"Is education for higher states of consciousness the fundamental solution to creating global sustainability." Nice review. Your essay might have worked better if you had given your answer at the beginning and then gone on to explain that answer. As i understand it you are saying 'In theory yes; but can it be done is not so clear.' Fair enough. 93
How do you create global sustainability? Does such a thing exist? Does it not exist? If it exists, does it need to be expanded and grown? Or if it does not exist, should it? What has to happen to see it created? The underlying assumptions seem to be that some level of awareness and action toward global sustainability does exist but not widely enough to save the planet before man destroys everything.
Throughout the week’s course, a variety of sources and opinions are introduced along the common theme of man’s awakening consciousness. That awakening consciousness tends to occur along a continuum. Part of the exploration delves into those ways in which some who experience what is described as this awakened state of being, may tend to think and act differently from those not as far along the continuum quantitatively.
Using a dictionary definition of the word ‘consciousness’ may serve to bring more understanding to the question of how or if education for higher states may influence the progression of a global sustainability.
con·scious·ness/ Noun: 1. The state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings. 2. The awareness or perception of something by a person.
Awakening consciousness, then, can be understood as a state in which an individual moves from a condition of limited perception of their surroundings to a state in which they have a heightened awareness of themselves as human beings and human doings. There are many conversations in many circles of society today that are bringing focus to a level of collective consciousness often referred to as “oneness.” This state is described as having an identity or harmony with someone or something, and by extension, everyone and everything.
Therefore combining all of the above, we have individuals and growing communities of people who are highly aware of their place in the universe and that place is perceived as being inextricably connected to all people, plants, animals, and even the finest, most subtle states of matter that makes up everything in the known, relative existence. This includes all bodies in space, space itself – which it usually referred to as “The Universe” – and even light and energy and all that can be known. Scientists have long recognized that every known element at its very core, finest level is made up of atomic matter. And so we say “We are all one.” I am the same as my mother and my father and my neighbor and extending outward to every element on the planet including the planet itself.
What tends to happen when this realization is reached is a heightened appreciation for the self and eventually a kinship with all life. However before the highest level of appreciation can typically be reached, there are complex layers of the human development that must be addressed. Ego would be defined as one of those layers. A strong ego in a person may hold them back from seeing themselves fully as the same as all beings. A strong ego tends to place the individual – in their own mind – at the center of their own universe. Until or unless the ego is in some way subjugated – according to some schools of thought – the individual’s progress along the consciousness continuum remains underdeveloped.
The point of going into this level of detail is to bring light to the fact that consciousness is only known by the self. This is often referred to as being in a state of self referral consciousness. And unless or until the individual finds themselves in that state of self referral consciousness, their full appreciation of their place in the universe remains limited.
An individual in a state of limited consciousness is unlikely to fully embrace the idea that they and their world and all beings around them are one. Without this level of awareness, it is difficult to even consider that they may play an integral part in the status of a global sustainability or that such a status is not only important but vital to the survival of the planet as a habitat for humanity.
Having argued that higher states of consciousness are fundamental to an appreciation for global sustainability, can one say that education and teaching a method for reaching such a state of consciousness is a fundamental solution to creating global sustainability. The answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ Once such a position is taken on this issue, then myriad questions arise as to how to deliver this education or if such an education is really even possible. Those questions go beyond the scope of this paper and will undoubtedly be argued ad infinitum by the various schools of teaching methods on the planet.
In closing it should be sufficient to point out that we would wish to raise individual consciousness to raise the collective consciousness. And to raise collective consciousness to educate and liberate the world, thereby creating the conditions on the planet whereby global sustainability is conceivable.
—end—
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Friday 3/9
Maharishi videos 89 A mixed bag of work. The first two are pretty good then you sort of stopped answering the question. When you say about Maharishi plugging TM it makes him sound like a cheap salesman. I hope that isn't your intention. What he always emphsized is to open awareness to the transcendent. TM is his preferred route. But his motivation isn't to 'make a sale' like that. It's to reduce suffering in the world.
#1 The Environment - Nicely done.
All the work, the knowledge, the systems are already there. Where do we want to be? What kind of environment do we want? It is all completely available to any man; he must make a choice. He can accept it or he can remodel it.
A man can have the environment he likes. Every thought, speech, and action affects his environment. These create a wave; it touches and influences – negatively, positively, or neutral, although it is never really neutral – everything you touch.
And it comes from our desires. Desires are always for more and more. Desires begin in the thoughts. Thoughts lead to desires. Desires lead to actions. Actions lead to achievement. Achievement leads to fulfillment.
This creates life-supporting influences in every thing around us. All depends on what influence we produce through our thoughts, speech, and actions. And it all depends on attention, whether widely or narrowly focused. We have to create that widened awareness. Such as with our surrounding, our house, some are so attractive and some are not so attractive. Every man can create his environment as he likes. He needs only sit and meditate and bring creative intelligence. The science of creative intelligence offers that to develop an expanded mind to be most creative.
By reducing stresses and strains, the environment begins to breathe signs of life. SCI give them the formula. It brings increased creative intelligence and there will be no problems. Man shouldn’t grumble.
Patrick Commentary: Here Maharishi specifically is focusing on the physical place of being for the individual. Where our surrounds bring the support of nature or whether they do not. And he makes it clear that the creative intelligence is with each person. We can make conscious choices that lead to the fulfillment of our desires – but it is incumbent on the individual to make those choices.
Without the benefit of practicing meditation, Maharishi is suggesting, the individual does not reach a state of consciousness whereby he or she is aware that they themselves are at cause in their world. Our thoughts, our speech, and actions bring about the manifestation of our desires. To have higher fulfillment of higher desires that are in line with our higher values, we must reach higher states of consciousness through meditation and through knowledge of the science of creative intelligence.
The higher meaning imparted to the student of this course from this video might be the advice that to create and to live in a global sustainable environment, the highest recommendation is to practice that meditation that connects to the highest absolute source of all knowing; "develop an expanded mind to be most creative." Then we may begin to live in accordance with the advice that Krishna gives to Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita: “...you should be free from the action of the gunas, established in eternal truth, self-controlled, without any sense of duality or the desire to acquire and hoard.” (2:45) “Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself—without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For yoga is perfect evenness of mind.” (2:48). _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Video #2 The Nature of Free Will vs. Determinism. Pretty good effort. One other key point is that the degree of free will depends on the level of development of CI in an individual.
From SCI, a good man is using full creative intelligence. Other kind is yet on the way to unfolding.
What is determinism is that SCI teaches us to have 200% value of life. It is split 100%/100% -- determinism and free will. There are two levels of life. The individual level of life and the cosmic level of life. Some things are absolutely determined. Determinism and free will are the same thing. You have complete free will in taking an action and when that action is taken the outcome is determined. Do this and the result is determined. Make your choice. Sow what you reap. other way round! What you sow is what you reap – not some other crop – only that one you have sown. So by the actions you take in sowing whether it is a crop or a thought, you will get what you give.
The present is structured on the actions of the past. Actions of the past are structured on free will. Natural laws are fixed; in favor of evolution; toward more and more; toward the infinite value of life.
Patrick’s Commentary: In the context of Global Sustainable Environment, Maharishi advises that we need to transcend to fully embrace and understand creative intelligence and to come into alignment with natural law. Only when people have risen to higher states of consciousness can they then experience the full value of life. Only when they experience the full value of life do they then utilize their free will to takes actions in the world with the support of nature that are beneficial for people and the planet together. This is sustainability.
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#3 Expansion of the Heart to develop that quality so what are the implications for global sustainability?
Spontaneous ability of finer perception as appreciation grows love increases and finer perception is more charming. The object of perception is more charming, more fascinating; there is more ability to love and this develops the heart. This increases along with more perception; is more charming; more attractive.
Celestial perception is the finest perception. When one is in cosmic consciousness one is free from stresses; enjoys life in freedom due to release of stress. The digestive system starts to produce more valuable substance than before.
The focus is not on the material as much as what that finer system produces from it. When stresses are released the system produces more valuable chemistry. Nervous system improves; crude prana versus refined prana, the prana of meditators; no coarseness to it. The machine, the body, functions better. So the more efficient system produces more beautiful material and operates at the most fundamental value – that particular intelligence.
Release of stress is most important. Transcendental meditation is the most effective way.
Patrick’s Commentary: Here, Mahesh talks about how we can improve ourselves at the individual level. How we can and should seek to function at the finest level of perception which is the level of celestial perception. Stress release he says is most important. The suggestion is that one who is carrying stresses can not reach the ultimate goal of perfection as a human. This perfection would be defined as both on the physical level of how the body is functioning as well as on the level of consciousness. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
#4 Limitations to Growth - So what are the implications for global sustainability?
Growth is unlimited. Progress depends on creative intelligence. It is unlimited when that potential becomes lively in the individual. And then it is unbounded and limitless. This is the experience of creativity.
Patrick’s commentary: This very brief video was a question and answer session with Maharishi where he offers his insights in response to questions from a small panel. I think the question had to do with if there were any limitations to growth. Maharishi’s answer was probably the shortest, most succinct I’ve heard yet in any of the videos at MUM. Growth is unlimited. The message of course is a plug for TM and the benefits one gets by practicing TM, such as lively potential and unbounded and limitless possibilities in ones life.
_ _ _ _ _ Cultivating An Ecological Conscience, by Frederick L. Kirschenmann I think you have done a great job summarizing the books thinking - not an easy task. But I'd like you to have given a clearer answer to the question I posed -ie what is his proposed method to cultivate an ecological conscience? He describes what such a conscience would be but what about the how? He describes how it happened to him. But what about the rest of us? 91
Before one even gets into the text of the book the author offers thoughts that inspired and informed the work. “Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life.” From the last paragraph of the Earth Charter, www.earthcharter.org.
In large measure, this statement seems to sum up the major foundational message offered in the Global Sustainable Environment course; that this new reverence for life in this time of awakening can only be possible when the conscience and consciousness of the collective finally reaches a state whereby these truths become the rule, not the exception. yes, that's my central thought.
The author spends time sharing his reflections on the divine and the deeper meanings in our own lives revealed in relationships with the whole of the biotic community; and part of the evolution of an ecological conscience.
Only by a rededication to organic farming, rebuilding soils, producing food that is more nutritious will true sustainability be achieved. Contrasts the owner-operator farm with rising absentee corporate ownership shows two very different mindsets and goals. Advocates for a soil-depletion allowance subsidy the same as oil companies get with their existing oil-depletion allowance, which of course while a great idea, probably has no support from those who could make it law.
A common reoccurring thread is that of the intense conviction that conventional agriculture is detrimental to the soil and that soils could be managed without synthetic inputs.
“The very notion of sustainability strikes me as a transcendent concept. It is a goal, a vision, a journey.”
He sees the possibility that sustainable agriculture is more than simply an alternative to conventional agriculture. It may be part of a much more comprehensive change in society, likening it as major paradigm changing as the Copernican revolution in the sixteenth century.
He extends the ideas further when describing an approach to solving the combined problems of agronomic, social, and biospheric problems, by going so far as to suggest it requires an evolution of a new production ethic combined with restoring the health of local ecosystems with maintaining optimum production. To achieve this awakened reality will recognize the seamless connections between healthy soil, healthy ecological neighborhoods, and vibrant human communities. A vibrant local economy is essential to an agriculture designed to maintain the health of local ecosystems.
One quickly realizes the breadth and depth of this discussion and where it is leading. That although the author is closely connected to his work on the farm, his mind, his thinking, and his consciousness have expanded to consider how all of what he is involved in demonstrates that harmony exists in diversity, the whole is contained in every part, and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. He sees the farm and the world as an extension of himself. The author clearly demonstrates a higher state of consciousness as characterized by skill in action, spontaneous right action, and support of nature.
While the author continues throughout the book, delving into deeper and deeper layers (for after all, life is found in layers), of the issues and controversies surrounding modern agriculture, i.e., genetically modifying plants and seeds, reasons why American agriculture is not sustainable, issues concerning sound science, our food and our relationship with food, the reader realizes that the whole of this material has been informed by a deeply thoughtful and compassionate caring for people and the earth and preserving life as we know it.
In the end, Mr. Kirschenmann shares that, “Different challenges, of course, require different strategies. The forgivingness of nature works to our advantage as we begin to restore the health of soils and planetary biodiversity. From an evolutionary perspective, our survival as a species probably is not the result of always carefully thinking things out and obtaining definitive scientific proof before acting to escape from life-threatening situations.” So we find here that the author goes far beyond the farm to consider the very survival of our species on this planet. This depth of thought and consideration, it would seem, requires an individual that has reached a connection with the cosmos, some call cosmic consciousness. And only be imploring and helping and showing others the way, will the consciousness of the collective to be impacted for the good.
One hopes that as individual consciousness rises, that there becomes a quickening in the collective consciousness. As we raise collective consciousness, only then does it become possible to educate and liberate the world.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Thursday, 3/8
Is the universe a machine? - Thanks Patrick. I didn't mean a machine literally. That was a metaphor for an inert, physical system. Anyway, I agree with your conclusion. I think the elaboration of your conclusion from the MVS camp would be the self-referral dynamics of consciousness. But maybe you have studied this much. 90 6. Write 300 words on 'Is the universe a machine that has leaned to think or a thought that has learned to make a machine.' You may find these two documents useful. But use all your SCI knowledge and reference sources.
It is difficult imaging the universe as some sort of “machine.” Certainly it has many moving parts. And certainly those parts have been honed to a fine precision. However, reflecting on the dictionary meaning of the word, “machine,” one finds it defined as, “An apparatus using or applying mechanical power to perform a particular task.” My personal sense is that the universe is neither.
Asking a student what is the universe or what is the essence of the universe seems a loaded question fraught with peril. These are ancient questions that mankind has been asking for thousands of years. It is a koan. There is no clear answer and as the student ponders it deeply, he finds himself reaching the outer boundaries of his mental capacity and consciousness. The teacher impels the student in this direction and then exceeds it so as to deliver a shock to the system where the student finds his ordinary, relative, waking mode of thinking inadequate to the task.
Some insight may be provided in pondering the deeper meaning of the Sanskrit expression, vasudhaiva kutumbakam: “the world is but one single family.” Everything in the relative creation is little more than cosmic debris or star dust. Stephen Hawking talks about beginnings of the universe and the appearance of life. “We do not know how DNA molecules first appeared. The chances against a DNA molecule arising by random fluctuations are very small.”
Maharishi offers but a glimpse of some principles that might help one understand the universe and life in his teachings on the science of creative intelligence. “Life is found in layers. Order is present everywhere. Outer depends on inner. The nature of life is to grow.” But surely this in inadequate to bring any light to this question at hand.
Many spiritual teachers tell us that all of creation is our own mind-manifestation; that thoughts become things. That the thoughts you focus your attention on become the experiences we have in this life. Is this, therefore, describing the latter part of the two-pronged question, “Is the universe a thought that has learned to make a machine?” Perhaps that is the best answer. We are the entire universe. We all think. Our thoughts are the universe.
Perhaps, then, the four major Mahavakyas describe this mind-manifestation and it is the universe.
prajñānam brahma - "Consciousness is Brahman" (Aitareya Upanishad 3.3 of the Rig Veda)
ayam ātmā brahma - "This Self (Atman) is Brahman" (Mandukya Upanishad 1.2 of the Atharva Veda)
tat tvam asi - "Thou art That" (Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7 of the Sama Veda)
aham brahmāsmi - "I am Brahman" (Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10 of the Yajur Veda)
Jai Bhagwan.
Wednesday, 3/7
Kinship for All Life Well done. Glad you enjoyed the book. With reference to your last comment, I guess both barbarism and grace are there and we can either turn the the 'dark side' or go for the light. 94
Kinship for All Life is a great story of consciousness awakening, primarily from the view of the author. It also offers vivid illustrations through the stories about others who have demonstrated a deeper understanding of nature’s intelligence and mankind’s connection to the natural world through intention. Mr. Boone’s encounter with the innate intelligence in the German shepherd dog, “Strongheart,” and how they came to communicate, know and trust each other is nothing short of illuminating. Boone describes how he needed to overcome his own “wrong beliefs about dogs” and overcome his ingrained feeling of superiority. He said in learning these lessons from the dog, he could become "a better companion for him and a better citizen of the universe.”
Over time, a “mental bridge” formed in the bond between them and thus they were able to share through a silent language he called “the Mind of the Universe that is constantly speaking through all life and for the greater good of all life.”
Another quality of the dog that seemed nothing short of amazing was not so much that the dog had been trained but, rather, educated. Over time with careful perception and gentle technique, the dog came to exhibit a quality the author describes as an “imprisoned splendor.” That is, a quality of character, talents, and even grace.
In the example of Grace Wiley at the Zoo for Happiness working with a large rattlesnake as a new-comer to her and her “gentling room,” the point is made that Miss Wiley “had again demonstrated the fact that regardless of appearances, good is latent in every living thing, and simply need to be called into active expression through the gracious application of respect, sympathetic understanding, gentleness and love.” This stands in stark contrast to statements made in Century of the Self by the narrator who described attributes of Americans as a, “… savage barbarism that lurked just under the surface of normal American life.”
Tuesday, 3/6 I thought you would sharpen your teeth on this one, although I didn't ask for a critique, just a summary of what the claim is. I could spend all day on this, but I'll just make a couple of comments. The reason Maharishi was open to and even keen on scientific research was that Indian philosophy and practices were held in such low esteem in the West. He hoped that research would show that TM does have value for the practical modern man. My second point is that this research paper is breaking into a new area of integrating the fields of neuroscience and pshychology with higher states of consciousness. I agree the study has weaknesses and one study doesn't ever really prove anything. You need a decent body of research to establish credibility. I see it as a start on an interesting journey, Anyway, well done. 91.
Movement Study Review: "Psychological and physiological characteristics of a proposed object-referral/self-referral continuum of self-awareness." Fred Travis, et. al.
(You may want to correct your notes but the study is not called "Consciousness and Cognition." That is the name of the journal it )was published in; #13, (2004).Thanks JC
The study attempts to validate a state of consciousness or self-awareness called "self-referral." Self-referral is being contrasted to a state identified as "object-referral." And the two are examined as opposing states of consciousness measured along a range of variables identified as the "continuum of self-awareness." The study involved fifty-one subjects with varying ranges of experience in the practice of Transcendental Meditation, from zero years through about twenty-five years of practice. Later in the study an allusion is made to "different meditation and spiritual traditions" but none of those were shown in the data for this study.
Curiously, throughout the study, the self-referral state became described as one of pure, self-referral consciousness. There was no mention of why the qualitative adjective referencing 'purity' was attached to that state except that the researchers showed a particular personal bias toward this state of consciousness. "Pure" as compared to what?
The data for analysis was gathered through a process of interviews--asking the subjects to respond to questions. Based on their answers they were given scores called a "Consciousness Factor." Those who did not practice transcendental meditation scored lower on all the scales and those who did practice transcendental meditation scored higher on the scales. All of the researchers are long time transcendental meditation practitioners. All of the researchers are transcendental meditation teachers. Part of the teacher training process involves being taught to repetitively describe transcendental meditation in the same words and descriptions used by the founder of the transcendental meditation. Therefore, it should be noted the likelihood of a strong bias by the researchers who are attempting to validate, first that this "pure, self-referral state" exists, that second, it is beneficial and worthwhile, and third, that it is implied as the exclusive domain of one who is a transcendental meditation practitioner.
The conclusion of the study states that "research can investigate the outcomes of different meditation and spiritual traditions," and that, "This line of research could dramatically impact our understanding of the possible range of human development and could help promote a more unified understanding of diverse spiritual traditions as different roads to the same goal--a more extensive development of human brain integration and unfoldment of our full human potential." Statements like "dramatically impact our understanding" seem sensationalist and speculative at best. The researchers go further in asserting that, "The implications of these data are that enlightenment may be operationalized". On balance and in fairness to the general scientific population, the researchers point out that "many scientifically minded people may consider enlightenment either imaginary, impractical, or simply outside the boundaries of scientific investigation."
Suggesting that one can or should reduce the goal of other spiritual traditions to "unfoldment of a state of full human potential, brought on by a more extensive development of human brain integration" would present as odious to practitioners of other traditions. In Catholic school, my teachers weren't particularly concerned with my "brain integration." While Maharishi Mahesh Yogi said, "The way to gain acceptance of transcendental meditation would be through science. " (Merv Griffin interview), very few spiritual traditions would share this view. Perhaps there is wisdom in the suggestion to keep to the data and avoid the confusion and mixed message that occurs when making casual yet unclarified references to "different meditation and spiritual traditions."
Monday, 3/5/12 --- A really excellent effort on the first installment. Sorry you were put off the second half. I'll review it myself and give you a 95 for part one. The whole thing is pretty interesting isn't it? I think Simund F was her Dad by the way.
Century of the Self
Are people like Bernays and Anna Freud partly responsible for diminished global sustainability in the 20th century?
The film gives a fascinating view into a body of work by founded primarily by Edward Bernays and Anna Freud, the nephew and sister, respectively, of the famous father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Anna Freud, interestingly, was also Bernays' mother, making him a “double nephew” to Mr. Freud. It outlines how their understanding of human emotional motivation, informed by deep psychology, can be manipulated on a mass level, to alter behavior patterns in large groups of people and, through the ingenious use of the then emerging technology of mass-media, even impacts entire populations.
Bernays pioneered the field of public relations and propaganda, and was sometimes called "the father of public relations". He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud. The term “public relations” was cleverly coined so as to not suggest his work was in fact what it was, propaganda, which had negative connotations after the war with Germany and Japan.
The film itself, then, looks at the ways in which Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and Edward Bernays influenced the way corporations and governments have analyzed, dealt with, and controlled people. "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." —Adam Curtis' introduction to the first episode.
The business and political world uses psychological techniques to read, create and fulfill our desires, to make their products or speeches as pleasing as possible to us. Curtis raises the question of the intentions and roots of this fact. Where once the political process was about engaging people's rational, conscious minds, as well as facilitating their needs as a society, the documentary shows how by employing the tactics of psychoanalysis, politicians appeal to irrational, primitive impulses that have little apparent bearing on issues outside of the narrow self-interest of a consumer population.
While it may be difficult to draw a direct correlation between the Bernays/Freud body of work and diminished global sustainability, it seems clear that their work played a significant role in ushering in the era of mass-consumerism. Factors leading up to mass-consumerism are more complex than simply people being manipulated to buy things. Governments themselves may in large measure be equally but in some ways, unknowingly complicit in transforming our world as we knew it before the war – one of meeting basic needs – to one where we all want to have the latest shiny object. This is because mass production industries were primarily created to build and feed the war machines. Technology too was advancing at a pace unparalleled in the history of the world. After the war and after the world no longer needed so many bombs and the machines that delivered them, many factories which wanted to continue to survive and thrive, were converted to post-war manufacturing of every conceivable new doo-dad the mind could imagine.
During this time also, the tactics of the circus barker and the snake oil salesman, could also be taken to the masses and to encourage, entice, cajole and convince all the people that in order to be beautiful, desirable, sexy, and to fit in with society, they needed to buy what everyone else was buying. “Keeping up with the Jones,” is an expression that describes whole neighborhoods acquiring “things” simply because the guy next-door had one. It is the comparison to one's neighbor as a benchmark for social caste or the accumulation of material goods. To fail to "keep up with the Joneses" is perceived as demonstrating socio-economic or cultural inferiority.
In summary, it seems safe to say that the signature of the effects of Bernays and Freud are clearly on the world of consumerism we live in today. To mark them as the masters of this evil empire is probably a bit to strong and not entirely the case. Human psychology remains a fascinating field of study. And although there remains disagreement in some circles as to the extent to which humans can be swayed by carefully planted messages and images, this film gives the strong suggestion that this is exactly what takes place. Following the analysis of this film, my next assignment is to analyze a Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Transcendental Meditation Movement generated scientific study on Psychological and physiological characteristics of a proposed object-referral/self-referral continuum of self-awareness and right from the introduction of the study the question arises as to what extent the Bernays/Freud techniques could have been employed to craft a preconceived reaction on the part of the reader. See separate analysis on the study.
SECOND EPISODE:
So I sat down to watch the second episode in this series and was very put off by this British guy going on and on about: "Big business, the government, and the CIA decided the only way to make democracy work and create a stable society was to repress the savage barbarism that lurked just under the surface of normal American life.
Then he started in on American military in World War II saying that in the "middle of fierce fighting the second world war, the American army was faced by an extraordinary number of mental breakdowns among its troops. 49% of all soldiers evacuated from combat were sent back because they suffered from "mental problems."
I'm going to get mental here and show this guy a little savage barbarism! The reaction his opening comments had on me was, "What kind of propaganda is this film intended to be, anyway?" The footage that is supposed to be of actual soldiers being screened by psychoanalysts is obviously staged and the personalities are actors. I guess I was half asleep during the first part and missed the underlying message.
How to Win Campaigns: Well done 93
Communications campaigns are most effective when told in a story type format.
Pictures and images are more powerful than words.
Any of eight basic story-types can be effectively used such as:
Cinderella: Unrecognized virtue recognized in the end.
Faust: A debt that must be repaid.
A gift taken away or a hero who cannot be kept down.
Seeing is believing.
Choose your most effective visual images.
Don’t let image choice default to the media outlet.
Feelings are important – be credible.
Emotional or psychological deficits are hard to overcome.
Campaigning is a ‘follow me’ or ‘come with us’ exercise.
The Feasibility Triangle:
Objective (purpose)
Resources (commitment priority)
Activities (applying effort)
Levels of engagement (four stages of ‘doing’):
Stage 1: Do nothing
Stage 2: Do one thing
Stage 3: Systematic engagement
Stage 4: Wholesale life change.
Perception of change and significance
Choose metrics to suit your campaign
Alignment
Begin by getting the attention of a group (‘sit comfortably and listen’)
Avoid arguments – they can cause people to disengage
Human Motivations
Understand underlying human needs.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs
Physiological(lowest/earliest needs, i.e. breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, etc.)
Self-actualization (top level addressed after lower levels met)
Pat Dade, UK company, Cultural Dynamics defines as three groups:
Settlers (security-driven)
Prospectors (esteem-driven)
Pioneers (outer-directed)
Each react very differently to campaigns, campaign propositions, and campaign mechanisms.
Campaigns needs to communicate differently for each group to gain support across groups.
ECOMIND I like you assessments. Excellent work. 93
Moore-Lappe says answers to the problems of global sustainability are “right in front or our noses.” And if so many people do care, then what is the problem? Too many people feel powerless. By and large people blame big companies having too much political clout and that powerful lobbyists and political action committees set the political agendas. Yet there is only one force strong enough to keep society creating a world we abhor and that is the emotional power of our own ideas to trap us or to free us. That fears of being without and fears of separateness, scarcity, and stasis (three S’s) keep us from making the change we need to make.
Limiting premises are trapped in a dominant frame of lack and separateness. Moore-Lappe believes each of these limiting premises or “mind-traps” need to be reframed in a way so as to free those who are trapped to find their power to create the world they really say they want.
List the Seven Traps
1. No-growth is the answer. Author says “growth is a word I personally don’t want to give up. I want my tomatoes to grow, and my friendships.” ----I agree with the author that this is neither the problem or the solution. The nature of life is to grow. That which does not grow, stagnates and decays.
2. Consumer society is the problem. Author says, “Much of what gets labeled self-seeking consumerism may actually reflect our deep need for connection with others.” That it’s more about our “yearning to enhance our status with others.” Patrick Spahr calls this the “Look at me” syndrome. ----I feel that western society and the so-called global economy are too structured on consumerism and not enough on “needism.” Regardless of needs, the economy prospers when people consume and suffers when people exercise restraint and self-sufficiency. Somewhere in the middle lies a balance. And typically, class structures will always have a major impact. Nineteenth century economist, Thorsten Veblen, is credited with coining the phrase “conspicuous consumption,” in his seminal work, The Theory of the Leisure Class. The masses gain some kind of satisfaction vicariously by observing the flamboyance of the super rich, or leisure class. In turn, those who are not of this class want to experience what they see as “the good life” and endeavor to acquire symbols of status beyond their means so as to demonstrate their good fortune.
3. We’ve hit the limits of a finite earth. Author: says that the thinking that got us into this mess is that our imagination remains locked inside an inherited, unecological world-view, one of separateness and lack. “The frame of limits can limit our view—keeping us from seeing the many positive steps we can take right now to balance the carbon cycle.” -----I don’t think society ever truly accepts limits. It’s like squeezing a balloon: squeeze over here and it pops out there. When society feels pinched, it has always been the impetuous for innovation.
4. We must overcome human nature to save the planet. Author: She doesn’t share this view that first this before that. She says that humans are much more complex creatures than simply “selfish little shoppers.” She offers six human traits as evidence of qualities we “can count on,” such as cooperation, empathy, fairness, efficacy, meaning, and imagination and creativity. -----I agree that society as a whole demonstrates these more altruistic qualities but society as a whole does not have the same vested interest in greed and gain and the largest powers on the earth, the banks, do. She says, “We can change the norms and rules of our societies to keep negative human potential in check.” And I say we haven’t done it yet. I am skeptical.
5. To save the planet we have to override humanity’s natural resistance to rules. Authors view: “Rules offer meaning and a sense of purpose and connectedness to others.” Such as Ten Commandments or Bill of Rights. “The challenge of reversing our planetary downward spin is not to overcome the American character or human nature but to build on the natural human love of rules.” “…we realize that new social rules, aligned both with nature’s non-arbitrary laws and with our own natures, can take shape and spread quickly if they make sense to people.” -------She is advocating for a new kind of rules, she says, that go beyond rules that limit harm and establish ground rules that avoid harm to begin with. Again as in all things, some kind of balance has to take place. The assertion of this trap is that humanity has a natural resistance to rules but I think again that it’s corporations that have the natural resistance to external rules. All organizations have a gazillion internal rules that govern how they conduct business. But they don’t want rules imposed by government or by policy or by regulation to limit what choices they make in anyway. History has proven that most of the largest corporations are unethical and immoral in some way and need to be bridled with as much legislation as possible before they can be safely turned loose on modern society.
6. Humans have lost the connection to nature. Author: As of 2008, the United Nations says, more than half of us now live in cities. In the UK, the typical eight-your-old is better at recognizing Pokemon characters than common wildlife. Still, humans evolved to love nature. So city dwellers, too, can and are rediscovering that natural connection. If we reconnect with nature it’s likely that support for public action to heal the natural world will grow too. ----Saying that humans have lost connection to nature is certainly a thought trap and one that is probably overstated at best and inaccurate at its worst. Today there are more and more active living magazines, books, and movie titles than ever. These things reflect on the demands of the consumer society who buy them. You can go into any sports store and find fifty styles of shoes for hiking, climing, biking, running, and specialty sports of all kinds. While author Richard Louv, in his book, The Nature Principle, does point to indicators of what he calls, “nature-deficit disorder,” his book is all about human restoration and the end of this condition.
7. It’s too late. Author: She begins by quoting the professors and scientists who are proponents of this thought trap. That we have failed to meet nature’s deadline. She says our most worrisome deficit is “hypocognition,” the absence of a key concept a society needs to thrive. She says, agreeing with Al Gore, that “in order to solve the environmental crisis we have to solve the democracy crisis.” -------My position is it is either too late, or it’s not. Do all you can and see what happens. I don’t believe that society at large can ignore all the warnings. And I do not believe that we will. Will enough be done fast enough to satisfy all of the “The sky is falling The sky is falling!” club? No. For four decades that I am aware of and probably longer, the western world has cried about human rights injustices in China yet human rights abuses still take place there. If anything, we began abusing human rights ourselves, at least from the Bush era onward. I’m don’t fully agree with Moore-Lappe that the flourishing of life depends on democracy attuned to all we now know of our nature. I do not see any one-government world or any global country of world anything taking place of the disparate governments the world has today. So we just have to keep pushing through authenticity and integrity, identifying what seem to be threats and advocating for solutions to those threats at ever possible turn.
Thanks for this great effort. You certainly covered food climate and polulation pretty throughly. You could have also spelled out the implications of sea level rise for loss of valuable delta crop land and climate population dislocation. I gather from their absence that you do not see genetic engineering as an issue. Maybe you are right. I hope so. I'm not bothering to correct typos by the way. Great effort. 92 Executive Summary: Challenges to Global Sustainability
Purpose of this paper
This paper offers a review of the concepts presented in the first three chapters of Lester Brown’s book titled Plan B 4.0, Mobilizing to Save Civilization. Global sustainability can be defined as a movement of individuals and groups who see the activities of humans as threatening to all life on the planet and are organized to find ways to stabilize and reverse those effects so as to save the earth as a habit for humans and all other life forms, plants, animals, etc.
Summary
Plan B 4.0 is a story about impending doom for all life on planet earth and potential prospects for saving the planet and human-kind before it’s too late.
Mobilizing Humanity to Save Itself
The most important challenge is not expending more time and energy on further environmental studies but rather to mobilize humanity to begin immediately taking action before it is too late. What constitutes the notion of what is “too late” remains an open dialog. However, there is widespread agreement that human-made dangers to our environment exist and that it is vital to defend against these dangers immediately and ask questions about them later.
Risks are Many
Desertification, the process by which fertile land becomes desert, typically as a result of drought, deforestation, or inappropriate agriculture, in many regions of the planet has occurred within a single generation. Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is losing 867,000 acres of rangeland and cropland to desertification each year.
This phenomenon is occurs where water resources are drying up and arable soils for food production are eroding. Some speculate that this danger is the result of over-grazing by cattle and/or over-tillage and depletion of the soils due to excessive agricultural stresses without adequate regard for crop rotations, diverse mixtures of crops, and inadequate measures to protect the land from sever erosion. Others speculate that first came global warming, the buildup of greenhouse gases on the earth leading to gradual temperature increases on the planet, being the primary stressor that then leads to water and soil depletion.
The Crisis is Already Upon Us
What is agreed upon is that both conditions are taking place and today it is of little consequence which occurred first when viewed from the perspective of the devastation occurring to the human habitat. A crisis of untold proportion looms in the measurable future for mankind and most agree it would be tragic to know this and do nothing. The possible extent of human suffering and chaos is nearly inconceivable.
Water tables around the globe are falling. The world's irrigated area tripled from 1950 to 2000 but has stabilized since then as aquifers in some countries are depleted by overpumping. Surface water on the earth is no longer adequate to irrigate agriculture in support of the enormous demands for food, feed-grains, and fuel crops. As an example, to date, India's 100 million farmers have drilled more than 21 million wells, investing some $12 billion in wells and pumps. Livestock demands now often exceed grassland carrying capacity by half or more. Carrying capacity refers to the number of people, other living organisms, or crops that a region can support without environmental degradation. Demands on that carrying capacity tend to expand exponentially. Typically this means that by the time people on the ground realize that something is wrong, i.e., resources are being depleted at alarming rates, it is too late.
Plan B 4.0 author Brown shares a vivid illustration that drives home the point of the danger of exponential growth:
"The French use a riddle to teach school children the nature of exponential growth. A lily pond, so the riddle goes, contains a single leaf. Each day the number of leaves doubles--two leaves the second day, four the third, eight the fourth, and so on. "If the pond is full on the thirtieth day, at what point is it half full?" Answer: "On the twenty-ninth day.""
So exponential growth or exponential depletion of earth's resources leads to this condition where on the day (or defined period) before the maximum is reached, it seemed as if the glass were only half empty. Though population growth is no longer exponential; neither are carbon emissions.
The opposite of exponential depletion would be that of linear depletion, such as when one is driving in ones car and the fuel tank reaches half-empty, one still has some distance to travel. Whereas in the illustration above, too often in environmental depletion, when we reach the half way point, then the end or zero point is too often within one cycle away.
This gives rise to a “food bubble economy,” where once the pumping of aquifers exceeds the natural recharge capacity, we face ecological overshoot and collapse. Around the globe, thousands of villages have been abandoned over time. With water gone and soil gone, the people are gone. Where do they go? Mass migrations of people from once rich agricultural regions are forced to become food nomads and refugees. This has played out time and again. These then become what have been called “failing states” and the data is being tracked by organizations such as the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine in an index that is update annually.
A Domino Effect?
When a nation state fails a breakdown in law and order with the resultant loss of personal security become the typical outcomes. Nation states, such as Haiti, Somalia, Zimbabwe, and even major oil producing states such as Yemen and even Iraq are notoriously high on the index. After decades of rapid population growth, governments are suffering from demographic fatigue, unable to cope with the steady shrinkage in cropland and freshwater supplies.
The above factors are the immediately visible effects of humans causing depletion of the earth’s resources simply to maintain the lives of the populations. What is less visible yet, according to more than 2,500 leading climate scientists, is humanity’s role in climate change. They have reported that the projected rise in the earth’s average temperature from 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius, or 2 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit, within the current century are likelihoods of the highest order. Projections such these come from the respected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Is It Too Late?
Another scientific group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has reported the effects of climate change will be twice as severe as those they projected as recently as six years ago. Instead of a 2.4 degree Celsius increase in global temperature reported earlier, they see a rise of 5.2 degrees. The effects of these rising temperatures have been called pervasive, leading to diminishing the yields of crops and melting glaciers that will alternately flood low-lying lands and then lead to severe drought. If there is a loss of glacier ice, which supplies many of the world’s rivers during dry seasons, the downstream effects would be devastating to life in many regions on the planet.
So the effects of unchecked climate change and rising temperatures would have a cascading effect across the globe. As temperatures rise, crop yield falls. As crop yield falls, more irrigation is attempted. As irrigation increases, water tables fall and soil, left dry, erode. Ice caps melt leading to flooding and even extreme loss of coastal cities and villages occurs. As land loss increase, frantic populations begin massive migrations in search of places to live. Existing stable regions then become overrun and overburdened by the sudden influx of new population and demands on already scarce resources. Civil wars and anarchy break out and violence, crime, and pestilence replace order and civilization as it was once known.
The Future is Now
That is, unless we, as a united race on the planet, can move to Plan B 4.0.
Plan B 4.0 is summarized as four closely interrelated and exceedingly ambitious, simultaneous initiatives. Stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restoration of the earth’s natural systems. Given the urgency of the condition humanity faces today, nothing less offers the hope of success.
Author Lester Brown became more real for me in this chapter. The writing was more fact based than chapter one, it seemed, and cuts more to well documented problems we face on planet Earth. The issues of population pressures on land and water have been known to me for some time and so Mr. Brown’s work got me up to date.
I had not been aware of the escalation and extent of irrigated land sourced from pumping wells drilled into aquifers. That in turn, he shows, has led to what he calls “overpumping,” a condition where the pumping of aquifers exceeds the natural recharge capacity of the environment on the aquifer. This then leads to what Brown terms as “ecological overshoot and collapse.”
Further depletion of these water resources then leads to the condition of a drop in food production. Brown calls this the “food bubble economy.”
I find my feelings flip-flopping back and forth when Mr. Brown moves into this discussion on “Civilization’s Foundation Eroding.” I go from feeling like “Okay, this is man-induced and only man can reverse the condition,” to “regardless of the actions of man, it is ultimately the climate that is scorching the earth and that is something for which man has yet to find an effective deterrent.
Brown spends a lot of words illustrating regions of the planet where there was once adequate water and fertile soils and these have now been depleted. The depletion has left tens of thousands of former villages around the globe in a condition where farming or grazing or food production has become untenable. Is this really the fault of man and is it really within man’s ability to change it as author Brown implies? Or is this simply the evolution of a planet and its various species including man? I don’t believe the answers are truly known.
Lester Brown is not the first environmentalist to show the damage done to grazing lands by overgrazing. And the problems of barren lands from over grazing and over-cultivation resulting in massive dust storms and loss of top soils have been well documented since at least America’s own brush with the famous Dust Bowls of the 1930s. Aggressive soil and land management measures and legislation were brought by the federal government and for the most part, re-stabilized Middle America’s open fields. Can these same measures be brought to other parts of the globe? I’ll be eager to read on and see what Mr. Brown has in store for us.
Thanks for these journals. Keeps me in the loop. Lot's of interesting perceptions. JC__ Wednesday, 2/29/12. Journal notes:
Sitting down to breakfast this morning, I noticed a friend's Facebook page where he has connected with Growing Spaces Greenhouses. They begin their info page saying: "Growing Spaces Greenhouses: We encourage people to enjoy a better life, by living in a manner that is sustainable over the long term. We inspire people to live in a way that attempts to minimize both consumption and production of waste."
This raised the following question in my mind: From what little I know about population and economic sciences, it seems that growth eventually levels off; growth can only go so far before it reaches an upward limit. Can the same be true by human efforts to "minimize both consumption and production of waste?" I think so. Then what? Consumption and production of waste can not conceivably reach a zero level. Are we just prolonging the ill effects of each on the planet?
Later this same day ....
I seem to be on a theme today... the race to the bottom. So as I was reading about "failing states," I took pause when the author said about Sudan, that they realistically cannot break out of the "demographic trap" on their own and that without assistance in rebuilding, will "simply continue to deteriorate." What does that mean? "Simply continue to deteriorate?" Is continual deterioration really possible? Can the worst of the worst become worse still? He makes the point about Somalia being a "failed state;" "which now exists only on maps." But on some level, it seems to me the country has stabilized around the tribal leaders who maintain some semblance of order amidst the chaos.
Therefore, despite the fact that this doesn't represent a stable global trading partner or banking opportunity, the yardsticks of the first world's view of everyone else, it also does not appear to be an endless decline or downward spiral.
Reading Notes: Plan B 4.0 Chap 1, Selling Our Future
The early part of the book came with a warning from John that it can be bleak and depressing but by the end of the first chapter I felt rather "armored" against the negativity and felt more like the author is being overly alarmist.
Brown described Plan B as, "...an integrated program with four interdependent goals." He defines these goals as:
Cutting net carbon dioxide emission 80 percent by 2020
Stabilizing population at 8 billion or lower
Eradicating poverty
Restoring the earth's natural systems including soils, aquifers, forests, grasslands, and fisheries.
Brown's zealotry really shines when he began making statements like, "Success depends on moving at wartime speed, restructuring the world energy economy at a pace reminiscent of the restructuring of the U.S. industrial economy in 1942 following the attack on Pearl Harbor." Even following the 9/11/2001 attacks on the World Trade centers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., we did not precipitate a mobilization on the scale of 1942. Therefore it would seem highly unlikely, short of an asteroid striking the planet, that such a huge undertaking will ever get traction.
Lester Brown is a dreamer and the world needs dreams so I am reticent to thoroughly dash all his hopes but dashed, I highly anticipate, they shall be. He sees an energy economy of the year 2020, having most of the U.S. fleet of vehicles being plug-in hybrids and all-electric. He goes on to further speculate that, "They will be largely running on wind-generated electricity for the equivalent of less than $1 a gallon of gasoline." I'm not one taken to placing bets but I'd be willing to make a substantial wager that the world of 2020 will not be that greatly different from 2012. That is speculative on my part but no more speculative than other assertions made by the author.
Mr. Brown talks about the rising number of "failing states" and how the result is "generating a downward economic spiral. A drying up of foreign investment and a resultant rise in unemployment." This in turn he says is distressing because these failing states become less reliable partners in the global system that depends on a cooperative network of functioning nation states. Could it be that these so-called failing states have chosen to exempt themselves from the folly of the international banking cartels that currently control the functioning of most world governments? "More failing states," writes Brown, "means more bad debt." Indebtedness to whom and for what end? The United States has a national debt so great that there is absolutely no hope of it ever being paid off. President Clinton sometimes gets lauded for having payed off the nation's deficit. All that was addressed was the interest portion of the debt. No conceivable plan can ever show a means to pay off the principle portion short of nationalizing the (privately owned, non-federal) Federal Reserve.
On population control, or what Brown calls "stabilization," he advocates for a "reduced fertility option." I seriously doubt if the world at large and especially the two-thirds world shares his opinion. I'll be on the look out later in the book for how he proposes to so radically change the minds of the masses.
Near the end of the first chapter, Brown holds up Curitiba, Brazil as a shining example of how world transportation systems can be restructured. What he fails to make note of is that no other major or minor world city has followed the lead of Curitiba. In the over thirty years time, since 1974, we have only one example.The referenced Paris and London initiatives may hold some promise but are more likely to see success in Europe than in the United States.
In his most recent book, World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse (2011), Brown emphasizes the geopolitical effects of fast-rising grain prices, noting that "the biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries," and one that could "bring down civilization." Now he isn't predicting simply economic collapse but of civilization as we know it. Can I trust this man? I'm not sure yet.
By the end of the chapter I felt like I heard Chicken Little crying out that, "The sky is falling, the sky is falling! A piece of it hit me on the head!" Bush rushed the country into a protracted engagement in Iraq on a wave of fabricated fear. I'm not yet convinced that all the author's concerns are either as urgent or dire as he suggests, saying the world economy is on a "collapse path," nor as solvable as a Plan B proposes. But stay tuned; we have only just begun.
Monday, February 27, 2012.
Met with John to go over course outline, the wikispaces, and received the general introduction to the course and professor expectations from student. Picked up 7 books and one DVD. the implications of these data are that enlightenment may be operationalized
"Is education for higher states of consciousness the fundamental solution to creating global sustainability." Nice review. Your essay might have worked better if you had given your answer at the beginning and then gone on to explain that answer. As i understand it you are saying 'In theory yes; but can it be done is not so clear.' Fair enough. 93
How do you create global sustainability? Does such a thing exist? Does it not exist? If it exists, does it need to be expanded and grown? Or if it does not exist, should it? What has to happen to see it created? The underlying assumptions seem to be that some level of awareness and action toward global sustainability does exist but not widely enough to save the planet before man destroys everything.
Throughout the week’s course, a variety of sources and opinions are introduced along the common theme of man’s awakening consciousness. That awakening consciousness tends to occur along a continuum. Part of the exploration delves into those ways in which some who experience what is described as this awakened state of being, may tend to think and act differently from those not as far along the continuum quantitatively.
Using a dictionary definition of the word ‘consciousness’ may serve to bring more understanding to the question of how or if education for higher states may influence the progression of a global sustainability.
con·scious·ness/ Noun: 1. The state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings. 2. The awareness or perception of something by a person.
Awakening consciousness, then, can be understood as a state in which an individual moves from a condition of limited perception of their surroundings to a state in which they have a heightened awareness of themselves as human beings and human doings. There are many conversations in many circles of society today that are bringing focus to a level of collective consciousness often referred to as “oneness.” This state is described as having an identity or harmony with someone or something, and by extension, everyone and everything.
Therefore combining all of the above, we have individuals and growing communities of people who are highly aware of their place in the universe and that place is perceived as being inextricably connected to all people, plants, animals, and even the finest, most subtle states of matter that makes up everything in the known, relative existence. This includes all bodies in space, space itself – which it usually referred to as “The Universe” – and even light and energy and all that can be known. Scientists have long recognized that every known element at its very core, finest level is made up of atomic matter. And so we say “We are all one.” I am the same as my mother and my father and my neighbor and extending outward to every element on the planet including the planet itself.
What tends to happen when this realization is reached is a heightened appreciation for the self and eventually a kinship with all life. However before the highest level of appreciation can typically be reached, there are complex layers of the human development that must be addressed. Ego would be defined as one of those layers. A strong ego in a person may hold them back from seeing themselves fully as the same as all beings. A strong ego tends to place the individual – in their own mind – at the center of their own universe. Until or unless the ego is in some way subjugated – according to some schools of thought – the individual’s progress along the consciousness continuum remains underdeveloped.
The point of going into this level of detail is to bring light to the fact that consciousness is only known by the self. This is often referred to as being in a state of self referral consciousness. And unless or until the individual finds themselves in that state of self referral consciousness, their full appreciation of their place in the universe remains limited.
An individual in a state of limited consciousness is unlikely to fully embrace the idea that they and their world and all beings around them are one. Without this level of awareness, it is difficult to even consider that they may play an integral part in the status of a global sustainability or that such a status is not only important but vital to the survival of the planet as a habitat for humanity.
Having argued that higher states of consciousness are fundamental to an appreciation for global sustainability, can one say that education and teaching a method for reaching such a state of consciousness is a fundamental solution to creating global sustainability. The answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ Once such a position is taken on this issue, then myriad questions arise as to how to deliver this education or if such an education is really even possible. Those questions go beyond the scope of this paper and will undoubtedly be argued ad infinitum by the various schools of teaching methods on the planet.
In closing it should be sufficient to point out that we would wish to raise individual consciousness to raise the collective consciousness. And to raise collective consciousness to educate and liberate the world, thereby creating the conditions on the planet whereby global sustainability is conceivable.
—end—
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Friday 3/9
Maharishi videos 89 A mixed bag of work. The first two are pretty good then you sort of stopped answering the question. When you say about Maharishi plugging TM it makes him sound like a cheap salesman. I hope that isn't your intention. What he always emphsized is to open awareness to the transcendent. TM is his preferred route. But his motivation isn't to 'make a sale' like that. It's to reduce suffering in the world.
#1 The Environment - Nicely done.
All the work, the knowledge, the systems are already there. Where do we want to be? What kind of environment do we want? It is all completely available to any man; he must make a choice. He can accept it or he can remodel it.
A man can have the environment he likes. Every thought, speech, and action affects his environment. These create a wave; it touches and influences – negatively, positively, or neutral, although it is never really neutral – everything you touch.
And it comes from our desires. Desires are always for more and more. Desires begin in the thoughts. Thoughts lead to desires. Desires lead to actions. Actions lead to achievement. Achievement leads to fulfillment.
This creates life-supporting influences in every thing around us. All depends on what influence we produce through our thoughts, speech, and actions. And it all depends on attention, whether widely or narrowly focused. We have to create that widened awareness. Such as with our surrounding, our house, some are so attractive and some are not so attractive. Every man can create his environment as he likes. He needs only sit and meditate and bring creative intelligence. The science of creative intelligence offers that to develop an expanded mind to be most creative.
By reducing stresses and strains, the environment begins to breathe signs of life. SCI give them the formula. It brings increased creative intelligence and there will be no problems. Man shouldn’t grumble.
Patrick Commentary: Here Maharishi specifically is focusing on the physical place of being for the individual. Where our surrounds bring the support of nature or whether they do not. And he makes it clear that the creative intelligence is with each person. We can make conscious choices that lead to the fulfillment of our desires – but it is incumbent on the individual to make those choices.
Without the benefit of practicing meditation, Maharishi is suggesting, the individual does not reach a state of consciousness whereby he or she is aware that they themselves are at cause in their world. Our thoughts, our speech, and actions bring about the manifestation of our desires. To have higher fulfillment of higher desires that are in line with our higher values, we must reach higher states of consciousness through meditation and through knowledge of the science of creative intelligence.
The higher meaning imparted to the student of this course from this video might be the advice that to create and to live in a global sustainable environment, the highest recommendation is to practice that meditation that connects to the highest absolute source of all knowing; "develop an expanded mind to be most creative." Then we may begin to live in accordance with the advice that Krishna gives to Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita: “...you should be free from the action of the gunas, established in eternal truth, self-controlled, without any sense of duality or the desire to acquire and hoard.” (2:45) “Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself—without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For yoga is perfect evenness of mind.” (2:48).
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Video #2 The Nature of Free Will vs. Determinism. Pretty good effort. One other key point is that the degree of free will depends on the level of development of CI in an individual.
From SCI, a good man is using full creative intelligence. Other kind is yet on the way to unfolding.
What is determinism is that SCI teaches us to have 200% value of life. It is split 100%/100% -- determinism and free will. There are two levels of life. The individual level of life and the cosmic level of life. Some things are absolutely determined. Determinism and free will are the same thing. You have complete free will in taking an action and when that action is taken the outcome is determined. Do this and the result is determined. Make your choice. Sow what you reap. other way round! What you sow is what you reap – not some other crop – only that one you have sown. So by the actions you take in sowing whether it is a crop or a thought, you will get what you give.
The present is structured on the actions of the past. Actions of the past are structured on free will. Natural laws are fixed; in favor of evolution; toward more and more; toward the infinite value of life.
Patrick’s Commentary: In the context of Global Sustainable Environment, Maharishi advises that we need to transcend to fully embrace and understand creative intelligence and to come into alignment with natural law. Only when people have risen to higher states of consciousness can they then experience the full value of life. Only when they experience the full value of life do they then utilize their free will to takes actions in the world with the support of nature that are beneficial for people and the planet together. This is sustainability.
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#3 Expansion of the Heart to develop that quality so what are the implications for global sustainability?
Spontaneous ability of finer perception as appreciation grows love increases and finer perception is more charming. The object of perception is more charming, more fascinating; there is more ability to love and this develops the heart. This increases along with more perception; is more charming; more attractive.
Celestial perception is the finest perception. When one is in cosmic consciousness one is free from stresses; enjoys life in freedom due to release of stress. The digestive system starts to produce more valuable substance than before.
The focus is not on the material as much as what that finer system produces from it. When stresses are released the system produces more valuable chemistry. Nervous system improves; crude prana versus refined prana, the prana of meditators; no coarseness to it. The machine, the body, functions better. So the more efficient system produces more beautiful material and operates at the most fundamental value – that particular intelligence.
Release of stress is most important. Transcendental meditation is the most effective way.
Patrick’s Commentary: Here, Mahesh talks about how we can improve ourselves at the individual level. How we can and should seek to function at the finest level of perception which is the level of celestial perception. Stress release he says is most important. The suggestion is that one who is carrying stresses can not reach the ultimate goal of perfection as a human. This perfection would be defined as both on the physical level of how the body is functioning as well as on the level of consciousness.
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#4 Limitations to Growth - So what are the implications for global sustainability?
Growth is unlimited. Progress depends on creative intelligence. It is unlimited when that potential becomes lively in the individual. And then it is unbounded and limitless. This is the experience of creativity.
Patrick’s commentary: This very brief video was a question and answer session with Maharishi where he offers his insights in response to questions from a small panel. I think the question had to do with if there were any limitations to growth. Maharishi’s answer was probably the shortest, most succinct I’ve heard yet in any of the videos at MUM. Growth is unlimited. The message of course is a plug for TM and the benefits one gets by practicing TM, such as lively potential and unbounded and limitless possibilities in ones life.
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Cultivating An Ecological Conscience, by Frederick L. Kirschenmann I think you have done a great job summarizing the books thinking - not an easy task. But I'd like you to have given a clearer answer to the question I posed - ie what is his proposed method to cultivate an ecological conscience? He describes what such a conscience would be but what about the how? He describes how it happened to him. But what about the rest of us? 91
Before one even gets into the text of the book the author offers thoughts that inspired and informed the work. “Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life.” From the last paragraph of the Earth Charter, www.earthcharter.org.
In large measure, this statement seems to sum up the major foundational message offered in the Global Sustainable Environment course; that this new reverence for life in this time of awakening can only be possible when the conscience and consciousness of the collective finally reaches a state whereby these truths become the rule, not the exception. yes, that's my central thought.
The author spends time sharing his reflections on the divine and the deeper meanings in our own lives revealed in relationships with the whole of the biotic community; and part of the evolution of an ecological conscience.
Only by a rededication to organic farming, rebuilding soils, producing food that is more nutritious will true sustainability be achieved. Contrasts the owner-operator farm with rising absentee corporate ownership shows two very different mindsets and goals. Advocates for a soil-depletion allowance subsidy the same as oil companies get with their existing oil-depletion allowance, which of course while a great idea, probably has no support from those who could make it law.
A common reoccurring thread is that of the intense conviction that conventional agriculture is detrimental to the soil and that soils could be managed without synthetic inputs.
“The very notion of sustainability strikes me as a transcendent concept. It is a goal, a vision, a journey.”
He sees the possibility that sustainable agriculture is more than simply an alternative to conventional agriculture. It may be part of a much more comprehensive change in society, likening it as major paradigm changing as the Copernican revolution in the sixteenth century.
He extends the ideas further when describing an approach to solving the combined problems of agronomic, social, and biospheric problems, by going so far as to suggest it requires an evolution of a new production ethic combined with restoring the health of local ecosystems with maintaining optimum production. To achieve this awakened reality will recognize the seamless connections between healthy soil, healthy ecological neighborhoods, and vibrant human communities. A vibrant local economy is essential to an agriculture designed to maintain the health of local ecosystems.
One quickly realizes the breadth and depth of this discussion and where it is leading. That although the author is closely connected to his work on the farm, his mind, his thinking, and his consciousness have expanded to consider how all of what he is involved in demonstrates that harmony exists in diversity, the whole is contained in every part, and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. He sees the farm and the world as an extension of himself. The author clearly demonstrates a higher state of consciousness as characterized by skill in action, spontaneous right action, and support of nature.
While the author continues throughout the book, delving into deeper and deeper layers (for after all, life is found in layers), of the issues and controversies surrounding modern agriculture, i.e., genetically modifying plants and seeds, reasons why American agriculture is not sustainable, issues concerning sound science, our food and our relationship with food, the reader realizes that the whole of this material has been informed by a deeply thoughtful and compassionate caring for people and the earth and preserving life as we know it.
In the end, Mr. Kirschenmann shares that, “Different challenges, of course, require different strategies. The forgivingness of nature works to our advantage as we begin to restore the health of soils and planetary biodiversity. From an evolutionary perspective, our survival as a species probably is not the result of always carefully thinking things out and obtaining definitive scientific proof before acting to escape from life-threatening situations.” So we find here that the author goes far beyond the farm to consider the very survival of our species on this planet. This depth of thought and consideration, it would seem, requires an individual that has reached a connection with the cosmos, some call cosmic consciousness. And only be imploring and helping and showing others the way, will the consciousness of the collective to be impacted for the good.
One hopes that as individual consciousness rises, that there becomes a quickening in the collective consciousness. As we raise collective consciousness, only then does it become possible to educate and liberate the world.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Thursday, 3/8
Is the universe a machine? - Thanks Patrick. I didn't mean a machine literally. That was a metaphor for an inert, physical system. Anyway, I agree with your conclusion. I think the elaboration of your conclusion from the MVS camp would be the self-referral dynamics of consciousness. But maybe you have studied this much. 90
6. Write 300 words on 'Is the universe a machine that has leaned to think or a thought that has learned to make a machine.' You may find these two documents useful. But use all your SCI knowledge and reference sources.
It is difficult imaging the universe as some sort of “machine.” Certainly it has many moving parts. And certainly those parts have been honed to a fine precision. However, reflecting on the dictionary meaning of the word, “machine,” one finds it defined as, “An apparatus using or applying mechanical power to perform a particular task.” My personal sense is that the universe is neither.
Asking a student what is the universe or what is the essence of the universe seems a loaded question fraught with peril. These are ancient questions that mankind has been asking for thousands of years. It is a koan. There is no clear answer and as the student ponders it deeply, he finds himself reaching the outer boundaries of his mental capacity and consciousness. The teacher impels the student in this direction and then exceeds it so as to deliver a shock to the system where the student finds his ordinary, relative, waking mode of thinking inadequate to the task.
Some insight may be provided in pondering the deeper meaning of the Sanskrit expression, vasudhaiva kutumbakam: “the world is but one single family.” Everything in the relative creation is little more than cosmic debris or star dust. Stephen Hawking talks about beginnings of the universe and the appearance of life. “We do not know how DNA molecules first appeared. The chances against a DNA molecule arising by random fluctuations are very small.”
Maharishi offers but a glimpse of some principles that might help one understand the universe and life in his teachings on the science of creative intelligence. “Life is found in layers. Order is present everywhere. Outer depends on inner. The nature of life is to grow.” But surely this in inadequate to bring any light to this question at hand.
Many spiritual teachers tell us that all of creation is our own mind-manifestation; that thoughts become things. That the thoughts you focus your attention on become the experiences we have in this life. Is this, therefore, describing the latter part of the two-pronged question, “Is the universe a thought that has learned to make a machine?” Perhaps that is the best answer. We are the entire universe. We all think. Our thoughts are the universe.
Perhaps, then, the four major Mahavakyas describe this mind-manifestation and it is the universe.
prajñānam brahma - "Consciousness is Brahman" (Aitareya Upanishad 3.3 of the Rig Veda)
ayam ātmā brahma - "This Self (Atman) is Brahman" (Mandukya Upanishad 1.2 of the Atharva Veda)
tat tvam asi - "Thou art That" (Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7 of the Sama Veda)
aham brahmāsmi - "I am Brahman" (Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10 of the Yajur Veda)
Jai Bhagwan.
Wednesday, 3/7
Kinship for All Life Well done. Glad you enjoyed the book. With reference to your last comment, I guess both barbarism and grace are there and we can either turn the the 'dark side' or go for the light. 94
Kinship for All Life is a great story of consciousness awakening, primarily from the view of the author. It also offers vivid illustrations through the stories about others who have demonstrated a deeper understanding of nature’s intelligence and mankind’s connection to the natural world through intention. Mr. Boone’s encounter with the innate intelligence in the German shepherd dog, “Strongheart,” and how they came to communicate, know and trust each other is nothing short of illuminating. Boone describes how he needed to overcome his own “wrong beliefs about dogs” and overcome his ingrained feeling of superiority. He said in learning these lessons from the dog, he could become "a better companion for him and a better citizen of the universe.”
Over time, a “mental bridge” formed in the bond between them and thus they were able to share through a silent language he called “the Mind of the Universe that is constantly speaking through all life and for the greater good of all life.”
Another quality of the dog that seemed nothing short of amazing was not so much that the dog had been trained but, rather, educated. Over time with careful perception and gentle technique, the dog came to exhibit a quality the author describes as an “imprisoned splendor.” That is, a quality of character, talents, and even grace.
In the example of Grace Wiley at the Zoo for Happiness working with a large rattlesnake as a new-comer to her and her “gentling room,” the point is made that Miss Wiley “had again demonstrated the fact that regardless of appearances, good is latent in every living thing, and simply need to be called into active expression through the gracious application of respect, sympathetic understanding, gentleness and love.” This stands in stark contrast to statements made in Century of the Self by the narrator who described attributes of Americans as a, “… savage barbarism that lurked just under the surface of normal American life.”
Tuesday, 3/6 I thought you would sharpen your teeth on this one, although I didn't ask for a critique, just a summary of what the claim is. I could spend all day on this, but I'll just make a couple of comments. The reason Maharishi was open to and even keen on scientific research was that Indian philosophy and practices were held in such low esteem in the West. He hoped that research would show that TM does have value for the practical modern man. My second point is that this research paper is breaking into a new area of integrating the fields of neuroscience and pshychology with higher states of consciousness. I agree the study has weaknesses and one study doesn't ever really prove anything. You need a decent body of research to establish credibility. I see it as a start on an interesting journey, Anyway, well done. 91.
Movement Study Review: "Psychological and physiological characteristics of a proposed object-referral/self-referral continuum of self-awareness." Fred Travis, et. al.
(You may want to correct your notes but the study is not called "Consciousness and Cognition." That is the name of the journal it )was published in; #13, (2004).Thanks JC
The study attempts to validate a state of consciousness or self-awareness called "self-referral." Self-referral is being contrasted to a state identified as "object-referral." And the two are examined as opposing states of consciousness measured along a range of variables identified as the "continuum of self-awareness." The study involved fifty-one subjects with varying ranges of experience in the practice of Transcendental Meditation, from zero years through about twenty-five years of practice. Later in the study an allusion is made to "different meditation and spiritual traditions" but none of those were shown in the data for this study.
Curiously, throughout the study, the self-referral state became described as one of pure, self-referral consciousness. There was no mention of why the qualitative adjective referencing 'purity' was attached to that state except that the researchers showed a particular personal bias toward this state of consciousness. "Pure" as compared to what?
The data for analysis was gathered through a process of interviews--asking the subjects to respond to questions. Based on their answers they were given scores called a "Consciousness Factor." Those who did not practice transcendental meditation scored lower on all the scales and those who did practice transcendental meditation scored higher on the scales. All of the researchers are long time transcendental meditation practitioners. All of the researchers are transcendental meditation teachers. Part of the teacher training process involves being taught to repetitively describe transcendental meditation in the same words and descriptions used by the founder of the transcendental meditation. Therefore, it should be noted the likelihood of a strong bias by the researchers who are attempting to validate, first that this "pure, self-referral state" exists, that second, it is beneficial and worthwhile, and third, that it is implied as the exclusive domain of one who is a transcendental meditation practitioner.
The conclusion of the study states that "research can investigate the outcomes of different meditation and spiritual traditions," and that, "This line of research could dramatically impact our understanding of the possible range of human development and could help promote a more unified understanding of diverse spiritual traditions as different roads to the same goal--a more extensive development of human brain integration and unfoldment of our full human potential." Statements like "dramatically impact our understanding" seem sensationalist and speculative at best. The researchers go further in asserting that, "The implications of these data are that enlightenment may be operationalized". On balance and in fairness to the general scientific population, the researchers point out that "many scientifically minded people may consider enlightenment either imaginary, impractical, or simply outside the boundaries of scientific investigation."
Suggesting that one can or should reduce the goal of other spiritual traditions to "unfoldment of a state of full human potential, brought on by a more extensive development of human brain integration" would present as odious to practitioners of other traditions. In Catholic school, my teachers weren't particularly concerned with my "brain integration." While Maharishi Mahesh Yogi said, "The way to gain acceptance of transcendental meditation would be through science. " (Merv Griffin interview), very few spiritual traditions would share this view. Perhaps there is wisdom in the suggestion to keep to the data and avoid the confusion and mixed message that occurs when making casual yet unclarified references to "different meditation and spiritual traditions."
Monday, 3/5/12 --- A really excellent effort on the first installment. Sorry you were put off the second half. I'll review it myself and give you a 95 for part one. The whole thing is pretty interesting isn't it? I think Simund F was her Dad by the way.
Century of the Self
Are people like Bernays and Anna Freud partly responsible for diminished global sustainability in the 20th century?
The film gives a fascinating view into a body of work by founded primarily by Edward Bernays and Anna Freud, the nephew and sister, respectively, of the famous father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Anna Freud, interestingly, was also Bernays' mother, making him a “double nephew” to Mr. Freud. It outlines how their understanding of human emotional motivation, informed by deep psychology, can be manipulated on a mass level, to alter behavior patterns in large groups of people and, through the ingenious use of the then emerging technology of mass-media, even impacts entire populations.
Bernays pioneered the field of public relations and propaganda, and was sometimes called "the father of public relations". He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud. The term “public relations” was cleverly coined so as to not suggest his work was in fact what it was, propaganda, which had negative connotations after the war with Germany and Japan.
The film itself, then, looks at the ways in which Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and Edward Bernays influenced the way corporations and governments have analyzed, dealt with, and controlled people. "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." —Adam Curtis' introduction to the first episode.
The business and political world uses psychological techniques to read, create and fulfill our desires, to make their products or speeches as pleasing as possible to us. Curtis raises the question of the intentions and roots of this fact. Where once the political process was about engaging people's rational, conscious minds, as well as facilitating their needs as a society, the documentary shows how by employing the tactics of psychoanalysis, politicians appeal to irrational, primitive impulses that have little apparent bearing on issues outside of the narrow self-interest of a consumer population.
While it may be difficult to draw a direct correlation between the Bernays/Freud body of work and diminished global sustainability, it seems clear that their work played a significant role in ushering in the era of mass-consumerism. Factors leading up to mass-consumerism are more complex than simply people being manipulated to buy things. Governments themselves may in large measure be equally but in some ways, unknowingly complicit in transforming our world as we knew it before the war – one of meeting basic needs – to one where we all want to have the latest shiny object. This is because mass production industries were primarily created to build and feed the war machines. Technology too was advancing at a pace unparalleled in the history of the world. After the war and after the world no longer needed so many bombs and the machines that delivered them, many factories which wanted to continue to survive and thrive, were converted to post-war manufacturing of every conceivable new doo-dad the mind could imagine.
During this time also, the tactics of the circus barker and the snake oil salesman, could also be taken to the masses and to encourage, entice, cajole and convince all the people that in order to be beautiful, desirable, sexy, and to fit in with society, they needed to buy what everyone else was buying. “Keeping up with the Jones,” is an expression that describes whole neighborhoods acquiring “things” simply because the guy next-door had one. It is the comparison to one's neighbor as a benchmark for social caste or the accumulation of material goods. To fail to "keep up with the Joneses" is perceived as demonstrating socio-economic or cultural inferiority.
In summary, it seems safe to say that the signature of the effects of Bernays and Freud are clearly on the world of consumerism we live in today. To mark them as the masters of this evil empire is probably a bit to strong and not entirely the case. Human psychology remains a fascinating field of study. And although there remains disagreement in some circles as to the extent to which humans can be swayed by carefully planted messages and images, this film gives the strong suggestion that this is exactly what takes place. Following the analysis of this film, my next assignment is to analyze a Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Transcendental Meditation Movement generated scientific study on Psychological and physiological characteristics of a proposed object-referral/self-referral continuum of self-awareness and right from the introduction of the study the question arises as to what extent the Bernays/Freud techniques could have been employed to craft a preconceived reaction on the part of the reader. See separate analysis on the study.
SECOND EPISODE:
So I sat down to watch the second episode in this series and was very put off by this British guy going on and on about: "Big business, the government, and the CIA decided the only way to make democracy work and create a stable society was to repress the savage barbarism that lurked just under the surface of normal American life.
Then he started in on American military in World War II saying that in the "middle of fierce fighting the second world war, the American army was faced by an extraordinary number of mental breakdowns among its troops. 49% of all soldiers evacuated from combat were sent back because they suffered from "mental problems."
I'm going to get mental here and show this guy a little savage barbarism! The reaction his opening comments had on me was, "What kind of propaganda is this film intended to be, anyway?" The footage that is supposed to be of actual soldiers being screened by psychoanalysts is obviously staged and the personalities are actors. I guess I was half asleep during the first part and missed the underlying message.
How to Win Campaigns: Well done 93
ECOMIND I like you assessments. Excellent work. 93
Moore-Lappe says answers to the problems of global sustainability are “right in front or our noses.” And if so many people do care, then what is the problem? Too many people feel powerless. By and large people blame big companies having too much political clout and that powerful lobbyists and political action committees set the political agendas. Yet there is only one force strong enough to keep society creating a world we abhor and that is the emotional power of our own ideas to trap us or to free us. That fears of being without and fears of separateness, scarcity, and stasis (three S’s) keep us from making the change we need to make.
Limiting premises are trapped in a dominant frame of lack and separateness. Moore-Lappe believes each of these limiting premises or “mind-traps” need to be reframed in a way so as to free those who are trapped to find their power to create the world they really say they want.
List the Seven Traps
1. No-growth is the answer. Author says “growth is a word I personally don’t want to give up. I want my tomatoes to grow, and my friendships.”
----I agree with the author that this is neither the problem or the solution. The nature of life is to grow. That which does not grow, stagnates and decays.
2. Consumer society is the problem. Author says, “Much of what gets labeled self-seeking consumerism may actually reflect our deep need for connection with others.” That it’s more about our “yearning to enhance our status with others.” Patrick Spahr calls this the “Look at me” syndrome.
----I feel that western society and the so-called global economy are too structured on consumerism and not enough on “needism.” Regardless of needs, the economy prospers when people consume and suffers when people exercise restraint and self-sufficiency. Somewhere in the middle lies a balance. And typically, class structures will always have a major impact. Nineteenth century economist, Thorsten Veblen, is credited with coining the phrase “conspicuous consumption,” in his seminal work, The Theory of the Leisure Class. The masses gain some kind of satisfaction vicariously by observing the flamboyance of the super rich, or leisure class. In turn, those who are not of this class want to experience what they see as “the good life” and endeavor to acquire symbols of status beyond their means so as to demonstrate their good fortune.
3. We’ve hit the limits of a finite earth. Author: says that the thinking that got us into this mess is that our imagination remains locked inside an inherited, unecological world-view, one of separateness and lack. “The frame of limits can limit our view—keeping us from seeing the many positive steps we can take right now to balance the carbon cycle.”
-----I don’t think society ever truly accepts limits. It’s like squeezing a balloon: squeeze over here and it pops out there. When society feels pinched, it has always been the impetuous for innovation.
4. We must overcome human nature to save the planet. Author: She doesn’t share this view that first this before that. She says that humans are much more complex creatures than simply “selfish little shoppers.” She offers six human traits as evidence of qualities we “can count on,” such as cooperation, empathy, fairness, efficacy, meaning, and imagination and creativity.
-----I agree that society as a whole demonstrates these more altruistic qualities but society as a whole does not have the same vested interest in greed and gain and the largest powers on the earth, the banks, do. She says, “We can change the norms and rules of our societies to keep negative human potential in check.” And I say we haven’t done it yet. I am skeptical.
5. To save the planet we have to override humanity’s natural resistance to rules. Authors view: “Rules offer meaning and a sense of purpose and connectedness to others.” Such as Ten Commandments or Bill of Rights. “The challenge of reversing our planetary downward spin is not to overcome the American character or human nature but to build on the natural human love of rules.” “…we realize that new social rules, aligned both with nature’s non-arbitrary laws and with our own natures, can take shape and spread quickly if they make sense to people.”
-------She is advocating for a new kind of rules, she says, that go beyond rules that limit harm and establish ground rules that avoid harm to begin with. Again as in all things, some kind of balance has to take place. The assertion of this trap is that humanity has a natural resistance to rules but I think again that it’s corporations that have the natural resistance to external rules. All organizations have a gazillion internal rules that govern how they conduct business. But they don’t want rules imposed by government or by policy or by regulation to limit what choices they make in anyway. History has proven that most of the largest corporations are unethical and immoral in some way and need to be bridled with as much legislation as possible before they can be safely turned loose on modern society.
6. Humans have lost the connection to nature. Author: As of 2008, the United Nations says, more than half of us now live in cities. In the UK, the typical eight-your-old is better at recognizing Pokemon characters than common wildlife. Still, humans evolved to love nature. So city dwellers, too, can and are rediscovering that natural connection. If we reconnect with nature it’s likely that support for public action to heal the natural world will grow too.
----Saying that humans have lost connection to nature is certainly a thought trap and one that is probably overstated at best and inaccurate at its worst. Today there are more and more active living magazines, books, and movie titles than ever. These things reflect on the demands of the consumer society who buy them. You can go into any sports store and find fifty styles of shoes for hiking, climing, biking, running, and specialty sports of all kinds. While author Richard Louv, in his book, The Nature Principle, does point to indicators of what he calls, “nature-deficit disorder,” his book is all about human restoration and the end of this condition.
7. It’s too late. Author: She begins by quoting the professors and scientists who are proponents of this thought trap. That we have failed to meet nature’s deadline. She says our most worrisome deficit is “hypocognition,” the absence of a key concept a society needs to thrive. She says, agreeing with Al Gore, that “in order to solve the environmental crisis we have to solve the democracy crisis.”
-------My position is it is either too late, or it’s not. Do all you can and see what happens. I don’t believe that society at large can ignore all the warnings. And I do not believe that we will. Will enough be done fast enough to satisfy all of the “The sky is falling The sky is falling!” club? No. For four decades that I am aware of and probably longer, the western world has cried about human rights injustices in China yet human rights abuses still take place there. If anything, we began abusing human rights ourselves, at least from the Bush era onward. I’m don’t fully agree with Moore-Lappe that the flourishing of life depends on democracy attuned to all we now know of our nature. I do not see any one-government world or any global country of world anything taking place of the disparate governments the world has today. So we just have to keep pushing through authenticity and integrity, identifying what seem to be threats and advocating for solutions to those threats at ever possible turn.
Thanks for this great effort. You certainly covered food climate and polulation pretty throughly. You could have also spelled out the implications of sea level rise for loss of valuable delta crop land and climate population dislocation. I gather from their absence that you do not see genetic engineering as an issue. Maybe you are right. I hope so. I'm not bothering to correct typos by the way. Great effort. 92
Executive Summary: Challenges to Global Sustainability
Purpose of this paper
This paper offers a review of the concepts presented in the first three chapters of Lester Brown’s book titled Plan B 4.0, Mobilizing to Save Civilization. Global sustainability can be defined as a movement of individuals and groups who see the activities of humans as threatening to all life on the planet and are organized to find ways to stabilize and reverse those effects so as to save the earth as a habit for humans and all other life forms, plants, animals, etc.
Summary
Plan B 4.0 is a story about impending doom for all life on planet earth and potential prospects for saving the planet and human-kind before it’s too late.
Mobilizing Humanity to Save Itself
The most important challenge is not expending more time and energy on further environmental studies but rather to mobilize humanity to begin immediately taking action before it is too late. What constitutes the notion of what is “too late” remains an open dialog. However, there is widespread agreement that human-made dangers to our environment exist and that it is vital to defend against these dangers immediately and ask questions about them later.
Risks are Many
Desertification, the process by which fertile land becomes desert, typically as a result of drought, deforestation, or inappropriate agriculture, in many regions of the planet has occurred within a single generation. Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is losing 867,000 acres of rangeland and cropland to desertification each year.
This phenomenon is occurs where water resources are drying up and arable soils for food production are eroding. Some speculate that this danger is the result of over-grazing by cattle and/or over-tillage and depletion of the soils due to excessive agricultural stresses without adequate regard for crop rotations, diverse mixtures of crops, and inadequate measures to protect the land from sever erosion. Others speculate that first came global warming, the buildup of greenhouse gases on the earth leading to gradual temperature increases on the planet, being the primary stressor that then leads to water and soil depletion.
The Crisis is Already Upon Us
What is agreed upon is that both conditions are taking place and today it is of little consequence which occurred first when viewed from the perspective of the devastation occurring to the human habitat. A crisis of untold proportion looms in the measurable future for mankind and most agree it would be tragic to know this and do nothing. The possible extent of human suffering and chaos is nearly inconceivable.
Water tables around the globe are falling. The world's irrigated area tripled from 1950 to 2000 but has stabilized since then as aquifers in some countries are depleted by overpumping. Surface water on the earth is no longer adequate to irrigate agriculture in support of the enormous demands for food, feed-grains, and fuel crops. As an example, to date, India's 100 million farmers have drilled more than 21 million wells, investing some $12 billion in wells and pumps. Livestock demands now often exceed grassland carrying capacity by half or more. Carrying capacity refers to the number of people, other living organisms, or crops that a region can support without environmental degradation. Demands on that carrying capacity tend to expand exponentially. Typically this means that by the time people on the ground realize that something is wrong, i.e., resources are being depleted at alarming rates, it is too late.
Plan B 4.0 author Brown shares a vivid illustration that drives home the point of the danger of exponential growth:
"The French use a riddle to teach school children the nature of exponential growth. A lily pond, so the riddle goes, contains a single leaf. Each day the number of leaves doubles--two leaves the second day, four the third, eight the fourth, and so on. "If the pond is full on the thirtieth day, at what point is it half full?" Answer: "On the twenty-ninth day.""
So exponential growth or exponential depletion of earth's resources leads to this condition where on the day (or defined period) before the maximum is reached, it seemed as if the glass were only half empty. Though population growth is no longer exponential; neither are carbon emissions.
The opposite of exponential depletion would be that of linear depletion, such as when one is driving in ones car and the fuel tank reaches half-empty, one still has some distance to travel. Whereas in the illustration above, too often in environmental depletion, when we reach the half way point, then the end or zero point is too often within one cycle away.
This gives rise to a “food bubble economy,” where once the pumping of aquifers exceeds the natural recharge capacity, we face ecological overshoot and collapse. Around the globe, thousands of villages have been abandoned over time. With water gone and soil gone, the people are gone. Where do they go? Mass migrations of people from once rich agricultural regions are forced to become food nomads and refugees. This has played out time and again. These then become what have been called “failing states” and the data is being tracked by organizations such as the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine in an index that is update annually.
A Domino Effect?
When a nation state fails a breakdown in law and order with the resultant loss of personal security become the typical outcomes. Nation states, such as Haiti, Somalia, Zimbabwe, and even major oil producing states such as Yemen and even Iraq are notoriously high on the index. After decades of rapid population growth, governments are suffering from demographic fatigue, unable to cope with the steady shrinkage in cropland and freshwater supplies.
The above factors are the immediately visible effects of humans causing depletion of the earth’s resources simply to maintain the lives of the populations. What is less visible yet, according to more than 2,500 leading climate scientists, is humanity’s role in climate change. They have reported that the projected rise in the earth’s average temperature from 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius, or 2 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit, within the current century are likelihoods of the highest order. Projections such these come from the respected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Is It Too Late?
Another scientific group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has reported the effects of climate change will be twice as severe as those they projected as recently as six years ago. Instead of a 2.4 degree Celsius increase in global temperature reported earlier, they see a rise of 5.2 degrees. The effects of these rising temperatures have been called pervasive, leading to diminishing the yields of crops and melting glaciers that will alternately flood low-lying lands and then lead to severe drought. If there is a loss of glacier ice, which supplies many of the world’s rivers during dry seasons, the downstream effects would be devastating to life in many regions on the planet.
So the effects of unchecked climate change and rising temperatures would have a cascading effect across the globe. As temperatures rise, crop yield falls. As crop yield falls, more irrigation is attempted. As irrigation increases, water tables fall and soil, left dry, erode. Ice caps melt leading to flooding and even extreme loss of coastal cities and villages occurs. As land loss increase, frantic populations begin massive migrations in search of places to live. Existing stable regions then become overrun and overburdened by the sudden influx of new population and demands on already scarce resources. Civil wars and anarchy break out and violence, crime, and pestilence replace order and civilization as it was once known.
The Future is Now
That is, unless we, as a united race on the planet, can move to Plan B 4.0.
Plan B 4.0 is summarized as four closely interrelated and exceedingly ambitious, simultaneous initiatives. Stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restoration of the earth’s natural systems. Given the urgency of the condition humanity faces today, nothing less offers the hope of success.
End.
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Good TED TALK on facing and solving big problems by Martha Beck:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL7WTcF0-TY
Plan B 4.0
Chapter 2
Author Lester Brown became more real for me in this chapter. The writing was more fact based than chapter one, it seemed, and cuts more to well documented problems we face on planet Earth. The issues of population pressures on land and water have been known to me for some time and so Mr. Brown’s work got me up to date.
I had not been aware of the escalation and extent of irrigated land sourced from pumping wells drilled into aquifers. That in turn, he shows, has led to what he calls “overpumping,” a condition where the pumping of aquifers exceeds the natural recharge capacity of the environment on the aquifer. This then leads to what Brown terms as “ecological overshoot and collapse.”
Further depletion of these water resources then leads to the condition of a drop in food production. Brown calls this the “food bubble economy.”
I find my feelings flip-flopping back and forth when Mr. Brown moves into this discussion on “Civilization’s Foundation Eroding.” I go from feeling like “Okay, this is man-induced and only man can reverse the condition,” to “regardless of the actions of man, it is ultimately the climate that is scorching the earth and that is something for which man has yet to find an effective deterrent.
Brown spends a lot of words illustrating regions of the planet where there was once adequate water and fertile soils and these have now been depleted. The depletion has left tens of thousands of former villages around the globe in a condition where farming or grazing or food production has become untenable. Is this really the fault of man and is it really within man’s ability to change it as author Brown implies? Or is this simply the evolution of a planet and its various species including man? I don’t believe the answers are truly known.
Lester Brown is not the first environmentalist to show the damage done to grazing lands by overgrazing. And the problems of barren lands from over grazing and over-cultivation resulting in massive dust storms and loss of top soils have been well documented since at least America’s own brush with the famous Dust Bowls of the 1930s. Aggressive soil and land management measures and legislation were brought by the federal government and for the most part, re-stabilized Middle America’s open fields. Can these same measures be brought to other parts of the globe? I’ll be eager to read on and see what Mr. Brown has in store for us.
Thanks for these journals. Keeps me in the loop. Lot's of interesting perceptions. JC__
Wednesday, 2/29/12.
Journal notes:
Sitting down to breakfast this morning, I noticed a friend's Facebook page where he has connected with Growing Spaces Greenhouses. They begin their info page saying: "Growing Spaces Greenhouses: We encourage people to enjoy a better life, by living in a manner that is sustainable over the long term. We inspire people to live in a way that attempts to minimize both consumption and production of waste."
This raised the following question in my mind: From what little I know about population and economic sciences, it seems that growth eventually levels off; growth can only go so far before it reaches an upward limit. Can the same be true by human efforts to "minimize both consumption and production of waste?" I think so. Then what? Consumption and production of waste can not conceivably reach a zero level. Are we just prolonging the ill effects of each on the planet?
Later this same day ....
I seem to be on a theme today... the race to the bottom. So as I was reading about "failing states," I took pause when the author said about Sudan, that they realistically cannot break out of the "demographic trap" on their own and that without assistance in rebuilding, will "simply continue to deteriorate." What does that mean? "Simply continue to deteriorate?" Is continual deterioration really possible? Can the worst of the worst become worse still? He makes the point about Somalia being a "failed state;" "which now exists only on maps." But on some level, it seems to me the country has stabilized around the tribal leaders who maintain some semblance of order amidst the chaos.
Therefore, despite the fact that this doesn't represent a stable global trading partner or banking opportunity, the yardsticks of the first world's view of everyone else, it also does not appear to be an endless decline or downward spiral.
Reading Notes:
Plan B 4.0
Chap 1, Selling Our Future
The early part of the book came with a warning from John that it can be bleak and depressing but by the end of the first chapter I felt rather "armored" against the negativity and felt more like the author is being overly alarmist.
Brown described Plan B as, "...an integrated program with four interdependent goals." He defines these goals as:
Brown's zealotry really shines when he began making statements like, "Success depends on moving at wartime speed, restructuring the world energy economy at a pace reminiscent of the restructuring of the U.S. industrial economy in 1942 following the attack on Pearl Harbor." Even following the 9/11/2001 attacks on the World Trade centers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., we did not precipitate a mobilization on the scale of 1942. Therefore it would seem highly unlikely, short of an asteroid striking the planet, that such a huge undertaking will ever get traction.
Lester Brown is a dreamer and the world needs dreams so I am reticent to thoroughly dash all his hopes but dashed, I highly anticipate, they shall be. He sees an energy economy of the year 2020, having most of the U.S. fleet of vehicles being plug-in hybrids and all-electric. He goes on to further speculate that, "They will be largely running on wind-generated electricity for the equivalent of less than $1 a gallon of gasoline." I'm not one taken to placing bets but I'd be willing to make a substantial wager that the world of 2020 will not be that greatly different from 2012. That is speculative on my part but no more speculative than other assertions made by the author.
Mr. Brown talks about the rising number of "failing states" and how the result is "generating a downward economic spiral. A drying up of foreign investment and a resultant rise in unemployment." This in turn he says is distressing because these failing states become less reliable partners in the global system that depends on a cooperative network of functioning nation states. Could it be that these so-called failing states have chosen to exempt themselves from the folly of the international banking cartels that currently control the functioning of most world governments? "More failing states," writes Brown, "means more bad debt." Indebtedness to whom and for what end? The United States has a national debt so great that there is absolutely no hope of it ever being paid off. President Clinton sometimes gets lauded for having payed off the nation's deficit. All that was addressed was the interest portion of the debt. No conceivable plan can ever show a means to pay off the principle portion short of nationalizing the (privately owned, non-federal) Federal Reserve.
On population control, or what Brown calls "stabilization," he advocates for a "reduced fertility option." I seriously doubt if the world at large and especially the two-thirds world shares his opinion. I'll be on the look out later in the book for how he proposes to so radically change the minds of the masses.
Near the end of the first chapter, Brown holds up Curitiba, Brazil as a shining example of how world transportation systems can be restructured. What he fails to make note of is that no other major or minor world city has followed the lead of Curitiba. In the over thirty years time, since 1974, we have only one example.The referenced Paris and London initiatives may hold some promise but are more likely to see success in Europe than in the United States.
In his most recent book, World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse (2011), Brown emphasizes the geopolitical effects of fast-rising grain prices, noting that "the biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries," and one that could "bring down civilization." Now he isn't predicting simply economic collapse but of civilization as we know it. Can I trust this man? I'm not sure yet.
By the end of the chapter I felt like I heard Chicken Little crying out that, "The sky is falling, the sky is falling! A piece of it hit me on the head!" Bush rushed the country into a protracted engagement in Iraq on a wave of fabricated fear. I'm not yet convinced that all the author's concerns are either as urgent or dire as he suggests, saying the world economy is on a "collapse path," nor as solvable as a Plan B proposes. But stay tuned; we have only just begun.
Tuesday, 2/28/12.
Reading day. Taking notes. Noting facts.
Monday, February 27, 2012.
Met with John to go over course outline, the wikispaces, and received the general introduction to the course and professor expectations from student. Picked up 7 books and one DVD.
the implications of these data are that enlightenment may be operationalized