People mirror the world and people are changing therefore, of coarse the world will change in time or what we as people define as time.  The world is changing now.  For the better so that it's for the best in the end.  This is inevitable.  And everything happens for the better.  

Shellby

"The civilization that dominates the contemporary world is no longer sustainable: "

You imply that somehow the terrible eras we have been through --of civilization--have 'had their place'.

For WHO exactly??

From the outset they have been sadistic, genocidal, and ecocidal, and unsustainable. All based on irrationality!

I just get you seem to make out the story of the 'white man experience' has been the 'right way' to 'now'. NOW for many Indigenous peoples and animals and nature it hasn't.

My goodness, Zest. You have a passion and persistence akin to the sol/sun. Truly an energy source/being. Thank you for the offerings.

History repeats and again the tangibly pathological, selfish, manic, self-aggrandising, edifice-building, venal, vapid, vacuous, soundbite-memorandum-mutherfucker segment of ‘society’ has spun semantic, a propagandist engine so completely convinced of the veracity of its value, and vision, that in denial and unconcerned, sweeps aside all complaint and refutation as mere triviality, whilst stipulating its own depraved logic as truth. So many blinkered, vested interests and tenured minds.

Or am I just seeking for someone to blame; another of our bad habits. We could spend an eternity attempting to track down the site of the first wrong step man made, but it is futile, maybe if we had evolved from Bonobo instead. All we can do is utilise our joyous potential to sustain what we recognise as genuinely valuable, as I suspect extremely dangerous times are ahead.

Sorry i think i was ranting.

It's a mind boggling mess, isn't it?  Hard to believe the history books.  But it's true we're driven to this time and time again.  Humans are not the only species that corals itself into dire straights.  Getting lost in hyper-specialization has taken its toll on countless species, they might have been "dumb", but we have no excuse.

 

A big toe is hyper-specialized, and like us, it's pretty useless on its own.  It needs a foot, which needs a shin, which needs a knee, and all the way up til there's a whole leg.  But this leg is going to need a body and this body will need sensory receivers in order to find fuel for living.  The sensory receivers will need a way to interpret the environment, remember what the best methods of gathering energy and organize them in a way that allows the least amount of energy expenditure necessary for life.  By cutting out the unnecessary acts, the brain improves the chance of survival.

Recognizing and removing the unnecessary acts is what improves the chance of survival.  The unnecessary acts...  I don't know when we forgot excess is the end, No one ever asked me what we should do next, maybe that left turn in Albuquerque did it?

Solid advice though, Negen.  I Cherish the earth for this body, the sun for these senses and the moon for offering me the way to humble reflection.  I ask them that I might continue to receive these gifts they offer and in return I will remain unshakable in their defense.

I suppose we can only hope that this fascinating self-awareness and self-reflectiveness of ours actually means something, being as it is, at the wave-front of material evolution, the effervescing limen of novelty. I have always fascinated on technological progress, but as i have grown older, my biophilic and luddite traits have come ever closer to the fore, for pragmatic reasons as much as idealist ones. The biosphere is failing, of that I have no doubt, regardless of the apocalyptic sidelines of global warming and oil depletion, etc. the environment is rotten. Whales classified as toxic waste because of organics concentrations, bees randomly dying, you name it. Complex systems require diversity to sustain and that diversity has been decimated, every species lost and every habitat ravaged leads US closer to collapse. I'm sounding a bummer here, but i don't know what else to say.

A weed in the narcissist's garden.

http://decontaminated-continuum.blogspot.com/

 

"Ideas emerge above the level of description in the realm of raw imaginal stuff, and the act of attaching symbols or words to them, a ballast of semantic and semiotic material, drags them down, inevitably misshapen and only partially described. This effort is however required to make conceptualizations available to others, for pleasure and for the critical purposes of dialectical exchange, although over time definitions become more refined and hopefully more congruent with the original notion. These writings should be recognized as such tentative articulations, gleaned in part from intuition and observation, but also from the ideas of all the others who have attempted this same process, ideas that have happened, for whatever reason, to pass through this local, noospheric sensorium, including those which have been corrupted or misunderstood en route. As such, they are not to be considered as propositions of truth, only the queriously curioidal and playfully humble, speculations of one that is many."

You...  You're a bonified agent of change-proper!  Always a pleasure to read such writings.  It is nearly impossible to contain an ever changing, shapeless energy being like this.  Well done! If you don't mind me saying so. 

han shan

 

http://ranprieur.com/essays/syswork.html

 

I thought this essay by Ran Prieur was pretty relevant to the discussion and is definitely worth a read. I appreciate what Mr Laszlo has to say about the difficulties we face as a species. What zezt had to say about civilization resonates with me as well. Civilization by definition is a hierarchical vertical system that is structured like a pyramid. And pyramids are not natural. They dont occur in nature. Thus they are opposed and dedicated to dominating nature which each of us are not outside of, and so, as part of civilization, we are participating whether willingly or not in the domination of ourselves. And this is why civilization has no adequate answer to the crises which the human race faces. I think there is something beyond civilization. Something symbiotic and horizontal and decentralized. Thats anarchy, but that word has been subverted into a negative connotation by civ itself, so perhaps we shouldnt call it anything and just DO IT.

An interesting article indeed, thanks for sharing.

My two-pence:

Groups can only be submissive or passive to horror, if they all assent, complicitly. It is of extreme interest to explore and elucidate the manner in which Homo Rapiens manifests innate hierarchies, with their systems of control and diplomacy, as a spontaneous emergence, in a way that is common in many animal group social systems. Is has been observed in a small population of chickens that hierarchies are also extant, and when a member of the hierarchy is removed, the system does not collapse, but reconfigures into the exact same hierarchy. We tacitly defer to the relative authority, to a leader, even the most ‘rebellious’ will seek out a new figurehead unless they are suitably confident and dominant to become one themselves, hence why so many gurus, prophets and political luminaries are able to succeed; they take the need for change and capitalise on it, not necessarily intentionally. These dominance battles might impose a new glossy format, but one that reinstates the same innate system, only in an apparently different form, hence the common platitudinous statements about revolutions never succeeding. If we are able to recognise this pattern and maintain vigilance we can head off the most extreme manifestations of it, the likes of totalitarianism etc. but deconstructing the hierarchy will not be so simple, potentially the best we can do is to decentralise it. This is certainly something to ponder.

A semantic note: we are natural, as is all we do. The delineation of humans from ‘nature’ ala Christianity, and its offspring Humanism, to my mind has served to abstract ‘nature’ from our experience. Rather than being part of its continuum, we have to come to see it as external and ourselves as special and therefore more inclined to use and misuse it. I think it is such semantic abstractions and absolutes that have in part caused us these problems of which we speak, maybe even more so than the 'system'. Something else to ponder.

I'll admit to plagiarising that from John Gray's 'Straw Dogs -Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals'; a vital read I recommend to all of you, although not for the delicate of constitution.

http://www.amazon.com/Straw-Dogs-Thoughts-Humans-Animals/dp/0374270937/r...

and as a companion; Armesto's 'So You Think You're Human?'

http://www.amazon.com/You-Think-Youre-Human-Humankind/dp/0192804170/ref=...

 

This article is very relevant to the thoughts I've been having recently.

 

The question is: what are we going to do? There are some suggestions, but no easy solution to the many inter-locking and complex problems facing our Earth right now.

 

I think we will just have to figure it out as we go along.... and try to do so in the most constructive, fearless, and hopeful way we can.

Well, Erwin, we can all dig where you're coming from here, but it ain't exactly news, is it? In fact, there are a few critical flaws in the formula you've laid down for the tipping point or critical mass that we've been told we need in order to bring about the Worldshift. The problem is not one of semantics (although the overuse of these terms does threaten death by cliché, btw), but in thought pattern & perspective. You can't bring about the bright & shiny New Day with imperial logic & metaphor. For example, knowingly or not, you've got a nasty can of worms writhing under the smooth bark of this one:

The civilization that dominates the contemporary world is no longer sustainable: if it is not to breakdown, it must transform.

Dude, it was never sustainable! To say, as you do, that it's only the fact that we're running out of room to "expand" that necessitates the Big Change (or whatever Awesome Phrase our eco-marketers are using this month) is an irreconcilable contradiction to the notion of the next step being better than the preceding, blood-soaked Age of Savagery, a slap in the face to all those brothers who were eaten by the Machine as it paved the Road of Progress. Why is that it's only when it's our bacon going into the frying pan that the way we do business becomes a problem?

 

Among the other problems with your unfortunate phraseology that caught my eye and are stuck in my throat is the way you've parsed Bucky Fuller's change-or-die ultimatum; the fear of collapse is a mighty weapon indeed, but it's morphed into an awfully moldy carrot by now. It's what the Peak Oil crowd uses to incite panic & hopelessness among the faithful addicts of the Pornography of Despair (a big business in its own right). They tell us that there is no substitute for oil, no way to keep the economy running smoothly, no "silver bullet" to prevent the cataclysmic and, presumably, inevitable descent into barbarism.

 

Nowhere is there room (or time!) to wonder why we would want to keep the economy or the political set up that services it, not us, "running smoothly." How much have we bought into the notion of man's fallen nature--how many times have we seen, "with our own eyes," Lord of the Flies?

 

This is what we have to transcend, folks. 

 

Not the scarcity of natural resources, with our time-saving technology; not the bestiality of man's nature, with our vaunted democratic institutions (and the guns that back them up). If you go back to Charles' intro to the Ascent of Humanity, you'll see that he was asking the right question from the start:

"What else is there?"

I promised Daniel that I would send in the answer I've found to this central question--here, not my old stomping grounds, since the spirit has been chased away from that once lively community by the agents of fear, disguised as "cynical realists"--and I mean to keep that promise, just as soon as I possibly can.

 

In the meantime, you guys are doing alright, poking your noses into all the good pies. I do actually appreciate what Erwin's trying to do. His Reenchantment of the Cosmos is an intriguing, if not exactly "new" prospect, since the human traditions beyond the Pale of Empire have always known that:

 

* All is One

* the universe is infinite

 

The existing order has a great fear of these truths, for they are antithetical to and make a mockery of the divisions that have been sown between us and the scarcities and entropies that have been created in the laboratory of control over the past 6,000 years.

 

But all you cosmic heads who still have some stardust in your eyes know all this, instinctively if not historically. You also know, because you've felt it, at some giant concert or small disaster where people let down their guards enough to synchronize their hearts, that empathy is understanding, while science is just another way of knowing, another, and actually quite limited metaphor. (In Dazzle Gradually, Dorion Sagan writes a beautiful story about the denial his famous father was in over this--he couldn't accept the idea that something could be true and verifiable, etc, etc, and still also just be another lens between us and what we think we see.)

And this, I think, is what bothers me just a little about Erwin's little post here. I mean aside from the vacuous repetition of intentionally vague buzzwords. Oh, and the ill-conceived politcs hiding behind the New Man he's pitching. You can see all of the above in this bit, including the old guard peeking out:

When a critical mass of people changes its values and priorities, the leadership catches on, and the world itself will change.

Yeah, hundredth monkey. That one liberated lots of minds, eh? Still not as bad as the part where "the leadership catches on"...and then the world changes. Bullweenies! The leadership is the problem--why do we still need & fear the archons, knowing what they've done to keep us down so very damned long (when it looks like up to us) ?

han shan

Yr. post kicked me right in the eye. I got caught up in the peak oil hoopla for awhile and then I realized that the doomer's greatest fear is not the reality of energy depletion, but the chance that it may not happen and the status quo which they are very much a part of and are too afraid to escape will carry on unabated. Its like the rapture for disillusioned atheist yuppies who got ensnared in materialism before they realized it wasnt all it was cracked up to be. We've got new age apocalypse and techno geek rapture, too. Those are totally different marketing groups, though.(Oh, and never forget The Great Conspiracy.)

  There is certainly an overabundance of things to be horrified about even when you turn off the interweb, unplug the TV, and just generally unplug from the zeitgeist. I'm an unashamed fan of Terence McKenna and the one thing that he said that sticks with me more than anything else is the idea that "culture is not your friend." As both a scientist and a guinea pig I can attest that culture can bleed you of your imagination. Nothing a regular dose of mushrooms cant cure though. And besides I fancy myself a poetic terrorist these days.  

  We gotta get over our fears, our addictions, our naivete, and our desire to "succeed" in the game of culture. Giving away the things which we put our souls into is a good start and I give you props for that. P E A C E

"(although the overuse of these terms does threaten death by cliché, btw)"

 

And I'm OK with the death of arbitrary constructs. 

 

This is news to an awe full lot of people. 

 

 

 

 

 

The Psychedelic Salon has a huge number of his lectures, as well as the trialogues he did with Ralph Abrahams and Rupert Sheldrake. Valuable stuff.

http://www.matrixmasters.net/blogs/

han shan

Pretty obvious but probably not as much so when he said it-

 

"As a result of confusing the real world of nature with mere signs such as money, stocks and bonds, title deeds and so forth we are destroying nature. This is a disaster. Time to wake up!"—Alan Watts in The Art of Meditation

Om an to Alan Watts record in 69, the 'Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are' was the book that quided my teenage LSD opened mind... too bad the owner of DEoxy was a control freak even if there is a lot of great stuff on there. 

look, were all thinking about this stuff. were all floating in the same space. it's a sign that something is going on. something big is gonna happen. over my dead body. this is how i end up sucked in.

I read a book when I was young called "Love."  This was no ordinary book as far as I could tell.  This was one of those books that effortlessly weaved the readers way through time.  Taking them from when to then with effortless grace as it broke beyond the boundaries and constructs of now and potential into a land of possibilities and substantial realities.  

The book had very clear intentions and a less then clear message.  It's intentions were to unveil the mysteries surrounding the construct of love and to do so with the passion of community being the vehicle.  

The setting was a school anywhere near you.  All of the explorers gathered and began the journey in  agreeance that Love is a very personal, highly objective construct.  The game the attendants devised following these lines was, to each write a searching, fearless, moral inventory of themselves and draw a conclusion based on these findings as to how they each define Love within the bounds of a relationship and then to bring the results together and find the common traits.  Surely this would at least get them in the ball park as to what Love is.  Very bold adventuring.

This portion of the game went on for a long time, months passed before any of them felt their inventories were completely accounted and more months passed before they would muster up the courage and conviction they needed to show them to their fellow explorers.  It wasn't an easy task for the players to get a hold of some of their more elusive characteristics they had unwittingly ignored all their lives.  They asked friends for help along the way, which seemed to make all the difference in streamlining the clunky ordeal.

 

Then the day came that the players decided they had enough, the desire to discover the very nature of Love had overcome their desire to hide their short comings.  There were much more important things in this life than worrying about whether or not your fellow explorers would find some short comings in your... short comings.

 

In another act of agreeance they gathered and all together they displayed their findings to one another.  All at once the pages of unearthed wreckage that had burdened them each individually their entire lives were heaped into a massive pile onto a desk in the middle of the school room.  They all stood around the desk, which was almost collapsing under the weight of the paper.  There was a moment of suspension of what to do next.  Then in an uproarious cacophony of immeasurable joy the classroom was alive with earth shaking laughter.  The windows nearly blew out from the sheer volume of bellowing glee and the desk which held the torments of yesterday collapsed beneath the weight of the pages.  

 

When the exuberation subsided and there was room between chuckles one of the more intrepid explorers asked, "So shall we begin?"  Another motion of agreeance lead to the less jubilous but lingeringly spirited act of tallying the results.

 

After a few hours of exchanging playful rib-jabs and shoulder shots the luminous smirks had yet to fade.  They began to see some results, this might actually work!  The white board they were recording the data on was filling up quick and they soon found themselves having to erase and condense some of the results for the lack of space.  This act went on for some time, record, erase, condense, record, erase, condense and on and on.  Finally the last page had been read and the final bit of data recorded.  The last group of results was condensed and condensed and condensed somemore until they all agreed they had come to a conclussion.  Love is not a what at all.  But the journey certainlly was full of it. 

 

From that point forward the explorers would get together and dream of ways to show everyone they met what they had found.  Communal Passion.

 

That's a very short version of a story my mother would tell me when I would ask her what the 60's were like.

Love is a working, a process, a verb not a noun. True love derives from the refractive magnificence of the meta-object that manifests between people, a spiritual sculpture or architechture, built from the sophisticated recognition of mutual acknowledgment, on the foundations of honesty and respect. This love can dazzle by the evanescent transience of a glance, or roil amidst the fables of a lifetime. If such a creation becomes immersed in the mire of romantic lore, or social dogmatic taboo, its brightness fades and its magick is extinguished.

A weed in the narcissist's garden