturally, I accepted.

Having finished reading the book it seemed only fair to write a review.

So far, so good!

I tried to marshal my thoughts for well over a week. Couldn’t get started. Strange, because when immersed in the book the messages were crystal clear.

Why the struggle to embrace Guy McPherson’s messages? Then in a moment of insight I realised that I was struggling to understand why I was struggling!

walkingaway — Published by PublishAmerica, LLLP

Because the blunt truth of the matter is that this book spells out the bleedin’ obvious. Humanity is between a rock and a hard place!

Look no further than the very first paragraph of the first chapter, Reason,:

At this late juncture in the era of industry, it seems safe to assume we face one of two futures. If we continue to burn fossil fuels, we face imminent environmental collapse. If we cease burning fossil fuels, the industrial economy will collapse. Industrial humans express these futures as a choice between your money or your life, and tell you that, without money, life isn’t worth living. As should be clear by now, industrial humans — or at least our “leaders” — have chosen not door number one (environmental collapse) and not door number two (economic collapse), but both of the above.

Sandy Krolick of Transition Voice wrote a review of Guy McPherson’s book in September, 2011. His last sentence was, “This is a book you will not put down; and having read it, you’ll no longer be able to ignore its conclusions.”

Again, what Sandy Krolick writes is perfectly correct. No argument. Yet …. something about that sentence from Sandy doesn’t speak to me. That struggle again.

Then I got it!

Let me go straight to page 177 of Prof. McPherson’s book and quote this:

It’s no longer just the living planet we should be concerned about. It’s us. The moral question, then: What are you going to do about it?

Then one paragraph later, come this:

There is simply no feeding the hollow spot in my gut and my psyche, as there was when I replaced my invisible, omnipotent friend in the sky with reason. Instead of abandoning the mirage of eternal life, I’m abandoning the mirage of globalization. Instead of giving up an everloving god, I’m giving up a comfortable life spent with my best friend. I’m taking yet another step in the path from make-believe to reality. And, as we all know, reality is a harsh, dispassionate mistress who doesn’t give a damn about the emptiness in my fragile little psyche. Fortunately, I still have the amusing memories of the absurdity of my former life, in which I believed I was saving the world by conducting and publishing mundane research and teaching irrelevant concepts to a largely disinterested audience.

I found the first step to be the most difficult. Simply recognizing the industrial economy as an omnicidal imperial beast forced me to cross a threshold most people find far too formidable to attempt.

Just reflect on those key words, “a threshold most people find far too formidable to attempt.”

Keep those words in mind as I quote the next paragraph from the book.

We’ve never been here as a species, much less as individuals. And every cultural message tells us we’re wrong, that the industrial age will last forever, that justice and goodness will prevail over every enemy (i.e., terrorist), that progress is a one-way street to industrial nirvana, that the harbinger of hope will keep the oil coming and the cars running and the planes flying so we can all soak up the sun on a sandy beach any time we need a break from our tumultuous lives in the cube farms of empire.

This, then, was the result of reading the book. The realisation of the reality of our existence. The immensity of the truth of where mankind is. The here and NOW!

Sorry, let me amend those last sentences. My realisation of the reality of my existence. The immensity of the truth of where I am. My here and NOW!

No wonder I struggled.

So not much of a book review, more a review of yours truly! That is the power of this book. Sandy Krolick was right; “This is a book you will not put down; and having read it, you’ll no longer be able to ignore its conclusions.”

Be warned. When you read this book brace yourself for what you see staring out of the mirror back at you. There will be no room left for delusion.

As Carl Sagan said, “It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.“

Change is never easy ….

… but change is also the one constant in life.

For every one of us there is no escaping change. It’s always been been that way; always will be.

Today, however, there’s an additional unsettling element. I’m speaking of the growing realisation that humanity could be facing the perfect storm. The ultimate storm of runaway climate change and the collapse of our global economy.

Therefore, when one comes across the wind of common-sense it needs to be promoted. My reason for promoting the opening speech by Jennifer Granholm at the TED2013 conference.

Because if we are to find a way of avoiding this storm, we have to do it through innovative ways of thinking and behaving. Each and every one of us deciding to work for a better future. (And see my P.S.)

P.S.

Back in the days of dogs living as coherent packs, one of the key roles of the alpha dog was to decide a change of territory. Then she, because the alpha dog was always a female, would lead the pack to a better place.

So we should learn from our ancient furry friends and take personal responsibility to find a ‘better’ place for ourselves and all our loved ones.

Saturday smile.

From dear, brave Cynthia.

Needs no further words from me.

Making sense of life?

“I accept chaos, I’m not sure whether it accepts me.” Bob Dylan.

Started this week with an essay from John Hurlburt. Likewise, finishing with these thoughts from John.

Are We Confused?

Egotistically, the objective is self.
Financially, the objective is profit.
Corporately, the objective is control.

Biologically, the objective is growth.
Physically, the objective is change.
Morally, the objective is equality.

Psychologically, the objective is integrity.
Philosophically, the objective is truth.
Scientifically, the objective is fact.

Intellectually, the objective is reason.
Emotionally, the objective is balance.
Spiritually, the objective is Unity.

an old lamplighter

To see is to understand.

Something each and every one of us has to absorb – but without going in to space!

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.“

So said Albert Einstein. As with so many wise men from all times, what gets uttered strikes as such obvious common-sense. But it took a wise person to utter it!

We need a change of consciousness. About the world we live on. This single, fragile, vulnerable rock in space that was featured in last Sunday’s post, Just a small white dot, and in yesterday’s post about Carl Sagan.

Climate Crocks, a ‘must follow’ blogsite for those that are concerned about the state of our planet, recently published a post that revealed how astronauts upon viewing the Planet Earth from Space had a profound Consciousness Change. Take this example;

“I think you start out with this idea of what it’s going to be like…and then when you do finally look at the Earth for the first time…you’re overwhelmed by how much more beautiful it really is, when you see it for real.

It’s just like it’s this dynamic, alive place, ..that you see glowing all the time..”

-Nicole Stott, Shuttle, ISS Astronaut

Or this from Ron Garan;

“When we look down on the Earth from space, we see this amazing, indescribably beautiful planet, ..it looks like a living, breathing organism..”

– Ron Garan, Suttle, ISS Astronaut

Wonderfully, that Climate Crocks piece quickly led to a new organisation called Planetary Collective.

Planetary Collective is a group of filmmakers, visual media creatives and thinkers who work with cosmologists, ecologists, and philosophers to explore some of the big questions facing our planet at this time.

Embracing a multidisciplinary, multi-media approach, we brings scientists, philosophers, and researchers together with designers, coders, and creatives to bring new perspectives to audiences around the world in fresh and innovative ways.

It was this group that last December released the short, but incredibly powerful film, Overview. Here it is:

Released 7th December 2012

At the end of 2011, we filmed a short documentary called OVERVIEW about astronauts’ experiences in space, due for release in the last quarter of 2012. The film is both a stand-alone short film and a prelude to CONTINUUM, introducing many of the key ideas expanded upon in the feature documentary.

SYNOPSIS

Astronauts who have seen the Earth from space have often described the ‘overview effect’ as an experience that has transformed their perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it, and enabled them to perceive it as our shared home, without boundaries between nations or species.

OVERVIEW is a short film that will explore this perspective through interviews with astronauts who have experienced the overview effect. The film also features insights from commentators and thinkers on the wider implications and importance of this understanding for humanity as a whole, and especially its relevance to how we meet the tremendous challenges facing our planet at this time.

That film release date of the 7th December, 2012 was the 40th anniversary of the most famous photograph of Planet Earth taken on the 7th December, 1972: The Blue Marble.

Original caption: “View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon. This translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to the Antarctica south polar ice cap.

This is the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud cover in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen at the northeastern edge of Africa. The large island off the coast of Africa is Madagascar. The Asian mainland is on the horizon toward the northeast.”

From WikiPedia,

The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth, taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, at a distance of about 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi).

The snapshot — taken by astronauts on December 7, 1972, at 5:39 a.m. EST (10:39 UTC) — is one of the most widely distributed photographic images in existence.

The image is one of the few to show a fully illuminated Earth, as the astronauts had the Sun behind them when they took the image. To the astronauts, Earth had the appearance and size of a glass marble, hence the name.

Back to that Overview film. Slightly confusing is the fact that the Planetary Collective website, where that Overview film is highlighted, is a different one to the associated Overview Institute website, from where one can read this Declaration:

A Critical Time

We live at a critical moment in human history. The challenges of climate change, food, water and energy shortages as well as the increasing disparity between the developed and developing nations are testing our will to unite, while differences in religions, cultures, and politics continue to keep us apart.

The creation of a “global village” through satellite TV and the Internet is still struggling to connect the world into one community. At this critical moment, our greatest need is for a global vision of planetary unity and purpose for humanity as a whole.

And to my mind the greatest need, the ONLY need, for that global vision is to move rapidly beyond our industrial and materialistic way of life to one where we live in harmony with our planet.

To pick up on what Ron Garan was quoted as saying, Planet Earth is a living, breathing organism. If the species man and thousands of other non-human species are to stand a chance of remaining on this living, breathing organism then You, Me and every other person out there, has to have a change of consciousness about the one and only place we live on.

So don’t flick over from those last words to the next thing in your life. Go back and look at the picture of our home, taken from Apollo 17. Make sure that you ask as many as you can to watch the Overview film above.

Finally, you be a person who makes a change in your consciousness. The rest is easy.

Back to dear old Albert E.

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.“

Carl Sagan

How very precious, vulnerable and fragile is this precious place we call home.

Today’s consciousness perambulation is the fault of Mr. P., as I like to call him. I refer to Pendantry as he is on his blog, Wibble.

You see on Sunday he added a comment to my post Just a small, white dot! that included the beautiful and awe-inspiring film made by the late Carl Sagan called Pale Blue Dot.

Like millions of others, I came to admire Carl Sagan through watching the fabulous, the truly fabulous, television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. (NB. All the episodes are on YouTube, Episode One is at the end of this Post, Ed.) Here’s how WikiPedia opens their reference to Carl.

Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He spent most of his career as a professor of astronomy at Cornell University where he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies.

He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He advocated scientifically skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

Sagan is known for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which he narrated and co-wrote. The book Cosmos was published to accompany the series. Sagan wrote the novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name.

He died far too young and was a tragic loss to humanity. The Carl Sagan web portal is here.

That 3:30 minute video Pale Blue Dot has, likewise, been seen by millions. If you or someone you know hasn’t seen it, then you must pause now …

It’s practically impossible to watch that video and not embrace the central message from Mr. Sagan. Here’s the transcript:

Our home from 6 billion kilometres. A very tiny dot against the vastness of space.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different.

Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.

On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.

The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Tomorrow, I will stay with the theme of our beautiful planet. Hope you can join me.

Now spoil yourself and watch Episode One of Cosmos.

Fear versus Faith

“Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.” William Congreve, English playwright and poet.

It’s Sunday (i.e. yesterday). I woke around 6am to a cold morning (28 deg F/-2.2 deg C), the result of a clear, moonlit night.

Then as the night sky lightened with the coming dawn, the green, forest-cloaked valleys, visible to the East through the bedroom windows filled with a white, morning mist. In a metaphorical sense that descending mist matched a mood of gloom that was trying to descend on me.

Early morning mist, Merlin, Oregon — Early morning mist, taken 7:15 am Sunday, 24th Feb.

As I lay back against the headboard of the bed, Jean still sleeping close to me, dogs Cleo, Hazel and Sweeny snoozing on and around me, I pondered on my mood. It came to me that I might be picking up the growing sense of anxiety, of uncertainty, that seems to be ‘in the air’. Me reading too many blog articles about global warming, climate change, et al. Being three-quarters through Professor Guy McPherson’s book Walking Away from Empire: A Personal Journey wasn’t helping either!

Then I recalled a recent conversation with dear friend and colleague from our Payson, AZ. days, John Hurlburt, who said that fear is the absence of faith. That if we trust what will be will be, then we can counter the fear of the unknown and embrace the present day, one day at a time. Living in the now as, you’ve guessed it, that dogs do so supremely well. Something else to learn from dogs!

I made a decision to take a stroll in the forest, emotionally speaking, for this week, so far as Learning from Dogs is concerned. Enjoy the beauty of the world around me and offer a few essays on the meaning of life. No blog posts at all about anything that engenders fear from any quarter!

And if that doesn’t slash the readership figures, I don’t know what will! So there! You have been warned.

So let me start by offering this essay from John. John is one of those rare people who has been through more than his fair share of ‘challenges’ over the years, yet has grown from those experiences.

Here’s John – I’m turning over and going back to sleep!

oooOOOooo

Education, Formation and Transformation

Most Americans remain comfortably complacent despite world economic brinksmanship, the escalating deterioration of our planetary environment and raging world discontent. Although we may be caring and compassionate in our personal lives, we are often reluctant to take any risk of reducing our personal comfort.

Education is a process. A process of learning how to think life through in order to become aware of whom we are, what we are, where we are, and why we exist. Education has always been the human gateway to a better future.

Knowledge does not guarantee wisdom. Education, formation and transformation are an integrated process which includes studying to gain knowledge, making natural connections based on the best information available, and experiencing the higher levels of conscious awareness we recognize as wisdom. The educational process works best when it is open minded, factual and sustained. We learn best when we learn together.

The human wisdom tradition is rich in myth, mysticism, symbols, imagination and creativity. It tells a common story of emergence through centuries of sacred writings stretching back through time to the earliest human cave scratchings roughly 17,000 years ago, and the beauty of the prayers of the Rig-Veda 12,000 years ago which all begin with an homage to the natural energy of the Sun.

We’re conscious components of a living planet. We’re surface dwellers with exposure to universal and planetary energies. Our species is only 200,000 years old. The universe is roughly 13 billion years old. Our planet is deteriorating and we’ve lost our collective moral compass. What can we do to make a local difference?

We only recently learned to hunt woolly mammoths in packs using bows, arrows and spears as tools. A perception of God in relation to our responsibility to each other and creation exists as the foundation of a human wisdom tradition which, relatively speaking, has just began.

In many ways, nothing seems to have changed as we have passed through successive cyclic waves of emergence and contraction. It becomes simultaneously increasingly more complex and exquisitely simple to understand. That is as we begin to realize how our metanexus emerges, contracts and turns inside out without breaking … like a pulse.

The next ten years are more important than the next several thousand years in respect to the choices we make about our biosphere.

There seems to be little doubt that our world problems are steadily increasing. What’s the next right thing to do? It’s time to grow our conscious connection in God. It’s time to share the spring of human wisdom from the ground up. It’s time to develop a world economy which is gentle to the earth.

The Clearing Rests in Song and Shade

The clearing rests in song and shade.
It is a creature made
By old light held in soul and leaf.
By humans joy and grief,
By human work,
Fidelity of sight and stroke,
By rain, by water on
The parent stone.
We join our work to Heaven’s gift,
Our hope to what is left,
That field and woods at last agree
In an economy
Of widest worth.
High Heaven’s Kingdom come on earth,
Imagine Paradise
O dust, arise!

Wendell Berry; 1909

oooOOOooo

“The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn.” Alvin Toffler

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A worthy pity party

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Are We Confused?

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Planetary Collective is a group of filmmakers, visual media creatives and thinkers who work with cosmologists, ecologists, and philosophers to explore some of the big questions facing our planet at this time.

Released 7th December 2012

A Critical Time

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Education, Formation and Transformation

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