Newsletter - November 24th, 2015 - Volume 2, Issue 12
TSW Posts from the Past Month German scholar Andreas Weber has written an excellent essay
on how we should look to Nature as a model for optimizing Human Systems. The 70 page paper is titled – “Enlivenment: Towards a fundamental shift in the concepts of nature, culture and politics.” Here is a small subsection of the paper that speaks in particular to how nature can guide us to a more enlightened economic system than the current Darwinian / NeoLiberal model currently in place.
Links worth Investigating A Systems Approach to Peacebuilding By
Louise Diamond, Ph.D. (Note: This article was originally intended to be the first chapter of a book entitled, Beyond Win-Win, by Louise Diamond. Though the book was never completed, and this chapter was written originally in 1997, nevertheless it stands on its own today as useful reading.)
- The WORST Place to Store Your Cell Phone | EMF
Dangers: "Can Your Cell Phone Cause Cancer? One interesting case that can serve as an illustrative warning of the cancer-causing potential of cell phones is that of a young woman with no other predisposing risk factors for cancer who came down with multi-focal breast cancer. The case was revealed in the May issue of the Environmental Health Trust's newsletter. As it turns out, the young
lady had the curious habit of tucking her cell phone into her bra...Two cancer specialists, Robert Nagourney and John West, concluded there was only one other possibility that might have directly contributed to her breast cancer. "We connected the dots," the patient said. And the dots―quite literally the pattern of the cancer, and distribution of the cancerous cells―lined up perfectly with the shape of her cell phone."
- Placebo Effect – The Amazing Power Of Consciousness, by Dr. Keith R. Holden. "The placebo effect provides insight into the complexity of consciousness and how little
we really know about the mind and its ability to heal. But the scientific evidence is accumulating and points towards the possibility that the mind has an unlimited healing ability. The placebo effect emphasizes the importance of belief in overall health and wellness. Be positive in what you say and be discerning about what you believe. Your body-mind is listening."
- The 11 Essential Attitudes for Meditation: "Subject all statements to the actual test of your own experience, and let the results be your
guide to truth. Insight meditation evolves out of an inner longing to wake up to what is real and to gain liberating insight into the true structure of existence. The entire practice hinges upon this desire to be awake to the truth. Without it, the practice is superficial.” - from the book Mindfulness in Plain in English - FarnamStreetBlog.com
Searching for the Ox: The Path to Enlightenment in 10 Pictures. "In
Zen’s famed 10 oxherding pictures, the ox is enlightenment and the herder is you, the meditator. Created by 12th-century Chinese master Guo-an Shi-yuan, the oxherding pictures have mapped the path for Buddhist practitioners ever since, inspiring countless commentaries and new renderings. Here is a contemporary take by graphic artist Mark T. Morse, with commentary by Boundless Way Zen teacher Josh Bartok and a Vajrayana perspective from the late Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.” Shambhala
Sun
Proactive Access to Knowledge and Wisdom - Could gratitude be the most important emotion of
all? David Shariatmadari writing in the UK’s Guardian Newspaper: "Unlike indebtedness, which can feel like a burden, gratitude is experienced as unequivocally positive. It does not feel like a duty (and, interestingly enough, is unlikely to be generated by an act of duty: if someone does something for you because they have to, you don’t feel particularly grateful). It boosts our wellbeing, and even our health. In one experiment, three sets of
participants were told to write either about their problems, things they were grateful for, or neutral events, once each week for 10 weeks. Subjects in the second group felt better about their lives as a whole and reported greater optimism. Extraordinarily, they also had fewer physical complaints and spent more time exercising than members of the other two groups."
- After Paris: A World That Has Lost Its Ethical Direction and Spiritual Foundation & A Media that Cheerleads for Fear and Militarism | Tikkun Magazine: "For many years, we at Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives have warned that the domination and power-over strategies to achieve “homeland security” have
been tried for over 7,000 years and all they have produced is more wars and violence, interspersed with short periods of peace that have, with the help of the sensationalist and natioanlist media and professional apologists for the existing inequalities, managed to hide from public view the degree of covert structural violence that every system of inequality and domination embodies."
- Terrence McNally podcast with LESTER BROWN, author of PLAN B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. "PLAN B 4.0 is a
comprehensive plan for reversing the trends that are undermining our future. Its four overriding goals are to stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restore the earth’s damaged ecosystems. Failure to reach any one of these goals will likely mean failure to reach the others as well. It’s time for Plan B: an all-out response at wartime speed proportionate to the magnitude of the threats facing civilization."
- Philosopher Erich Fromm on the Art of Loving and What Is Keeping Us from Mastering It: "This book … wants to show that
love is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in by anyone, regardless of the level of maturity reached by him. It wants to convince the reader that all his attempts for love are bound to fail, unless he tries most actively to develop his total personality, so as to achieve a productive orientation; that satisfaction in individual love cannot be attained without the capacity to love one’s neighbor, without true humility, courage, faith and discipline. In a culture in which these qualities
are rare, the attainment of the capacity to love must remain a rare achievement.“ - from BrainPickings.org
- A Primer on Terms Related to Climate Change: " Len Rosen just released a useful primer of terms, events, and concepts related to climate change. It is, as Rosen aptly refers to it, a great "cheat
sheet" for people following the coverage and proceedings that will take place in December’s Climate Change Conference in Paris”. Word Future Society
- “Consciousness precedes Being, and not the other way around...For this reason, the salvation in this human world lies nowhere else than the human heart...Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe toward which this world is
headed - be it ecological, social, demographic, or a general breakdown of civilization - will be unavoidable. If we are no longer threatened by world war or by the danger that the absurd mountains of nuclear weapons might blow up the world, this does not mean we have definitely won. We are still capable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of all our actions, if they are to be moral, is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country,
my company, my success - responsibility to the order of being where all our actions are indelibly recorded and where and only where they will be properly judged.” - former Czech President, Vaclav Havel in a speech to a joint session of the US Congress on February 21st, 1990
- “We humans think
that we can own the planet, as if fleas could own a dog. Our concepts of property ownership are vastly different from traditional practices of recognizing use rights over various resources. A right to grow or gather food or other resources in a particular place is about meeting needs. Property ownership is about the ability to live on one side of the world and speculate on resources on the other, possibly without ever seeing it, without regard to need or consequence.” - Nandor Tanczos,
former New Zealand Green Party MP writing in the forward to Derek Wall’s book - Economics after Capitalism, A Guide to the Ruins
- "The brain gives the heart its sight. The heart gives the brain its vision."
- Rob Kall
- "And,
maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power – almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving.” - Philosopher Erich Fromm from his1956 book - The Art of
Loving
- “We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis.” Or, more succinctly: 'Our economic system and our planetary system are at war.' Something’s got to give, and
nature, as we’ve learned, is not in a giving mood.“ - Naomi Klein in her book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate
- "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
- "I think that we can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do—by what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include." - Robert Nelson Jacobs
Assuming military action of any kind was not an option, what would you do as President of the World to help bring peace to the Middle East? [this is a hard systems thinking challenge for sure...hint: start by identifying the point of view and historical background of all involved parties and then layer a Unity
Consciousness perspective on top of that.]
I took this picture a few weeks ago in the “Rose Garden Park” - West Allentown, PA toward the end of our beautiful Autumn. The picture was “stylized” with an iPhone App called Painteresque (very simple and easy to use).
Have a Great Week, Stay Positive, and Proactively Choose Your Thoughts to Create Your Desired Reality.
And, wishing you a very Happy Thanksgiving!
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