Section 1: Welcome/Introduction
Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium
Index for Background References (V-2)
Updated December 2009
Module 1:
Eco-Spot Connection [Page …]
1B – The Pachamama Story [Page 1]
Module 2: Where Are We?
2A – Environmental Sustainability [Page…]
2B – Environmental and Social Justice [Page …]
2C – Spiritual, Psychological and Emotional Impact [Page …]
Module 3: How Did We Get Here?
3A – Worldviews and Assumptions [Page …]
3B – Another Worldview [Page …]
Eco-Spot: Island Home [Page …]
Module 4: The Universe Story [Page …]
Module 5: What’s Possible For The Future?
5A – History and the Emerging Dream [Page …]
WOMBAT [Page …]
Module 6: Where Do We Go From Here?
6A – Personal Stand [Page …]
6B – In Blessed Unrest, Choosing Action [Page …]
Module 7: Finale: Hope Committed in Action [Page …]
Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium
V-2 Background References
Updated October 2009
These are the background references for the” V-2” version of the Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium. For comments on, or additions to, this document, or to find out about The Pachamama Alliance, the organization that created the Symposium, please go to: or email info@ and indicate “Background References” on the subject line.
V-2 Module 1A: Eco-Spot Connections
| |Key Points: |Source/References: |
| |1A-1 | |
| |Narrator: | |
| |It’s the third planet from the sun—a tiny | |
| |sphere spinning through a moment in time—a | |
| |remarkable place that was kind enough to yield | |
| |just the right elements to sustain a phenomenon| |
| |called life, where each creature is as unique | |
| |as this world we call home. And a day begins in| |
| |much the same way for all. Maybe that's when it| |
| |crosses your mind—in the warmth from a ray of | |
| |sun or the kindness of a stranger—it occurs to | |
| |you how one life touches so many others. And | |
| |you begin to see how all things are connected, | |
| |like the blood that unites one family. And you | |
| |come to realize that mankind did not weave the | |
| |web of life; we're merely a strand in it, and | |
| |whatever we do to the web, we do to | |
| |ourselves…on the third planet from the sun. | |
| |(Voiceover: Linda Hunt) | |
| |1A-2 |A non-profit Earth Communication Office (ECO) created the 60-second video |
| |Eco-Spot Connections Video |spots we have been showing today. They would love to get them distributed as |
| | |much as possible, in movie theaters, in any and all settings. There is a CD |
| | |with about 20 of the spots on it available at their website |
| | |Earth Communications is working to change the way that media is used, |
| | |refocusing it from a tool for selling things, to a tool to help re-imagine a |
| | |sustainable future. See: |
V-2 Module 1B: The Pachamama Story
| |Key Points: |Source/References: |
| |1B-1 |A symposium is a form of meeting where ideas can be shared; the word derives |
| |Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream |from the Greek verb sympotein meaning "to drink together." For more see |
| |Symposium | |
| |1B-2 |The Pachamama Alliance is a non-profit (or you could say “social profit”) |
| |This Symposium was created by The Pachamama |organization that works primarily with indigenous groups in the Amazon basins|
| |Alliance. |of Ecuador and Peru. |
| | |The destruction of the world's rainforests is driven by a complex web of |
| | |social and economic forces, many of these a logical result of modern |
| | |society's worldview -- a view that, although rich in technological insight, |
| | |is often ignorant of the value of nature's apparently free and limitless |
| | |services. It is a view guided by maximum short-term financial gain while |
| | |disregarding the long-term costs of ecological degradation. It is a worldview|
| | |in which tropical forests can show up as a cash crop to be harvested rather |
| | |than as an irreplaceable ecosystem to be protected. This is not, however, the|
| | |only worldview. For more information, see: |
| | | |
| | |The Pachamama Alliance now has an important role in assisting Ecuador to |
| | |consider moving to a non-petroleum based economy. Millions of acres of |
| | |pristine rainforest have been protected by the Ecuadorian government and its |
| | |stewardship has been granted to the Achuars. |
| | |The Pachamama Alliance has assisted the Ecuadorian government of Rafael |
| | |Correa government in adopting a green constitution. Ecuador has become the |
| | |first country to approve a constitution that, among other reforms, recognizes|
| | |certain inalienable rights for nature. Under five provisions in the new |
| | |constitution's Rights of Nature chapter, an ecosystem has the "right to |
| | |exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, |
| | |functions and its processes in evolution," and "every person, people, |
| | |community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of these |
| | |rights." For more information, see: |
| | | |
| | |The Pachamama Alliance is also fostering with the Ecuadorian government the |
| | |development of a gift-economy incubator in Quito, inspiring greater |
| | |volunteerism and a shift in our cultural ethos towards generosity. In a gift |
| | |economy, goods and services are given without any strings attached; it is an |
| | |economic system where wealth is decreased by hoarding and it is the |
| | |circulation of the gifts within the community that leads to increase – in |
| | |both connections and relationship strength. The gift-economy is an ancient, |
| | |indigenous idea that is curiously finding its footing in the modern Internet |
| | |economy. |
| | |For more information, see: |
| | | |
| | |See the following links for some details on progress made in protecting |
| | |forests and the rights of indigenous people in Ecuador: |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |
| | |uador.html |
| | |
| | |.asp |
| | | |
| |1B-3 |Pachamama is a word in the Quechua language of the Andes. Quechua was the |
| |Pachamama |language of the Inca empire. It is the most widely spoken of all American |
| | |Indian languages. For more, see Wikipedia at: |
| | | |
| |1B-4 |Achuar (Ah-chwar) |
| |Narrator: |To read about the Achuar people see the NAE website: |
| |“…The Achuar are an ancient dream culture … in | |
| |Ecuador and Peru.” |and see Wikipedia at: |
| | | |
| | |Read about the importance of dreams to the indigenous people: |
| | | |
| |1B-5 |To see a movie about oil damage in the Amazonian rainforest, go to: |
| |Narrator: | |
| |“… they began to see what the outside world and|As an Achuar leader said, because they live here, they preserve the forest, |
| |its thirst for oil was doing to the land…” |they love the forest—so that it can be sustained and give life to nature for |
| | |all living beings. They believe that life is under the ground, on the |
| | |surface of earth, and in the atmosphere. These three things are interrelated |
| | |so that the world can exist. Therefore, it’s not possible to say, ‘I'll take|
| | |the oil and ignore the forest.’ Everything is connected to everything else in|
| | |this world. The territory of the Achuar is sacred to them as they explain on |
| | |this website: |
| | | |
| |1B-6 |The term “indigenous people” has no fixed, standard definition. Literally, |
| |Indigenous people |the word “indigenous” means originating from or native to a place. In this |
| | |broad sense, we are all “indigenous” but most of us raised in the dominant |
| | |culture lack a deep connection to place. |
| | |To understand more about this complex concept, see: |
| | | |
| |1B-7 |Lynne Twist is co-founder of The Pachamama Alliance. She is also the founder |
| |Lynne Twist |of Soul Money Institute. She is a global activist, fundraiser, speaker, |
| | |consultant, and author. She has dedicated her life to global initiatives that|
| | |serve the best instincts in all of us. She has raised hundreds of millions of|
| | |dollars and trained thousands of fundraisers to be more effective in their |
| | |work. An original staff member of The Hunger Project, an organization started|
| | |in 1977 to end world hunger, Lynne served as a leader of this global |
| | |initiative for 20 years. Lynne has spent more than three decades working in |
| | |positions of leadership with many global initiatives, including: ending world|
| | |hunger, protecting the world’s rainforests, empowering indigenous peoples, |
| | |improving health, economic, and political conditions for women and children, |
| | |advancing the scientific understanding of human consciousness, creating a |
| | |sustainable future for all life. |
| | |For further information, see: about/about-lynne-twist |
| | |For a video, see: watch?v=dXvosTss4gg&feature=related |
| |1B-8 |To learn more about the materialistic dream of the North, see: |
| |Lynne Twist: | |
| |“… we would need to change the dream of the |If we consider that the dream of the North is a trance, the following article|
| |North – the dream of the modern world, a dream |can be useful: drwier1.htm |
| |deeply rooted in consumption and acquisition, | |
| |without any regard to the consequences…” | |
| |1B-9 |Bill Twist is co-founder of The Pachamama Alliance and has been President and|
| |Bill Twist |Chairman of the Board since its inception. He has an extensive background in |
| | |business and was the Senior Vice-President for Financial Services for |
| | |Comdisco, a New York Stock Exchange company. He is on the Board of the Centro|
| | |Economicos Derechos y Sociales in Ecuador, an NGO working on economic and |
| | |social rights issues in the Andes countries in South America. He is also the |
| | |Board President of the Champion Securities Company. |
| | |watch?v=Jmjw0D6143Q |
| |1B-10 |The Pachamama Alliance’s mission is two-fold: |
| |Bill Twist: |To preserve the Earth’s tropical rainforest by empowering the indigenous |
| |“… But we took the request of the Achuar very |people who are its natural custodians. |
| |seriously…” |To contribute to bringing forth an environmentally sustainable, socially just|
| | |and spiritually fulfilling human presence on this planet as the guiding |
| | |principle of our time. |
| | |See content/view/2/4/ |
| |1B-11 |For video on interconnectedness see: |
| |Narrator: |videos/whatwoulditlooklike |
| |“The intention is that by the end, …, you see |For an article on the interface between science and metaphysics, see: |
| |them as interrelated facets of one profoundly |metaphysics-dynamic-unity-reality.htm |
| |interconnected whole.” |For a video discussion on oneness between a physicist and a mystic, see: |
| | |globalspirit/Oneness |
| | |For an article on interconnectedness by a biologist, see: |
| | |i-.uk/whatbarrier.php |
| |1B-12 |For a short video on the global crisis, see: |
| |Narrator: |videos/mcmehtaclip1 |
| |“… the scope and urgency of the planetary |For a brief overview of the planetary situation, see: |
| |situation we face.” |Earth_in_the_Balance.htm |
| | |For an article on the state of the world, see: |
| | |State_of_the_World_Article |
| |1B-13 |For definition of blessed unrest, see: wiki/Blessed_Unrest |
| |Blessed unrest |For a video on defining blessed unrest: |
| | |video.html |
| |1B-14 |For more information on the Prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor, go to : |
| |Narrator: |. |
| |“… One such legend is found throughout much of |Other possible sources: or |
| |the Americas — the Prophecy of the Eagle and | |
| |the Condor.” | |
| |1B-15 |John Perkins is a board member and one of the founders of The Pachamama |
| |John Perkins |Alliance. Economist, activist and author. |
| | |John Perkins spent three decades as an Economic Hit Man, business executive, |
| | |author, and lecturer. He lived and worked in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, |
| | |Latin America, and North America. Then he made a decision: he would use these|
| | |experiences to change the world. For more information, see: |
| | | or |
| | |John’s website: |
| | |For more information on "time of prophecies", see at John’s organization, |
| | |Dream Change: |
| |1B-16 |Don Alverto Tazo is a shaman of the Andes. A shaman is a practitioner of |
| |Don Alverto Tazo |shamanism, a term used to denote a number of separate practices and belief |
| | |sets found in different indigenous peoples in many different parts of the |
| | |world. Shamans might typically be active as healers and intermediaries with |
| | |the spirit world on behalf of their own community. |
| | |For more about this complex topic read: |
| | | |
| |1B-17 |Domingo Paez is an Achuar leader. He was the first Achuar who ran for |
| |Domingo Paez |Congress in Ecuador. Although he did not win, he has been an active leader |
| | |in his community for quite some time. There is no information on Domingo on |
| | |the web, you can find out more about the Achuar: |
| | | |
V-2 Module 2A: Where Are We? Environmental Sustainability
| |Key Points: |Source/Reference: |
| |2A-1 |Sustainability is the ability of the current generation to meet its needs, |
| |Sustainability |without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. The UN|
| | |definition of sustainability was originally put forth in Section 3, #27 of |
| | |Our Common Future, a report from the United Nations World Commission on |
| | |Environment and Development (WCED) and was published in 1987. This report was|
| | |also called the Brundtland report in recognition of former Norwegian Prime |
| | |Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland's role as Chair of the World Commission on |
| | |Environment and Development. |
| | |The report is one of the seminal environmental documents of the 20th century.|
| | |It is representative of the growing global awareness in the second half of |
| | |the century of the enormous environmental problems facing the planet, and of |
| | |a growing shift towards global environmental action. As the report observes, |
| | |humankind saw the earth from space for the first time only a few decades ago,|
| | |and yet this has had a profound impact on the way in which we perceive the |
| | |earth and our place on it. |
| | |For a copy of the report see this link: |
| | | |
| | |Or this link from the World in Balance website: |
| | | |
| | |Here is one of the various definitions of sustainability: |
| | |Sustainability can be defined as humanity’s investment in a system of living,|
| | |projected to be viable on an ongoing basis that provides quality of life for |
| | |all individuals of sentient species and preserves natural ecosystems. |
| | |Sustainability in its simplest form describes a characteristic of a process |
| | |or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. |
| | |See more on this definition at: |
| | | |
| | |The Iroquois Confederacy, as well as many other indigenous peoples, held care|
| | |and respect for the earth as a duty. The Iroquois had as guiding principles |
| | |the consideration of impacts to peace, nature and future generations when |
| | |making decisions. This principle was referred to in the presentation to the |
| | |United Nations made by the people of the Six Nations in 1995: “In making any |
| | |law, our chiefs must always consider three things: the effect of their |
| | |decision on peace; the effect on the natural world; and the effect on seven |
| | |generations in the future.” |
| | | |
| | |A synthesis of these definitions can be found at: |
| | | |
| |2A-2 |The term ecology refers to the relationships between organisms and their |
| |Ecology and biodiversity |environments and the study of those relationships. It also refers to the |
| | |branch of sociology (human ecology) that is concerned with studying the |
| | |relationships between human groups and their physical and social |
| | |environments. And a third definition is the study of the detrimental effects |
| | |of modern civilization on the environment. |
| | |See definitions at : |
| | | |
| | |Biodiversity is another term widely used in relation to ecology. Biodiversity|
| | |is defined as the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome or |
| | |for the entire Earth. Biodiversity is often used as a measure of the health |
| | |of biological systems. Biodiversity found on Earth today consists of many |
| | |millions of distinct biological species, which is the product of four billion|
| | |years of evolution. |
| | |For more information, see: |
| | |In May 2008, there was a convention on biodiversity: |
| | |For a video on Biodiversity: |
| | | |
| | |In terms of lack of biodiversity, just 12 crops and 14 animal species now |
| | |provide most of the world’s food. Less genetic diversity means fewer |
| | |opportunities for the growth and innovation needed to boost agriculture at a |
| | |time of soaring food prices. |
| | | |
| |2A-3 |Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth |
| |Narrator: |that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can|
| |“What kind of world is our modern way of life |no longer be taken for granted. An excellent summary of the impact of all |
| |actually producing?” |this on the environment is in the comprehensive United Nations Millennium |
| | |Ecosystem Assessment report (a study carried out by 1,360 scientists around |
| | |the world, completed in 2005), which concludes unequivocally that we are in |
| | |an environmental crisis. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment presents the |
| | |findings of the 1,360 scientists worldwide who worked for five years to |
| | |evaluate the impact of human presence on the planet. Initiated in 2001, the |
| | |objective of the MA is to assess the consequences of ecosystem change for |
| | |human well-being and the scientific basis for actions needed to enhance the |
| | |conservation and sustainable use of those systems and their contribution to |
| | |human well-being. Each part of this assessment has been scrutinized by |
| | |governments, independent scientists, and other experts to ensure the |
| | |robustness of its findings. The assessment report as well as other related |
| | |information can be found at: |
| | | |
| | |See summary of reports at GreenFacts website: |
| | | |
| |2A-4 |The world population was estimated at 6.71 billion in July 2008 by World Fact|
| |Narrator: |book. |
| |“One place to begin is with the dramatic | |
| |changes that have occurred in population.” |See the chart created by the Population Reference Bureau |
| | |(). Download the chart entitled World Population Growth |
| | |through History at: |
| | |
| | |ation_Trends2/Population_Trends.htm |
| | |Find out more about current world population, development and social issues |
| | |at the following links: |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |See current population count and other real time statistics at: |
| | | |
| | |Find out more about current world population, development and social issues |
| | |at the following links: |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| |2A-5 |Sunlight is the energy which was absorbed on earth during the Carboniferous |
| |Narrator: |Period, 400 million years ago. Then, for a period of about 70 million years,|
| |“For thousands of years, human population on |the sunlight which fell on the planet was the single and primary source of |
| |Earth remained relatively steady. But then, |energy. It was “trapped” in the growth of plant matter, both on land and in |
| |about 200 years ago, at the time of the |the seas. The accumulation of dead plant matter over this period, its |
| |industrial revolution, humans learned how to |fossilization and subsequent compression by geological forces has resulted in|
| |harness the energy of fossil fuels. That |the reserves of what we call fossil fuels. |
| |allowed agricultural productivity to increase |Find out more on the link between population growth and the industrial |
| |dramatically, and human population began to |revolution at the following link: |
| |grow exponentially.” | |
| | |The concept is brilliantly described and discussed by author Thom Hartmann in|
| | |his book Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight and on his website: |
| | | |
| |2A-6 |Two examples of our over-consumption relates to paper and water. For |
| |Narrator: |information on paper consumption and ideas for reducing paper consumption |
| |“… ever-expanding process of extraction, |visit the following sites: |
| |production, consumption and disposal of natural| |
| |resources.” | |
| | | |
| | |For a visual interpretation of paper consumption (as well as visual |
| | |representation of the consumption of other commodities such as plastic and |
| | |cell phones) , see the Running the Numbers exhibit by artist Chris Jordan at |
| | |his website: |
| | |Statistics used for creating his art work include: |
| | |1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags are used in the US every hour. |
| | |410,000 of disposable hot-beverage paper cups are used in the US every |
| | |fifteen minutes. |
| | |30,000 reams of office paper, or 15 million sheets, are used in the US every |
| | |five minutes. |
| | |For current water use, see other real time statistics at: |
| | | |
| | |Information on water use and the world water crisis can be found at: |
| | | |
| | |and from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report on water |
| | |resources: |
| | | |
| | |To ensure availability for future generations, the withdrawal of fresh water |
| | |from an ecosystem should not exceed its natural replacement rate. Minimizing |
| | |human water use helps to preserve fresh water habitats for local wildlife and|
| | |migrating waterfowl, as well as reducing the need to build new dams and other|
| | |water diversion infrastructure. |
| | | |
| |2A-7 |For statistics, go to: |
| |Narrator: |This issue is discussed further in the symposium. |
| |“Poverty is increasing…” | |
| |2A-8 |In his book Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (NY: Penguin Press, 2005),|
| |Narrator: |British economist Richard Layard asserts that, while average incomes have |
| |“Increased material wealth has not produced the|doubled in the United States, Britain, and Japan, people, on average, are no |
| |personal fulfillment…” |happier today than they were fifty years ago (as measured by the World Values|
| | |Survey, 1981, 1990, 1995-7). See Richard Layard’s income and happiness chart,|
| | |U.S on p. 16 and comparing happiness across countries on pp. 19-20 at: |
| | |. |
| | |) |
| | |Business Week: 2006: Rating Countries for the Happiness Factor. The U.S. came|
| | |in at 23 of 178 world countries. |
| | | |
| | |The Center for Disease Control says that 17 percent of American high school |
| | |kids report having seriously considered suicide during the previous 12 |
| | |months; 9 percent report having actually attempted suicide. |
| | |The overall rate of suicide among youth has declined slowly since 1992 |
| | |(Lubell, Swahn, Crosby, and Kegler 2004). However, youth suicide is a major |
| | |public health problem in the United States. In 2003, suicide ranked as the |
| | |3rd leading cause of death for young people. See |
| | |) and |
| | | |
| | |The National Youth Risk Behavior Survey: 1991-2005 found that the percent of |
| | |high school students nationwide who: |
| | |had seriously considered suicide in 2005 was 16.9% (down from 29% in 1991). |
| | |made a suicide plan in 2005 was 13% (also a decrease). |
| | |made an actual suicide attempt in 2005 was 8.4% (no appreciable change from |
| | |1991). |
| | |
| | |f |
| | |Time Magazine featured a special report on happiness in . The contents of |
| | |this issue can be reviewed at this website: |
| | | |
| | |The American Psychological Association reports that, between 75 and 90% of |
| | |all visits to physicians are for stress-related conditions. |
| | | |
| | |A Time magazine article reported that insurance claims for stress, |
| | |depression, and job burnout are now the US’s fastest growing disability |
| | |category. |
| | | |
| |2A-9 |The impact of the present housing turn down is discussed here: |
| |Narrator: |wwellingtonhive.2008/03/wider-impact-of-housing-turn-down.ht|
| |“The worst housing turndown since World War |ml |
| |Two……” | |
| |2A-10 |Walden Bello is an Akbayan Representative in the 14th Congress of Republic of|
| |Walden Bello |the Philippines. He is also a senior analyst of Focus on the Global South and|
| | |professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines, and is one of |
| | |the leading critics of the current model of economic globalisation, combining|
| | |the roles of intellectual and activist. |
| | |
| | |with-walden-bello.html?Itemid=1 |
| |2A-11 |The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is one of the measures of national income |
| |Walden Bello: |and output for a given country's economy. GDP is defined as the total market |
| |“Gross domestic product (GDP) is supposed to be|value of all final goods and services produced within the country in a given |
| |a measure of everythin – puts a value on |period of time (usually a calendar year). |
| |everything – that’s been produced in an economy| |
| |within a year’s time.” | |
| |2A-12 |Economic growth is the increase in the value of goods and services produced |
| |Narrator: |by an economy and is most commonly measured as a percentage change in GDP. |
| |“The current industrial model requires |See definition of GDP at this Wikipedia link: |
| |continuous economic growth, …” | |
| | |As the Wikipedia points out, GDP per capita is often used as an indicator of |
| | |how well a country is doing economically, with the implication that this is |
| | |related to people’s standard of living. See: |
| | | |
| |2A-13 |Dr. Noel Brown is the former director of the United Nations Environmental |
| |Dr. Noel Brown |Program. |
| |2A-14 |The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) has as its mission to provide|
| |United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) |leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by |
| | |inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their |
| | |quality of life without compromising that of future generations. |
| | | |
| |2A-15 |Randy Hayes is founder and President of the Rainforest Action Network |
| |Randy Hayes |() and a Senior Staff Associate at the International Forum|
| | |on Globalization (). |
| | |A brief bio of Randy can be found at the following link: |
| | | |
| |2A-16 |More on habitat degradation and destruction can be found at Wikipedia: |
| |Randy Hayes: | |
| |“Virtually every natural habitat across the | |
| |planet is being degraded.” |Global Change and the Earth System: a Planet Under Pressure- This 2004 book |
| | |catalogues how human activity has begun to significantly affect the planet |
| | |and how it functions. Atmospheric composition, land cover, marine ecosystems,|
| | |coastal zones, freshwater systems and global biological diversity have all |
| | |been substantially affected. The magnitude and rate of human-driven change is|
| | |alarming. It is now clear that the Earth has entered the so-called |
| | |Anthropocene Era — the geological era in which humans are a significant and |
| | |sometimes dominating environmental force. Records from the geological past |
| | |indicate that never before has the Earth experienced the current suite of |
| | |simultaneous changes: we are sailing into planetary terra incognita. |
| | | |
| | |The authors are Margot Wallström, European Commissioner for the environment, |
| | |Bert Bolin, founding chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, |
| | |Paul Crutzen, who was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Will |
| | |Steffen, Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program.|
| | |The book is available through the website: |
| | | |
| | |Also see the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report mentioned above. |
| |2A-17 |Evidence of climate disruption has been well documented in scientific |
| |Randy Hayes: |literature. |
| |“We’ve got climate disruption…” | |
| | |The UNEP has established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The |
| | |IPCC was established to provide the decision-makers and others interested in |
| | |climate change with an objective source of information about climate change. |
| | | |
| | |See current real time statistics on CO2 emissions at: |
| | | |
| | |Find out about global warming in the news at this PBS site: |
| | |
| | |html |
| | |Climate change is threatening earth’s ecosystems in an unprecedented way. If|
| | |patterns of emissions continue at the current rates, effects such as species |
| | |extinction, food shortages, water shortages, desertification, increased |
| | |flooding, increases in disease and severe weather changes are predicted. The |
| | |Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (PCC), (which, along with Al Gore, |
| | |was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize) provides an objective source of |
| | |information about climate change. The IPCC is a scientific |
| | |intergovern-mental body set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)|
| | |and by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Find out more about |
| | |the IPPC at their website: |
| | | |
| | |See the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on Climate Change: |
| | |ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf |
| |2A-18 |Deforestation of rainforests: In 1950, we had lost only 8% of the tropical |
| |Randy Hayes: |rainforests that existed in 1750; by 2000, we had lost 30% of what existed in|
| |“We’ve got deforestation of the rainforests and|1750. |
| |the other forests...” |Since the beginning of the Industrial Age we've eliminated almost 70% of our |
| | |forests. |
| | |In the last decade (the 1990s) alone we lost 96 million hectares of the |
| | |Earth’s forest cover (a hectare is approximately 2 ½ acres). That was, by |
| | |far, the largest of any recent decade. |
| | |Forests have effectively disappeared in 25 countries, and another 29 have |
| | |lost more than 90% of their forest cover. |
| | |We continue to destroy rain forests on the planet at the rate of a football |
| | |field a second; one fifth of the Amazon has already been cleared. |
| | | |
| | |See a visual of the disappearing rain forests: |
| | |
| | |tml |
| | |And see current real time statistics on forest loss at: |
| | | |
| | |76% of original forest over the past 8000 years has been destroyed as of |
| | |2000. Based on sq. kilometers lost from 62,203 down to 13,501 sq. K. |
| | |Some countries losing forest at 10% annually as of 2005, as per Mongabay, as |
| | |per UN |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |earthwatch.emergingissues/forests/forestloss.php |
| | |Almost half of the planet’s original forest has been destroyed, mostly during|
| | |the last three decades, as per UN Earthwatch, and UN Food and Agricultural |
| | |Organization, 1997 |
| | |earthwatch.emergingissues/forests/forestloss.php |
| | |The world’s forests have shrunk by some 40 percent since agriculture began |
| | |11,000 years ago, as per Earth Policy Institute |
| | | |
| |2A-19 |Soil erosion is second only to population growth as the biggest environmental|
| |Randy Hayes: |problem the world faces, said David Pimentel, professor of ecology at |
| |“We’ve got soil erosion.” |Cornell. See: |
| | | |
| | |For up-to-the-minute figures on soil erosion and other statistics see: |
| | | |
| | |Farmland (Soil) – 40% of the globe’s agricultural lands are degraded…20% are |
| | |in danger of becoming deserts. |
| | | |
| | |See overview with map showing degradation at: |
| | |
| | |d_deg.html |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |We are losing 0.7% of cultivated arable land annually, as per UN Food and |
| | |Agricultural Organization (FAO) 1992 |
| | | |
| | |Nearly one-third of the world’s arable land was lost in the second half of |
| | |the twentieth century.- A Fairer World. Originally from Electronic Green |
| | |Journal, Univ. of Idaho |
| | | |
| | | |
| |2A-20 |For more information on aquifers see Wikipedia: |
| |Randy Hayes: | |
| |“We’ve got the draining of underground water |Desertification is potentially the most threatening ecosystem change |
| |aquifers…” |impacting livelihoods of the poor. Dry lands occupy 41% of Earth’s land area.|
| | |More than 2 billion people—a third of the human population in the year |
| | |2000—live in these dry regions of the world. They suffer more than any other |
| | |parts of the population from problems such as malnutrition, infant mortality,|
| | |and diseases related to contaminated or insufficient water. The pressure to |
| | |support life is increasing on dry land ecosystems, yet twenty per cent are in|
| | |danger of becoming deserts. |
| | |Re: Ogallala Aquifer - Basic definition: |
| | | |
| | |Ogallala Aquifer facing depletion: |
| | | |
| | |If present trends continue, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or|
| | |regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the world |
| | |population could be subject to water stress, according to a UN report (Global|
| | |Environment Outlook: Environment for Development (GEO-4) Assessment. Since |
| | |1987, many coastal and marine ecosystems and most freshwater ecosystems have |
| | |continued to be heavily degraded, with many completely lost, some |
| | |irreversibly. |
| | | |
| | |Another source for general information on the state of water is this UNESCOs |
| | |site: |
| | | |
| | |Re: Water shortage for 2 billion - See 2002 U.N. Report reported by BBC |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |Some areas, like California, are experiencing drought believed to be linked |
| | |to climate change. |
| | | |
| |2A-21 |Aquatic and marine dead zones can be caused by an increase in chemical |
| |Randy Hayes: |nutrients in the water, known as eutrophication. Chemical fertilizer is |
| |“… the polluting of our rivers with poison .” |considered the prime cause of dead zones around the world. Currently the most|
| | |notorious dead zone is a 22,126 square kilometers (8,543 square mile) region |
| | |in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi River dumps high-nutrient runoff|
| | |from its vast drainage basin, which includes the heart of U.S. agribusiness, |
| | |the Midwest, affecting important shrimp fishing grounds. This is equivalent |
| | |to a dead zone the size of the State of New Jersey. |
| | |(ecology) |
| | |Dead zones are increasing around the world. |
| | |
| | |d=20061020143030 |
| | |Dead zones may be linked to global warming: |
| | | |
| | |Experts estimate there are 200 so-called ocean dead zones, as per Reuters Oct|
| | |2006, as per UN Env Program |
| | | |
| | |Oxygen-poor ocean zones are growing. Linked to global warming, these areas of|
| | |the Pacific and Atlantic cannot sustain most marine life, a new study warns. |
| | |
| | |85619.story |
| | |Other types of water pollution: |
| | | |
| | |
| | |ml |
| | |Although progress has been made in cleaning up pollution from human waste in |
| | |some areas of the world, new pollution sources such as nutrients, sediments, |
| | |and toxics from runoff produced by agriculture, storm drains and gas and oil |
| | |production have worsened the problem. |
| | | |
| |2A-22 |The North Atlantic ocean eco-system is on the verge of collapse. The plankton|
| |Randy Hayes: |of the oceans are disappearing. |
| |“We’ve got the overfishing of the oceans of the|For information about the decline of Europe’s seas see: |
| |world.” | |
| | |In 1950, 15% of the ocean’s ecosystems were being exploited at a |
| | |non-sustainable rate; in 2000, 80% were being exploited at a non-sustainable |
| | |rate. |
| | | |
| | |The unchanging appearance of the ocean belies a major shift in the systems of|
| | |life hidden beneath the waves, due mostly to the human appetite for fish and |
| | |the increasing technological efficiency of the fishing industry. The full |
| | |consequences of this pressure are still poorly understood, but catches of |
| | |edible fish in the oceans have plummeted dramatically. |
| | | |
| | |UN Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that 70% of the world's fish |
| | |species are either fully exploited or depleted. |
| | |
| | |nd_marine_mammals/fisheries_factsheet.html |
| | |Globally, 90% Of Large Fish Are Gone, by Kate Melville |
| | | |
| |2A-23 |Toxins are accumulating in the environment, destroying the ability of our |
| |Randy Hayes: |planet to regenerate itself or to continue providing life-sustaining |
| |“We’ve got the toxic burden in people’s |environmental services. Sewer sludge, landfill and run-off of fertilizers are|
| |bodies…” |polluting our waters … And the toxins are not just in the environment. |
| | |They’re in our bodies as well, because the chemical pollutants in the waters |
| | |and air and land don’t just stay there. Ultimately they end up inside our |
| | |bodies- us and other species. |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |Acid rain damage far worse than previously believed. |
| | |) |
| | |For information on health affects of air pollution, see: |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| |2A-24 |The rate of cancer is expected to double as per WebMD, 2002 |
| |Randy Hayes: | |
| |“… the rates of cancer that are going up.” |However, the overall cancer mortality id declining at a record pace, says |
| | |National Study, 2007 |
| | |
| | |ublic/20071108cancerreports.html |
| |2A-25 |The work of Lynn Marguelles and Dorian Sagan, What is Life addresses the |
| |Randy Hayes: |concept of our biological interconnectivity. This article from In Context |
| |“These are all big ticket, global, ecological |magazine addresses their work: |
| |issues, and what they are doing is that they | |
| |are shredding the fabric of life that basically|There is established but incomplete evidence that changes being made in |
| |creates the life support systems; the ability |ecosystems are increasing the likelihood of nonlinear changes in ecosystems |
| |of the planet to support our life and future |(including accelerating, abrupt, and potentially irreversible changes), with |
| |generations”. |important consequences for human well-being. Changes in ecosystems generally |
| | |take place gradually. Some changes are nonlinear, however: once a threshold |
| | |is crossed, the system changes to a very different state. And these nonlinear|
| | |changes are sometimes abrupt; they can also be large in magnitude and |
| | |difficult, expensive, or impossible to reverse… The increased likelihood of |
| | |these nonlinear changes stems from the loss of biodiversity and growing |
| | |pressures from multiple direct drivers of ecosystem change. The loss of |
| | |species and genetic diversity decreases the resilience of ecosystems, which |
| | |is the level of disturbance that an ecosystem can undergo without crossing a |
| | |threshold to a different structure or functioning. In addition, growing |
| | |pressures from drivers such as overharvesting, climate change, invasive |
| | |species, and nutrient loading push ecosystems toward thresholds that they |
| | |might otherwise not encounter. (UN Millennium Assessment, Ecosystem and |
| | |Human Wellbeing Synthesis Report) |
| | | |
| | |From a more spiritual vantage point, listen to a talk on the web of life |
| | | |
| |2A-26 |In practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that, if 2005 |
| |Narrator: |was the year of global Peak Oil, oil production in the year 2030 will be the |
| |“Many experts say that oil extraction worldwide|same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2030 will be both |
| |is about to reach its peak. Peak Oil is the |much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized |
| |term they use.” |(oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil |
| | |will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a |
| | |result, the price of oil will skyrocket, and oil dependant economies will |
| | |crumble. |
| | |princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events.html |
| | | |
| |2A-27 |Michael Meacher is a British Labour party politician, and Member of |
| |Micheal Meacher |Parliament (MP) for Oldham West and Royton. On 22 February 2007, he declared |
| | |that he would be standing for the Labour Leadership, challenging Gordon Brown|
| | |and John McDonnell. On 14 May, however, after talks with John McDonnell, he |
| | |announced he would stand aside in order to back McDonnell as the "candidate |
| | |of the left". |
| | | |
| |2A-28 |For an interview with Micheal Meacher on peak oil, see: |
| |Micheal Meacher: | |
| |“…the oil industry believes that peak oil is | |
| |probably in the area of 2010, 2015…” | |
| |2A-29 |Ecological Footprint: two researchers in Oakland, California, Dr. William |
| |Narrator: |Rees of the University of British Columbia and Dr. Mathis Wackernagel of the |
| |“It is clear that the resources of the Earth |Global Footprint Network, combined data on the actual use of the Earth’s |
| |are being used up. The critical question |resources with information on the Earth’s capacity for regeneration into a |
| |becomes ‘How much and how fast? One useful |single indicator they call the Ecological Footprint. These compare a |
| |measurement system is called the Ecological |population’s demands on nature...with the Earth’s available biological |
| |Footprint.” |capacity to determine whether it can be sustained. This approach has become |
| | |one of the most widely referenced sustainability analysis tools around the |
| | |globe. |
| | | |
| | |The book is entitled Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing human impact on |
| | |Earth, New Society Publishers, 1996. It can be found at: |
| | | |
| | |Number of earths we use, crossed '1" in 1985. As of 2003, we needed the |
| | |equivalent of 1.25 earths to support us. Click on the link below and follow |
| | |the ‘World Footprint’ link to see how the demand is increasing beyond |
| | |biocapacity. |
| | | |
| | |You can calculate your own ecological footprint by clicking on the link to |
| | |the Global footprint above and following the ‘Your Footprint’ link to learn |
| | |about the impact you are having on the earth and ideas for reducing it. |
| | |For more background reading on this concept, see |
| | |Resource Flows: The Material Basis of Industrial Economies and The Weight of |
| | |Nations by the World Resources staff. |
| | |] |
| | |For new larger population numbers, see charts at: |
| | | |
| |2A-30 |Mathis Wackernagel is the founder and Executive Director of Global Footprint |
| |Mathis Wackernagel |Network, a research organization which supports the creation of a sustainable|
| | |economy by advancing the use of the Ecological Footprint. The goal of the |
| | |organization is to make ecological limits central to decision-making |
| | |everywhere. |
| | |For his bio, along with other working on this project, see: |
| | | |
| |2A-31 |See |
| |Mathis Wackernagel: | |
| |“…Humanity has been continuously increasing its| |
| |resource demand to the extent that by the | |
| |mid-eighties we started to use more than what | |
| |nature can regenerate.” | |
| |2A-32 |Susan Burns is the Managing Director of the Global Footprint Network. In |
| |Susan Burns |that role she leads the overall strategic direction of the organization and |
| | |oversees communications, partnership, project development and finance. Prior |
| | |to launching Global Footprint Network, Susan founded the pioneering |
| | |sustainability consulting firm, Natural Strategies. |
| | |See her bio along with other working on this project at: |
| | |gfn_sub.php?content=whoweare |
| |2A-33 |See |
| |Narrator: | |
| |“Currently, if every one lived on Earth as | |
| |North Americans do, we’d need five Earths.” | |
| |2A-34 |Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are now at 383 parts per million by volume,|
| |Narrator: |compared with approximately 295in the year 1900. For more information see: |
| |“…increasing amount of carbon dioxide…” | |
| | |There has been a dramatic increase of carbon dioxide and methane since the |
| | |industrial revolution. For more on the greenhouse effect gases see: |
| | | |
| | |Evidence of climate change ahs been well documented in the scientific |
| | |literature. See: |
| | | |
| |2A-35 |Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of The Council of Canadians and the |
| |Maude Barlow |co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, working internationally for the right |
| | |to water. She serves on the boards of the International Forum on |
| | |Globalization and Food and Water Watch, as well as being a Councilor with the|
| | |Hamburg-based World Future Council. Maude is the recipient of six honorary |
| | |doctorates degrees for her global water justice work. She is also the |
| | |best-selling author or co-author of sixteen books, including Blue Gold: The |
| | |Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the World’s Water and Blue Covenant: The |
| | |Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. |
| | | |
| | |To find out more about the Council of Canadians, see: |
| | | |
| | |To find out more about Food and Water Watch, see: |
| | | |
| |2A-36 |Research has found pollution and temperature levels are rising faster and |
| |Maude Barlow: |Arctic ice is melting quicker than in the worst-case scenarios forecast by |
| |“The scientists from around the world are |the United Nations. |
| |coming together to tell us that climate change |References to accelerating climate change can be found at: |
| |is actually happening at a much faster rate | |
| |than they had anticipated.” | |
| | | |
| | |The Earth’s climate is capable of making sudden drastic shifts. Although |
| | |this has not happened during recorded human history, the continued burning of|
| | |fossil fuels could bring this about. |
| | | |
| |2A-37 |For early warning signs of global warming, see: |
| |Maude Barlow: | |
| |“...the signs are the cataclysmic storms, the |As ocean temperatures increase, hurricanes are predicted to be more severe. |
| |extremes in weather…” | |
| |2A-38 |As the ice caps melt precipitation and flooding is predicted to increase and |
| |Maude Barlow: |droughts become more frequent and severe. |
| |“The polar ice caps are melting...” | |
| | |Scientists consider that the acceleration of the melting of the Greenland ice|
| | |cap could play an important role in the future stability of ocean circulation|
| | |and, hence, in the development of climate change. For more information on |
| | |the potential impacts see the following story from Science Daily: |
| | |releases/2007/05/070507113401.htm |
| | |The melting of the Greenland ice sheet and its progress toward the sea is |
| | |also accelerating. |
| | | |
| | |Huge cracks are appearing in the Greenland ice sheets are shown in this |
| | |video: |
| | |
| | |105 |
| | |Huge areas of the Wilkins Ice Shelf broke off Antarctic’s continental ice |
| | |shelf in March 2008 are shown here: |
| | | |
| |2A-39 |In a cover story Be Worried, Be Very Worried, Time Magazine featured a |
| |Wake UP, Freak Out: |special report on global warming in March 26, 2006. |
| |“…the fate of civilization itself hangs in the | |
| |balance… we are now dangerously close to the |The Greenland ice sheet is melting. Alarming huge cracks in the oldest Arctic|
| |tipping point in the world’s climate system.” |ice have been recently observed. |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| |2A-40 |Janos Pasztor is the acting head of the UNFCCC’s Project-Based Mechanisms |
| |Janos Pasztor |Programme about the growth of the carbon market at the moment. |
| |2A-41 |The acceleration of the ice melt is likely to put large areas of the earth |
| |Janos Pasztor: |that are currently populated under water. |
| |“If glaciers disappear, then they will no | |
| |longer be able to supply the lakes and the |Glaciers have been slowly receding over the last century, but since the mid |
| |rivers. As they are melting, you have more |1990’s the rate at which they are melting has greatly accelerated. |
| |water around, flooding, and lakes are full. But|
| |once they disappear, then that’s it, there is | |
| |no more.” | |
| |2A- 42 |Mankind’s impact on other living species has been dramatic. As habitat |
| |Narrator: |shrinks and pollution increases species that depend on nature for their |
| |“…the impact we are having on other species.” |sustenance suffer. |
| | |Links that explore our relationship with animals include: |
| | |The World Wildlife Fund website: |
| | | |
| | |Other sites are: |
| | | |
| | | |
| |2A-43 |David Ulansey is founder of Species Alliance and a professor at the |
| |David Ulansey |California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), as well as the founder of |
| | |the Species Alliance. He has done extensive research on species extinction |
| | |and has made it his personal mission to make others aware of this critical |
| | |issue. |
| | |For information on the Species Alliance, see: |
| | | |
| |2A-44 |As stated in the Randy Hayes segment, tens of millions of species on earth |
| |David Ulansey: |are facing extinction; one third of amphibian species and one half of the |
| |“We are in the midst of a mass extinction, but |earth’s plants are facing extinction. |
| |the news has not reached the general public.” |In 2006 a U.N. report acknowledged that humans are responsible for the worst |
| | |spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs and must make unprecedented extra |
| | |efforts to reach a goal of slowing losses by 2010. In effect, humans are |
| | |currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the history of |
| | |earth, and the greatest since the dinosaurs disappeared, 65 million years |
| | |ago. The current pace of extinctions is 1,000 times faster than historical |
| | |rates. |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |The current loss of species is being called the Sixth Mass Extinction. This |
| | |video gives a succinct summary of the species extinction crisis and the |
| | |psychological impact it has on us. It is the trailer for the movie Call of |
| | |Life: Facing the Mass Extinction. |
| | |According to the 1998 American Museum of Natural History scientist report |
| | |entitled Biodiversity in Crisis, scientists estimate that tens of thousands |
| | |of species are headed for certain extinction over the coming decades, with no|
| | |preventive action possible because of the extensive habitat loss that has |
| | |already occurred worldwide. Many other species will not go completely |
| | |extinct, but will experience drastic population declines, lose distinct |
| | |populations, and suffer severe loss of genetic diversity. |
| | |See excerpts of this report or order the full report at: |
| | | |
| | |See 2002 CNN news report: “There is virtual unanimity among scientists that |
| | |we have entered a period of mass extinction not seen since the age of the |
| | |dinosaurs... Estimates vary, but extinction is figured by experts to be |
| | |taking place between 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural "background" |
| | |extinction. |
| | |
| | |/index.html |
| | |A national survey reveals that a biodiversity crisis. Scientific experts |
| | |believe we are in the midst of the fastest mass extinction in Earth’s history|
| | |(American Museum of Natural History, 2, April 2005). See: |
| | | |
| | |Not counting the effects of global warming, one quarter of the world’s |
| | |mammals will face extinction in the next 30 years, according to the UN’s Geo3|
| | |report. |
| | | |
| | |There are now 41,415 species on the International Union for the Conservation |
| | |of Nature (IUCN) Red List and 16,306 of them are threatened with extinction. |
| | |You can look up individual species or search entire lists on the IUCN |
| | |website:
| | | |
| | |Key species on the IUCN Red Lists are featured in this beautiful video: |
| | | |
| | |Climate change is also exacerbating stress on bird species as this article |
| | |points out: |
| | |
| |2A-45 |Although population counts and statistics on lion populations vary, there is |
| |David Ulansey: |wide agreement that lions living in the wild are threatened. |
| |“African lions are on the absolute verge of | |
| |extinction…there are only 20,000 left… that’s |According to according to the International Union for the Conservation of |
| |down 90% in the last few decades.” |Nature (IUCN), African lion populations have declined 30-50% in the last 20 |
| | |years. |
| | | |
| | |The Defenders of Wildlife report that, today, fewer than 21,000 lions remain |
| | |in all of Africa. |
| | | |
| |2A-46 |According to the Defenders of Wildlife, in the early 1900s, there were around|
| |David Ulansey: |100,000 tigers throughout their range. Today, an estimated total of around |
| |“Every species and subspecies of tiger on the |3,000-4,500 exist in the wild. |
| |planet is on the absolute verge of extinction.”| |
| |2A-47 |According to the Defenders of Wildlife, at the turn of the 20th century, |
| |David Ulansey: |there were a few million African elephants and about 100,000 Asian elephants.|
| |“Elephants…down 90% in the last century.” |Today, there are an estimated 450,000 - 700,000 African elephants and between|
| | |35,000 - 40,000 wild Asian elephants. |
| | | |
| |2A-48 |There is a growing realization that a much broader range of marine species |
| |David Ulansey: |are under threat of extinction and marine biodiversity is experiencing |
| |“90% of all large fish are gone from the |potentially irreversible degradation. |
| |oceans.” | |
| | |More than 50% of the shark species in the ocean are threatened by extinction.|
| | | |
| | |According to the Live Science website, if the loss of marine species from |
| | |over fishing and climate change continues at the current rate, all commercial|
| | |fish and seafood species could collapse by 2048. In addition to that |
| | |researchers have found that, in addition to distressing a major food supply |
| | |for humans, the loss of marine life could disrupt biodiversity on a global |
| | |scale. |
| | | |
| |2A-49 |The list of threatened species is growing at an alarming rate as reported by |
| |David Ulansey: |various web sources. |
| |“Half of all species of life may be extinct in | |
| |50 years…” | |
| | | |
| | | |
| |2A-50 |Brian Swimme is a Professor of Cosmology at the California Institute of |
| |Brian Swimme |Integral Studies (CIIS), founder of The Center for the Story of the Universe,|
| | |and author of The Universe Story (Harper San Francisco, 1992) written with |
| | |Thomas Berry, and The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos (Orbis, 1996). He has |
| | |developed several video presentations, and the most recent is Powers of the |
| | |Universe. |
| |2A-51 |Brian Swinne is referring to the Sixth Mass Extinction. |
| |Brian Swimme: |According to a 2002 CNN news report, there is virtual unanimity among |
| |“Nothing this destructive has happened in 65 |scientists that we have entered a period of mass extinction not seen since |
| |million years.” |the age of the dinosaurs... Estimates vary, but extinction is figured by |
| | |experts to be taking place between 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural |
| | |"background" extinction. |
| | |
| | |/index.html |
| |2A-52 |Grief and loss are human processes. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, in her pioneering |
| |Brian Swimme: |work on grief On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the|
| |“So we are suddenly confronted with this fact |Five Stages of Loss (2005) Described the five stages of grief as: 1) denial |
| |and we don’t really know how to respond to it. |2) anger 3) bargaining 4) depression 5) acceptance. |
| |I think that’s beyond most of us, because we | |
| |haven’t deepened our hearts in a way that would|Understanding the grief process that people feel when they feel loss might be|
| |make possible the grief that is wanting to be |useful in assisting us to allow ourselves to feel our pain and grief at what |
| |felt.” |is happening to the earth. The hospice site has information on grief: |
| | | |
V-2 Module 2B: Where Are We? Social Justice
| |Key Points: |Source/Reference: |
| |2B-1 |Social justice is the concept of a society with a greater degree of economic |
| |Social justice |egalitarianism through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or even |
| | |property redistribution, policies aimed toward achieving that which |
| | |developmental economists refer to as equality of opportunity and equality of |
| | |outcome. |
| | | |
| | |In looking at a socially just human presence there are two fundamental |
| | |aspects to consider: democracy and fairness (or justice). |
| | |Participatory democracy: Does the society or culture provide everyone within |
| | |the society the ability to participate in decision-making—especially in |
| | |decisions that directly affect them and their lives? |
| | | |
| | |Equality/fairness: Is everyone in the society afforded a fair, or equal, |
| | |opportunity to benefit from the common resources (wealth) available to the |
| | |society? |
| | | |
| | |For more in-depth issues, see: |
| |2B-2 |The idea that growth economy is beneficial to all is not supported. For |
| |Narrator: |example, between 1980 and 1996 in the USA, real incomes went up 58 percent |
| |“One of the primary expectations people have of|for the wealthiest 5 percent of American households, but less than 4 percent |
| |the modern industrialized system has been that,|for the lowest 60 percent. |
| |by growing the economy, life will get better |In an article of the Washington Monthly journal of March 1999 about the |
| |for everyone…’ |downside of a growth economy, Jonathan Rowe and Judy Silverstein wrote: |
| | |“But what actually has been expanding? A lot of things can grow, and do. |
| | |Waistlines grow. Medical bills grow. Traffic, debt, and stress all grow. We |
| | |can't know whether an "expansion" is good or not unless we know what it |
| | |includes. Yet the President didn't tell, and the media homes didn't ask, |
| | |which was typical too. |
| | |A human economy is supposed to advance well-being. That is elementary. Yet |
| | |politicians and pundits rarely talk about it in those terms. Instead they |
| | |revert to the language of "expansion," "growth," and the like, which mean |
| | |something very different.” |
| | | |
| |2B-3 |Christine Loh is currently the CEO of Civic Exchange, a Hong Kong think tank |
| |Christine Loh |which she co-founded in 2000. In January 2007 she was named Hong Kong |
| | |Business’ Woman of the Year for 2006. She has worked in many areas, including|
| | |law, business, politics, media and the non-profit sector, but is best known |
| | |as a leading voice in public policy in Hong Kong, particularly in promoting |
| | |democracy and environmental protection. In recent years she has also been |
| | |strongly associated with the campaign to save Hong Kong's Harbour from |
| | |excessive land reclamation and overdevelopment. |
| | | |
| |2B-4 |Of the 173 countries in the study, 70 to 80 have lower per-capita incomes |
| |Christine Loh: |than they did 10 or 30 years ago. People in Africa consume 20 percent less |
| |“…in the last 20 years or so, the world has |than they did 25 years ago. |
| |become more unequal…” |So the poor are getting poorer as the rich are getting richer. (UN report |
| | |shows rich richer, poor poorer; John Catalinotto) |
| | | |
| |2B-5 |Over the last 30 years, per capita income has actually fallen in 80 |
| |Narrator: |countries9 (David Korten, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, |
| |“We all know that a great disparity currently |2006). |
| |exist between rich and poor.” |See an overview of the research on Globalization and Income Inequality at: |
| | | |
| |2B-6 |The concept of ‘if the earth were a village of 100 people’ was originally |
| |Narrator: |proposed in the State of the Village report entitled Who Lives in the Global |
| |“One way to understand this disparity is to |Village (1990) by Donella Meadows, a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Harvard and |
| |think of the Earth as a community of 100 |founder of the Sustainability Institute. |
| |people…” |
| |2B-7 |According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, environmental justice is|
| |Narrator: |the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of |
| |“The movement to address this [disparity] has a|race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, |
| |name, environmental justice.” |implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and |
| | |policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this |
| | |Nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of |
| | |protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the |
| | |decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, |
| | |learn, and work. |
| | | |
| | |Environmental Justice, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal, is the central |
| | |forum for the research, debate, and discussion of the equitable treatment and|
| | |involvement of all people, especially minority and low-income populations, |
| | |with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of |
| | |environmental laws, regulations, and policies. |
| | | |
| | |People are organizing to promote environmental justice. For example, |
| | |Greenaction mobilizes community power to win victories that change government|
| | |and corporate policies and practices to protect health and to promote |
| | |environmental justice. |
| | | |
| |2B-8 |Majora Carter founded the non-profit environmental justice solutions |
| |Majora Carter |corporation, Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx). |
| | |The mission of the SSBx is environmental Justice through innovative, |
| | |economically sustainable projects that are informed by community needs. |
| | |Her first major project was writing a $1.25M Federal Transportation planning |
| | |grant for the South Bronx Greenway with 11 miles of alternative transport, |
| | |local economic development, low-impact storm-water management, and |
| | |recreational space. This led to the first new South Bronx water front park in|
| | |over 60 years. |
| | | |
| | |To learn about Sustainable South Bronx and the projects, see: |
| | | |
| |2B-9 |In the US, there is evidence of a lack of environmental justice. A report |
| |Majora Carter: |entitled Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, 1987-2007: Grassroots Struggles to |
| |“Environmental justice is the belief that no |Dismantle Environmental Racism in the United States, shows that 20 years |
| |community should have to bear the brunt of a |after it’s first report on the issue, disproportionately large numbers of |
| |disproportionate amount of environmental |people of color still live in hazardous waste host communities, and that they|
| |burdens and not enjoy any environmental |are not equally protected by environmental laws. According to the report, |
| |benefits.” |nearly half of all Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans |
| | |live in communities with uncontrolled waste sites. |
| | |justice/pdfs/toxic20.pdf |
| | |On Earth, there is a new phenomenon in the global arena: environmental |
| | |refugees. These are people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in |
| | |their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, |
| | |deforestation and other environmental problems, together with the associated |
| | |problems of population pressures and profound poverty. In their desperation, |
| | |these people feel they have no alternative but to seek sanctuary elsewhere, |
| | |however hazardous the attempt. Not all of them have fled their countries, |
| | |many being internally displaced. |
| | | |
| |2B-10 |Environmental racism refers to intentional or unintentional racial |
| |Majora Carter: |discrimination in the enforcement of environmental rules and regulations, the|
| |“…but right now race and class are the most |intentional or unintentional targeting of minority communities as the |
| |excellent indicators of where you are going to |location for polluting industries, or the exclusion of minority groups from |
| |find the good stuff like parks and trees and |public and private boards, commissions, and regulatory bodies. |
| |where you will find the bad stuff like waste | |
| |facilities or power plants, and almost to a |The Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA) found |
| |fault around the world that is something that |that people of color are nearly 50 percent more likely than whites to live |
| |you see.” |near a commercial toxic waste facility, and three times more likely than |
| | |whites to live in communities with multiple toxic waste facilities. |
| | | |
| | |The CPA also recently released a study entitled Toxic Wastes and Race |
| | |Revisited which revealed that commercial toxic waste facilities are even more|
| | |likely to be located in minority communities now than ever before, despite |
| | |grassroots |
| | |activism and growing national attention to the issue. |
| | | |
| |2B-11 |Native Americans maintained a land base and a cultural identity, economically|
| |Narrator: |as well as socially and politically, things that continue to set them apart |
| |“In the United States, Native American continue|from other ethnic groups or classes in the United States. Although viewed as |
| |to be marginalized and have their natural |relatively valueless by nineteenth-century white standards, these lands were |
| |resources appropriated.” |places of spiritual value and some contained resources of immense worth. Land|
| | |(its loss, location, and resource wealth or poverty), exploitation of land, |
| | |and changing Indian needs, attitudes, and religious demands define the issues|
| | |facing modern Indians and their environments. |
| | | |
| |2B- 12 |Enei Begaye grew up on the Navajo reservation. She is currently the Executive|
| |Enei Begaye |Director of the Black Mesa Water Coalition, Enei studied Geological and |
| | |Environmental Sciences with a focus on land and water management at Stanford |
| | |University. She is a recognized advocate of Indigenous Peoples rights, youth,|
| | |and the environment. She is an active speaker, strategist, writer, and |
| | |organizer. Her experience includes work within the United Nations as well as |
| | |national and local governments, representing Indigenous and environmental |
| | |interests. Enei is also a co-founder of the Native Movement Collective and a |
| | |campaigner for the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), where she worked |
| | |with Indigenous communities throughout the U.S. to protect their water |
| | |resources. |
| |2B-13 |At Black Mesa, Navajo and Hopi people needed to organize to protect the |
| |Enei Begaye: |N-Aquifer from the Peabody Coal Mine slurry lines that pumped millions of |
| |“The people who live off Black Mesa, the people|gallons from Black Mesa to the Mojave generating station in Laughlin, NV. In |
| |who live right off the coal mine area don’t |2005 through efforts of BMWC and other environmental and sacred site |
| |have electricity. They don’t even have running |protection organizations, they successfully shut down the Peabody Coal Mine. |
| |water.” | |
| | |Water is also a part of the sacred way of life of the native people living in|
| | |Black Mesa. For an argument in favor of Native Americans’ rights to protect |
| | |sacred water sites, see: |
| | | |
| | |Other Indigenous homelands are also being sacrificed. Here is a link to the |
| | |Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) website, with a story about the Tar |
| | |Sands of Northern Alberta: |
| | | See the IEN website for |
| | |other stories of environmental degradation of indigenous lands to support our|
| | |habits of consumerism and our addiction to fossil fuels: |
| | | |
| |2B-14 |See the entire video of “The Story of Stuff” and learn more about it at: |
| |Narrator: | View the statistics in|
| |“One way to look at the dynamics of |‘The Story of Stuff’ and learn the sources for that information at: |
| |environmental injustice comes from the United | |
| |States in this excerpt from a film by Annie | |
| |Leonard called “The Story of Stuff.” | |
| |2B-15 |Annie Leonard is an expert in international sustainability and environmental |
| |Annie Leonard |health issues, with more than 20 years of experience investigating factories |
| | |and dumps around the world. Coordinator of the Funders Workgroup for |
| | |Sustainable Production and Consumption, a funder collaborative working for a |
| | |sustainable and just world, Annie communicates worldwide about the impact of |
| | |consumerism and materialism on global economies and international health. |
| | | |
| |2B-16 |The Global Issues website reports that inequalities in consumption are stark.|
| |Annie Leonard: |Globally, the 20% of the world’s people in the highest-income countries |
| |“…We have 5% of the world’s population, but we |account for 86% of total private consumption expenditures — the poorest 20% a|
| |are using 30% of the world’s resources and |minuscule 1.3%. More specifically, the richest fifth: |
| |creating 30% of the world’s waste.” |Consume 45% of all meat and fish, the poorest fifth 5% |
| | |Consume 58% of total energy, the poorest fifth less than 4% |
| | |Have 74% of all telephone lines, the poorest fifth 1.5% |
| | |Consume 84% of all paper, the poorest fifth 1.1% |
| | |Own 87% of the world’s vehicle fleet, the poorest fifth less than 1%. |
| | |TradeRelated/Consumption.asp This figure is citied in |
| | |many places. For example: John L Seitz: Global Issues: An Introduction |
| | |(2001). |
| |2B-17 |There is now a term, ecological debt, which tries to address the issue of |
| |Annie Leonard, The Story of Stuff |resource extraction from developing countries. The cumulative responsibility |
| |“So, my country’s response to this limitation |of industrialized countries for the destruction caused by their production |
| |is simply to go take someone else’s! This is |and consumption patterns is called 'ecological debt'. Natural wealth |
| |the Third World, which—some would say—is |extracted by the North at the expense of southern people has contaminated |
| |another word for our stuff that somehow got on |their natural heritage and sources of sustenance. This debt is the result of |
| |somebody else’s land. So what does that look |a development model that is being spread throughout the world and which |
| |like? The same thing: trashing the place.” |threatens more sustainable local economies. For another definition, see: |
| | | |
| | |A Canadian website tells the story of how a Louisiana based company is |
| | |extracting resources from West Papua. |
| | | |
| | |All oil companies are still exploring for more oil. In the next 5 years, BP|
| | |alone will spend $5bn on oil exploration and production alone. Here is one |
| | |of BP’s new projects. NorthStar is the first offshore oil project proposed |
| | |for the Arctic Ocean. Inupiat Eskimos from Alaska’s North Slope, whose |
| | |subsistence lifestyle is already under threat from climate change, are using |
| | |the law to try and stop this oil exploration project. |
| | | |
| |2B-18 |According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), unless concerted |
| |Annie Leonard |action is taken to address the root causes of rapid urbanization, including |
| |“Globally 200,000 people a day are moving from |migration from rural to urban areas, the number of people living in slums |
| |environments that have sustained them for |will grow in the coming years. Many people migrate to cities from rural areas|
| |generations into cities many to live in slums. |to seek economic opportunity and to escape deprivation or environmental |
| |So, you see, it is not just resources that are |degradation that has driven them off the land. But often people who leave the|
| |wasted along this system, but people too. Whole|countryside to find better lives in the city have no choice but to settle in |
| |communities get wasted.” |shantytowns and slums where they lack access to decent housing and |
| | |sanitation, health care and education—in effect, trading in rural poverty for|
| | |urban poverty. |
| | | |
| |2B-19 |Although we know about the devastation to the natural environment, the |
| |Narrator: |devastating effects of our industrialized world also include the creation of |
| |“…the industrial world’s demand for oil, |a human devsatation, namely environmental refugees. Globally, mass movements |
| |minerals, and timber is having devastating |of people are taking place as people are being forced from their homelands |
| |effects on the land, air, water, and people.” |due to environmental degradation. Currently, the number of these |
| | |environmental refugees is surpassing those refugees created by political and |
| | |social strife. See: |
| | | |
| | |Rising sea levels, desertification and shrinking freshwater supplies will |
| | |create up to 50 million environmental refugees by the end of the decade, |
| | |experts warn today. Janos Bogardi, director of the Institute for Environment |
| | |and Human Security at the United Nations University in Bonn, said creeping |
| | |environmental deterioration already displaced up to 10 million people a year,|
| | |and the situation would get worse. |
| | | |
| | |Scholars are predicting that 50 million people worldwide will be displaced by|
| | |2010 because of rising sea levels, desertification, dried up aquifers, |
| | |weather-induced flooding and other serious environmental changes, says Andrew|
| | |Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation in the United Kingdom |
| | |and the author of a book entitled Environmental Refugees: The Case for |
| | |Recognition. |
| | |For in-depth discussion, see: |
| | | |
| |2B-20 |To look at the human conditions at the Niger Delta of Nigeria, look at an |
| |Narrator: |account from a person who lived there. |
| |“An example is the Niger Delta of Nigeria where| |
| |hundreds of millions of dollars of oil have | |
| |been extracted and exported, yet most of the | |
| |people live in poverty on less than one US | |
| |dollar a day.” | |
| |2B-21 |Wangari Maathai is a Kenyan environmental and political activist. She was |
| |Wangari Maathai |educated in the United States at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as at |
| | |the University of Nairobi in Kenya. In the 1970s, Maathai founded the Green |
| | |Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the |
| | |planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 2004 |
| | |she became the first African woman, and the first environmentalist, to |
| | |receive the Nobel Peace Prize for “her contribution to sustainable |
| | |development, democracy and peace.” Maathai was an elected member of |
| | |Parliament and served as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural |
| | |Resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki between January 2003 and|
| | |November 2005. She is of Kikuyu ethnicity. |
| | | |
| |2B-22 |A system is a set of interacting or interdependent entities forming an |
| |Wangari Maathai: |integrated whole. The study of complex systems brings an old approach to the |
| |“What we do not understand is that we humans |many scientific questions that are a weak fit for the usual mechanistic view |
| |are only part of this ecosystem. And when we |of reality present in science. Complex system is therefore often used as a |
| |kill part of the system we are killing |broad term encompassing a research approach to problems in many diverse |
| |ourselves.” |disciplines including anthropology, artificial life, chemistry, computer |
| | |science, economics, evolutionary computation, earthquake prediction, |
| | |meteorology, molecular biology, neuroscience, physics, psychology and |
| | |sociology. Human societies (and probably human brains) are complex systems in|
| | |which neither the components nor the couplings are simple. Nevertheless, they|
| | |exhibit many of the hallmarks of complex systems. |
| | | |
| | | |
| |2B-23 |Robert Reich is presently Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of|
| |Robert Reich |Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in |
| | |three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under |
| | |President Bill Clinton. He has written ten books, including The Work of |
| | |Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages. |
| | | |
| |2B-24 |Various organizations have created declarations of interdependence. Read |
| |Robert Reich: |some of them here: |
| |“The principal of social justice is that there | |
| |is a social contract. We are not just | |
| |individuals. We are part of a society, a | |
| |worldwide society. We’re interdependent and | |
| |that interdependence flows at many levels. | |
| |It’s spiritual, it is psychological, it is | |
| |economic. The notion that we can exist and | |
| |prosper just individually based purely on what | |
| |we do and what we earn is a rather new notion | |
| |in history and it doesn't work.” | |
| |2B-25 |Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of The Council of Canadians and the |
| |Maude Barlow |co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, working internationally for the right |
| | |to water. She serves on the boards of the International Forum on |
| | |Globalization and Food and Water Watch, as well as being a Councilor with the|
| | |Hamburg-based World Future Council. Maude is the recipient of six honorary |
| | |doctorates degrees for her global water justice work. She is also the |
| | |best-selling author or co-author of sixteen books, including Blue Gold: The |
| | |Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the World’s Water and Blue Covenant: The |
| | |Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. |
| | | |
| |2B-26 |The sense of entitlement that one race or class has, the sense that they |
| |Maude Barlow: |deserve all that they have by reason of birth or position, that they have an |
| |“I think for a lot of people who are born in |inherent right to it, and that they do not have a responsibility for others’ |
| |privilege there’s a sense that what a friend of|well being, that other less fortunate people’s problems are not their |
| |mine calls the right not to know. I don’t have|problem, has been termed white privilege. |
| |to know about poverty, I don’t have to know |Peggy McIntosh, Associate Director of the Wellesley College Center for |
| |about racism, I don’t have to know about |Research on Women, describes white privilege as an invisible package of |
| |environmental degradation or environmental |unearned assets, which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I |
| |justice or injustice because it’s not me, I’ve |was meant. to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible |
| |got my life and I’ve you know got my family and|weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, |
| |I can do what I want.” |visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks. |
| | | |
| | |Also see Whiteness is ownership of the earth by W.E.B. Du Bois. |
| |2B-27 |Van Jones is the founding director of the Ella Baker Center for Human |
| |Van Jones |Rights. Founded in 1996 and named for an unsung civil rights heroine, the |
| | |Center seeks to replace the U.S. incarceration industry with youth |
| | |opportunities and community-based solutions. Van Jones is also a passionate |
| | |advocate for the environment and for responsible business. He serves on |
| | |numerous governing boards, including: Rainforest Action Network, WITNESS, |
| | |Bioneers, the New Apollo Project and the Social Venture Network. Van's |
| | |efforts have earned him many honors. |
| | |See: or |
| | | and the Ella Baker |
| | |Center at: |
| | | |
| |2B-28 |Social justice refers to the concept of a society in which justice is |
| |Van Jones: |achieved in every aspect of society, rather than merely the administration of|
| |“A socially just world is a world in which, if |law. It is generally thought of as a world which affords individuals and |
| |you had to draw a lot, and it would put you |groups fair treatment and an impartial share of the benefits of society. |
| |anywhere in that society, you would feel | |
| |perfectly confident, you wouldn’t be worried, | |
| |because you knew whatever lot you drew would be| |
| |a good lot. It doesn’t mean everything’s equal| |
| |-- it just means that every single person in | |
| |that society has a decent shot at living the | |
| |fullest life that they can. But if you close | |
| |your eyes and you think to yourself, would you | |
| |want to be black? Would you trade places? Well | |
| |if you wouldn’t trade places, then there’s work| |
| |to be done.” | |
V-2 Module 2C: Where are We? Spiritual, Psychological & Emotional Impact
| |Key Points: |Source/Reference: |
| |2C-1 |We submit that in terms of our spiritual/emotional health, the costs |
| |Spiritual, Psychological, and Emotional Impact|resulting from our modern worldview and how we’re living aren’t out in the |
| | |future somewhere; they are present—right here, right now. |
| | |If we tell the truth, most of us would admit that something is seriously "off|
| | |course" about our lives and the lives of those around us. The pace of life in|
| | |the modern world is getting faster and faster. Stress levels are rising as |
| | |our culture supposedly “advances.” People around us seem increasingly |
| | |isolated, alienated, mistrusting, angry, cut off from one another and from |
| | |their own hearts, lacking any deep or abiding connection to spirit or sense |
| | |of purpose in their lives. |
| | | |
| | |In The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty (2004), David |
| | |G. Myers writes that this diagnosis of spiritual poverty has come from many |
| | |perspective”: |
| | |The real problem of modernity is the problem of belief,” observed sociologist|
| | |Daniel Bell. “To use an unfashionable term, it is a spiritual crisis. |
| | |In this Harvard commencement address, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn deplored the |
| | |Western world’s material obsession and spiritual poverty. We have placed too |
| | |much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being|
| | |deprived of our most precious possession, our spiritual life. |
| | |There is within us a crisis, a kind of spiritual surrender, agreed Jesse |
| | |Jackson. Can we rebuild the wall (of hope)? We have the money. We have the |
| | |education, but there is something within us that is in trouble.” |
| | |There is a yawning hole in the psyche of American and Americans where our |
| | |sense of common purpose, of community and connection, of hope and spiritual |
| | |satisfaction should be, echoed former NY columnist Anna Quindlen. We liberals|
| | |must acknowledge this: that while the rights of the individual are precious, |
| | |at some deep level individualism alone does not suffice. And the ability of |
| | |the radical right to seize and exploit the terrain of the soul has been |
| | |helped immeasurably by the failure of so many of the rest of us to even |
| | |acknowledge the soul’s existence. |
| | |Television producer Norman Lear concurred, saying, at no time in my life has |
| | |our culture been so estranged from spiritual values…Our problems are not |
| | |economic and political. They are moral and spiritual—and must be addressed on|
| | |that level if real solutions are to be found. |
| | |Rabbi Michael Learner, editor of Tikkun, called for a politics in the image |
| | |of God, an attempt to reconstruct the world in a way that takes seriously the|
| | |uniqueness and preciousness of every human being and our connection to a |
| | |higher ethical and spiritual purpose that vies meaning to our lives. |
| | |Alienation and spiritual yearnings can also be found in popular music, as in |
| | |these lyrics from Sting: “Everyone I know is lonely/and God’s so far away/and|
| | |my heart belongs to no one/ s now some times I pray/please take this peace |
| | |between us/ and fill it up some way….” |
| | |Looking beyond America, Czech poet-president Vaclav Havel saw the present |
| | |global crisis as directly related the spiritual condition of modern |
| | |civilization. This condition is characterized by loss: the loss of |
| | |‘metaphysical certainties, of an experience of the transcendental, of any |
| | |personal moral authority, and of any kind of higher horizon. Havel believes |
| | |that if the world is to change for the better it must star with a change in |
| | |human consciousness. We must discover a deeper sense of responsibility toward|
| | |the world, which means responsibility toward something higher in the self. |
| |2C-2 |Sheikh Bentounes is the designated spiritual leader of the Sufi congregation |
| |Sheikh Bentounes |known as Al’ Alawiya. Writer, teacher, and speaker, Sheikh Bentounes has been|
| | |traveling around the world for many years now, mainly in Europe, Africa, and |
| | |the Middle East, carrying the traditional education of Sufism. Sheikh |
| | |Bentounes states that if Islam is a body, Sufism is its heart, a place where |
| | |we learn anew to taste the savor of God in the silence of the moment. |
| | | |
| |2C-3 |Crisis has four defining characteristics. Seeger, Sellnow and Ulmer explain |
| |Sheikh Bentounes : |that a crises are "specific, unexpected, and non-routine events or series of |
| |"The model of the society of consumerism is a |events that [create] high levels of uncertainty and threat or perceived |
| |model bringing us to a catastrophe at all |threat to an organization's high priority goals. Thus the first three |
| |levels. Today’s world is in crisis; economic, |characteristics are that the event is 1. unexpected (i.e., a surprise), 2. |
| |financial, energetic; a crisis of meaning." |creates uncertainty, and 3. is seen as a threat to important goals. However, |
| | |Venette argues that crisis is a process of transformation where the old |
| | |system can no longer be maintained. Therefore the fourth defining quality is |
| | |4. the need for change. If change is not needed, the event could more |
| | |accurately be described as a failure. |
| | | |
| |2C-4 |John Robbins is a food activist, author and plant diet enthusiast who has |
| |John Robbins |made a generation aware of the linkages between agriculture, health and the |
| | |environment. According to him, the choices that we make today as to the way |
| | |we treat each other, the way we raise our children, the kinds of families and|
| | |communities we create, will determine how the future unfolds. |
| | | |
| |2C-5 |Are Americans lonelier, more isolated? - A recent study reported that |
| |John Robbins: |American adults, who shocked pollsters in 1985 when they said they had only |
| |“There is a great loneliness of spirit today. |three close friends, today say they have just two. And the number who say |
| |We’re trying to live, we’re trying to cope in |they have no one to discuss important matters with has doubled to 1 in 4. |
| |the face of what seems to be overwhelming |See: |
| |evidence that who we are doesn’t matter, that | |
| |there is no real hope for enough change, that |As a society we are deeply troubled, and many of us are beginning to wake up |
| |the environment and human experience is |to the fact that material success will not bring us the satisfaction and |
| |deteriorating so rapidly and increasingly and |fulfillment, meaning and happiness that we thought would come with it. |
| |massively. This is the context, psychically and|A number of books explore the “spiritual hunger” in American culture, |
| |spiritually, in which we are working today. |including: |
| |This is how our lives are reflected to us. |Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, The |
| |Meanwhile, we’re yearning for connection with |Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need, and Overworked American: |
| |each other, with ourselves, with the powers of |The Unexpected Decline in Leisure by Juliet B. Shor |
| |nature, the possibilities of being alive. |The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz |
| |When that tension arises, we feel pain, we feel|The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies by Robert Lane |
| |anguish at the very root of ourselves, and then|Psychology and Consumer Culture: The Struggle for a Good Life in a |
| |we cover that over, that grief, that horror, |Materialistic World by Tim Kasser |
| |with all kinds of distraction – with |A recent study by the University of Chicago showed that 25% of all Americans |
| |consumerism, with addictions, with anything |report they have no one in their lives they can confide in, and another 25% |
| |that we can use to disconnect and to go away.” |reports they have just one person in their lives that they can confide in. |
| | |Both of these figures had approximately doubled over the past 20 |
| | |years—showing a rapid loss of close relationships by half of all Americans. |
| | |The report Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks |
| | |over Two Decades, Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and Matthew E. |
| | |Brashears, (June 2006) can be studied in depth at: |
| | | |
| | |Alternatively a commentary can be viewed at: |
| | | |
| | |In the United States 700,000 people receive treatment for alcoholism on any |
| | |given day (and those are the ones seeking treatment). |
| | |The number of people treated for alcoholism on any given day appears in |
| | |Alcoholism Treatment in the United States, a report available on the National|
| | |Institute of Alcohol Abuse and A. 10th Special Report to the U.S. Congress on|
| | |Alcohol and Alcoholism, 2002. See: |
| | | |
| | |Record Sales of Sleeping Pills Are Causing Worries, appeared in the New York |
| | |Times on February 7, 2006. |
| | |
| | |37535e&ex=1296968400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print |
| | |More statistics on alcoholism and substance abuse: |
| | |In U.S. alcohol abuse is increasing, while alcohol dependence is declining. |
| | | and/or |
| | | |
| | |Excessive alcohol consumption is the third leading preventable cause of death|
| | |in the United States. |
| | |In 2002, almost 5 million adults were alcohol-dependent or alcohol-abusing |
| | |and had at least one child younger than age 18 living in their home. |
| | | |
| | |More than one-fourth of all children in the United States are exposed to |
| | |alcohol abuse or dependence in their families before they are 18 years of |
| | |age. |
| | |In 2002, 6.2 million Americans were current abusers of prescription drugs. |
| | | |
| |2C-6 |Juan Manuel Carrion is an artist, ornithologist and environmentalist living |
| |Juan Manuel Carrion |near Quito in Ecuador. For many years he has worked to raise Ecuador's public|
| | |awareness about the need to preserve and protect its natural environment and |
| | |its bio-diversity. |
| | |To hear him speak, go to: |
| | | |
| |2C-7 |To look at an article on artificial needs and the capitalistic model, see: |
| |Juan Manuel Carrion: | |
| |“The problem is that we have created artificial| |
| |needs that make us consume more than we really | |
| |need.” | |
| |2C-8 |This article on consumerism and its lack of fulfillment echoes want Van says |
| |Van Jones: |in a lighthearted way: |
| |“The reason that people are into this mass | |
| |consumption nightmare dream is because people |Here is an report on consumerism and the planet: |
| |are lonely and people are hurt, and people | |
| |really believe that more income more stuff more|Vicki Robbins and Joe Dominguez, in their book, Your Money or Your Life, |
| |consumption more things – the relationship with|argue that our time is more precious than working to accumulate wealth and |
| |things -- will fix the hunger in the human |urge people to express their values through their money. See the New Roadmap|
| |heart, and it will never work”. |Foundation website for more information: |
| | | |
| | |Not only is consumerism not filling our loneliness, it is also eroding our |
| | |fiscal security and impacting the environment: |
| | | |
| |2C-9 |Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, and author. Starting at age|
| |Paul Hawken |20, he dedicated his life to sustainability and changing the relationship |
| | |between business and the environment. His practice has included starting and |
| | |running ecological businesses, writing and teaching about the impact of |
| | |commerce on living systems, and consulting with governments and corporations |
| | |on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy. |
| | | |
| |2C-10 | |
| |Paul Hawken: | |
| |“This is not the best of all possible worlds, | |
| |even though it appears that way on TV and | |
| |advertisements. I think people in their most | |
| |poignant and honest moments will admit that | |
| |this is really hard right now. For everybody.” | |
| |2C-11 |A World Health Organization study released in 2004 (published in JAMA in |
| |Narrator: |June) shows that, “rates of most mental illness are far higher in the U.S. |
| |“The idea that material gain leads to personal |than in any other country in the world.” ‘These numbers are absolutely |
| |fulfillment has been demonstrated not to be the|staggering,’ says Ronald C. Kessler, PhD, a professor of health care policy |
| |case. Although incomes have skyrocketed in |at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and one of the study's co-researchers. |
| |economically-advanced countries, study after | |
| |study have shown that levels of reported |2005 Update: One in 4 adult Americans surveyed by Harvard researchers |
| |happiness have remained the same or even |(2001-2003) had symptoms consistent with a diagnosable mental disorder. The |
| |declined. Developed nations also generally have|most common is anxiety. |
| |higher rates of mental illness.” |
| | |hgate="94086.html |
| | |See statistics on mental disorders from National Institute of Mental Health |
| | |at: |
| | | |
| | |Are we over-diagnosing? Read a counter view at Web MD: |
| | | |
| | |The American Psychological Association reports that between 75 and 90% of all|
| | |visits to physicians are for stress-related conditions. |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |A Time magazine article reported that insurance claims for stress, |
| | |depression, and job burnout are now the US’s fastest growing disability |
| | |category. |
| | | |
| |2C-12 | |
| |Luke Tayor | |
| |2C-13 |In her new book The Work That Reconnects, Joanna Macy discusses the angst of |
| |Luke Tayor: |our era, and the pain, fear, guilt and inaction it has engendered. Then it |
| |For people of my generation who are just coming|points forward to the way out of apathy, to the work that reconnects. |
| |into their experience of despair as the details| |
| |of what’s happening around the globe become | |
| |clearer and begin to click into place, there’s | |
| |no language for us quite yet. I think it must | |
| |be unprecendented on an individual level, on a | |
| |human level, that we are facing that kind of | |
| |loss. | |
| |2C-14 |Joanna Macy, Ph.D., is an eco-philosopher and a scholar of Buddhism, general |
| |Joanna Macy |systems theory, and deep ecology. A respected voice in movements for peace, |
| | |justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with four decades of |
| | |activism. She has created a ground-breaking theoretical framework for |
| | |personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for |
| | |its application. |
| |2C-15 |The current crisis invites each of us to explore our personal relationship to|
| |Joanna Macy: |the natural world. In the following comments, Joanna Macy uses the example of|
| |The anguish we feel for what is happening to |Saint Francis who established a mystic bond with the Earth. Participation at |
| |our world is inevitable and normal and even |this level of caring and intimacy is an exciting venture. It is to know the |
| |healthy. Pain is very useful. Just don’t be |heart of the Earth as Saint Francis did. … |
| |afraid of it. Because if we are afraid to feel |t could well be that our work now is to grow a new planetary consciousness. |
| |that, we won’t feel where it comes from, and |Carl Jung said there’s no birth of consciousness without pain. We are |
| |where it comes from is love, our love for this |discovering that we are the sensory organs of our living planet, and that |
| |world. That’s what is going to pull us through.|discovery involves pain. All of a sudden we realize that we care, that our |
| | |hearts are breaking over people who aren’t even born yet. This is truly a |
| | |noble thing. Over twenty years of doing this work I have found that people |
| | |would rather hurt and feel connected than be anesthetized and feel isolated. |
| | |contributors/macy.html |
| | |In The Coming of the Cosmic Christ he wrote, the Pascal Mysteries of the |
| | |Third Millennium will have to do with the death and resurrection of the |
| | |Earth, where Earth, Herself, plays the role of Christ crucified. |
| |2C-16 |According to Joanna Macy, we cannot deny our grief. We must deepen our |
| |John Robbins: |hearts to allow it to come out and be expressed, and it can become part of |
| |There is the possibility that the energy that |the ground that supports us we move forward. Many of us feel called to |
| |has been bound in the repression of it can now |respond to the ecological destruction of our planet, yet we feel overwhelmed,|
| |flow through us and energize us, make us |immobilized, and unable to deal realistically with the threats to life on |
| |clearer, more alive, more passionate, |Earth. This beautiful article on Gratitude and how that is the beginning of |
| |committed, courageous, determined people. |healing, by Joanna Macy, tell of a way to transform grief: |
| | | |
V-2 Module 3A: How Did We Get Here? Worldviews and Assumptions
| |Key Points: |Source/Reference: |
| |3A- 1 |What is a worldview? |
| |Worldviews, Assumptions |Worldview might be imagined as a giant lens-bubble that encases us entirely |
| | |but invisibly, translating events and experiences into forms that fit our |
| | |patterned expectations. |
| | | |
| | |The western scientific view tends to analyze and dissect things in order to |
| | |understand them. This taking apart, or seeing things as made up of their |
| | |component parts is one of the bases of our perception of separateness. Over |
| | |the centuries, the story that’s been communicated to us, consciously or |
| | |unconsciously, has been that the world is a huge machine, made up of separate|
| | |parts, like a big clock or something that has no meaning, and that, aided by |
| | |our technology we can strategize how to use and even master it. |
| | |The Clockwork Universe was the metaphor, the story that shaped the dream of |
| | |Western civilization for hundreds of years. According to the Wikipedia, the |
| | |“Clockwork Universe” is a theory as to the origins of the universe. In this |
| | |theory, the universe can be thought of as a machine--a clock wound up by God |
| | |that ticks along, like a perfect machine, governed by the laws of physics. |
| | |The task of scientists, then, was to discover those laws. The theory has its|
| | |roots in the work of Isaac Newton. |
| | | |
| | |The popularity of this theory swelled during the European Age of |
| | |Enlightenment (18th century), as scientists looked to Newton's laws of motion|
| | |to explain the behavior of the solar system. The second law of thermodynamics|
| | |and quantum physics has now undermined this theory. |
| | | |
| | |In the modern world in which we are living, “We are separate” has been a deep|
| | |and fundamental part of the cultural story of western civilization, |
| | |especially since the development of the scientific method of inquiry about |
| | |400 years ago. Given that assumption, it’s perfectly understandable how we |
| | |could behave the way we’ve behaved in our culture; it makes sense. If we're |
| | |here, and the world is “out there,” then we’d naturally use it for our own |
| | |well-being and prosperity. Why not? |
| | |The scientific method is an approach to understanding the phenomena of the |
| | |world we live in through a process of hypothesis and then gathering evidence.|
| | | |
| | | |
| | |Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world’s most innovative biologists said, I think|
| | |that many of the problems we have come from a too narrow scientific paradigm |
| | |or model of reality which creates a split between the mind... feelings and |
| | |experience. This creates a split in our entire culture which is at the root |
| | |of our ecological crisis and the sense of alienation and loss of meaning. I |
| | |think a more holistic and inclusive scientific approach will help heal this |
| | |split and improve our relations with the natural world around us and each |
| | |other. |
| | |Find out more about Rupert Sheldrake at: |
| | | |
| |3A-2 |Come Together: Can we discover a depth of wisdom far beyond what is available|
| |More on Assumptions |to individuals alone? |
| | |by Craig Hamilton: “…For Bohm, all the problems of human affairs could be |
| | |traced to the “incoherence of our thought,” and particularly, of our |
| | |collective thought. Looking at the way our unexamined cultural |
| | |presuppositions, beliefs, and ideas prevent us from coming together in |
| | |meaningful exchange on matters of importance, he proposed a new mode of |
| | |inquiry that would both reveal this incoherence and point the way beyond it. |
| | |Drawing from the Greek dialogos, which he defined as “meaning moving |
| | |through,” Bohm explained that in this new form of dialogue, “a new kind of |
| | |mind . . . begins to come into being which is based on the development of a |
| | |common meaning that is constantly transforming in the process of the |
| | |dialogue. People are no longer primarily in opposition, nor can they be said |
| | |to be interacting, rather they are participating in this pool of common |
| | |meaning, which is capable of constant development and change.”… |
| | | |
| |3A-3 |Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and |
| |Narrator: |expecting different results. However, we do not need to do the same thing |
| |Now that we have looked squarely at where we |over and over once realize what we are doing is self-destructive. |
| |are, a good question to ask might be: How did |See more about the human capacity to learn and change at these websites: |
| |an intelligent, well-meaning species who, for | |
| |the most part, only wanted to make the world | |
| |better and more secure for their children, end | |
| |up in such a condition? What could possibly |“We don't have to make human beings smart. They are born smart. All we have |
| |explain how we got into our current |to do is stop doing the things that made them stupid." ~ John Holt |
| |predicament? | |
| |3A-4 |Thomas Berry is a Catholic priest, a cultural historian, and a cosmologist or|
| |Thomas Berry |“Earth scholar,” as he prefers to be called. He is an advocate for deep |
| | |ecology and ‘ecospirituality.’ As the Wikipedia describes him, Berry proposes|
| | |that a deep understanding of the evolving universe is “a necessary |
| | |inspiration and guide for our own effective functioning as individuals and as|
| | |a species. He is considered a leader in the tradition of Teilhard de |
| | |Chardin.” His books include: The Dream of the Earth, The Universe Story From |
| | |the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era, A Celebration of the |
| | |Unfolding of the Cosmos (with physicist Brian Swimme, 1992) , and The Great |
| | |Work: Our Way into the Future. |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |You can read about A Dream of the Earth here: |
| | | |
| |3A-5 |Co-intelligence is a capacity that goes far beyond individual IQ-based |
| |Thomas Berry: |intelligence. It is intelligence that's grounded in wholeness, |
| |The great work of our times, I would say, is |interconnectedness and co-creativity. It is collective, collaborative, |
| |moving the human community from its present |synergistic, wise, resonant, heartful, and connected to greater sources of |
| |situation as a destructive presence on the |intelligence. We find co-intelligence -- and its opposite, co-stupidity -- in|
| |planet to a benign or mutually enhancing |individuals |
| |presence. It’s that simple. |groups |
| | |organizations |
| | |communities |
| | |societies |
| | |processes |
| | |systems and |
| | |institutions |
| | |Each of these can be co-intelligent whenever it calls forth collective wisdom|
| | |in and around it -- usually by using diversity creatively. |
| | |According to Co-Intelligence, the story as pattern forms one of the |
| | |underlying structures of reality, comprehensible and responsive to those who |
| | |possess what we call narrative intelligence. Our psyches and cultures are |
| | |filled with narrative fields of influence, or story fields, which shape the |
| | |awareness and behavior of the individuals and collectives associated with |
| | |them. |
| | | |
| |3A-6 |Drew Dellinger is a poet, teacher, and activist. He is founder of Poets for |
| |Drew Dellinger |Global Justice, and author of the collection of poems, love letter to the |
| | |milky way. Dellinger has presented and performed at hundreds of events across|
| | |the country, speaking on justice, cosmology, ecology, and democracy. |
| | |Dellinger’s poetry has been widely published and his work is featured in the |
| | |film, "Voices of Dissent," and the books Igniting a Revolution, Children of |
| | |the Movement, and Global Uprising. In 1997 he received Common Boundary |
| | |magazine’s national Green Dove Award. Dellinger has studied cosmology and |
| | |ecological thought with Thomas Berry since 1990, and has taught at Prescott |
| | |College, Naropa University-Oakland, and Esalen Institute. |
| | | |
| |3A-7 |According to the Tapestry Institute website, modern culture has lost the |
| |Drew Dellinger: |kinship with nature that is its birthright. The dead and dying pieces of the |
| |Thomas Berry says that the primary problem with|great and ancient relationship between humans and the earth lie scattered |
| |western civilization is that it creates and |like bleached bones across the landscapes of our exile. But they can be |
| |perpetuates a radical separation between the |collected again, reassembled into the whole, sung back to life for us all. |
| |human world and the natural world -- that we’ve| |
| |given all the rights to the human and no rights|On the myth of separation, Einstein said, a human being is a part of a whole,|
| |to the natural world. |called by us 'universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences |
| |We think we're behaving very rationally - |himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a |
| |creating jobs, gross domestic product is |kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of |
| |rising, that we're on this kind of a logical |prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a |
| |economic course, but actually we're heading |few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this |
| |toward our destruction. And the only way to |prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures |
| |explain this is that we've been locked into a |and the whole of nature in its beauty. |
| |kind of mythic entrancement, a worldview that's| |
| |become dysfunctional and therefore destructive.| |
| |3A-8 |Thomas Berry spent most of his life looking at the question of why humans |
| |Narrator: |would behave the way we have, and he offers this as an explanation of what’s |
| |According to Berry, our industrial age is a |going on with our human presence on this planet at this time. Berry says that|
| |period of technological entrancement in which |the whole Industrial Age is a period of technological entrancement, an |
| |our obsession with progress has us marching |altered state of consciousness, a mental fixation that alone can explain how |
| |toward an ill-defined magical paradise |we came to ruin our air and water and soil and to severely damage all our |
| |somewhere in the future — a future in which we |basic life systems (Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred, 1991). |
| |have mastered the Earth and everything on it —|For the transcript of an interview with Jerry Mander, see: |
| |without any limits. | |
| |3A-9 |The idea of mental models may be useful here: |
| |Narrator: | |
| |It could be said that we in the modern world |Here is one woman’s story of waking up from a trance: |
| |are living in a kind of “trance” – something | |
| |the indigenous people would call “the dream of |In this article on creating a spacious center for transformation, Dr. Aftab |
| |the modern world. This dream is our current |Omer, of the Institute of Imaginal Studies states that the cultural center of|
| |worldview – a point of view we don’t even know |the historical era that we refer to as “modernity” has collapsed. Its norms, |
| |that we have. |values, and practices no longer have credibility and legitimacy. In the wake |
| |Our worldview is held in place by a set of |of this collapse, our planet’s ecological crisis calls for global cultural |
| |beliefs and unexamined assumptions that we are |transformation. The ways in which we consume and share our planet’s resources|
| |completely unaware of – like glasses we’ve worn|are ecologically unsustainable as well as painfully oppressive for millions |
| |so long, we don’t even know we’re looking |of people. Extreme economic injustice and other oppressive conditions |
| |through them any more. |engender chronic conflict at a global level. Our contemporary challenge is to|
| |People’s actions correlate with their |create a postmodern culture that once again has a center—a “spacious center” |
| |worldview. We take the actions appropriate to |where the creative potentials of diversity, conflict, and chaos can be |
| |how we see the world. So when our actions |actualized. |
| |produce outcomes we are not intending, it is | |
| |important to identify the unconscious, | |
| |unexamined assumptions that generated those | |
| |actions in the first place. | |
| |3A-10 |NASA describes cosmology is the scientific study of the large scale |
| |Brian Swimme: |properties of the Universe as a whole. It endeavors to use the scientific |
| |One way to characterize the cosmology that |method to understand the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the entire |
| |really is at work in our culture is this: That |Universe. Like any field of science, cosmology involves the formation of |
| |the natural world, the Earth, is there for us |theories or hypotheses about the universe which make specific predictions for|
| |to satisfy our needs and desires, whatever they|phenomena that can be tested with observations. Depending on the outcome of |
| |might be. So we want to make things, and we use|the observations, the theories will need to be abandoned, revised or extended|
| |the Earth. We make things. And we think of it |to accommodate the data. The prevailing theory about the origin and evolution|
| |as something like a lumberyard. In fact, we use|of our Universe is the so-called Big Bang theory. |
| |the word “resource,” so that the Earth is full | |
| |of resources that are there for us to use as we| |
| |see fit. | |
| |Now that orientation actually is not that bad | |
| |so long as humans are not that powerful. But | |
| |suddenly, when we become so massively present, | |
| |that orientation turns out to be completely | |
| |pathological. You can’t call a forest a | |
| |resource. It’s filled with amazing beings. | |
| |You can’t call the ocean with all those fish | |
| |and the marine mammals a resource. Each of | |
| |these species is the end result of 13.7 billion| |
| |years of evolution. They’re spectacular; | |
| |they’re stupendous; they have a right to be | |
| |here. So to think of them as resources and to | |
| |use them however we like is really what is | |
| |driving our destruction. | |
| |3A-11 |We act upon our beliefs. So the way we behave reflects how we see ourselves |
| |Narrator: |and the world. Our belief system is the actual set of precepts from which we |
| |In a world we assume to be full of resources |live our daily life, those beliefs which govern our thoughts, our words, and |
| |for our use, clear-cutting of forests makes |our actions. Without these precepts, we could not function. |
| |perfect sense. Another example of an unexamined| |
| |assumption is that competition alone is the | |
| |fundamental law of nature. But, when we really | |
| |look, does that assumption hold true? | |
| |3A-12 |Dr. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, philosopher, environmental activist, eco |
| |Dr. Vandana Shiva |feminist and author of several books. She is currently based in Delhi and |
| | |has authored over 300 papers in leading scientific and technical journals. |
| | | |
| |3A- 13 |Competition is a contest between individuals, groups, nations, animals, etc.,|
| |Dr. Vandana Shiva: |for territory, a niche, or allocation of resources. It arises whenever two or|
| |So much sort of pseudo-science being done |more parties strive for a goal which cannot be shared. Competition occurs |
| |trying to show that the world is in |naturally between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. |
| |competition. Survival of the fittest and all |For example, animals compete over water supplies, food, and mates, etc. |
| |that. I think human beings are more prone to |Humans compete for water, food, and mates, though when these needs are met |
| |compassion and cooperation. If we look at the |deep rivalries often arise over the pursuit of wealth, prestige, and fame. |
| |work that’s being done in science, it’s about |Business is often associated with competition as most companies are in |
| |cooperation: cells must cooperate, species must|competition with at least one other firm over the same group of customers. |
| |cooperate. Cooperation rather than competition | |
| |is the way nature works.” |Cooperation is the process of working or acting together, which can be |
| | |accomplished by both intentional and non-intentional agents. In its simplest |
| | |form it involves things working in harmony, side by side, while in its more |
| | |complicated forms, it can involve something as complex as the inner workings |
| | |of a human being or even the social patterns of a nation. It is the |
| | |alternative to working separately in competition. Cooperation can also be |
| | |accomplished by computers, which can handle shared resources simultaneously, |
| | |while sharing processor time. |
| | | |
| | |Humans, like all animals, form cooperative groups to compete for limited |
| | |resources. All life is ultimately competitive, because the natural tendency |
| | |of any population is to explode, although it is kept in check by the limited |
| | |food supply (and other factors). Because there are more animals than food, |
| | |animals must compete to survive. In situations where the food supply is |
| | |somehow sufficient, deadly competition falls. Liberals therefore advocate the|
| | |creation of a sustainable economy, where the population is kept constant |
| | |(through birth control) and resources are used no faster than they can be |
| | |replaced. The result will be a more cooperative and civil society. |
| | | |
| |3A-14 |If you use an internet search engine and enter in the search box “smart |
| |Narrator: |shopper,” you will see many, many websites emerging, which reflects that our |
| |In modern society, many of us believe that our |way of life in the industrialized world is oriented toward making us, or |
| |job as “smart shoppers’ is to get the highest |reducing us, into “smart shoppers.” |
| |level of comfort and convenience at the lowest | |
| |possible price. We assume that when we buy | |
| |something, the price we pay reflects the full | |
| |cost of making it. According to Annie Leonard | |
| |in the Story of Stuff, maybe not. | |
| |3A-15 |Think of the things that you have purchase in the past that cost under $10 |
| |Annie Leonard: |and were made overseas… often by hand. What would happen if we paid the true|
| |I was walking to work and I wanted to listen to|cost of things? |
| |the news, so I found this cute little green |Here are some links with information about sweatshops: |
| |radio for 4 dollars and 99 cents. I was | |
| |standing there in line to buy this thing, and I| |
| |was thinking how $4.99 could possibly capture | |
| |the costs of making this radio and getting it | |
| |to my hands. The metal was probably mined in | |
| |South Africa; the petroleum was probably | |
| |drilled in Iraq; the plastics were probably | |
| |produced in China; and maybe the whole thing | |
| |was assembled in Mexico. $4.99 wouldn’t even | |
| |pay the rent for the shelf space it occupied | |
| |until I came along, let alone part of the staff| |
| |guy’s salary that helped me pick it out, or the| |
| |multiple ocean cruises and truck rides pieces | |
| |of this radio went on. That’s how I realized, I| |
| |didn’t pay for the radio… | |
| |3A-16 |To learn more about the importance we place on the value on money in our |
| |Lynne Twist: |lives, visit: |
| |We have a lot of unexamined assumption around | |
| |money. One of them is that people have equated | |
| |their own value with money... | |
| |3A-17 |Julia Butterfly Hill is an activist who, in 1997, climbed up an ancient |
| |Julia Butterfly Hill |Redwood to save it from being felled. She stayed in the tree for over two |
| | |years before the timber company agreed not to cut it down (nor any of the |
| | |trees immediately surrounding it). |
| | |Julia helped found the Circle of Life Foundation (an offshoot of the Earth |
| | |Island Institute) to promote the sustainability, restoration, and |
| | |preservation of life. As a writer and poet, Julia reflects on what it will |
| | |take to make sustainability mainstream. Julia has been the recipient of many |
| | |honors and awards, and is a frequent speaker for environmental conferences |
| | |around the world. She is also a policy board member of Organic Consumers |
| | |Association and an activist leader for Earth First! |
| | |See: ; |
| |3A-18 |For a visual interpretation of paper consumption (as well as visual |
| |Julia Butterfly Hill: |representation of the consumption of other commodities such as plastic and |
| |When you say you’re going to throw something |cell phones) , see the Running the Numbers exhibit by artist Chris Jordan at |
| |away, where’s “away”? There’s no such thing. |his website: |
| |And where “away” actually is, is social justice| |
| |issues and environmental justice issues. Every| |
| |plastic bag, plastic cup, plastic to-go | |
| |container -- that is the petroleum complex in | |
| |Africa, Ecuador, Colombia, Alaska, you name it.| |
| |Every paper bag, paper plate, paper napkin -- | |
| |that is a forest. Everything that is called | |
| |waste or disposable is the ways in which we are| |
| |saying that it is acceptable to throw our | |
| |planet and its people away…Disposables are one | |
| |of the huge magnifiers of how we've lost our | |
| |connection to the sacred. | |
| |3A-19 |For a visual interpretation of consumption, see the Running the Numbers |
| |Every 30 seconds, the US throws “away” 106,000 |exhibit by artist Chris Jordan at his website: |
| |aluminum cans | |
| |3A-20 |For a visual interpretation of consumption see the Running the Numbers |
| |Every day, the US throws “away” 426,000 cell |exhibit by artist Chris Jordan at his website: |
| |phones | |
| |3A-21 |For a visual interpretation of consumption see the Running the Numbers |
| |Every hour, the US throws “away” 1.14 million |exhibit by artist Chris Jordan at his website: |
| |paper bags | |
| |3A-22 |For a visual interpretation of the human consumption of plastic, see the |
| |Every 5 minutes, the US throws “away” 2 million|Running the Numbers exhibit by artist Chris Jordan at his website: |
| |plastic bottles | |
| |3A-23 |For a visual interpretation of consumption see Running the Numbers exhibit by|
| |Every 15 minutes, the US throws “away” 410,000 |artist Chris Jordan at his website: |
| |coffee cups | |
| |3A-24 |The throw-away society is a human society strongly influenced by consumerism.|
| |Julia Butterfly Hill: |The term describes a critical view of over-consumption and excessive |
| |We just take it for granted that we are just |production of short-lived or disposable items. |
| |going to go to the coffee shop and get coffee | |
| |that came from an exploited community where a | |
| |forest was destroyed for a monoculture, put it | |
| |in a paper cup that used to be a forest, put a | |
| |plastic lid on top of it that used to be an | |
| |indigenous | |
| | |
| |community somewhere in a beautiful area, drink | |
| |it and then throw it away where it goes back | |
| |and pollutes a nature community or a human | |
| |community at the end. | |
| |I am so fiercely passionate about it, because I| |
| |know in my heart that as long we are trashing | |
| |the planet and trashing each other, a healthy | |
| |and a holistic, and a healed world is not | |
| |possible. We cannot have peace on the Earth | |
| |unless we also have peace with the Earth. | |
| |3A-25 |Children in prison… |
| |Van Jones: |American prisons are home to 73 inmates locked up for life for crimes they |
| |See, we don’t just have unexamined assumptions |committed when they were 13 or 14. Bump that age limit up three years and we |
| |about how we relate to the planet. We have |have 2,225 prisoners locked up for the rest of their lives for crimes they |
| |underlying assumptions that we haven’t examined|committed when they were 17 or younger. |
| |about how we relate to each other. We have a | |
| |society that believes that we have throwaway |According to the UN, more than 1 million children worldwide are living in |
| |resources, throwaway species, and throwaway |detention as a result of being in a position of conflict with the law, |
| |people. |without access to a fair judicial process or legal representation. |
| |The same mindset that says I can ball up this | |
| |can and throw it away, the same mindset that |Children in poverty… |
| |says I can ball up this child and throw that |The organization CARE estimates that ‘Of the 57 million people worldwide who |
| |child into a prison forever for a mistake that |died last year, 10.5 million of them were children less than five years old. |
| |that child made, similar to a mistake my child |The majority of these children — some 98 percent — were in developing |
| |might be making with drugs or whatever -- |nations. |
| |that’s the core mindset. | |
| | |Child in labor/slavery… |
| | | |
| | |Image of child laborers: |
| | | |
| | |Traditional Lakota spiritual beliefs tell us that when a child experiences |
| | |trauma his or her spirit is hurt. A first step toward healing is nagi kicopi,|
| | |or "calling the spirit back". What we find is that the problem of the child, |
| | |whatever it is-drugs, alcohol, rebelliousness, violence or suicidal |
| | |tendencies –does not happen in isolation. Rather it is an individual |
| | |reflection of the larger pain of the family and the community. |
| | |(Ethleen Iron Cloud Two Dogs) |
| | | |
| | |On traditional medicine: |
| | |
| | |76_pf.html |
| |3A-26 |Separating from our illusion is described here: |
| |Narrator: | |
| |The dream of the modern world is constructed |For more information on assumptions or paradigms from an indigenous |
| |almost entirely out of assumptions that have |viewpoint, see: |
| |simply been accepted for generations. |When we begin to look, we find that we are swimming in unexamined |
| |Questioning these assumptions is a powerful way|assumptions. By beginning to identify them, we at least have a chance of |
| |to begin to awaken from our collective trance. |separating ourselves from them and consciously making different choices. An |
| | |example of one of our unexamined assumption is that we must have economic |
| | |growth. |
| | |One of the most prevalent assumptions in our society is that a healthy |
| | |economy is a growing economy. Right? We must have growth! The economy depends|
| | |on consumers consuming. This unexamined assumption makes us into consumers, |
| | |not citizens! You may remember a time when people used to be referred to as |
| | |‘citizens,’ when we were talked to and related to as citizens, as people who |
| | |actually had some responsibility for generating the well-being of the common |
| | |good or caring for it. We’re now not that anymore. Now our primary label is |
| | |consumers. |
| | | |
| | |This idea is also discussed in Lynne Twist’s book, The Soul of Money: |
| | |Transforming your Relationship with Money and Life (W.W. Norton, 2003). |
| | |Economic growth is the increase in value of the goods and services produced |
| | |by an economy, and is most commonly measured as a percentage change in GDP. |
| | |GNP is a measure of the total value of final goods and services produced in a|
| | |year by a country's nationals (including profits from capital held abroad). |
| | |Another measure is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The two terms GDP and |
| | |GNP are almost identical.
| | |: |
| | |As the Wikipedia points out, GDP per capita is often used as an indicator of |
| | |how well a country is doing economically, with the implication that this is |
| | |related to people’s standard of living. |
| | | |
| | |However, it is not, strictly speaking, a measure of standard of living. For |
| | |instance, in an extreme example, a country which exported 100 per cent of its|
| | |production would still have a high GDP, but a very poor standard of living. |
| | |Efforts are underway to institutionalize more meaningful measures of |
| | |well-being based on criticisms. Some say that the relentless pursuit of GDP |
| | |growth has been the defining characteristic of Western politics over the last|
| | |50 years. The report exposes the comfortable assumption that economic growth |
| | |is a good indicator of human progress and well-being as a myth. Economic |
| | |growth is leading to unacceptable environmental risks, failing to guarantee |
| | |social progress and doesn’t make us any happier. |
| | |You can view the report Chasing Progress: Beyond measuring economic growth, |
| | |The power of Well-being at: |
| | | |
| |3A-27 | |
| |Narrator: | |
| |The dream of the modern world is constructed | |
| |almost entirely out of assumptions that have | |
| |simply been accepted for generations. | |
| |Questioning these assumptions is a powerful way| |
| |to begin to awaken from our collective trance. | |
V-2 Module 3: How Did We Get Here? Another Worldview
| |Key Points: |Source/Reference: |
| |3B-1 |The myth of the industrialized world is that we are separate. Another way of |
| |Narrator: |being able to see our own trance or worldview is to recognize that there are |
| |Of all the countless assumptions that make up |people on this planet who aren’t doing the things we’re doing, who aren’t |
| |our modern industrialized world, there is one |caught in this dream of progress; people who have a very different worldview.|
| |that is primary and all-encompassing. The |These are people of the Condor, intact indigenous cultures, many of whom, |
| |assumption that we are separate – from every |incidentally, have been living sustainably, in sacred reciprocity with (the) |
| |one and every thing. This assumption shapes |Earth for thousands of years. |
| |virtually all of our perceptions and actions. | |
| | |For more on this idea, see this excerpt from Earthdance: Living Systems in |
| | |Evolution (1999) by Elizabeth Sahtouris at: |
| | | |
| | |For more information, see: |
| | | |
| | |
| | |ledge.html |
| | | |
| |3B-2 |Jakada Imani is the Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human |
| |Jakada Imani |Rights. Previously, he was a lead strategist on some of the Ella Baker |
| | |Center’s most high profile campaigns including Books Not Bars, the ongoing |
| | |campaign to replace California’s abusive youth prisons with effective |
| | |rehabilitation programs. Before joining Ella Baker Center, Mr. Imani was a |
| | |Constituent Liaison for Oakland City Councilwoman Nancy Nadel. He helped |
| | |launch or lead a number of important San Francisco Bay Area organizations. |
| |3B-3 |A Mayan elder had this to say: “We hold this reality together. We are the |
| |Jakada Imani: |keepers of the Earth. When we truly honor ourselves and our awesome creative |
| |There is a fundamental misconception that we |power we will again live in a sacred way where we honor all life. When we |
| |are separate and more than one. And I think |honor all live the essence/spirit of all living things will manifest.” |
| |we're learning that that's not true. If there's|(Hunbatz Men) |
| |only one, whatever I do to you I do to me, if | |
| |there's only one, whatever I do to the air I do| |
| |to me. If there's only one, whatever I do in | |
| |society is what I'm actually doing to myself, | |
| |doing to my family, doing to my children. | |
| |3B-4 |Sharing Indigenous Wisdom website: |
| |Narrator: | |
| |Spiritual traditions have long taught that | |
| |separation is an illusion. Buddhist teacher | |
| |Thich Nhat Hanh puts it this way. | |
| |3B-5 |Thich Nhat Hanh is an expatriate Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, |
| |Thich Nhat Hanh |author, poet and peace activist. In the early 1960s, he founded the School of|
| | |Youth for Social Services (SYSS) in Saigon, a grassroots relief organization |
| | |that rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools and medical centers, and |
| | |resettled families left homeless during the Vietnam War. He traveled to the |
| | |U.S. a number of times to study at Princeton University, and later lecture at|
| | |Cornell University and teach at Columbia University. His main goal of those |
| | |travels, however, was to urge the U.S. government to withdraw from Vietnam. |
| | |He urged Martin Luther King, Jr. to oppose the Vietnam War publicly, and |
| | |spoke with many people and groups about peace. In a January 25, 1967 letter |
| | |to the Nobel Institute in Norway, King nominated him for the Nobel Peace |
| | |Prize. Nhat Hanh led the Buddhist delegation to the Paris Peace Talks. |
| | | |
| |3B-6 |Need for social contact: George Gallup said that Americans are the loneliest|
| |Thich Nhat Hanh: |people on the planet, despite their busy lives and their constant activity |
| |We have the word to be, but what I propose is |and interaction. We long for deeper community, something outside of |
| |that a word to inter-be. Because it is not |commerce. In their book, Creating Community: Five Keys to Building a Small |
| |possible to be alone, by yourself. You need |Group Culture, Andy Stanley and Bill Willits assert that People Need |
| |other people in order to be. You need other |Community. It is medically proven that social isolation has bad effects on |
| |beings in order to be. Not only (do) you need |health and well-being: |
| |father, mother, but also uncle, … brother, | |
| |sister, society, but you also need sunshine, |Indigenous values have always reflected the importance of community: |
| |river, air, trees, birds, elephants, and so on.| |
| |So it is impossible to be yourself, alone. You | |
| |have to inter-be with everyone and everything | |
| |else, and therefore to be means to inert-be. | |
| |3B-7 |One form of the mechanistic view is Universal Mechanism, which holds that the|
| |Narrator: |universe is best understood as a completely mechanical system--that is, a |
| |Over the centuries, the story that’s been |system composed entirely of matter in motion under a complete and regular |
| |communicated in the modern world, consciously |system of laws of nature. |
| |or unconsciously, has been that the world |Somewhat similar to the Mechanistic view is the Clockwork Universe Theory |
| |operates like a huge machine made up of |established by Isaac Newton. A "clockwork universe" can be thought of as |
| |separate parts like a big clock. For the past |being a clock wound up by God and ticking along, as a perfect machine, with |
| |400 years, the scientific tradition has been |its gears governed by the laws of physics |
| |trying to take the clock apart and figure out | |
| |how it works so we can master it and use it for|. |
| |our own purposes. | |
| |3B-8 |Carl Anthony, PhD. is a Ford Foundation Senior Fellow and Visiting Scholar at|
| |Carl Anthony |the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley. Before joining the Ford |
| | |Foundation, he was Founder and Executive Director of the Urban Habitat |
| | |Program. He served as President of Earth Island Institution and co-founded |
| | |and published the Race, Poverty and the Environment Journal, the only |
| | |environmental justice periodical in the United States. Dr. Anthony is |
| | |co-founder with Margaret Paloma Pavel, of the Earth House Leadership Center. |
| | |He is writing a book on the Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of |
| | |Race. |
| |3B-9 |The cosmological world-views reflect a belief that nature is controlled by |
| |Carl Anthony: |something which is bigger than and extends beyond the limits of the universe |
| |A mechanistic view meant that instead of seeing|- God or the gods. The mechanistic world-views have no need for such |
| |the interconnection between things, there was a|supernatural control; indeed, they deliberately exclude it. They view the |
| |way of analyzing what people were coming into |natural world like a machine. These world-views can be traced back to the |
| |contact with and taking it apart. So what |Renaissance in Europe, through the work of early scientists such as Bacon, |
| |evolved was kind of a fragmented view of the |Galileo and Newton. The Industrial Revolution helped to promote them further.|
| |natural world. And we became hypnotized, |Modern ideas about technocracy and scientism closely reflect these |
| |really, with the power that came out of this |mechanistic views about the world and how it functions. (Earth Care) |
| |technology, and we lost our connection to each | |
| |other, we lost our connection to the mystery of| |
| |the universe. | |
| |3B-10 |As an Achuar indigenous leader said, because they live here, they preserve |
| |Narrator: |the forest, they love the forest—so that it can be sustained and give life to|
| |Even though the modern worldview is dominant on|nature for all living beings. They believe that life is under the ground, on|
| |Earth, it’s important to recognize that it’s |the surface of earth, and in the atmosphere. These three things are |
| |not the only worldview. Traditional indigenous |interrelated so that the world can exist. Therefore, it’s not possible to |
| |cultures, for example, are no so focused on |say, ‘I'll take the oil and ignore the forest.’ Everything is connected to |
| |progress; rather, they concern themselves with |everything else in this world. The territory of the Achuar is sacred to them |
| |the health and durability of their community |as they explain on this website: |
| |and see the interconnection of all things. | |
| |3B-11 |Tom Goldtooth is Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network and |
| |Tom Goldtooth |oversees its policy work around environmental protection, environmental |
| | |justice, climate justice, energy, toxics, water, globalization and trade, and|
| | |sustainable development. |
| |3B-12 |Tom speaks about the indigenous way in this article, which appeared in Yes! |
| |Tom Goldtooth: |Magazine: |
| |We use another terminology called Mitakuye | |
| |Oyasin, which is “All My Relations”. We try to| |
| |recognize that we are related to everything as | |
| |indigenous people… Mitakuye Oyasin is also, | |
| |defines our relationship to the animals, to the| |
| |fish, to the plants, to the trees, to the | |
| |birds, to the even the microorganisms, OK. So | |
| |that we are all related. | |
| |3B-13 |Jeanette Armstrong is Okanagan author and Executive Director of the En’owkin |
| |Jeannette Armstrong |Centre from Okanagan in British Columbia, Canada. She is the first Native |
| | |woman novelist from Canada. While growing up on the Penticton Indian Reserve,|
| | |Armstrong received a traditional education from Okanagan Elders and her |
| | |family. As an indigenous civil rights activist, Armstrong fights for the |
| | |right of Native people to keep land that legally belongs to them. To learn |
| | |more about Jeanette, see: |
| | | |
| |3B-14 |An example of the indigenous point of view is explained in this article from |
| |Jeannette Armstrong: |Yes Magazine by Jeanette Armstrong: |
| |The foundational understanding from my point of| |
| |view, or an indigenous point of view, is that | |
| |you are a part of that land in a very | |
| |interdependent way. And that that | |
| |interdependence arose with thousands of years | |
| |of intelligence in terms of being a part of | |
| |that land. You are part of that land. It’s | |
| |your body – it’s you. And you can't do things| |
| |to the land that in the end comes back and | |
| |destroys you. | |
| |3B-15 |Bob Randall is part of the Stolen Generations of Australia and former |
| |Bob Randall |Indigenous Person of the Year. He is credited with bringing to light the |
| | |issue of forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families, in 1970. |
| | |His song, "My Brown Skin Baby They Take Him Away," written at the time, is |
| | |described as an "anthem" for the Stolen Generations. |
| | | |
| |3B-16 |Non aboriginal people are rediscovering their intent to be caretakers of the |
| |Bob Randall: |Earth, for example, see: |
| |We’re only caretakers for our time on this | |
| |Earth, for our children’s children, who’s gone | |
| |come after us. | |
| |3B-17 |Kiritapu Allan is an indigenous activist from Aotearoa/New Zealand who has |
| |Kiritapu Allan |been engaged with the Native Movement. She is Co–Director of the |
| | |Non-Governmental Organization, Conscious Collaborations. |
| | | |
| |3B-18 |Western society has gone through many traumatic episodes over the past five |
| |Kiritapu Allan: |centuries to separate secular knowledge from spiritual knowledge. This is |
| |I’m a young indigenous woman, but I am born in |generally not the case for indigenous and local communities. Their knowledge |
| |a colonized world. My worldview begins with an |is often embedded in a cosmology, and the distinction between "intangible" |
| |intrinsic understanding of what is balance. |knowledge and physical things is often blurred. Indigenous peoples often say |
| |If I step on or take away or do something to |that their knowledge is holistic, and cannot be separated from our lands and |
| |upset the balance, then we go through a process|resources. |
| |of restoring it. | |
| |3B-19 |Cormac Cullinan is a senior environmental lawyer and adviser on |
| |Cormac Cullinan |institutional, policy and regulatory reform in the fields of environment and |
| | |natural resource management. His work in pioneering a legal philosophy that |
| | |restores an ecological perspective to governance systems (Earth |
| | |jurisprudence) is internationally recognized and in 2008 led to his inclusion|
| | |in “Planet Savers: 301 Extraordinary Environmentalists”. |
| | | |
| |3B-20 |This point of view about the importance of the role to be played by |
| |Cormac Cullinan: |indigenous people at this moment in time is echoed in the following article: |
| |I think that the indigenous peoples of the | |
| |world have a particularly important role to | |
| |play at this moment in history, this moment in | |
| |the life of Pachamama, of the Earth. We need | |
| |them to come forward and explain how they see | |
| |things, because these are things which have | |
| |been forgotten. | |
| |3B-21 |Another indigenous leader echoes this stand. In Saving the Planet with |
| |Tom Goldtooth: |Indigenous Knowledge, what the world needs today is a good dose of Indigenous|
| |Somehow, industrialized society has not caught |realism, says Native American scholar Daniel Wildcat in this thoughtful, |
| |up with itself to really appreciate and respect|forward-looking treatise. The Native response to the environmental crisis |
| |what indigenous peoples have to offer, but it’s|facing our planet, Red Alert! seeks to debunk the modern myths that humankind|
| |something that’s very important, I think, |is the center of creation and that it exerts control over the natural world. |
| |that’s going to save the planet. | |
| |3B-22 |As an example, the contribution of indigenous peoples' knowledge to the |
| |Narrator: |development of pharmaceuticals and herbal remedies is being recognized in the|
| |By combining the technological brilliance of |industrialized world. |
| |the industrialized world with the |ocs.mq.edu.au/~cjone005/Conference%20Report.doc |
| |Earth-honoring spirit of indigenous cultures, | |
| |we have the opportunity now to merge the genius| |
| |of the human mind with the wisdom of the human | |
| |heart. | |
| |3B-23 |As an example, in Reinventing the Sacred, the renowned biologist and |
| |Bill Twist: |complexity theorist Stuart A. Kauffman says that one view of God is that God |
| |And now that we are starting to wake up to how |is our chosen name for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, |
| |the world is really organized, that’s a real |biosphere, and human cultures. Because of this ceaseless creativity, we |
| |moment of hope for us. We’re not flawed, evil |typically do not and cannot know what will happen. We live our lives forward,|
| |people; we’re misinformed and, informed |as Kierkegaard said. We live as if we knew, as Nietzsche said. We live our |
| |properly, we can count on ourselves. |lives forward into mystery, and do so with faith and courage, for that is the|
| | |mandate of life itself. But the fact that we must live our lives forward into|
| | |a ceaseless creativity that we cannot fully understand means that reason |
| | |alone is an insufficient guide to living our lives. Reason, the center of the|
| | |Enlightenment, is but one of the evolved, fully human means we use to live |
| | |our lives. Reason itself has finally led us to see the inadequacy of reason. |
| | |We must therefore reunite our full humanity. We must see ourselves whole, |
| | |living in a creative world we can never fully know. (Think About This: Living|
| | |Forward, 6.26.08, at ) |
| | | |
| |3B-24 | |
| |Narrator: | |
| |We are mistaken -- not flawed! This is good | |
| |news, because there’s not much hope for an | |
| |inherently flawed species. But there is hope | |
| |for one that has recognized – and is waking up | |
| |from – a trance. That opens up some new | |
| |possibilities for the future. | |
| |Eco-Spot: Island Home |A non-profit Earth Communication Office (ECO) created the 60-second video |
| |Narrator: |spots we have been showing today. They would love to get them distributed as |
| |What if you lived in a home on an island you |much as possible, in movie theaters, in any and all settings. There is a CD |
| |could not leave – with limited amounts of food |with about 20 of the spots on it available at their website |
| |and safe drinking water? It would be very |Earth Communications is working to change the way that media is used, |
| |important to use only what you need. Well it |refocusing it from a tool for selling things, to a tool to help re-imagine a |
| |doesn’t matter where your home is because we |sustainable future. See: |
| |all live on an island we can’t leave. | |
V-2 Module 4: The Universe Story
| |Key Points: |Source/Reference: |
| |4-1 |Stories are critical to culture. Every culture has its stories. Stories |
| |Narrator: |tell us who we are and teach us our cultural worldview. |
| |One way to describe our collective worldview |In The Power of Story in Social Movements, Marshall Ganz analyzes the link |
| |and the unexamined assumptions that comprise it|between story telling and the development of agency, reformulation of |
| |would be to call it our story. |identity, the accessing of motivational resources to form a leadership group,|
| |Anthropologists tell us that a culture’s story |found a new organization and launch a new social movement. |
| |about how the Universe came to be created and |“Social movements are not merely reconfigured networks and redeployed |
| |how the human community came to be a part of |resources. They are new stories of whom their participants hope to become.” |
| |the Universe is really the background for |
| |everything else the culture believes—their |ORY.pdf |
| |values, ethics, laws, institutions. Everything.| |
| |A new cultural story is emerging at this time | |
| |in history, and it’s a story that says we are | |
| |not separate, but rather we are profoundly | |
| |connected at both the macro and micro | |
| |level. Our children are being raised within | |
| |this new “operating system” already, and it’s | |
| |beginning to shape the consciousness on our | |
| |planet. | |
| |4-2 |The book entitled The Universe Story by cosmologists Thomas Berry and Brian |
| |Narrator: |Swimme inspired the film entitled The Awakening Universe. |
| |One way of telling this story comes from | |
| |cultural historian Thomas Berry and |In this book, cosmologists Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry fashion a new |
| |mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme who wrote|cosmology from the "Primordial Flaring Forth" at the beginning of time |
| |a book called The Universe Story. Here is an |through the successive stages of the universe culminating with the emergence |
| |excerpt from a film by Neal Rogin about this |of consciousness. |
| |new way of seeing the world. |In the last eighty years or so, the vast majority of the scientific community|
| | |has gradually come to espouse a single story of how the Universe and all |
| | |living things were created. |
| | |What is the new cosmology? Brian Swimme writes that, we live in a moment of |
| | |breakdown and creativity similar to the moment in 1543 when Copernicus |
| | |announced to a startled Europe that the Earth was not stationary, but was |
| | |sailing rapidly through space as it spun around the Sun. |
| | |This was difficult news to take in all at once, he says, but over time the |
| | |Europeans reinvented their entire civilization in light of this strange new |
| | |fact about the Universe. The fundamental institutions of the medieval world, |
| | |including the monarchies, the church, the feudal economic system, and the |
| | |medieval sense of self, melted away as a radically different civilization was|
| | |constructed. Today we face a similar challenge. |
| | |The cosmological discovery that shatters nearly everything upon which the |
| | |modern age was built is the discovery that the Universe came into existence |
| | |13.7 billion years ago and is so biased toward complexification that life and|
| | |intelligence are now seen to be a nearly inevitable construction of |
| | |evolutionary dynamics…As a consequence, the major institutions of the modern |
| | |period, including that of agriculture and religion and education and |
| | |economics, need to be re-imagined within an intelligent, self-organizing, |
| | |living Universe, so that instead of degrading the Earth's life systems, |
| | |humanity might learn to join the enveloping community of living beings in a |
| | |mutually enhancing manner. This great work will surely draw upon the talents |
| | |and energies of many millions of humans from every culture of our planet and |
| | |throughout the rest of the 21st century. |
| | | |
| | |Wikipedia defines cosmology as the study of the Universe in its totality, and|
| | |by extension, humanity's place in it. |
| | |See also definition on NASA website: |
| | | |
| | |Here is a website for the current PBS series, Faith and Reason: |
| | | |
| |4-3 |Author Michael Colebrook describes two key elements in Thomas Berry’s |
| |Thomas Berry: |thinking. Firstly, the primary status of the universe. The universe is, ‘the |
| |We will be alienated from the universe until we|only self-referential reality in the phenomenal world. It is the only text |
| |have a story, an adequate story of the universe|without context. Everything else has to be seen in the context of the |
| |that tells the story of the human as well as |universe’. The second element is the significance of story, and in particular|
| |the story of everything else, because it is |the universe as story. ‘The universe story is the quintessence of reality. We|
| |part of one single process that has been going |perceive the story. We put it in our language, the birds put it in theirs, |
| |through a sequence of transformative episodes. |and the trees put it in theirs. We can read the story of the universe in the |
| | |trees. Everything tells the story of the universe. The winds tell the story, |
| | |literally, not just imaginatively. The story has its imprint everywhere, and |
| | |that is why it is so important to know the story. If you do not know the |
| | |story, in a sense you do not know yourself; you do not know anything. |
| | | |
| | |Berry connected the primal awakening to an awesome universe permeated with |
| | |numinous energy to the primordial experience of human consciousness, and |
| | |considers this era to be the archetypical period of human history. Although |
| | |the modern techno-progress myth presides over Eurowestern human |
| | |consciousness, there are fragments of the primal sensitivities that still |
| | |reside in the deeper realms of the unconscious. It is this recovery or |
| | |reintegration of the primal numinous experiences of the universe, genetically|
| | |encoded within the human psyche, which needs to be retrieved into |
| | |consciousness. This can be accomplished best through myth, which connects the|
| | |paradigmatic structure of the depth of the human psyche to the human context |
| | |of cultural narrative. Berry wrote that the mythic dimension of the |
| | |ecological age is neither romanticism nor an idealism. It is rather a depth |
| | |insight into the structure and functioning of the entire earth process. … The|
| | |revelatory aspect of the ecological age finds expression in the ecological |
| | |archetype which finds its most effective expression in the great story of the|
| | |universe. … These archetypical symbols are the main instruments for the |
| | |evocation of the energies needed for our future renewal of the earth. |
| | |Twelve Principles for Understanding the Universe and the Role of the Human in|
| | |the Universe Process (Thomas Berry): |
| | | |
| |4-4 |Miriam MacGillis is a Dominican Sister who lives and works at Genesis Farm, a|
| |Miriam MacGillis |140-acre community farm that practices biodynamic agriculture. Miriam |
| | |coordinates programs exploring the work of philosopher and cosmologist Thomas|
| | |Berry, including a graduate and undergraduate Earth Literacy program. In her |
| | |international lectures she seeks to convey that a new understanding of |
| | |cosmology is essential for a response to the present ecological crisis and |
| | |for shaping our planet's future. |
| |4-5 |Her work at Genesis Farm is rooted in a belief that the Universe, Earth, and |
| |Miriam MacGillis: |all reality are permeated by the presence and power of that ultimate Holy |
| |This idea of an emergent universe is very, very|Mystery. A Sacred Mystery that has been so deeply and richly expressed, and |
| |new. There is no culture, no tradition, no |is the common thread, in the world's spiritual traditions. |
| |sage, no prophet that could know that the way | |
| |our generation is blessed to know it. | |
| |4-6 |Mary Evelyn Tucker is a Senior Lecturer and Senior Scholar at Yale University|
| |Mary Evelyn Tucker |where she has appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental |
| | |Studies as well as the Divinity School and the Department of Religious |
| | |Studies. She is a co-founder and co-director with John Grim of the Forum on |
| | |Religion and Ecology. Together they organized a series of ten conferences on |
| | |World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at|
| | |Harvard Divinity School. They is a series of ten volumes from the conferences|
| | |distributed by Harvard University Press. |
| | | |
| |4-7 |Mary Evelyn Tucker has authored many books on religion and ecology including,|
| |Mary Evelyn Tucker: |Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase. She is the co-editor |
| |When we begin to realize this tremendous sense |of books on ecological views of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism. She has|
| |of time that’s orienting us and space that’s |published the volume Confucian Spirituality co-edited with Tu Weiming, and |
| |grounding us, we are energized in a new way to |her newest book, The Record of Great Doubts: The Philosophy of Ch'i, is |
| |take responsibility for the planet and its |forthcoming. |
| |ecosystems. In other words, our response to the| |
| |magnificence of cosmology and this story is a | |
| |responsibility to its continuity.” | |
| |4-8 |In a complementary perspective, the Earth is understood as emerging from an |
| |Brian Swimme: |intelligent design.
“Intelligent design” refers to a scientific research |
| |The Universe Story shows how profoundly related|program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars|
| |we are… It shows that we are involved with each|who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds|
| |other and have been for a long time. It is not |that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained|
| |the case that the Earth was assembled and then |by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.|
| |we were added to the Earth, and it was there |Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is|
| |for our purposes. Rather, we came out of the |able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of |
| |Earth. |chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such |
| | |research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when |
| | |intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those|
| | |same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from |
| | |intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to |
| | |detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and |
| | |specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical |
| | |architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological|
| | |diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately |
| | |530 million years ago. This scientific model needs to be distinguished from |
| | |creationism. |
| | | |
| |4-9 |Matthew Fox is an American Episcopal priest and theologian. He is an exponent|
| |Matthew Fox |of Creation Spirituality, a movement grounded in the mystical philosophies of|
| | |medieval visionaries Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart and|
| | |Nicholas of Cusa. His books have sold millions of copies and by the mid 1990s|
| | |had a huge and diverse following. |
| | |(priest) |
| |4-10 | |
| |Matthew Fox: | |
| |Now the recovery of cosmology brings back a | |
| |sense of community, or it ought to, to | |
| |rediscover that we are kin with all other | |
| |beings. And if you run the film of the universe| |
| |backward 14 billion years, you realize we all | |
| |descend from an original pin prick smaller than| |
| |a zygote. It’s really one being here. We’re all| |
| |relatives. | |
| |4-11 |The Big Bang Theory is an effort to explain what happened at the very |
| |Narrator: |beginning of our universe. Discoveries in astronomy and physics have shown |
| |Imagine nothing. No space. Not darkness. Not |beyond a reasonable doubt that our universe did in fact have a beginning. |
| |even a vast emptiness. But nothing. Now imagine|Prior to that moment there was nothing; during and after that moment there |
| |…everything! In a stupendous explosion of |was something: our universe. The big bang theory is an effort to explain what|
| |light, heat and energy, radiating out in every |happened during and after that moment. |
| |direction, the Universe erupted into existence | |
| |13.7 billion years ago. | |
| |4-12 |To read more about Drew’s point of view on this point, visit: |
| |Drew Dellinger: | |
| |We can see that everything that ever was, is or| |
| |will be, was compressed into a space smaller | |
| |than a seed, tinier than a tear, more minuscule| |
| |than a molecule. All space, all time, and the | |
| |potential for everything that would ever exist | |
| |started as a single point. So in a very real | |
| |sense science has discovered what indigenous | |
| |people have known all along: we are all one; we| |
| |are all connected; we all come from the very | |
| |same source. | |
| |4-13 |This refers to the Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang Theory is an effort to |
| |Narrator: |explain what happened at the very beginning of our universe. Discoveries in |
| |This massive fireball continued expanding, |astronomy and physics have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that our universe |
| |eventually cooling enough for the very first |did in fact have a beginning. Prior to that moment there was nothing; during |
| |atoms to form. |and after that moment there was something: our universe. The big bang theory |
| | |is an effort to explain what happened during and after that moment. |
| | | |
| |4-14 |For similar thoughts about the Earth as an amazing and designed creation, see|
| |Brian Swimme: |the book and movie entitled The Privileged Planet by Guillermo Gonzalez and |
| |If the expansion has just been a little bit |Jay W. Richards. |
| |slower, the universe would have collapsed into | |
| |an enormous black hole. Or if the expansion had| |
| |just been a little bit faster the universe | |
| |would have expanded just too fast for the | |
| |galaxies to form and so we’d have simply dust. | |
| |If you altered the expansion just 1 millionth | |
| |of 1% the entire universe would collapse. So | |
| |what it suggests is that there is a profound | |
| |wisdom at work in the universe. | |
| |4-15 |The Gaia hypothesis states that Earth herself, including its atmosphere, is |
| |Miriam MacGillis: |an organism. It’s author, James Lovelock defined Gaia as a complex entity |
| |Earth, as we see her now, has arrived at such a|involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality |
| |complexity, such a development, such a journey |constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical |
| |of that original fireball, that she is now |and chemical environment for life on this planet. |
| |alive in her own right. In other words, the | |
| |universe, in earth, has reached a complexity in| |
| |which universe awakens into life and is alive. | |
| |4-16 | |
| |Drew Dillinger: | |
| |Think about it. Everything we see around us has| |
| |developed from the boiling cauldron of the | |
| |early Earth, a sphere of lava that miraculously| |
| |gave rise to the sea and the atmosphere, and | |
| |then life in its infinite expressions. As Brian| |
| |Swimme says, the Earth was once molten rock and| |
| |now sings operas. So all creativity and all | |
| |consciousness arises, in some mysterious way, | |
| |from the depths of the Earth itself. | |
| |4-17 | |
| |Miriam MacGillis: | |
| |Why out of stardust has this come to be? Why | |
| |songbird? Why green? Why the lushness of palm | |
| |and the stability of cypress, and the grandeur | |
| |of the mountains? And why the oceans with their| |
| |billions of teeming life forms? We are part of | |
| |a journey so much more than we ever could even | |
| |imagine. | |
| |4-18 |What is the new cosmology? |
| |Brian Swimme: |In 1543 Copernicus announced to a startled Europe that the Earth was not |
| |As we move into this understanding, we have a |stationary, but was sailing rapidly through space as it spun around the Sun. |
| |new identity of ourselves as cosmological |This was difficult news to take in all at once, but over time the Europeans |
| |beings…. We are the universe in the form of a |reinvented their entire civilization in light of this strange new fact about |
| |human. And it is true of everyone. It’s an |the Universe. The fundamental institutions of the medieval world, including |
| |amazing new understanding of ourselves that is |the monarchies, the church, the feudal economic system, and the medieval |
| |so profoundly inclusive and everyone is part of|sense of self, melted away as a radically different civilization was |
| |this. Everything is part of this, and we |constructed. |
| |discover as well a profound kinship. That no |We live in a similar moment of breakdown and creativity. The cosmological |
| |matter what being we talk about on the planet, |discovery that shatters nearly everything upon which the modern age was built|
| |we are related. We are related in terms of |is the discovery that the Universe came into existence 13.7 billion years ago|
| |energy. We’re related in terms of genetics. |and is so biased toward complexification that life and intelligence are now |
| |We’re all in one way or another like a form of |seen to be a nearly inevitable construction of evolutionary dynamics. Our new|
| |kin and that just – It’s overwhelming. So it’s |challenge is to reinvent our civilization. The major institutions of the |
| |just now coming into human awareness. It’s |modern period, including that of agriculture and religion and education and |
| |going to take a lot of reflection to embody |economics, need to be re-imagined within an intelligent, self-organizing, |
| |this fully, but it is a massive change… in |living Universe, so that instead of degrading the Earth's life systems, |
| |human consciousness. |humanity might learn to join the enveloping community of living beings in a |
| | |mutually enhancing manner. This great work will surely draw upon the talents |
| | |and energies of many millions of humans from every culture of our planet and |
| | |throughout the rest of the 21st century (Brian Swimme), |
| | | |
| | |Another book entitled The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos: Humanity and the New |
| | |Story by Brian Swimme states that the really surprising thing is that the |
| | |news of the birthplace of the universe was always here. |
| |4-19 |For a description of the Milling exercise by Joanna Macy, you can visit: |
| |Joanna Macy’s “Milling” exercise |
| | |rcise+joanna+macy&source=bl&ots=Bztr_JdmiK&sig=dWnSvtwcIxkvGV_zzbRJH1kOilk&hl|
| | |=en&ei=5GwUS4iUEoi2swPDobmKBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CA8|
| | |Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false |
V-2 Module 5: What Is Possible for the Future?
History and The Emerging Dream
| |Key Points: |Source/Reference: |
| |5-1 |Howard Zinn, historian, wrote that there is a tendency to think that what we |
| |History |see in the present moment will continue. What leaps out from history is its |
| | |utter unpredictability. The quote is from The Optimism of Uncertainty by |
| | |Howard Zinn (2004.) |
| | |Howard Zinn is an American historian and political scientist who has been |
| | |active in the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in the United States. A |
| | |Professor Emeritus in the Political Science Department at Boston University, |
| | |he is the author of 20 books. The best known is the popular A People's |
| | |History of the United States. Read about him on Wikipedia at: |
| | | and |
| | | |
| |5-2 |Two more of Einstein’s quotes are applicable to creativity. Here he calls us|
| |Creativity/Imagination |to find new thinking to solve our problems. |
| | |We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we |
| | |created them. And this one extols the power of creativity. Imagination is |
| | |more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know |
| | |and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there |
| | |ever will be to know and understand. |
| | |In his book A New Reformation, Matthew Fox gives the 97 Theses, one of which |
| | |says that creativity is both humanity’s greatest gift and its most powerful |
| | |weapon for evil and so it ought to be both encouraged and steered to |
| | |humanity’s most God-like activity which all religions agree is: Compassion. |
| | |Another of Fox’s theses is that to honor the ancestors and celebrate the |
| | |communion of saints does not mean putting heroes on pedestals but rather |
| | |honoring them by living out lives of imagination, courage and compassion in |
| | |our own time, culture and historical moment as they did in theirs. |
| |5-3 |What is emerging, the new way of seeing the world is called the Great |
| |The emerging dream |Turning. (David Korten, The Great Turning, from Empire to Earth Community). |
| | |It has also been called the Great Emergence. This is a turning away from |
| | |what is unsustainable a turning toward what is sustainable. See this website|
| | |on The Great Turning: |
| | | |
| | |Joanna Macy has done extensive writing on this idea: |
| | | |
| | |In an article from Yes! Magazine, Joanna Macy talks about the three |
| | |dimensions of the Great Turning: |
| | | |
| | |Something is emerging. Some call it the Great Turning. Others call it the |
| | |Turning Tide, or the Great Emergence, or the Emergence of Earth Community. |
| | |However we name it, it’s being recognized widely that something is now coming|
| | |into existence, very powerfully. |
| | |Everett Rogers pioneering research on diffusion of innovations found that |
| | |when 5% of a population adopts an idea it’s embedded, when 20% adopt it it’s |
| | |unstoppable. |
| | |For more about Everett Rogers see Wikipedia: |
| | | |
| | |For more on this concept of the adoption of innovation see: |
| | |Rogers, Everett M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations, |
| | |From a more philosophical/scientific perspective, Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an |
| | |American intellectual who wrote extensively on the history of science and |
| | |developed several important notions in the philosophy of science. In The |
| | |Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn argued that science does not |
| | |progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, but undergoes periodic |
| | |revolutions, also called "paradigm shifts" (although he did not coin the |
| | |phrase), in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field |
| | |is abruptly transformed. |
| | | |
| | |Our dream or concepts about this world have changed through history. Four |
| | |hundred years ago Galileo tried to get the church fathers to look through a |
| | |telescope to see that the Earth was not the center of the universe, but they |
| | |refused. But not being willing to look through the telescope didn’t disprove |
| | |the existence of the planets. Outdated worldviews can be very entrenched and |
| | |quite difficult to replace. Galileo, often referred to as the father of |
| | |modern science was a philosopher, astronomer and physicist living in 16th and|
| | |17th century Italy. |
| | | |
| |5-4 |The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was the most famous voice for civil |
| |Martin Luther King, Jr. |rights in US history. Van Jones recommends the book Bearing The Cross by |
| | |Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by |
| | |David J. Garrow. Being educated on social justice issues and the history of |
| | |the struggle for social justice is a first step in creating a socially just |
| | |world. |
| |5-5 |Martin Luther King, Jr. said that the arc of the moral universe is long but |
| |Martin Luther King, Jr.: |it bends toward justice. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds|
| |Let us remember that there is a creative force |of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let |
| |in the universe, a power that is able to make a|us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull |
| |way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays|down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out |
| |into bright tomorrows. Let us realize that the |of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize|
| |arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends|the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice (Southern |
| |toward justice. |Christian Leadership Conference Presidential Address, 1967). |
| | | |
| | |. |
| | |
| | |Awake.html |
| |5-6 |The British leaving India nonviolently. |
| |Male voice: |India was regarded as the “Jewel of the British Empire” and a source of great|
| |There is a tendency to think that what we see |wealth to the colonial masters. The activities leading up to its |
| |in the present moment will continue. We forget |independence in 1947 and the role played by M.K. Gandhi. |
| |how often we have been astonished by the sudden| |
| |crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary |The Berlin wall coming down. |
| |changes in people’s thoughts, by unexpected |The Berlin wall was constructed in 1961 to separate East Berlin from the |
| |eruptions of rebellion against tyranny, by the |West. It was dismantled in 1989. From the Wikipedia, when a government |
| |quick collapse of systems of power that seemed |statement that crossing of the border would be permitted was broadcast on |
| |invincible. What leaps out of the history of |November 9, 1989, masses of East Germans approached and then crossed the |
| |the past hundred years is its utter |wall, and were joined by crowds of West Germans in a celebratory atmosphere. |
| |unpredictability. |The wall was subsequently destroyed by a euphoric public over a period of |
| | |several weeks, and its fall was the first step toward German reunification, |
| | |which was formally concluded on October 3, 1990. |
| | | |
| | |The fall of the Soviet Union. |
| | |An exemplar of “hospicing the old,” Mikhail Gorbachev ended the political |
| | |supremacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and dissolved the|
| | |Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |Substantial smoking decrease. |
| | |How many of you smoke? How many of your parents’ smoked? Smoking has |
| | |decreased dramatically in one generation. CDC statistics:
| | | |
| | | |
| | |resources/history/tobacco_history.html |
| | |End of Apartheid in South Africa. |
| | |Apartheid existed in South Africa from 1948 to 1991. |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |End of slavery. |
| | |This reference refers to the end of the slavery of African-Americans in the |
| | |USA and the abolition of the legal trade in slaves. To this day many |
| | |millions of people remain in slavery around the world. |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |Woman’s suffrage. |
| | |This is the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to extend |
| | |suffrage, the right to vote, to women. |
| | |'s_suffrage |
| | |Man on the moon. |
| | |Initially seen as the stuff of science fiction, J.F. Kennedy galvanized the |
| | |American nation 1961 into putting a man on the moon and returning him safely |
| | |to Earth by the end of the 1960’s. |
| | | |
| | |Universal Declaration of Human Rights. |
| | |On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and |
| | |proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. : |
| | | |
| |5-8 |The Revolutions of 1989, the Autumn of Nations, the Collapse of Communism or |
| |Mariya Shall: |the Fall of Communism were a revolutionary wave that swept across Central and|
| |Demonstrations in Russia were like totally |Eastern Europe in late 1989, ending in the overthrow of Soviet-style |
| |illegal. After one second holding a banner in |communist states within the space of a few months. The largely bloodless |
| |front of you, you would be arrested. But we did|political upheaval began in Poland, continued in Hungary, and then led to a |
| |it once, and we did it twice, and then we did |surge of mostly peaceful revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and |
| |it three times, and a year later demonstrations|Bulgaria. Romania was the only Eastern-bloc country to overthrow its |
| |were common thing on the streets of Moscow. We |communist regime violently and execute its head of state. Tiananmen Square |
| |didn’t believe that we could change anything, |protests of 1989 failed to end communism in China. In Slovenia, then part of |
| |but we did it anyway. |former Yugoslavia, the same process started already in spring of 1988, but |
| | |had little influence on the development in other Socialist countries, except |
| | |for neighboring Croatia. The subsequent events that continued in 1990 and |
| | |1991 are sometimes also referred to as a part of the revolutions of 1989. |
| | | |
| |5-9 |The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union of 27 member |
| |Narrator: |states, located primarily in Europe. Committed to regional integration, the |
| |After many centuries of warfare in Europe, who |EU was established by the Treaty of Maastricht on 1 November 1993 upon the |
| |could have imagined the emergence of the |foundations of the European Economic Community. With almost 500 million |
| |political and economic power that is now the |citizens, the EU combined generates an estimated 30% share (US$18.4 trillion |
| |European Union? |in 2008) of the nominal gross world product and about 22% of the PPP gross |
| |And, in a country with a history of slavery and|world product. The EU has developed a single market through a standardized |
| |segregation, who could have predicted that a |system of laws which apply in all member states, ensuring the free movement |
| |man of color would be elected its president? |of people, goods, services, and capital. It maintains common policies on |
| |Or that a nation would publicly apologize for |trade, agriculture, fisheries and regional development. Sixteen member states|
| |the wrongs committed against its First Peoples?|have adopted a common currency, the euro, constituting the Eurozone. |
| | | |
| | |Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States and the first African|
| | |American to hold the office, as well as the first president born in Hawaii. |
| | |Obama previously served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois |
| | |from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in |
| | |November 2008. |
| | |A long-awaited apology from the Canadian government to the country's native |
| | |population was Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The apology, which |
| | |took place as planned, involved Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper |
| | |offering his regrets, on behalf of the government, for decades of racial |
| | |discrimination towards natives in residential schools. These schools were |
| | |operated during the 19th and 20th centuries by churches and funded by a |
| | |branch of the federal government. The First Nations native children in the |
| | |residential school system were forced to assimilate into non-native culture, |
| | |were at times victims of physical and/or sexual abuse, and were exposed to |
| | |poor sanitation and a lack of medical |
| | |care.
| | |_historical_apology_to_natives |
| | | |
| |5-10 |Prime Minister Rudd is the 26th and current Prime Minister of Australia and |
| |Prime Minister Rudd |federal leader of the centre-left Australian Labor Party (ALP). He majored in|
| | |Chinese language and Chinese history, became proficient in Mandarin and |
| | |acquired a Chinese alias, Lù Kèwén. Rudd's thesis on Chinese democracy |
| | |activist Wei Jingsheng was supervised by Pierre Ryckmans, the eminent |
| | |Belgian-Australian sinologist. |
| |5-11 |An apology has been offered to the Stolen Generations of Australia. According|
| |Prime Minister Rudd: |to some, it can be a hollow act when not supported by reparation. Current |
| |We apologize for the laws and policies of |calls for compensation to the Stolen Generations have been endorsed by the UN|
| |successive Parliaments and governments that |Human Rights Committee in its April 2009 report on Australia’s performance on|
| |have inflicted profound grief, suffering, and |human rights. While applauding the Apology to the Stolen Generations, the |
| |loss on our fellow Australians. |Committee raised serious concerns about the lack of an adequately resourced |
| |For the pain, suffering and hurt of those |national Indigenous representative body and the need to make adequate |
| |Stolen Generations, we say sorry…” |reparations to the Stolen Generations. The Committee urged Australia to |
| | |establish a national compensation scheme. |
| | |
| | |ay_6_meredith_gibbs_mq_ad/ |
| |5-12 |Catherine Ingram is an international dharma teacher with communities in the |
| |Catherine Ingram |U.S., Europe, and Australia. |
| | | |
| |5-13 | The Apartheid Legislation in South Africa was a series of different laws and|
| |Catherine Ingram: |acts which were to help the apartheid-government to enforce the segregation |
| |Many years ago I interviewed Desmond Tutu, |of different races and cement the power and the dominance by the Whites, of |
| |prior to the end of apartheid, about a year and|substantially European descent, over the other race groups. Starting in 1948,|
| |a half before it ended. And he kept, in the |the Nationalist Government in South Africa enacted laws to define and enforce|
| |interview, saying “when we end apartheid,” and |segregation. With the enactment of apartheid laws in 1948, racial |
| |I kept thinking as I was listening to him, |discrimination was institutionalized. What makes South Africa's apartheid era|
| |“yeah right,” you know, like, “dream on” – I |different from segregation in other countries is the systematic way in which |
| |mean, I didn’t want to rain on his parade or |the National Party, which came into power in 1948, formalized it through the |
| |anything, but in my heart of hearts I thought |law. The effect of the legislation was invariably favorable to the whites and|
| |not in your lifetime… …And lo and behold, a |detrimental to the other race groups. |
| |year and a half later it was over. So it was |
| |really a profound lesson about what can happen |canhistory.library/bl/blSAApartheidFAQ.htm |
| |when-when the will of people aligns. | |
| |5-14 |Archbishop Desmond Tutu is a South African cleric and activist who rose to |
| |Desmond Tutu |worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. In 1984, Tutu |
| | |became the second South African to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Tutu was|
| | |the first black South African Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa,|
| | |and primate of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the |
| | |Anglican Church of Southern Africa). Tutu chaired the Truth and |
| | |Reconciliation Commission and is currently the chairman of The Elders. Tutu |
| | |is vocal in his defence of human rights and uses his high profile to campaign|
| | |for the oppressed. Tutu also campaigns to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, |
| | |homophobia, poverty and racism. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, |
| | |the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, the Gandhi Peace Prize in |
| | |2005[1] and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Tutu has also compiled|
| | |several books of his speeches and sayings. |
| | | |
| |5-15 |Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s opposition to apartheid brought him worldwide |
| |Desmond Tutu: |notice in the 1980’s. Apartheid is a system of racial segregation that was |
| |We have defeated awful things like Nazism, like|enforced in South Africa from 1948 to 1991. Desmond Tutu stood for "a |
| |communism, like apartheid. And we have also |democratic and just society without racial divisions" with equal civil rights|
| |seen some wonderful human beings -- Mahatma |for all. Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. After the fall of apartheid,|
| |Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama. And so |he headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, for which he was awarded |
| |you say, you know what that says is that |the Sydney Peace Prize in 1999. |
| |ultimately good prevails. It is a moral | |
| |universe, despite all appearances to the |Desmond Tutu now has Peace Center, the mission of which is to nurture peace |
| |contrary. Hahahaha! It is that… there’s no way|by promoting ethical, visionary, and values-based human development. See: |
| |in which evil will ultimately triumph. | |
| |5-16 |Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Town Totnes and of the Transition|
| |Rob Hopkins |Network. He has many years experience in education, teaching permaculture and|
| | |natural building, and set up the first 2 year full-time permaculture course |
| | |in the world, at Kinsale Further Education College in Ireland as well as |
| | |co-ordinating the first eco-village development in Ireland to be granted |
| | |planning permission. He is author of ‘Woodlands for West Cork!’, ‘Energy |
| | |Descent Pathways’ and most recently ‘The Transition Handbook: from oil |
| | |dependence to local resilience.’ |
| |5-17 | |
| |Rob Hopkins: | |
| |We sit at a point in time which is | |
| |extraordinarily pregnant with possibilities. | |
| |And that what’s really important, is that we | |
| |shift our thinking from being focused on | |
| |probabilities – as in well, what’s the | |
| |probability that we’ll have runaway climate | |
| |change … --- to possibilities. | |
| |And so once you start to look at possibilities,| |
| |then there’s huge energy that is unlocked from | |
| |that. | |
| |5-18 |One area where radical changes in thinking have occurred is in the scientific|
| |Narrator: |world. This article on paradigm shifts in Wikipedia gives examples of |
| |New possibilities for the future are emerging |changes in scientific thinking: |
| |in all sectors of society – in national and | |
| |international government, in business and |According to scientists we are even evolving more quickly than humans use to |
| |commerce, and the myriad organizations of civil|evolve: |
| |society. | |
| |Now, governments worldwide are beginning to | |
| |step up to address our global challenges. | |
| |5-19 |Ed Miliband is a British Labour politician, who has been the Member of |
| |Ed Miliband |Parliament for Doncaster North since 2005 and is the current Secretary of |
| | |State for Energy and Climate Change (2009). |
| | | |
| |5-20 |The UK has today announced its strategy for meeting carbon emissions targets |
| |Ed Miliband: |and to a massive increase in renewable energy. Plans announced this morning |
| |For the proposals published today are the first|by UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, have been met with |
| |time we’ve set out a comprehensive plan for |cautious praise by industry and environment groups (July 2009). |
| |carbon across every sector. |
| | |ering/environmental/uk-announces-long-term-carbon-reduction-strategy.html |
| |5-21 |Every time we travel or turn on our computers, we add greenhouse gases to the|
| |Narrator: |atmosphere. This is because most of the energy we use comes from fuels like |
| |Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Costa Rica are|oil, coal, and gas. Other types of energy, like solar and wind power, do not |
| |racing to become the world’s first developed |contribute to climate change. But they are often more expensive. |
| |nation to go entirely carbon neutral. |Being "carbon neutral" means removing as much carbon dioxide from the |
| | |atmosphere as we put in. How can we remove carbon dioxide from the |
| | |atmosphere? One way is to buy "carbon offsets". This supports projects like a|
| | |wind farm or solar park. It helps make clean energy more affordable. It |
| | |reduces future greenhouse gas emissions to make up for our travel and |
| | |electricity use today. |
| | |
| | |p |
| |5-22 |Natalia Greene is … ??? |
| |Natalia Greene | |
| |5-23 |In September 2008 Ecuador became the first country in the world to declare |
| |Natalia Greene: |constitutional rights for nature, thus codifying a new system of |
| |Ecuador is the first country in the world to |environmental protection. Reflecting the beliefs and traditions of the |
| |recognize the rights of nature in its |indigenous peoples of Ecuador, the constitution declares that nature “has the|
| |constitution. Recognizing the rights of nature |right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure,|
| |means treating nature as a somebody, as someone|functions and its processes in evolution.” This right, the constitution |
| |to protect and not as something to be destroyed|states, “is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or|
| |or exploited. |the State to indemnify the people that depend on the natural systems.”
The |
| | |new constitution redefines people’s relationship with nature by asserting |
| | |that nature is not just an object to be appropriated and exploited by people,|
| | |but is rather a rights-bearing entity that should be treated with parity |
| | |under the law. |
| | |
| | |l-rights-of-nature/ |
| |5-24 |“Time is short. We must seize this historic moment to
act responsibly and |
| |Narrator: |decisively for the common good.” With only six years until the 2015 deadline |
| |The United Nations’ Millenium Development Goals|to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon|
| |represent a worldwide effort to end hunger and |chose these words to strongly urge Governments to engage constructively in |
| |poverty by 2015. |the preparations for a high-level meeting in September 2010 to review |
| |Businesses and corporations are recognizing |progress towards the MDGs and other international development goals. |
| |that success in the twenty-first century means | |
| |paying attention to the triple bottom line: | |
| |People, Planet, and Profit. | |
| |5-25 |Hunter Lovins is President and founder of the Natural Capitalism Solutions. |
| |Hunter Lovins |NCS educates senior decision-makers in business, government and civil society|
| | |to restore and enhance the natural and human capital while increasing |
| | |prosperity and quality of life. In partnership with leading thinkers and |
| | |implementers, NCS creates innovative, practical tools and strategies to |
| | |enable companies, communities and countries to become more sustainable. |
| | |
| | |47&Itemid=54 |
| |5-26 |Many businesses are taking the lead through environmental policies and |
| |Hunter Lovins: |actions. Internet companies have been formed to help organizations formulate |
| |The world’s largest corporation has announced |a carbon footprint management plan, set realistic carbon reduction targets, |
| |aspirational goals to be 100% renewable energy,|and meet them. |
| |zero waste, and sell only sustainable products.| |
| |Sixty to ninety thousand companies that sell | |
| |products to Wal-Mart will now have to show that| |
| |they are measuring and tracking their carbon | |
| |footprint and beginning to reduce it. | |
| |5-27 |There are many websites providing opportunities to companies, organizations |
| |Narrator: |and workers to post or offer green collar jobs. |
| |The economic landscape is also being remade | |
| |with new green collar jobs… | |
| |5-28 |(any idea?) |
| |Van Jones: | |
| |If you give them the tools and the training and| |
| |the technology, they can retrofit a nation… | |
| |5-29 |Eric Lombardi is currently the Executive Director of Eco-Cycle, Inc. Eric has|
| |Eric Lombardi |had a long career in resource conservation, social enterprise development and|
| | |non-profit (NGO) organizational management. |
| | | |
| |5-30 |Eco-Cycle, Inc. is an organization working to build zero waste communities. |
| |Eric Lombardi: |Find lots of resources and information for reducing waste at |
| |A lot of people think that trash is inevitable | |
| |– it’s one of those necessary evils of life. |Eco-Cycle, founded in 1976, is considered a nationwide pioneer in the |
| |But that’s not true. Waste is actually the |recycling industry. |
| |product of bad design, and bad design can be |Some recycling facts from the Eco-Cycle website: |
| |changed. |If every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of 1,000 sheet virgin |
| | |fiber bathroom tissues with 100% recycled ones, we could save: 373,000 trees,|
| | |1.48 million cubic feet of landfill space, and 155 million gallons of water. |
| | |Seventh Generation Co. |
| | |Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 trees, 2 barrels of oil (enough to run the |
| | |average car for 1,260 miles), 4,100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the|
| | |average home for 6 months), 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space, and 60 pounds |
| | |of air pollution. Trash to Cash |
| | |Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet |
| | |of airplanes every 3 months. Environmental Defense Fund |
| | |About 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable, yet our recycling rate |
| | |is just 28%. Environmental Protection Agency |
| | |You can take steps to prevent junk mail. Each year, the junk mail industry |
| | |destroys about 100 million trees. The production and disposal of junk mail |
| | |consumes more energy than 3 million cars. |
| | | |
| | |Some internet sites offer people the possibility to cancel magazine |
| | |distribution in their mail boxes, that is, to reduce junk mail and wasting of|
| | |paper, as well as to contribute to tree planting with their subscription. |
| | | |
| |5-31 |At , paper is made out of elephant dung. This paper is |
| |Narrator: |manufactured using a process that promotes environmental protection. The |
| |Innovation design is also creating low-tech |paper is sanitized and has good utility value. Variations is the elephant’s |
| |solutions for the developing world. |diet, age and dental state give each batch of paper a unique color and |
| |Everywhere on Planet Earth – in cities and |texture. Colour varies with the type of food consumed: Coconut, Kitul or Jak.|
| |towns, suburbs and villages – a vast and |Texture depends on whether the elephant is able to chew the food or not. |
| |unprecedented global phenomena is beginning to |Fully digested fiber gives the paper a smooth finish while half digested |
| |make itself know. |fiber makes the paper coarser. In buying and using this paper. People are |
| | |making a contribution to the care of this magnificent animal which is being |
| | |driven to extinction by loss of its natural habitat. A percentage of the |
| | |proceeds of our sales goes to the Millennium Elephant Foundation – affiliated|
| | |to the World Society for protection of Animals (WSPA) – which maintains a |
| | |home for elderly and disabled elephants. |
| | | |
| |5-32 |(Blessed Unrest definition here too?) |
| |Paul Hawken: | |
| |(Bioneers Conference 2004) | |
| |There is another super power here on earth that| |
| |is an unnamed movement. It is far different and| |
| |bigger and more unique than anything we have | |
| |ever seen. It flies under the radar of the | |
| |media by and large. | |
| |It is non-violent; it is grass-roots. It has no| |
| |cluster bombs, no armies, and no helicopters. | |
| |It has no central ideology. A male vertebrate | |
| |is not in charge… This unnamed movement… You | |
| |can clap for that… | |
| |The very word “movement”, I think, is too small| |
| |to describe it. | |
| |This movement is humanity’s immune system to | |
| |resist and heal political disease, economic | |
| |infection, and ecological corruption caused by | |
| |ideologies. | |
| |This is fundamentally a civil rights movement, | |
| |a human rights movement; this is a democracy | |
| |movement; it is the coming world.” | |
| |5-33 |(any idea?) |
| |Paul Hawken: | |
| |What you are seeing here is the beginning of a | |
| |list of the two million organizations in the | |
| |world that work towards social and | |
| |environmental justice, and that’s a minimum. | |
| |To give you a sense of how big this movement | |
| |is: If I start this tape on today at 9:00 am, | |
| |and we watch this all day and all night, and | |
| |the day after that, until a wee passed, and | |
| |then for three more weeks, and then a month | |
| |after that, we still would not have seen the | |
| |names of all the groups in the world. | |
| |It’s the largest social movement in the history| |
| |of humankind, by far. | |
| |5-34 |(any idea?) |
| |Narrator: | |
| |At the heart of a transition to a new world are| |
| |the communities, families, and individuals who | |
| |are changing the way they are living – making | |
| |new choices based on the values that support a | |
| |more sustainable, just, and fulfilling society.| |
| |5-35 |Micheal Pollan is an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of |
| |Micheal Pollan |journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. |
| | | |
| |5-36 |Pollan's latest book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, released on |
| |Micheal Pollan: |January 1, 2008, explores the relationship with what he terms nutritionism |
| |When we think about global warming, we think |and the Western diet, with a focus on late 20th century food advice given by |
| |about transportation, we think about how we |the science community. Pollan holds that consumption of fat and dietary |
| |heat our houses, but in fact how we eat has |cholesterol do not lead to a higher rate of coronary disease, and that the |
| |just as big an impact on climate change. |reductive analysis of food into nutrient components is a flawed paradigm. He |
| | |questions the view that the point of eating is to promote health, pointing |
| | |out that this attitude is not universal and that cultures that perceive food |
| | |as having purposes of pleasure, identity, and sociality may end up with |
| | |better health. He explains this seeming paradox by vetting then validating |
| | |the notion that nutritionism and, therefore, the whole Western framework |
| | |through which we intellectualize the value of food is more a religious and |
| | |faddish devotion to the mythology of simple solutions than a convincing and |
| | |reliable conclusion of incontrovertible scientific research. Pollan spends |
| | |the rest of his book explicating his first three phrases: "Eat food. Not too |
| | |much. Mostly plants." |
| | | |
| |5-37 |The internet is one of the most significant technological developments of the|
| |Narrator: |present time. Through the World Wide Web humanity has been given a tool for |
| |Powering this global phenomenon is the |global communication and interconnectivity. Its use has become central to the|
| |explosive digital revolution that is revealing |lives of millions of people, businesses and organizations, linking humanity |
| |and connecting a planetary human community. |together in ways unimaginable a few decades ago. But how does it relate to |
| | |the emerging consciousness of oneness? |
| | |The unified connectivity presented by the Internet has been long known to the|
| | |mystic, who in meditation has access to a dimension of oneness in which |
| | |everything is simultaneously present, and all knowledge is accessible. The |
| | |experience of super-conscious state happens on this plane of oneness. But |
| | |the Internet presents a model of a unified consciousness that is accessible |
| | |on a more physical plane, to anyone who has access to a computer. |
| | | |
| |5-38 |Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi banker and economist. He previously was a |
| |Muhammad Yunus |professor of economics where he developed the concept of microcredit. These |
| | |loans are given to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank |
| | |loans. Yunus is also the founder of Grameen Bank. In 1998 he was awarded with|
| | |the Concorde Prince of asturias award. In 2006, Yunus and the bank were |
| | |jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for their efforts to create economic |
| | |and social development from below." |
| | | |
| |5-39 |To see statistics about children’s internet use, visit: |
| |Muhammad Yunus: | |
| |This generation is much more powerful than our | |
| |generation was technology-wise, | |
| |information-wise. Today, a little kid runs to | |
| |Google to find out what’s the latest, and | |
| |challenges everybody else because he or she has| |
| |the latest information. | |
| |5-40 |Jon Warnow has won the Brower Youth Awards 2007. |
| |Jon Warnow | |
| |5-41 |See his video about people connecting through the internet in order to create|
| |Jon Warnow: |a new way of getting together toward activism and change: |
| |People can now be connected nationwide to act | |
| |locally in their communities and then have all | |
| |that local action united into one synchronized | |
| |beautiful harmonic voice… | |
| |5-42 |YouTube is a website that offers web services for uploading, viewing and |
| |Niger Delta woman: |sharing video files. The technology used for viewing the clips is a very |
| |The only voice we have is this video editing. |popular one and can be very easily viewed with the help of one of the |
| |They say we don’t know books, we can’t write |numerous compatible software players currently available. Moreover, the video|
| |much. But if we are able to make a small film |clips using this format can be very easily embedded in other websites, thus |
| |about what is happening to us, it will go on |increasing YouTube's own customer base. However, practically, YouTube is a |
| |the internet and the whole world will see it. |service which lets the users upload just about any type of video material, |
| | |representing some sort of crossbreed between the file sharing networks, blogs|
| | |and social networking websites. Oh, and it's also free and very user |
| | |friendly. |
| | | |
| |5-43 |One publication that reports on creating positive social change is World |
| |Narrator: |Changing: |
| |Awake, committed people are discovering that a | |
| |new future is possible, and they are becoming | |
| |who they need to be to make it happen – | |
| |together. | |
| |Wombat Video |Global Mind Shift is an organization dedicated to bringing about global |
| | |community and has created the wombat video. |
| | | |
| | |The Wombat video can be found at the following link: |
| | | |
V-2 Module 6A: Where Do We Go From Here? Personal Stand
|Pg: |Key Points: |Source/References: |
| |6A-2 |Drew Dellinger is a spoken work poet, teacher, and activist. Dellinger was |
| |Drew Dellinger: |listed as one of the "important musical voices" of the "new international, |
| |It’s 3:23 in the morning and I'm awake because |broad-based (global justice) movement" by YES! magazine. Dellinger has |
| |my great-great grandchildren won’t let me |inspired minds at hundreds of conferences, colleges, rallies, and protests |
| |sleep. |across the U.S. He has published poems in magazines and books, including the |
| |My great-great grandchildren ask me in dreams |anthology Global Uprising. In 1997 he received Common Boundary magazine's |
| |What did you do while the planet was plundered?|national Green Dove Award for his work. Dellinger has studied cosmology with |
| | |Thomas Berry since 1990, and currently teaches at Naropa University in |
| |What did you do when the Earth was unraveling? |Oakland and Prescott College in Arizona. He is founder of Poets for Global |
| |Surely you did something when the seasons |Justice, a project building movements for social and ecological change by |
| |started failing, |unleashing the poetry in everyone. |
| |as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying.| |
| |Did you fill the streets with protest when | |
| |democracy was stolen? | |
| |What did you do once you knew? | |
| |6A-3 |Also see a short interview with M.C Mehta entitled The World Is On Fire at: |
| |Narrator: | |
| |So now we know. We know that our current | |
| |worldview, and the industrial system it gave | |
| |rise to, have run up against the limits of a | |
| |finite planet. | |
| |We know that the vitality of the Earth is | |
| |declining every day. That the chasm between the| |
| |few of us who have more than we need and the | |
| |many of us who have not nearly enough gets | |
| |wider every day. And we know that it is hurting| |
| |all of us inside. | |
| |6A-4 | |
| |Narrator: | |
| |At the same time, we know that we are part of a| |
| |worldwide awakening – a grassroots movement for| |
| |change that is unprecedented in human history. | |
| |So now that we know, the question arises: what | |
| |part do we play in this unfolding story? | |
| |Where do we go from here? | |
| |Where do you go from here? | |
| |6A-5 |A non-profit Earth Communication Office (ECO) created the 60-second video |
| |Power of One Eco Spot |spots we have been showing today. They would love to get them distributed as |
| |Not so long ago, a little girl in Alabama |much as possible, in movie theaters, in any and all settings. There is a CD |
| |wanted to go to the same school as everyone |with about 20 of the spots on it available at their website |
| |else. |Earth Communications is working to change the way that media is used, |
| |And a gentle man from India wanted to raise |refocusing it from a tool for selling things, to a tool to help re-imagine a |
| |consciousness without raising his voice. |sustainable future. See: |
| |In East Germany, a man wanted to break free. |Examples of the Power of One: |
| |And a woman traveled the world giving hope to |You may have heard of the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize: Wangari |
| |those who had none. |Maathai, (whan-GAH-ree ma-TIE) a Kenyan woman who is the founder of the Green|
| |This is the power of one: To protect your home |Belt movement. Thirty million trees have been planted in Africa as a result |
| |in the Amazon. |of her work with the women in the countryside. |
| |To prevent poaching of the African mountain |The biography of this remarkable woman can be read at the Nobel Prize |
| |gorilla. |website: |
| |To rescue harp seals in Finland. | |
| |Or to care for the environment in our own |And a time capsule message from Wangari for all us can be found at this You |
| |backyard. |Tube page: |
| |The power of one is the power to do something. | |
| |Anything. |In a book called Bury The Chains Adam Hochschild writes about the beginnings |
| | |of the anti-slavery movement. |
| | |In an interview, Adam Hochschild explains the importance of this event. In |
| | |the late 18th century, he says a small group of Englishmen went out on a limb|
| | |and put forward the radical notion that slavery was wrong. At first, their |
| | |proposal that Enlightenment ideals of equality and liberty should be extended|
| | |to the millions of African slaves held in Britain’s colonies…seemed totally |
| | |utopian, crackpot, wildly too idealistic.” But—in slightly more than 50 |
| | |years, after its humble birth in a London print shop, the British antislavery|
| | |movement “overturned the atrocity that had formed the economic backbone of |
| | |the world’s most powerful empire. |
| | | |
| | |Read about the book, Bury the Chains, at: |
| | |
| | |9 |
| | |In February 2007 an inspiring movie called Amazing Grace was released that |
| | |focuses on the dedicated political figures who were key to the movement. |
| | |Read more at: |
| | | |
| |6A-6 |The Beingness Doctrine |
| |Lynne Twist: |Stephan A. Schwartz, Schwartz Report |
| |People want to know what to do, and I think | |
| |that’s a good question too. But a more profound|Looking at Nobel Peace Prize recipients: |
| |question and a more powerful question is who do|Of the individuals, it seems to go to three kinds of people: |
| |we need to be? And I think who we need to be |Government officials |
| |are people who know that the decisions and |Hereditary and acknowledged leaders |
| |choices we make now impact the future of life |Ordinary people who are committed to change |
| |for the next hundred years. Everybody alive |It is the regular folk who make up the third category that are the most |
| |today has a role to play. You don’t have a big |interesting, because they illustrate clearly the eight laws of the Strategy. |
| |role and you don’t have a small role, you just |Consider just two: |
| |have a role. And if you play it, then your life|The 1976 Peace Prize was awarded jointly to two Irish housewives, Mairead |
| |will really have a kind of meaning that you’ve |Corrigan and Betty Williams. Each was in her early thirties when, on a |
| |dreamt of. |Saturday afternoon in August 1976 when, along with a male friend, Ciaran |
| | |McKeown, they founded the Community of Peace People. Both were solidly |
| | |working class and lived in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mairead’s father was a |
| | |window cleaning contractor, and her mother was a housewife. Mairead had been |
| | |working since she was 16 in various clerical jobs, was proud of her |
| | |shorthand, and had risen to become the Confidential Secretary to the Managing|
| | |Director of a local company. Betty William’s life was much the same. Her |
| | |father was a butcher. |
| | |Like her friend, Mairead, she was married, and she had two children, a son, |
| | |Paul and a daughter, Deborah. They had no prior experience as activists and, |
| | |by their own admission, were hardly sophisticated in politics. But they had |
| | |had enough of the religious violence in Ireland, and believed that even |
| | |though they were utterly lacking in the sort of resume one associates with |
| | |political success, they could make a difference. |
| | |The 1992 Peace Prize was won by Rigoberta Menchú, daughter of a impoverished |
| | |Quiche Mayan peasant family in which both adults and children went to pick |
| | |coffee on the big often absentee owner plantations. Reared as a Catholic, she|
| | |became involved in social reform activities through the Church and, while |
| | |still a teenager, she became prominent in the women’s rights movement. By the|
| | |time she was chosen for the Nobel she was a leading advocate of Indian rights|
| | |and ethno-cultural reconciliation, not only in Guatemala but in the Western |
| | |Hemisphere generally. |
| | |(this is fine but maybe add something about being as a state of consciousness|
| | |rather than as a state of doing) |
| |6A-7 |George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) is a Nobel-prize winner. |
| |George Bernard Shaw’s quotation: | |
| |Let me read to you: |The first part of the quote is from the Epistle Dedicatory to Arthur Bingham |
| |This is the true joy in life, the being used |Walkley, Man and Superman, 1903 (Cambridge, Mass.: The University Press) |
| |for a purpose recognized by yourself as a | |
| |mighty one; the being a force of nature instead| |
| |of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments |The second part is from Shaw at Brighton, 1907. |
| |and grievances, complaining that the world will| |
| |not devote itself to making you happy. I am of | |
| |the opinion that my life belongs to the whole | |
| |community, and as long as I live it is my | |
| |privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want | |
| |to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the | |
| |harder I work, the more I live. Life is no | |
| |brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid | |
| |torch which I have got hold of for the moment, | |
| |and I want to make it burn as brightly as | |
| |possible before handing it on to future | |
| |generations. | |
| |6A-8 |Joanna Macy offers guidelines to support us in taking a stand in Personal |
| |Van Jones: |Guidelines for the Great Turning: |
| |I don’t think an authentic stand comes from |Come from Gratitude |
| |your head. I think an authentic stand comes |To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe--to participate in |
| |from your heart. If your child is sick, right? |the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs |
| |Something happens in you to make a miracle, to |that draw nourishment from it--is a wonder beyond words. Gratitude for the |
| |make a miracle.// It has nothing to do with the|gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the |
| |facts. And that’s all that’s required is your |mystic, the source of all true art. Furthermore, it is a privilege to be |
| |child my child your grandchild your child’s |alive in this time when we can choose to take part in the self-healing of our|
| |child’s child – they’re in peril. And if you |world. |
| |start thinking about it, you’ll sit down. But |Don't be Afraid of the Dark |
| |if you feel it you’ll stand up. |This is a dark time, filled with suffering and uncertainty. Like living cells|
| |The amazing thing about this thing is that it’s|in a larger body, it is natural that we feel the trauma of our world. So |
| |when you stand up you license other people to |don't be afraid of the anguish you feel, or the anger or fear, for these |
| |stand up. Now you stand up by yourself don’t |responses arise from the depth of your caring and the truth of your |
| |make a [?] bit of difference in the rational |interconnectedness with all beings. To suffer with is the literal meaning of |
| |world. You’re just one fool standing up. But if|compassion. |
| |you’ve ever seen a standing ovation? It starts |Dare to Vision |
| |with one fool standing up. And then pretty soon|Out of this darkness a new world can arise, not to be constructed by our |
| |the whole stage is standing up but it’s a |minds so much as to emerge from our dreams. Even though we cannot see clearly|
| |different moment, right? |how it's going to turn out, we are still called to let the future into our |
| | |imagination. We will never be able to build what we have not first cherished |
| | |in our hearts… |
| | |Roll up your Sleeves |
| | |Many people don't get involved in the Great Turning because there are so many|
| | |different issues, which seem to compete with each other. Shall I save the |
| | |whales or help battered children? The truth is that all aspects of the |
| | |current crisis reflect the same mistake, setting ourselves apart and using |
| | |others for our gain. So to heal one aspect helps the others to heal as well. |
| | |Just find what you love to work on and take joy in that. Never try to do it |
| | |alone. Link up with others; you'll spark each others' ideas and sustain each |
| | |others' energy… |
| | |Act your Age |
| | |Since every particle in your body goes back to the first flaring forth of |
| | |space and time, you're really as old as the universe. So when you are |
| | |lobbying at your congressperson's office, or visiting your local utility, or |
| | |testifying at a hearing on nuclear waste, or standing up to protect an old |
| | |grove of redwoods, you are doing that not out of some personal whim, but in |
| | |the full authority of your 15 billions years. |
| | |html/great.html |
V-2 Module 6B: Where Do We Go From Here?
In Blessed Unrest, Choosing Action
|Pg. |Key Points: |Source/Reference: |
| |6B-1 | |
| |Narrator: | |
| |Once we take a personal stand to change the | |
| |dream of the modern world, the question | |
| |becomes: Now what? Where do we start? | |
| |6B-2 |Kenney Ausubel is CEO and founder of Bioneers, an award-winning social entrepreneur,|
| |Kenney Ausubel |author, journalist and filmmaker. Bioneers is a nationally recognized nonprofit |
| | |dedicated to disseminating practical and visionary solutions for restoring Earth’s |
| | |imperiled ecosystems and healing our human communities. Kenny launched the annual |
| | |Bioneers Conference in 1990 with his producing partner and wife, Nina Simons, |
| | |Bioneers co-founder. |
| |6B-3 |(any idea?) |
| |Kenney Ausubel: | |
| |People ask me what can I do, what can I do, I | |
| |want to do something. Well the first choice, | |
| |you’ve already made the first choice if you’re | |
| |saying that, because the first choice is you | |
| |know you have to do something. | |
| |6B-4 |The need to first transform ourselves personally before attempting to transform our |
| |Narrator: |world is a central tenet to many spiritual traditions. For a more psychological |
| |In looking at taking action, there are three |perspective, see: |
| |areas that are useful to consider. First, what |
| |can I do in my personal life, right where I |=page |
| |work and live? | |
| |6B-5 |This statement is consistent with motto Think Globally, Act Locally. It urges people|
| |Dr. Vandana Shiva: |to consider the health of the entire planet and to take action in their own |
| |I think the most important step to take to |communities. Long before federal and state agencies began enforcing environmental |
| |rebuild the environment, to rebuild the |laws, individuals were coming together to protect habitats and the organisms that |
| |planet’s health, to rebuild our own health, and|depend on them. These efforts are referred to as grassroots efforts. They occur on a|
| |to rebuild the health of communities is to |local level and are primarily run by volunteers. |
| |basically ask, what is it in my immediate | |
| |surroundings that I can take a step towards in | |
| |terms of healing? | |
| |6B-6 |Hunter Lovins is President and founder of the Natural Capitalism Solutions. NCS |
| |Hunter Lovins |educates senior decision-makers in business, government and civil society to restore|
| | |and enhance the natural and human capital while increasing prosperity and quality of|
| | |life. In partnership with leading thinkers and implementers, NCS creates innovative,|
| | |practical tools and strategies to enable companies, communities and countries to |
| | |become more sustainable. |
| | |
| | |id=54 |
| |6B-7 | |
| |Hunter Lovins: | |
| |We need to demand of our government that they | |
| |step forth and take action. But even more | |
| |important is what each one of us does. What we | |
| |do in our business, what we do in our | |
| |communities, and what we do in our personal | |
| |lives. | |
| |6B-8 |The work of connecting goes against our competitive, cultural grain, but what we are|
| |Narrator: |learning is that through the principle of synergy, the power of connection is the |
| |Another area of action is communication: using |power of 1+1=3. |
| |the power of words to engage others in seeing |The Third Sector, Community Development and Social Justice; Theodore J. Hopkins, |
| |and creating the new possibilities before us; |Jr., Delivered at the Seventh International Conference of the International Society |
| |speaking out to friends, family, and co-workers|for Third Sector Research, July 9-12, 2006, Bangkok, Thailand. |
| |– in our own community as well as to those in | |
| |the halls of power. |In the book entitled Forces for Good; The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, |
| | |what authors Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant discovered came as a |
| | |surprise. They initially assumed that there was something inherent to these |
| | |organizations that led to great impact—and that success was directly tied to |
| | |organizational growth or management. Instead, they learned that becoming a |
| | |high-impact nonprofit is not just about building a great organization, and then |
| | |expanding it to reach more people. Rather, high-impact nonprofits work with and |
| | |through other organizations and individuals to create more impact than they could |
| | |have ever achieved alone. |
| | |High-impact nonprofits build social movements and fields; they transform business, |
| | |government, other nonprofits, and individuals; and they change the world around |
| | |them. In the end, six patterns crystallized into the form presented here—the six |
| | |practices that high-impact nonprofits use to achieve extraordinary impact. These |
| | |nonprofits: |
| | |1. Work with government and advocate for policy change |
| | |2. Harness market forces and see business as a powerful partner |
| | |3. Convert individual supporters into evangelists for the cause |
| | |4. Build and nurture nonprofit networks, treating other groups as allies |
| | |5. Adapt to the changing environment |
| | |6. Share leadership, empowering others to be forces for good |
| | | |
| | |Artists are working with environmentalists and residents to make a political change |
| | |in Louisiana, where toxic waste is devastating communities along the Mississippi |
| | |River. |
| | |When people have the chance to witness their collective stories, they get energized,|
| | |more critical, and more powerful as a group. |
| | | |
| |6B-9 |Synergy means "together energy", i.e., the energy that can be released by bringing |
| |Juan Manuel Carrion: |things into relationship, creating something new which is not predictable from the |
| |All the changes at the individual level are |original things which were combined. "Project Synergy" was chosen as the name for |
| |important. First comes the individual change, |this alternative careers and lifestyles project because people had experienced that,|
| |but since none of us exists on his own, |by trying to integrate their values and their working life and lifestyles, whole new|
| |isolated, and it isn’t about me as an |solutions were discovered that they hadn't imagined before. Moreover, synergy was |
| |individual, but about us, collectively. |something you could get by bringing people into cooperative relationships. You've |
| | |got synergy when ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (Lee Altenberg). |
| |6B-10 |There’s another important point about the role of community in working on these |
| |Narrator: |issues. We know that for us to find our way to an environmentally sustainable, |
| |A third arena is collective, cooperative |spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on this planet, it will |
| |action. We know we cannot do this great work |completely and totally depend on each one of us doing our very best to find the |
| |alone, and the good news is we don’t have to. |pathway that will get us there (although it doesn’t necessarily mean getting |
| |As we seek friends and partners in this |everyone to agree to do one “right” thing). |
| |do-it-yourself project, we can look to an |The concept that the wisdom of the collective outweighs the wisdom of any |
| |example from nature from evolutionary biologist|individuals, even when the people making up the collective are not necessarily |
| |Elisabet Sathouris. |experts, is fascinating. It is written about in the book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why |
| | |the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, |
| | |Economies, Societies and Nations, first published in 2004, is a book written by |
| | |James Surowiecki. |
| | | |
| | |Elisabet Sathouris write about indigenous worldview. |
| | | |
| | |Others speak about doing it with the Friend. |
| | | |
| |6B-11 |Jon Symes works at The Pachamama Alliance. |
| |Jon Symes | |
| |6B-12 |Imaginal cells – “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the rest of the |
| |Jon Symes: |world calls butterfly.” —Richard Bach |
| |There’s a moment in the life of a caterpillar |Note: A cluster of imaginal cells makes up an “imaginal disc. An imaginal disc that |
| |when it begins to eat more and more. It becomes|begins to develop into a wing or a leg or an eye is an “imaginal bud.” |
| |a voracious consumer, and eats many times its |This concept of imaginal cells has been popularized by evolutionary biologist, |
| |own weight in food. It eventually becomes |Elizabet Sahtouris as a metaphor for transformation in the human realm. She sees the|
| |bloated and immobile, and at that very moment |metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly as having many parallels to our |
| |inside the caterpillar there are these tiny |collective rite of passage. See: |
| |cells waking up. The biologists call them | |
| |imaginal cells. |For more about Sahtouris, see: and |
| |These cells keep popping up and joining | |
| |together as clusters. The clusters become |Note: The apparent originator of the metaphor is Norie Huddle. Her butterfly |
| |strings of imaginal cells. And at this point, |metaphor was featured in the Institute of Noetic Science (IONS) Magazine Issue 52, |
| |well before the cells are a majority, the |June-August 2000 in an article entitled “What the Butterfly Knows/Wired for Wings” |
| |imaginal cells have become the genetic director|by Keith Thompson. See: |
| |of the whole of the caterpillar. | |
| |The rest of the caterpillar’s cells collapse |See Huddle website: |
| |into a kind of nutritive soup, which feeds the | |
| |emergence of the butterfly – the unpredictable | |
| |miracle that is a butterfly. | |
| |6B-13 |The term “blessed unrest” came from a quote by Martha Graham, who was an American |
| |Narrator: |dancer, teacher, and choreographer known as one of the foremost pioneers of modern |
| |Those of us standing for a just, sustainable |dance. See Wikipedia reference at: |
| |and fulfilling future find ourselves seeing the|The full quote is: |
| |world through new eyes. We are in a particular |“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into|
| |state – one that is at once uncomfortable and |action, and there is only one of you in all time. This expression is unique. |
| |exhilarating – a state that could be called |And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The |
| |Blessed Unrest. |world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how|
| | |it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and |
| | |directly, to keep the channel open. |
| | |You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and |
| | |aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open…No artist is |
| | |pleased… |
| | |There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is on a queer, divine |
| | |dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive |
| | |than the others.” |
| | |--Martha Graham (to Agnes DeMille), Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham. |
| |6B-14 |Together we can be wiser than any of us can be alone. |
| |Bill Twist: |We need to know how to tap that wisdom. Healthy communities, institutions and |
| |Blessed Unrest is a state where somebody sees, |societies -- perhaps even our collective survival -- depend on our ability to |
| |knows fully well where we are, what’s going on |organize our collective affairs more wisely, in tune with each other and nature. |
| |around them, what the mechanisms are that keep |This ability to wisely organize our lives together -- all of us being wiser together|
| |us where we are, and yet sees a future that we |than any of us could be alone -- we call co-intelligence. In its broadest sense, |
| |all want to go to, and has the ability to |co-intelligence involves accessing the wisdom of the whole on behalf of the whole. |
| |create possibilities for holding that future as|Co-intelligence is emerging through new developments in democracy, organizational |
| |something that inspires their life. |development, collaborative processes, the Internet and systems sciences like ecology|
| | |and complexity. Today millions of people are involved in co-creating |
| | |co-intelligence. Our diverse efforts grow more effective as we discover we are part |
| | |of a larger evolutionary enterprise, and as we learn together and from each other. |
| | |The Co-Intelligence Institute works to further the understanding and development of |
| | |co-intelligence. It focuses on catalyzing co-intelligence in the realms of politics,|
| | |governance and conscious evolution of ourselves and our social systems. We research,|
| | |network, advocate, and help organize leading-edge experiments and conversations in |
| | |order to weave what is possible into new, wiser forms of civilization. |
| | |Find out more at |
| |6B-15 |The term “blessed unrest” came from a quote by Martha Graham, who was an American |
| |Luke Tayor: |dancer, teacher, and choreographer known as one of the foremost pioneers of modern |
| |Blessed Unrest is the willingness to keep |dance. See Wikipedia reference at: |
| |showing up day after day, moment after moment, | |
| |in spite of how uncomfortable it is. | |
| |6B-16 |Joanna Macy writes beautifully about how our pain is linked to the pain of the |
| |Alain Desouches: |Earth: “Because the pain I feel when I allow myself to witness the pain of the world|
| |It’s at the same time a state of happiness to |is no less than your pain--you, who perpetuate destruction and cut yourselves off |
| |be in sync, in synchronization with the Earth, |from needs of the present and the generations of the future, I bow to you in |
| |and at the same time a state of being |compassion and touch the Earth”. |
| |completely in touch with the pain that Earth | |
| |experiences in this present time. | |
| |6B-17 |This statement refers to the psychological concept of intrinsic motivation, that is,|
| |Onno Koelman: |motivation that comes from inside an individual rather than from any external or |
| |It’s not lie “gotta do something,” it’s more |outside rewards, such as money or grades. The motivation comes from the joy one gets|
| |like “I want to do something.” |from the task itself or from the sense of satisfaction in completing or even working|
| | |on a task. |
| | | |
| |6B-18 |In its broadest sense, co-intelligence involves accessing the wisdom of the whole on|
| |Bill Twist: |behalf of the whole. |
| |Yes, we will take action; we’ll be impelled to |Co-intelligence is emerging through new developments in democracy, organizational |
| |get out, to do things, but equally important is|development, collaborative processes, the Internet and systems sciences like ecology|
| |that we become something – we’ll become an |and complexity. Today millions of people are involved in co-creating |
| |instrument of something being able to work |co-intelligence. Our diverse efforts grow more effective as we discover we are part |
| |through us. |of a larger evolutionary enterprise, and as we learn together and from each other. |
| | |The Co-Intelligence Institute works to further the understanding and development of |
| | |co-intelligence. It focuses on catalyzing co-intelligence in the realms of politics,|
| | |governance and conscious evolution of ourselves and our social systems. We research,|
| | |network, advocate, and help organize leading-edge experiments and conversations in |
| | |order to weave what is possible into new, wiser forms of civilization. |
| | | |
| |6B-19 | |
| |Desmond Tutu: | |
| |Every single one of us can do something to make| |
| |a difference. You can – you can – you can - you| |
| |can; I can. God bless you. | |
| |Some Websites of the Emerging Dream: |Pachamama Alliance: |
| |The Pachamama Alliance | |
| |Wiserearth |Wiserearth: |
| |Green for all | |
| |Low carbon diet |Green For All: |
| |Better World Shopping guide | |
| |Northwest Earth Institute |Low Carbon Diet : |
| |Native Americans | |
| |Ashoka |Better World Shopping Guide: |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |Northwest Earth Institute |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |Native Americans: |
| | | |
| | |Ashoka: |
V-2 Module 7: Finale: Hope Committed in Action
|Pg. |Key Points: |Source/Reference: |
| |7.1 |The quote is from Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Huizdala by|
| |Male voice: |Vaclav Havel (1990), a collection of interviews that “are at once Havel’s |
| |The kind of hope that I often think about…I |political autobiography, a history of Czechoslovakia under communism, a |
| |understand above all as a state of mind, not a |meditation on the social and political role of art, and a guide for all |
| |state of the world. |people of conscience facing conscienceless regimes” (from the back cover). |
| |Either we hope within us, or we don’t. It is a |Here is the full text of the quote from pp. 181-182: |
| |dimension of the soul. |“I think I should probably say first that the kind of hope I often think |
| |Hope is not a conviction that something will |about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as |
| |turn out well, but the certainty that something|prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. |
| |makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. |Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul, and|
| | |it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or|
| | |estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation |
| | |of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is |
| | |immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. I |
| | |don’t think you can explain it as a mere derivative of something here, of |
| | |some movement, or of some favorable signs in the world. I feel that its |
| | |deepest roots are in the transcendental, just as the roots of human |
| | |responsibility are, though of course I can’t—unlike Christians, for |
| | |instance—say anything concrete about the transcendental. An individual may |
| | |affirm or deny that his hope is so rooted, but this does nothing to change my|
| | |conviction (which is more than just a conviction; it’s an inner experience). |
| | |The most convinced materialist and atheist may have more of this genuine, |
| | |transcendentally rooted inner hope (this is my view, not his) than ten |
| | |metaphysicians together. |
| | |Hope, in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy that things are |
| | |going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed|
| | |for early success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it is|
| | |good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the|
| | |situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is |
| | |definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that |
| | |something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, |
| | |regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think that the deepest and most |
| | |important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us|
| | |to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the |
| | |human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from |
| | |‘elsewhere.’ It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to |
| | |live and to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours |
| | |do, here and now.” |
| | |Vaclav Havel was a “quizzical absurdist playwright” when, in 1976, he agreed |
| | |to become the spokesman for a group calling for a more tolerant and open |
| | |Czechoslovakia. Thirteen years later, having endured harassment and multiple |
| | |imprisonments for his political activities, Havel became his country’s |
| | |president. You can read about him on the Wikipedia at: |
| | |, or at his official website: |
| | | |
| |7-2 |Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in|
| |Julia Butterfly Hill: |one's life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events|
| |What gives me hope? I reflect back again to a |will turn out for the best. When used in a religious context, hope carries a |
| |time when I was in the tree and it’s a time |connotation of being aware as spiritual truth. In Christian theology, hope is|
| |that as soon as I go there it begins tears, and|one of the three theological virtues (faith, hope, and love), which are |
| |I know that it will for the rest of my life. |spiritual gifts of God. In contrast to the above, it is not a physical |
| |When I was listening to the chainsaws every day|emotion but a spiritual grace. Hope is distinct from positive thinking, which|
| |and having watched these ancient trees hit the |refers to a therapeutic or systematic process used in psychology for |
| |ground every day and not being able to go and |reversing pessimism. |
| |amuse myself and shut down and just bearing | |
| |witness day in and day out and feeling myself | |
| |and every last shred of hope being strangled | |
| |and killed. … And the answer that came to me | |
| |was, “Julia, if you have hope in your heart and| |
| |even if you’re the only person left who has | |
| |hope in their heart – is that hope is committed| |
| |in action, then there’s hope for the world. If | |
| |you’re the only person left, as long as your | |
| |hope is committed in action, then hope is alive| |
| |in the world.” | |
| |7-3 |In psychology, any new demanding situation can be seen as either a threat or |
| |David Ulansey: |a challenge. Depending on how we perceive the new situation will determine |
| |I believe that this is the moment when the |how we respond to it, that is, with fear and withdrawal, or with hope and |
| |human species can rise to its full potential. |engagement. |
| |We have now created for ourselves the greatest |(add reference) |
| |challenge we have ever faced. And that means | |
| |that we are, we have the opportunity to live | |
| |the most meaningful lives that have ever been | |
| |lived. | |
| |7-4 | |
| |Rob Hopkins: | |
| |This is a historic process that’s starting. | |
| |This is a once-off window of opportunity to | |
| |create something really, really extraordinary | |
| |that future generations will tell stories | |
| |about, sing songs about, put plates up to. | |
| |7 -5 |This famous saying “We are the ones we've been waiting for” can be seen from |
| |Van Jones: |a Hopi point of view at: |
| |Look to your left and look to your right. Look | |
| |at the beautiful people who are around you | |
| |right now. We don’t need any hero on a white | |
| |horse. We’re the people we’ve been waiting for.| |
| |You already have within you enough love to save| |
| |the planet. | |
| |7-6 | |
| |Al Gore: | |
| |There is an old African proverb some of you | |
| |know that says, “If you want to go quickly, go | |
| |alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We | |
| |have to go far quickly, so we have to have a | |
| |change in consciousness, a change in | |
| |commitment, a new sense of urgency, a new | |
| |appreciation for the privilege that we have of | |
| |undertaking this challenge. | |
| |7-7 | |
| |Wangari Mathaai: | |
| |In the course of history there comes a time | |
| |when humanity is called to shift to a new level| |
| |of consciousness, to reach a higher moral | |
| |ground, a time when we have to shed our fear | |
| |and give hope to each other. That time is now. | |
| |7-8 |This statement is one part of The Pachamama Alliance’s two-fold mission. |
| |Narrator: | |
| |We now have the unprecendented opportunity to | |
| |set off in an entirely new direction, and | |
| |together make real the world we so deeply yearn| |
| |for: an environmentally sustainable, | |
| |spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human| |
| |presence on this planet. | |
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