Symposium References V2 - 072612

Background References for Awakening the Dreamer Symposium (V2)
Module 1: 1A Eco-Spot Connection [Page 2] 1B The Pachamama Story [Page 3] Module 2: Where Are We? 2A Environmental Sustainability [Page 6] 2B Environmental and Social Justice [Page 22] 2C Spiritual, Psychological and Emotional Impact [Page 30] Module 3: How Did We Get Here? 3A Worldviews and Assumptions [Page 35] 3B Another Worldview [Page 44] Eco-Spot: Island Home [Page 49] Module 4: The Universe Story [Page 49] Module 5: Whats Possible For The Future? 5A History and the Emerging Dream [Page 55] WOMBAT [Page 67] Module 6: Where Do We Go From Here? 6A Personal Stand [Page 68] 6B In Blessed Unrest, Choosing Action [Page 69] Module 7: Finale: Hope Committed in Action [Page 73]
References - 9/13/2012
Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium V-2 Background References
These are the background references for the Version 2 (V2) of the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium. For comments or additions to this document please email support@pachamama.org.
V-2 Module 1A: Eco-Spot Connections

Key Points: 1A-1 Narrator: Its the third planet from the sun a tiny sphere spinning through a moment in timea remarkable place that was kind enough to yield just the right elements to sustain a phenomenon called life, where each creature is as unique as this world we call home. And a day begins in much the same way for all. Maybe that's when it crosses your mindin the warmth from a ray of sun or the kindness of a strangerit occurs to you how one life touches so many others. And you begin to see how all things are connected, like the blood that unites one family. And you come to realize that mankind did not weave the web of life; we're merely a strand in it, and whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselveson the third planet from the sun. (Voiceover: Linda Hunt) 1A-2 Eco-Spot Connections Video A non-profit Earth Communication Office (ECO) created the 60-second video spots we have been showing today. They would love to get them distributed as much as possible, in movie theaters, in any and all settings. Source/References:
Key Points:
Source/References: There is a CD with about 20 of the spots on it available at their website www.oneEarth.org Earth Communications is working to change the way that media is used, refocusing it from a tool for selling things, to a tool to help re-imagine a sustainable future. See: www.oneearth.org
V-2 Module 1B: The Pachamama Story

Key Points: 1B-1 Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium 1B-2 This Symposium was created by The Pachamama Alliance. Source/References: A symposium is a form of meeting where ideas can be shared; the word derives from the Greek verb sympotein meaning "to drink together." For more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symposium The Pachamama Alliance is a non-profit (or you could say social profit) organization that works primarily with indigenous groups in the Amazon basins of Ecuador and Peru. The destruction of the world's rainforests is driven by a complex web of social and economic forces, many of these a logical result of modern society's worldview -- a view that, although rich in technological insight, is often ignorant of the value of nature's apparently free and limitless services. It is a view guided by maximum shortterm financial gain while disregarding the long-term costs of ecological degradation. It is a worldview in which tropical forests can show up as a cash crop to be harvested rather than as an irreplaceable ecosystem to be protected. This is not, however, the only worldview. For more information, see: http://www.pachamama.org/content/view/2/12/ The Pachamama Alliance now has an important role in assisting Ecuador to consider moving to a nonpetroleum based economy. Millions of acres of pristine rainforest have been protected by the Ecuadorian government and its stewardship has been granted to the Achuars. The Pachamama Alliance has assisted the Ecuadorian government of Rafael Correa government in adopting a green constitution. Ecuador has become the first country
Key Points:
Source/References: to approve a constitution that, among other reforms, recognizes certain inalienable rights for nature. Under five provisions in the new constitution's Rights of Nature chapter, an ecosystem has the "right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution," and "every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of these rights." For more information, see: http://www.greenchange.org/article.php?id=3389 The Pachamama Alliance is also fostering with the Ecuadorian government the development of a gifteconomy incubator in Quito, inspiring greater volunteerism and a shift in our cultural ethos towards generosity. In a gift economy, goods and services are given without any strings attached; it is an economic system where wealth is decreased by hoarding and it is the circulation of the gifts within the community that leads to increase in both connections and relationship strength. The gift-economy is an ancient, indigenous idea that is curiously finding its footing in the modern Internet economy. For more information, see: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1019/event/index.js p?event_KEY=39695 See the following links for some details on progress made in protecting forests and the rights of indigenous people in Ecuador: http://mariri.net/rainforest-blog/index.php?tag=ecuador http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/pihhr/V1N1CESR.html http://www.usaid.gov/locations/latin_america_caribbean/ environment/country/ecuador.html http://www.rainforestportal.org/issues/2007/01/victory_e cuador_strengthens_so.asp http://www.american.edu/TED/ecuador.htm
1B-3 Pachamama
Pachamama is a word in the Quechua language of the Andes. Quechua was the language of the Inca empire. It is the most widely spoken of all American Indian languages. For more, see Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechua_language Achuar (Ah-chwar) To read about the Achuar people see the NAE website:
1B-4 Narrator:
Key Points: The Achuar are an ancient dream culture in Ecuador and Peru.
Source/References: http://www.nacionalidadachuarecuador.org/archivos/ingl es/index_english.html and see Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achuar Read about the importance of dreams to the indigenous people: http://www.dreamtime.net.au/indigenous/spirituality.cfm To see a movie about oil damage in the Amazonian rainforest, go to: www.crudethemovie.com As an Achuar leader said, because they live here, they preserve the forest, they love the forestso that it can be sustained and give life to nature for all living beings. They believe that life is under the ground, on the surface of earth, and in the atmosphere. These three things are interrelated so that the world can exist. Therefore, its not possible to say, I'll take the oil and ignore the forest. Everything is connected to everything else in this world. The territory of the Achuar is sacred to them as they explain on this website: http://www.achuarperu.org/en/20achuar_people/ The term indigenous people has no fixed, standard definition. Literally, the word indigenous means originating from or native to a place. In this broad sense, we are all indigenous but most of us raised in the dominant culture lack a deep connection to place. To understand more about this complex concept, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples Lynne Twist is co-founder of The Pachamama Alliance. She is also the founder of Soul Money Institute. She is a global activist, fundraiser, speaker, consultant, and author. She has dedicated her life to global initiatives that serve the best instincts in all of us. She has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and trained thousands of fundraisers to be more effective in their work. An original staff member of The Hunger Project, an organization started in 1977 to end world hunger, Lynne served as a leader of this global initiative for 20 years. Lynne has spent more than three decades working in positions of leadership with many global initiatives, including: ending world hunger, protecting the worlds rainforests, empowering indigenous peoples, improving health,
1B-5 Narrator: they began to see what the outside world and its thirst for oil was doing to the land
1B-6 Indigenous people
1B-7 Lynne Twist
Key Points:
Source/References: economic, and political conditions for women and children, advancing the scientific understanding of human consciousness, creating a sustainable future for all life. For further information, see: www.soulofmoney.org/about/about-lynne-twist For a video, see: www.youtube.com/watch? v=dXvosTss4gg&feature=related
1B-8 Lynne Twist: we would need to change the dream of the North the dream of the modern world, a dream deeply rooted in consumption and acquisition, without any regard to the consequences 1B-9 Bill Twist
To learn more about the materialistic dream of the North, see: www.storyofstuff.org If we consider that the dream of the North is a trance, the following article can be useful: www.hypnogenesis.com/drwier1.htm
Bill Twist is co-founder of The Pachamama Alliance and has been President and Chairman of the Board since its inception. He has an extensive background in business and was the Senior Vice-President for Financial Services for Comdisco, a New York Stock Exchange company. He is on the Board of the Centro Economicos Derechos y Sociales in Ecuador, an NGO working on economic and social rights issues in the Andes countries in South America. He is also the Board President of the Champion Securities Company. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmjw0D6143Q The Pachamama Alliances mission is two-fold: - To preserve the Earths tropical rainforest by empowering the indigenous people who are its natural custodians. - To contribute to bringing forth an environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilling human presence on this planet as the guiding principle of our time. See www.pachamama.org/content/view/2/4/ For video on interconnectedness see: www.globalonenessproject.org/videos/whatwoulditlooklik e For an article on the interface between science and metaphysics, see: www.spaceandmotion.com/metaphysics-dynamic-unity-
1B-10 Bill Twist: But we took the request of the Achuar very seriously
1B-11 Narrator: The intention is that by the end, , you see them as interrelated facets of one profoundly interconnected whole.
Key Points:
Source/References: reality.htm For a video discussion on oneness between a physicist and a mystic, see: www.linktv.org/globalspirit/Oneness For an article on interconnectedness by a biologist, see: www.i-sis.org.uk/whatbarrier.php
1B-12 Narrator: the scope and urgency of the planetary situation we face.
For a short video on the global crisis, see: www.globalonenessproject.org/videos/mcmehtaclip1 For a brief overview of the planetary situation, see: www.ontheissues.org/Earth_in_the_Balance.htm For an article on the state of the world, see: www.oxfordleadership.com/State_of_the_World_Article For definition of blessed unrest, see: wikipedia.org/wiki/Blessed_Unrest For a video on defining blessed unrest: www.blessedunrest.com/video.html For more information on the Prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor, go to : http://www.pachamama.org. Other possible sources: http://www.labyrinthina.com/prophecy.htm or http://www.spiritwheel.com/eaglecondor.htm John Perkins is a board member and one of the founders of The Pachamama Alliance. Economist, activist and author. John Perkins spent three decades as an Economic Hit Man, business executive, author, and lecturer. He lived and worked in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and North America. Then he made a decision: he would use these experiences to change the world. For more information, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Perkins or Johns website: http://www.johnperkins.org/ For more information on "time of prophecies", see at Johns organization, Dream Change: http://www.dreamchange.org Don Alverto Tazo is a shaman of the Andes. A shaman is a practitioner of shamanism, a term used to denote a number of separate practices and belief sets found in different indigenous peoples in many different parts of the world. Shamans might typically be active as healers and intermediaries with the spirit world on behalf of their own community.
1B-13 Blessed unrest
1B-14 Narrator:
One such legend is found

throughout much of the Americas the Prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor. 1B-15 John Perkins
1B-16 Don Alverto Tazo
Key Points:
Source/References: For more about this complex topic read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaman
1B-17 Domingo Paez
Domingo Paez is an Achuar leader. He was the first Achuar who ran for Congress in Ecuador. Although he did not win, he has been an active leader in his community for quite some time. There is no information on Domingo on the web, you can find out more about the Achuar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achuar
V-2 Module 2A: Where Are We? Environmental Sustainability

Key Points: 2A-1 Sustainability Source/Reference: Sustainability is the ability of the current generation to meet its needs, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. The UN definition of sustainability was originally put forth in Section 3, #27 of Our Common Future, a report from the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) and was published in 1987. This report was also called the Brundtland report in recognition of former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland's role as Chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development. The report is one of the seminal environmental documents of the 20th century. It is representative of the growing global awareness in the second half of the century of the enormous environmental problems facing the planet, and of a growing shift towards global environmental action. As the report observes, humankind saw the earth from space for the first time only a few decades ago, and yet this has had a profound impact on the way in which we perceive the earth and our place on it. For a copy of the report see this link: http://www.un-documents.net/wced-ocf.htm Or this link from the World in Balance website: http://www.worldinbalance.net/agreements/1987brundtland.html# Here is one of the various definitions of sustainability:
Key Points:
Source/Reference: Sustainability can be defined as humanitys investment in a system of living, projected to be viable on an ongoing basis that provides quality of life for all individuals of sentient species and preserves natural ecosystems. Sustainability in its simplest form describes a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. See more on this definition at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability The Iroquois Confederacy, as well as many other indigenous peoples, held care and respect for the earth as a duty. The Iroquois had as guiding principles the consideration of impacts to peace, nature and future generations when making decisions. This principle was referred to in the presentation to the United Nations made by the people of the Six Nations in 1995: In making any law, our chiefs must always consider three things: the effect of their decision on peace; the effect on the natural world; and the effect on seven generations in the future. http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/PresentTo UN.html A synthesis of these definitions can be found at: http://www.sustainability101.com/sustainabilitydefinition.htm
2A-2 Ecology and biodiversity
The term ecology refers to the relationships between organisms and their environments and the study of those relationships. It also refers to the branch of sociology (human ecology) that is concerned with studying the relationships between human groups and their physical and social environments. And a third definition is the study of the detrimental effects of modern civilization on the environment. See definitions at Answers.com: http://www.answers.com/topic/ecology-1? cat=technology Biodiversity is another term widely used in relation to ecology. Biodiversity is defined as the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome or for the entire Earth. Biodiversity is often used as a measure of the health of biological systems. Biodiversity found on Earth today consists of many millions of distinct
Key Points:
Source/Reference: biological species, which is the product of four billion years of evolution. For more information, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity In May 2008, there was a convention on biodiversity: http://www.cbd.int/ For a video on Biodiversity: http://www.cbd.int/doc/videos/cop-08/2010-target.swf In terms of lack of biodiversity, just 12 crops and 14 animal species now provide most of the worlds food. Less genetic diversity means fewer opportunities for the growth and innovation needed to boost agriculture at a time of soaring food prices. http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/1000841/in dex.html
2A-3 Narrator: What kind of world is our modern way of life actually producing?
Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planets ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted. An excellent summary of the impact of all this on the environment is in the comprehensive United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report (a study carried out by 1,360 scientists around the world, completed in 2005), which concludes unequivocally that we are in an environmental crisis. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment presents the findings of the 1,360 scientists worldwide who worked for five years to evaluate the impact of human presence on the planet. Initiated in 2001, the objective of the MA is to assess the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and the scientific basis for actions needed to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of those systems and their contribution to human well-being. Each part of this assessment has been scrutinized by governments, independent scientists, and other experts to ensure the robustness of its findings. The assessment report as well as other related information can be found at: http://www.millenniumassessment.org//en/index.aspx See summary of reports at GreenFacts website: http://www.greenfacts.org/ecosystems/links/index.htm The world population was estimated at 6.71 billion in July 2008 by World Fact book.
2A-4 Narrator:
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Key Points: One place to begin is with the dramatic changes that have occurred in population.
Source/Reference: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-worldfactbook/print/xx.html See the chart created by the Population Reference Bureau (http://www.prb.org). Download the chart entitled World Population Growth through History at: http://www.prb.org/Content/NavigationMenu/PRB/PRB_ Library/Graphics_Bank/Population_Trends2/Population_ Trends.htm Find out more about current world population, development and social issues at the following links: http://www.un.org/esa/population/unpop.htm http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org See current population count and other real time statistics at: http://www.worldometers.info/ Find out more about current world population, development and social issues at the following links: http://www.un.org/esa/population/unpop.htm http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/sixbillion/s ixbillion.htm Sunlight is the energy which was absorbed on earth during the Carboniferous Period, 400 million years ago. Then, for a period of about 70 million years, the sunlight which fell on the planet was the single and primary source of energy. It was trapped in the growth of plant matter, both on land and in the seas. The accumulation of dead plant matter over this period, its fossilization and subsequent compression by geological forces has resulted in the reserves of what we call fossil fuels. Find out more on the link between population growth and the industrial revolution at the following link: http://www.ecology.com/features/industrial_revolution/in dex.html The concept is brilliantly described and discussed by author Thom Hartmann in his book Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight and on his website: http://www.thomhartmann.com/last.shtml Two examples of our over-consumption relates to paper and water. For information on paper consumption
2A-5 Narrator: For thousands of years, human population on Earth remained relatively steady. But then, about 200 years ago, at the time of the industrial revolution, humans learned how to harness the energy of fossil fuels. That allowed agricultural productivity to increase dramatically, and human population began to grow exponentially.
2A-6 Narrator:
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Key Points: ever-expanding process of extraction, production, consumption and disposal of natural resources.
Source/Reference: and ideas for reducing paper consumption visit the following sites: http://www.environmentalpaper.org/PAPERstatistics.html http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1497 http://www.woodconsumption.org/products/paper.html For a visual interpretation of paper consumption (as well as visual representation of the consumption of other commodities such as plastic and cell phones) , see the Running the Numbers exhibit by artist Chris Jordan at his website: http://www.chrisjordan.com/ Statistics used for creating his art work include: 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags are used in the US every hour. 410,000 of disposable hot-beverage paper cups are used in the US every fifteen minutes. 30,000 reams of office paper, or 15 million sheets, are used in the US every five minutes. For current water use, see other real time statistics at: http://www.worldometers.info/ Information on water use and the world water crisis can be found at: http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/index.php?id=25 and from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report on water resources: http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y4473E/Y4473E00.HT M To ensure availability for future generations, the withdrawal of fresh water from an ecosystem should not exceed its natural replacement rate. Minimizing human water use helps to preserve fresh water habitats for local wildlife and migrating waterfowl, as well as reducing the need to build new dams and other water diversion infrastructure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_conservation For statistics, go to: www.poverty.com This issue is discussed further in the symposium. In his book Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (NY: Penguin Press, 2005), British economist Richard Layard asserts that, while average incomes have doubled in the United States, Britain, and Japan, people,
2A-7 Narrator: Poverty is increasing 2A-8 Narrator: Increased material wealth has not produced the personal
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Key Points: fulfillment
Source/Reference: on average, are no happier today than they were fifty years ago (as measured by the World Values Survey, 1981, 1990, 1995-7). See Richard Layards income and happiness chart, U.S on p. 16 and comparing happiness across countries on pp. 19-20 at: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/events/lectures/layard/RL030303.pdf . http://cep.lse.ac.uk/layard/annex.pdf) Business Week: 2006: Rating Countries for the Happiness Factor. The U.S. came in at 23 of 178 world countries. http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/oct2006 /gb20061011_072596.htm The Center for Disease Control says that 17 percent of American high school kids report having seriously considered suicide during the previous 12 months; 9 percent report having actually attempted suicide. The overall rate of suicide among youth has declined slowly since 1992 (Lubell, Swahn, Crosby, and Kegler 2004). However, youth suicide is a major public health problem in the United States. In 2003, suicide ranked as the 3rd leading cause of death for young people. See http://www.safeyouth.org/scripts/facts/suicide.asp) and http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00036818. htm The National Youth Risk Behavior Survey: 1991-2005 found that the percent of high school students nationwide who: had seriously considered suicide in 2005 was 16.9% (down from 29% in 1991). made a suicide plan in 2005 was 13% (also a decrease). made an actual suicide attempt in 2005 was 8.4% (no appreciable change from 1991). http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/yrbs/pdf/trends/2005_ YRBS_Suicide_Attempts.pdf Time Magazine featured a special report on happiness in . The contents of this issue can be reviewed at this website: http://www.time.com/time/2005/happiness/ The American Psychological Association reports that, between 75 and 90% of all visits to physicians are for stress-related conditions.
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Key Points:
Source/Reference: http://www.apahelpcenter.org/articles/article.php?id=11 A Time magazine article reported that insurance claims for stress, depression, and job burnout are now the USs fastest growing disability category. http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1580401,00.ht ml
2A-9 Narrator: The worst housing turndown since World War Two 2A-10 Walden Bello
The impact of the present housing turn down is discussed here: wwww.wellingtonhive.blogspot.com/2008/03/widerimpact-of-housing-turn-down.html Walden Bello is an Akbayan Representative in the 14th Congress of Republic of the Philippines. He is also a senior analyst of Focus on the Global South and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines, and is one of the leading critics of the current model of economic globalisation, combining the roles of intellectual and activist. www.waldenbello.org http://focusweb.org/the-g-20-global-capital-and-theconjuncture-an-interview-with-walden-bello.html? Itemid=1 The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is one of the measures of national income and output for a given country's economy. GDP is defined as the total market value of all final goods and services produced within the country in a given period of time (usually a calendar year).
2A-11 Walden Bello: Gross domestic product (GDP) is supposed to be a measure of everythin puts a value on everything thats been produced in an economy within a years time. 2A-12 Narrator: The current industrial model requires continuous economic growth,
Economic growth is the increase in the value of goods and services produced by an economy and is most commonly measured as a percentage change in GDP. See definition of GDP at this Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product As the Wikipedia points out, GDP per capita is often used as an indicator of how well a country is doing economically, with the implication that this is related to peoples standard of living. See: http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/economy/ Dr. Noel Brown is the former director of the United Nations Environmental Program. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Noel_Brown
2A-13 Dr. Noel Brown
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Key Points: 2A-14 United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP)
Source/Reference: The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) has as its mission to provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations. http://www.unep.org/ Randy Hayes is founder and President of the Rainforest Action Network (http://www.hran.org) and a Senior Staff Associate at the International Forum on Globalization (http://www.ifg.org/). A brief bio of Randy can be found at the following link: http://www.ifg.org/about/staff.htm More on habitat degradation and destruction can be found at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_degradation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_degradation Global Change and the Earth System: a Planet Under Pressure- This 2004 book catalogues how human activity has begun to significantly affect the planet and how it functions. Atmospheric composition, land cover, marine ecosystems, coastal zones, freshwater systems and global biological diversity have all been substantially affected. The magnitude and rate of human-driven change is alarming. It is now clear that the Earth has entered the so-called Anthropocene Era the geological era in which humans are a significant and sometimes dominating environmental force. Records from the geological past indicate that never before has the Earth experienced the current suite of simultaneous changes: we are sailing into planetary terra incognita. http://www.livescience.com/environment/080127-newepoch.html The authors are Margot Wallstrm, European Commissioner for the environment, Bert Bolin, founding chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Paul Crutzen, who was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Will Steffen, Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. The book is available through the website: http://www.igbp.net/booklaunch/book.html
2A-15 Randy Hayes
2A-16 Randy Hayes: Virtually every natural habitat across the planet is being degraded.
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Key Points:
Source/Reference: Also see the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report mentioned above.
2A-17 Randy Hayes: Weve got climate disruption
Evidence of climate disruption has been well documented in scientific literature. http://www.unep.org/Themes/climatechange/ The UNEP has established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC was established to provide the decision-makers and others interested in climate change with an objective source of information about climate change. http://www.ipcc.ch/ See current real time statistics on CO2 emissions at: http://www.worldometers.info/ Find out about global warming in the news at this PBS site: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/science/ globalwarming/map_flash.html Climate change is threatening earths ecosystems in an unprecedented way. If patterns of emissions continue at the current rates, effects such as species extinction, food shortages, water shortages, desertification, increased flooding, increases in disease and severe weather changes are predicted. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (PCC), (which, along with Al Gore, was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize) provides an objective source of information about climate change. The IPCC is a scientific intergovernmental body set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Find out more about the IPPC at their website: http://www.ipcc.ch/ See the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on Climate Change: www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessmentreport/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf Deforestation of rainforests: In 1950, we had lost only 8% of the tropical rainforests that existed in 1750; by 2000, we had lost 30% of what existed in 1750. Since the beginning of the Industrial Age we've eliminated almost 70% of our forests. In the last decade (the 1990s) alone we lost 96 million hectares of the Earths forest cover (a
2A-18 Randy Hayes: Weve got deforestation of the rainforests and the other forests...
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Key Points:
Source/Reference: hectare is approximately 2 acres). That was, by far, the largest of any recent decade. Forests have effectively disappeared in 25 countries, and another 29 have lost more than 90% of their forest cover. We continue to destroy rain forests on the planet at the rate of a football field a second; one fifth of the Amazon has already been cleared. http://www.un.org/earthwatch/forests/forestloss.html See a visual of the disappearing rain forests: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/0806 06-AP-rainforest-photos.html And see current real time statistics on forest loss at: http://www.worldometers.info/ 76% of original forest over the past 8000 years has been destroyed as of 2000. Based on sq. kilometers lost from 62,203 down to 13,501 sq. K. Some countries losing forest at 10% annually as of 2005, as per Mongabay, as per UN http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/globalecology.php#5 http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1115-forests.html http://www.globalforestwatch.org/english/about/faqs.htm earthwatch.unep.net/emergingissues/forests/forestloss.p hp Almost half of the planets original forest has been destroyed, mostly during the last three decades, as per UN Earthwatch, and UN Food and Agricultural Organization, 1997 earthwatch.unep.net/emergingissues/forests/forestloss.p hp The worlds forests have shrunk by some 40 percent since agriculture began 11,000 years ago, as per Earth Policy Institute http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Forest/index.htm
2A-19 Randy Hayes: Weve got soil erosion.
Soil erosion is second only to population growth as the biggest environmental problem the world faces, said David Pimentel, professor of ecology at Cornell. See: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March06/soil.erosio n.threat.ssl.html For up-to-the-minute figures on soil erosion and other
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Key Points:
Source/Reference: statistics see: http://www.worldometers.info/ Farmland (Soil) 40% of the globes agricultural lands are degraded20% are in danger of becoming deserts. http://www.worldbank.org/html/cgiar/press/dres0005.htm See overview with map showing degradation at: http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/curr ent/lectures/land_deg/land_deg.html http://www.afairerworld.org/_Environment/agriculture.ht ml http://egj.lib.uidaho.edu/index.php/egj/article/view/2725/ 2683 We are losing 0.7% of cultivated arable land annually, as per UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) 1992 http://www.fao.org/docrep/T0667E/t0667e04.htm Nearly one-third of the worlds arable land was lost in the second half of the twentieth century.- A Fairer World. Originally from Electronic Green Journal, Univ. of Idaho http://www.afairerworld.org/_Environment/agriculture.ht ml http://egj.lib.uidaho.edu/index.php/egj/article/view/2725/ 2683
2A-20 Randy Hayes: Weve got the draining of underground water aquifers
For more information on aquifers see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer Desertification is potentially the most threatening ecosystem change impacting livelihoods of the poor. Dry lands occupy 41% of Earths land area. More than 2 billion peoplea third of the human population in the year 2000live in these dry regions of the world. They suffer more than any other parts of the population from problems such as malnutrition, infant mortality, and diseases related to contaminated or insufficient water. The pressure to support life is increasing on dry land ecosystems, yet twenty per cent are in danger of becoming deserts. Re: Ogallala Aquifer - Basic definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer Ogallala Aquifer facing depletion: http://www.kerrcenter.com/publications/ogallala_aquifer. pdf If present trends continue, 1.8 billion people will be living
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Key Points:
Source/Reference: in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the world population could be subject to water stress, according to a UN report (Global Environment Outlook: Environment for Development (GEO-4) Assessment. Since 1987, many coastal and marine ecosystems and most freshwater ecosystems have continued to be heavily degraded, with many completely lost, some irreversibly. http://www.unep.org/geo/geo4/media/ Another source for general information on the state of water is this UNESCOs site: http://www.unesco.org/water/water_links/ Re: Water shortage for 2 billion - See 2002 U.N. Report reported by BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/1887451.stm http://www.un.org/earthwatch/freshwater/index.html Some areas, like California, are experiencing drought believed to be linked to climate change. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/us/05drought.html? _r=1&hp&oref=slogin
2A-21 Randy Hayes: the polluting of our rivers with poison .
Aquatic and marine dead zones can be caused by an increase in chemical nutrients in the water, known as eutrophication. Chemical fertilizer is considered the prime cause of dead zones around the world. Currently the most notorious dead zone is a 22,126 square kilometers (8,543 square mile) region in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi River dumps high-nutrient runoff from its vast drainage basin, which includes the heart of U.S. agribusiness, the Midwest, affecting important shrimp fishing grounds. This is equivalent to a dead zone the size of the State of New Jersey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_zone_(ecology) Dead zones are increasing around the world. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/10/20/deadzone_pl a.html?category=earth&guid=20061020143030 Dead zones may be linked to global warming: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/0802141 44547.htm Experts estimate there are 200 so-called ocean dead zones, as per Reuters Oct 2006, as per UN Env Program http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1019-
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Key Points:
Source/Reference: 09.htm Oxygen-poor ocean zones are growing. Linked to global warming, these areas of the Pacific and Atlantic cannot sustain most marine life, a new study warns. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-nadeadzone2-2008may02,0,1285619.story Other types of water pollution: http://www.mbgnet.net/fresh/pollute.htm http://library.thinkquest.org/26026/Environmental_Proble ms/water_pollution.html Although progress has been made in cleaning up pollution from human waste in some areas of the world, new pollution sources such as nutrients, sediments, and toxics from runoff produced by agriculture, storm drains and gas and oil production have worsened the problem. http://earthtrends.wri.org/features/view_feature.php? theme=2&fid=16
2A-22 Randy Hayes: Weve got the overfishing of the oceans of the world.
The North Atlantic ocean eco-system is on the verge of collapse. The plankton of the oceans are disappearing. For information about the decline of Europes seas see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6730045.stm In 1950, 15% of the oceans ecosystems were being exploited at a non-sustainable rate; in 2000, 80% were being exploited at a non-sustainable rate. http://overfishing.org/ The unchanging appearance of the ocean belies a major shift in the systems of life hidden beneath the waves, due mostly to the human appetite for fish and the increasing technological efficiency of the fishing industry. The full consequences of this pressure are still poorly understood, but catches of edible fish in the oceans have plummeted dramatically. http://www.greenfacts.org/fisheries/index.htm UN Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that 70% of the world's fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. http://www.hsus.org/marine_mammals/what_are_the_is sues/commercial_fisheries_and_marine_mammals/fishe ries_factsheet.html Globally, 90% Of Large Fish Are Gone, by Kate Melville http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20030414203530da ta_trunc_sys.shtml
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Key Points: 2A-23 Randy Hayes: Weve got the toxic burden in peoples bodies
Source/Reference: Toxins are accumulating in the environment, destroying the ability of our planet to regenerate itself or to continue providing life-sustaining environmental services. Sewer sludge, landfill and run-off of fertilizers are polluting our waters And the toxins are not just in the environment. Theyre in our bodies as well, because the chemical pollutants in the waters and air and land dont just stay there. Ultimately they end up inside our bodies- us and other species. http://toxics.usgs.gov/regional/emc/ http://www.un.org/earthwatch/toxicchem/ http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/index.ph p Acid rain damage far worse than previously believed. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php? newsid=27550) For information on health affects of air pollution, see: http://www.nrdc.org/air/pollution/qbreath.asp The rate of cancer is expected to double as per WebMD, 2002 http://www.webmd.com/content/Article/16/1738_53682.h tm?pagenumber=2 However, the overall cancer mortality id declining at a record pace, says National Study, 2007 http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/publications/news/n ews-now/health-of-thepublic/20071108cancerreports.html The work of Lynn Marguelles and Dorian Sagan, What is Life addresses the concept of our biological interconnectivity. This article from In Context magazine addresses their work: http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC34/Margulis.htm There is established but incomplete evidence that changes being made in ecosystems are increasing the likelihood of nonlinear changes in ecosystems (including accelerating, abrupt, and potentially irreversible changes), with important consequences for human wellbeing. Changes in ecosystems generally take place gradually. Some changes are nonlinear, however: once a threshold is crossed, the system changes to a very different state. And these nonlinear changes are sometimes abrupt; they can also be large in magnitude
2A-24 Randy Hayes: the rates of cancer that are going up.
2A-25 Randy Hayes: These are all big ticket, global, ecological issues, and what they are doing is that they are shredding the fabric of life that basically creates the life support systems; the ability of the planet to support our life and future generations.
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Key Points:
Source/Reference: and difficult, expensive, or impossible to reverse The increased likelihood of these nonlinear changes stems from the loss of biodiversity and growing pressures from multiple direct drivers of ecosystem change. The loss of species and genetic diversity decreases the resilience of ecosystems, which is the level of disturbance that an ecosystem can undergo without crossing a threshold to a different structure or functioning. In addition, growing pressures from drivers such as overharvesting, climate change, invasive species, and nutrient loading push ecosystems toward thresholds that they might otherwise not encounter. (UN Millennium Assessment, Ecosystem and Human Wellbeing Synthesis Report) http://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/docu ment.356.aspx.pdf From a more spiritual vantage point, listen to a talk on the web of life http://www.workingwithoneness.org/article_world_soul.ht ml
2A-26 Narrator: Many experts say that oil extraction worldwide is about to reach its peak. Peak Oil is the term they use.
In practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that, if 2005 was the year of global Peak Oil, oil production in the year 2030 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the worlds population in 2030 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price of oil will skyrocket, and oil dependant economies will crumble. http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil Michael Meacher is a British Labour party politician, and Member of Parliament (MP) for Oldham West and Royton. On 22 February 2007, he declared that he would be standing for the Labour Leadership, challenging Gordon Brown and John McDonnell. On 14 May, however, after talks with John McDonnell, he announced he would stand aside in order to back McDonnell as the "candidate of the left". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Meacher
2A-27 Micheal Meacher
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Key Points: 2A-28 Micheal Meacher: the oil industry believes that peak oil is probably in the area of 2010, 2015 2A-29 Narrator: It is clear that the resources of the Earth are being used up. The critical question becomes How much and how fast? One useful measurement system is called the Ecological Footprint.
Source/Reference: For an interview with Micheal Meacher on peak oil, see: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/22864
Ecological Footprint: two researchers in Oakland, California, Dr. William Rees of the University of British Columbia and Dr. Mathis Wackernagel of the Global Footprint Network, combined data on the actual use of the Earths resources with information on the Earths capacity for regeneration into a single indicator they call the Ecological Footprint. These compare a populations demands on nature...with the Earths available biological capacity to determine whether it can be sustained. This approach has become one of the most widely referenced sustainability analysis tools around the globe. http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php? content=global_footprint The book is entitled Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing human impact on Earth, New Society Publishers, 1996. It can be found at: http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/3663 Number of earths we use, crossed '1" in 1985. As of 2003, we needed the equivalent of 1.25 earths to support us. Click on the link below and follow the World Footprint link to see how the demand is increasing beyond biocapacity. http://www.globalfootprintnetwork.org/ You can calculate your own ecological footprint by clicking on the link to the Global footprint above and following the Your Footprint link to learn about the impact you are having on the earth and ideas for reducing it. For more background reading on this concept, see Resource Flows: The Material Basis of Industrial Economies and The Weight of Nations by the World Resources staff. http://earthtrends.wri.org/features/view_feature.php? theme=6&fid=4] For new larger population numbers, see charts at: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?
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Key Points: 2A-30 Mathis Wackernagel
Source/Reference: content=global_footprint Mathis Wackernagel is the founder and Executive Director of Global Footprint Network, a research organization which supports the creation of a sustainable economy by advancing the use of the Ecological Footprint. The goal of the organization is to make ecological limits central to decision-making everywhere. For his bio, along with other working on this project, see: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php? content=whoweare See www.footprintnetwork.org
2A-31 Mathis Wackernagel: Humanity has been continuously increasing its resource demand to the extent that by the mid-eighties we started to use more than what nature can regenerate. 2A-32 Susan Burns
Susan Burns is the Managing Director of the Global Footprint Network. In that role she leads the overall strategic direction of the organization and oversees communications, partnership, project development and finance. Prior to launching Global Footprint Network, Susan founded the pioneering sustainability consulting firm, Natural Strategies. See her bio along with other working on this project at: www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php? content=whoweare See http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/blog/
2A-33 Narrator: Currently, if every one lived on Earth as North Americans do, wed need five Earths. 2A-34 Narrator: increasing amount of carbon dioxide
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are now at 383 parts per million by volume, compared with approximately 295in the year 1900. For more information see: http://oism.org/pproject/review.pdf There has been a dramatic increase of carbon dioxide and methane since the industrial revolution. For more on the greenhouse effect gases see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gases
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Key Points:
Source/Reference: Evidence of climate change ahs been well documented in the scientific literature. See: http://www.umep.org/Themes/climatechange/
2A-35 Maude Barlow
Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of The Council of Canadians and the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, working internationally for the right to water. She serves on the boards of the International Forum on Globalization and Food and Water Watch, as well as being a Councilor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. Maude is the recipient of six honorary doctorates degrees for her global water justice work. She is also the best-selling author or co-author of sixteen books, including Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the Worlds Water and Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maude_Barlow To find out more about the Council of Canadians, see: http://www.canadians.org/index.html To find out more about Food and Water Watch, see: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water Research has found pollution and temperature levels are rising faster and Arctic ice is melting quicker than in the worst-case scenarios forecast by the United Nations. References to accelerating climate change can be found at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/15/2091879 .htm http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312024,00.html http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory? id=3880571 The Earths climate is capable of making sudden drastic shifts. Although this has not happened during recorded human history, the continued burning of fossil fuels could bring this about. http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/Science/Ab rupt_Change.asp For early warning signs of global warming, see: http://www.climatehotmap.org/ As ocean temperatures increase, hurricanes are predicted to be more severe.
2A-36 Maude Barlow: The scientists from around the world are coming together to tell us that climate change is actually happening at a much faster rate than they had anticipated.
2A-37 Maude Barlow: ...the signs are the cataclysmic storms, the extremes in
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Key Points: weather
Source/Reference: http://www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/issues/ar t19625.html As the ice caps melt precipitation and flooding is predicted to increase and droughts become more frequent and severe. http://climatechange.ws/weather/ Scientists consider that the acceleration of the melting of the Greenland ice cap could play an important role in the future stability of ocean circulation and, hence, in the development of climate change. For more information on the potential impacts see the following story from Science Daily: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070507113401 .htm The melting of the Greenland ice sheet and its progress toward the sea is also accelerating. http://www.livescience.com/environment/041209_runaw ay_glacier.html Huge cracks are appearing in the Greenland ice sheets are shown in this video: http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3? type=article&article_id=218393105 Huge areas of the Wilkins Ice Shelf broke off Antarctics continental ice shelf in March 2008 are shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=1guDkKO6p2w&feature=related In a cover story Be Worried, Be Very Worried, Time Magazine featured a special report on global warming in March 26, 2006. http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/26/coverstory/index.ht ml The Greenland ice sheet is melting. Alarming huge cracks in the oldest Arctic ice have been recently observed. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7303385.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7006640.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7417123.stm Janos Pasztor is the acting head of the UNFCCCs Project-Based Mechanisms Programme about the growth of the carbon market at the moment.
2A-38 Maude Barlow: The polar ice caps are melting...
2A-39 Wake UP, Freak Out: the fate of civilization itself hangs in the balance we are now dangerously close to the tipping point in the worlds climate system.
2A-40 Janos Pasztor
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Key Points: 2A-41 Janos Pasztor: If glaciers disappear, then they will no longer be able to supply the lakes and the rivers. As they are melting, you have more water around, flooding, and lakes are full. But once they disappear, then thats it, there is no more.
Source/Reference: The acceleration of the ice melt is likely to put large areas of the earth that are currently populated under water. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/112003.htm Glaciers have been slowly receding over the last century, but since the mid 1990s the rate at which they are melting has greatly accelerated. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/0821 _020821_wireglaciers.html Mankinds impact on other living species has been dramatic. As habitat shrinks and pollution increases species that depend on nature for their sustenance suffer. Links that explore our relationship with animals include: The World Wildlife Fund website: http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/index.cfm Other sites are: http://www.e-pioneer.com/Animals/index.html http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/06/0306100 74759.htm David Ulansey is founder of Species Alliance and a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), as well as the founder of the Species Alliance. He has done extensive research on species extinction and has made it his personal mission to make others aware of this critical issue. http://www.ciis.edu/faculty/ulansey.html For information on the Species Alliance, see: http://www.speciesalliance.org As stated in the Randy Hayes segment, tens of millions of species on earth are facing extinction; one third of amphibian species and one half of the earths plants are facing extinction. In 2006 a U.N. report acknowledged that humans are responsible for the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs and must make unprecedented extra efforts to reach a goal of slowing losses by 2010. In effect, humans are currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the history of earth, and the greatest since the dinosaurs disappeared, 65 million years ago.
2A- 42 Narrator: the impact we are having on other species.
2A-43 David Ulansey
2A-44 David Ulansey: We are in the midst of a mass extinction, but the news has not reached the general public.
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Key Points:
Source/Reference: The current pace of extinctions is 1,000 times faster than historical rates. http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL2 55714820071026 http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL2 344053520071024 The current loss of species is being called the Sixth Mass Extinction. This video gives a succinct summary of the species extinction crisis and the psychological impact it has on us. It is the trailer for the movie Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction. http://www.speciesalliance.org/video.php According to the 1998 American Museum of Natural History scientist report entitled Biodiversity in Crisis, scientists estimate that tens of thousands of species are headed for certain extinction over the coming decades, with no preventive action possible because of the extensive habitat loss that has already occurred worldwide. Many other species will not go completely extinct, but will experience drastic population declines, lose distinct populations, and suffer severe loss of genetic diversity. See excerpts of this report or order the full report at: http://cbc.amnh.org/center/pubs/pubscbcinverts.php? npid=43 See 2002 CNN news report: There is virtual unanimity among scientists that we have entered a period of mass extinction not seen since the age of the dinosaurs... Estimates vary, but extinction is figured by experts to be taking place between 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural "background" extinction. http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/23/green .century.mass.extinction/index.html A national survey reveals that a biodiversity crisis. Scientific experts believe we are in the midst of the fastest mass extinction in Earths history (American Museum of Natural History, 2, April 2005). See: http://www.amnh.org/museum/press/feature/biofact.html Not counting the effects of global warming, one quarter of the worlds mammals will face extinction in the next 30 years, according to the UNs Geo3 report. http://www.unep.org/geo/geo3/
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Key Points:
Source/Reference: There are now 41,415 species on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List and 16,306 of them are threatened with extinction. You can look up individual species or search entire lists on the IUCN website: http://cms.iucn.org/about/work/programmes/species/red _list/index.cfm Key species on the IUCN Red Lists are featured in this beautiful video: http://www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/redlist2007/video_redLis t2007.wmv Climate change is also exacerbating stress on bird species as this article points out: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm? newsid=48407&newsdate=20-May-2008
2A-45 David Ulansey: African lions are on the absolute verge of extinctionthere are only 20,000 left thats down 90% in the last few decades.
Although population counts and statistics on lion populations vary, there is wide agreement that lions living in the wild are threatened. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3119434.stm According to according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), African lion populations have declined 30-50% in the last 20 years. http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php/15951/all The Defenders of Wildlife report that, today, fewer than 21,000 lions remain in all of Africa. http://www.defenders.org/wildlife_and_habitat/wildlife/lio n.php According to the Defenders of Wildlife, in the early 1900s, there were around 100,000 tigers throughout their range. Today, an estimated total of around 3,0004,500 exist in the wild. http://www.defenders.org/wildlife_and_habitat/wildlife/tig er.php According to the Defenders of Wildlife, at the turn of the 20th century, there were a few million African elephants and about 100,000 Asian elephants. Today, there are an estimated 450,000 - 700,000 African elephants and between 35,000 - 40,000 wild Asian elephants. http://www.defenders.org/wildlife_and_habitat/wildlife/ele phant.php There is a growing realization that a much broader
2A-46 David Ulansey: Every species and subspecies of tiger on the planet is on the absolute verge of extinction. 2A-47 David Ulansey: Elephantsdown 90% in the last century.
2A-48
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Key Points: David Ulansey: 90% of all large fish are gone from the oceans.
Source/Reference: range of marine species are under threat of extinction and marine biodiversity is experiencing potentially irreversible degradation. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/05/14/coolsc.di sappearingfish/ More than 50% of the shark species in the ocean are threatened by extinction. http://www.livescience.com/environment/080522oceanic-sharks.html According to the Live Science website, if the loss of marine species from over fishing and climate change continues at the current rate, all commercial fish and seafood species could collapse by 2048. In addition to that researchers have found that, in addition to distressing a major food supply for humans, the loss of marine life could disrupt biodiversity on a global scale. http://www.livescience.com/environment/061102_marine _loss.html The list of threatened species is growing at an alarming rate as reported by various web sources. http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2. html http://www.rainforestweb.org/Rainforest_Information/Sp ecies_Extinction/ http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/12/379 2/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/01/0107 _040107_extinction.html Brian Swimme is a Professor of Cosmology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), founder of The Center for the Story of the Universe, and author of The Universe Story (Harper San Francisco, 1992) written with Thomas Berry, and The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos (Orbis, 1996). He has developed several video presentations, and the most recent is Powers of the Universe. http://www.brianswimme.org/media/press_kits.asp Brian Swinne is referring to the Sixth Mass Extinction. According to a 2002 CNN news report, there is virtual unanimity among scientists that we have entered a period of mass extinction not seen since the age of the dinosaurs... Estimates vary, but extinction is figured by
2A-49 David Ulansey: Half of all species of life may be extinct in 50 years
2A-50 Brian Swimme
2A-51 Brian Swimme: Nothing this destructive has happened in 65 million years.
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Key Points:
Source/Reference: experts to be taking place between 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural "background" extinction. http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/23/green .century.mass.extinction/index.html
2A-52 Brian Swimme: So we are suddenly confronted with this fact and we dont really know how to respond to it. I think thats beyond most of us, because we havent deepened our hearts in a way that would make possible the grief that is wanting to be felt.
Grief and loss are human processes. Elizabeth KublerRoss, in her pioneering work on grief On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss (2005) Described the five stages of grief as: 1) denial 2) anger 3) bargaining 4) depression 5) acceptance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model Understanding the grief process that people feel when they feel loss might be useful in assisting us to allow ourselves to feel our pain and grief at what is happening to the earth. The hospice site has information on grief: http://www.hospicenet.org/html/knowledge.html
V-2 Module 2B: Where Are We? Social Justice

Key Points: 2B-1 Social justice Source/Reference: Social justice is the concept of a society with a greater degree of economic egalitarianism through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or even property redistribution, policies aimed toward achieving that which developmental economists refer to as equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice In looking at a socially just human presence there are two fundamental aspects to consider: democracy and fairness (or justice). Participatory democracy: Does the society or culture provide everyone within the society the ability to participate in decision-makingespecially in decisions that directly affect them and their lives? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_democracy Equality/fairness: Is everyone in the society afforded a fair, or equal, opportunity to benefit from the common resources (wealth) available to the society? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_equality For more in-depth issues, see:
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www.socialjusticejournal.org 2B-2 Narrator: One of the primary expectations people have of the modern industrialized system has been that, by growing the economy, life will get better for everyone The idea that growth economy is beneficial to all is not supported. For example, between 1980 and 1996 in the USA, real incomes went up 58 percent for the wealthiest 5 percent of American households, but less than 4 percent for the lowest 60 percent. http://www.neweconomyindex.org/9myths.html In an article of the Washington Monthly journal of March 1999 about the downside of a growth economy, Jonathan Rowe and Judy Silverstein wrote: But what actually has been expanding? A lot of things can grow, and do. Waistlines grow. Medical bills grow. Traffic, debt, and stress all grow. We can't know whether an "expansion" is good or not unless we know what it includes. Yet the President didn't tell, and the media homes didn't ask, which was typical too. A human economy is supposed to advance well-being. That is elementary. Yet politicians and pundits rarely talk about it in those terms. Instead they revert to the language of "expansion," "growth," and the like, which mean something very different. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_3_31/ai_5 4098104/ Christine Loh is currently the CEO of Civic Exchange, a Hong Kong think tank which she co-founded in 2000. In January 2007 she was named Hong Kong Business Woman of the Year for 2006. She has worked in many areas, including law, business, politics, media and the non-profit sector, but is best known as a leading voice in public policy in Hong Kong, particularly in promoting democracy and environmental protection. In recent years she has also been strongly associated with the campaign to save Hong Kong's Harbour from excessive land reclamation and overdevelopment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Loh Of the 173 countries in the study, 70 to 80 have lower per-capita incomes than they did 10 or 30 years ago. People in Africa consume 20 percent less than they did 25 years ago. So the poor are getting poorer as the rich are getting richer. (UN report shows rich richer, poor poorer; John Catalinotto) http://www.workers.org/ww/1998/richpoor0924.php
2B-3 Christine Loh
2B-4 Christine Loh: in the last 20 years or so, the world has become more unequal
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2B-5 Narrator: We all know that a great disparity currently exist between rich and poor.
Over the last 30 years, per capita income has actually fallen in 80 countries9 (David Korten, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, 2006). See an overview of the research on Globalization and Income Inequality at: http://www.networkideas.org/feathm/aug2002/ft19_Glob alisation_Survey.htm The concept of if the earth were a village of 100 people was originally proposed in the State of the Village report entitled Who Lives in the Global Village (1990) by Donella Meadows, a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Harvard and founder of the Sustainability Institute. http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/index.php? display_article=vn338villageed According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work. http://www.epa.gov/oecaerth/environmentaljustice/ Environmental Justice, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal, is the central forum for the research, debate, and discussion of the equitable treatment and involvement of all people, especially minority and lowincome populations, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. http://www.liebertpub.com/products/product.aspx? pid=259 People are organizing to promote environmental justice. For example, Greenaction mobilizes community power to win victories that change government and corporate policies and practices to protect health and to promote environmental justice. http://www.greenaction.org Majora Carter founded the non-profit environmental
2B-6 Narrator: One way to understand this disparity is to think of the Earth as a community of 100 people
2B-7 Narrator: The movement to address this [disparity] has a name, environmental justice.
2B-8
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Majora Carter
justice solutions corporation, Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx). The mission of the SSBx is environmental Justice through innovative, economically sustainable projects that are informed by community needs. Her first major project was writing a $1.25M Federal Transportation planning grant for the South Bronx Greenway with 11 miles of alternative transport, local economic development, low-impact storm-water management, and recreational space. This led to the first new South Bronx water front park in over 60 years. http://www.ssbx.org/MajoraCarterStaffBio.htm To learn about Sustainable South Bronx and the projects, see: http://www.ssbx.org/ In the US, there is evidence of a lack of environmental justice. A report entitled Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, 1987-2007: Grassroots Struggles to Dismantle Environmental Racism in the United States, shows that 20 years after its first report on the issue, disproportionately large numbers of people of color still live in hazardous waste host communities, and that they are not equally protected by environmental laws. According to the report, nearly half of all Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans live in communities with uncontrolled waste sites. www.ucc.org/justice/pdfs/toxic20.pdf On Earth, there is a new phenomenon in the global arena: environmental refugees. These are people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with the associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty. In their desperation, these people feel they have no alternative but to seek sanctuary elsewhere, however hazardous the attempt. Not all of them have fled their countries, many being internally displaced. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692964/ Environmental racism refers to intentional or unintentional racial discrimination in the enforcement of environmental rules and regulations, the intentional or unintentional targeting of minority communities as the
2B-9 Majora Carter: Environmental justice is the belief that no community should have to bear the brunt of a disproportionate amount of environmental burdens and not enjoy any environmental benefits.
2B-10 Majora Carter: but right now race and class are the most excellent indicators
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of where you are going to find the good stuff like parks and trees and where you will find the bad stuff like waste facilities or power plants, and almost to a fault around the world that is something that you see.
location for polluting industries, or the exclusion of minority groups from public and private boards, commissions, and regulatory bodies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_racism The Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA) found that people of color are nearly 50 percent more likely than whites to live near a commercial toxic waste facility, and three times more likely than whites to live in communities with multiple toxic waste facilities. http://mit.edu/thistle/www/v9/9.05/7backyard.html The CPA also recently released a study entitled Toxic Wastes and Race Revisited which revealed that commercial toxic waste facilities are even more likely to be located in minority communities now than ever before, despite grassroots activism and growing national attention to the issue. http://www.cfpa.org/publications/pub.cfm?ID=116 Native Americans maintained a land base and a cultural identity, economically as well as socially and politically, things that continue to set them apart from other ethnic groups or classes in the United States. Although viewed as relatively valueless by nineteenthcentury white standards, these lands were places of spiritual value and some contained resources of immense worth. Land (its loss, location, and resource wealth or poverty), exploitation of land, and changing Indian needs, attitudes, and religious demands define the issues facing modern Indians and their environments. http://cpluhna.nau.edu/Research/native_americans1.htm Enei Begaye grew up on the Navajo reservation. She is currently the Executive Director of the Black Mesa Water Coalition, Enei studied Geological and Environmental Sciences with a focus on land and water management at Stanford University. She is a recognized advocate of Indigenous Peoples rights, youth, and the environment. She is an active speaker, strategist, writer, and organizer. Her experience includes work within the United Nations as well as national and local governments, representing Indigenous and environmental interests. Enei is also a co-founder of the Native Movement Collective and a campaigner for the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), where she
2B-11 Narrator: In the United States, Native American continue to be marginalized and have their natural resources appropriated.
2B- 12 Enei Begaye
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worked with Indigenous communities throughout the U.S. to protect their water resources. http://www.nativeworldnetwork.com/startpage1 2B-13 Enei Begaye: The people who live off Black Mesa, the people who live right off the coal mine area dont have electricity. They dont even have running water. At Black Mesa, Navajo and Hopi people needed to organize to protect the N-Aquifer from the Peabody Coal Mine slurry lines that pumped millions of gallons from Black Mesa to the Mojave generating station in Laughlin, NV. In 2005 through efforts of BMWC and other environmental and sacred site protection organizations, they successfully shut down the Peabody Coal Mine. http://www.nativeworldnetwork.com/startpage1 Water is also a part of the sacred way of life of the native people living in Black Mesa. For an argument in favor of Native Americans rights to protect sacred water sites, see: http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/bitstream/1808/414 1/1/umi-ku-2457_1.pdf Other Indigenous homelands are also being sacrificed. Here is a link to the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) website, with a story about the Tar Sands of Northern Alberta: http://www.ienearth.org/CITSC/Sand_Tar_Campaign.ht ml See the IEN website for other stories of environmental degradation of indigenous lands to support our habits of consumerism and our addiction to fossil fuels: http://www.ienearth.org/index.html 2B-14 Narrator: One way to look at the dynamics of environmental injustice comes from the United States in this excerpt from a film by Annie Leonard called The Story of Stuff. 2B-15 Annie Leonard Annie Leonard is an expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues, with more than 20 years of experience investigating factories and dumps around the world. Coordinator of the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption, a funder collaborative working for a sustainable and just world, Annie communicates See the entire video of The Story of Stuff and learn more about it at: http://www.storyofstuff.com/ View the statistics in The Story of Stuff and learn the sources for that information at: http://storyofstuff.com/pdfs/annie_leonard_facts.pdf
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worldwide about the impact of consumerism and materialism on global economies and international health. http://www.storyofstuff.com/anniesbio.html 2B-16 Annie Leonard: We have 5% of the worlds population, but we are using 30% of the worlds resources and creating 30% of the worlds waste. The Global Issues website reports that inequalities in consumption are stark. Globally, the 20% of the worlds people in the highest-income countries account for 86% of total private consumption expenditures the poorest 20% a minuscule 1.3%. More specifically, the richest fifth: Consume 45% of all meat and fish, the poorest fifth 5% Consume 58% of total energy, the poorest fifth less than 4% Have 74% of all telephone lines, the poorest fifth 1.5% Consume 84% of all paper, the poorest fifth 1.1% Own 87% of the worlds vehicle fleet, the poorest fifth less than 1%. www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Consumption.as p This figure is citied in many places. For example: John L Seitz: Global Issues: An Introduction (2001). 2B-17 Annie Leonard, The Story of Stuff So, my countrys response to this limitation is simply to go take someone elses! This is the Third World, whichsome would say is another word for our stuff that somehow got on somebody elses land. So what does that look like? The same thing: trashing the place. There is now a term, ecological debt, which tries to address the issue of resource extraction from developing countries. The cumulative responsibility of industrialized countries for the destruction caused by their production and consumption patterns is called 'ecological debt'. Natural wealth extracted by the North at the expense of southern people has contaminated their natural heritage and sources of sustenance. This debt is the result of a development model that is being spread throughout the world and which threatens more sustainable local economies. For another definition, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_debt A Canadian website tells the story of how a Louisiana based company is extracting resources from West Papua. http://www.westpapua.ca/?q=node/124 All oil companies are still exploring for more oil. In the next 5 years, BP alone will spend $5bn on oil exploration and production alone. Here is one of BPs new projects. NorthStar is the first offshore oil project proposed for the
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Arctic Ocean. Inupiat Eskimos from Alaskas North Slope, whose subsistence lifestyle is already under threat from climate change, are using the law to try and stop this oil exploration project. http://www.risingtide.nl/greenpepper/climate/arcticoil.htm l 2B-18 Annie Leonard Globally 200,000 people a day are moving from environments that have sustained them for generations into cities many to live in slums. So, you see, it is not just resources that are wasted along this system, but people too. Whole communities get wasted. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), unless concerted action is taken to address the root causes of rapid urbanization, including migration from rural to urban areas, the number of people living in slums will grow in the coming years. Many people migrate to cities from rural areas to seek economic opportunity and to escape deprivation or environmental degradation that has driven them off the land. But often people who leave the countryside to find better lives in the city have no choice but to settle in shantytowns and slums where they lack access to decent housing and sanitation, health care and educationin effect, trading in rural poverty for urban poverty. http://www.unfpa.org/ Although we know about the devastation to the natural environment, the devastating effects of our industrialized world also include the creation of a human devsatation, namely environmental refugees. Globally, mass movements of people are taking place as people are being forced from their homelands due to environmental degradation. Currently, the number of these environmental refugees is surpassing those refugees created by political and social strife. See: http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/a/enviro refugees.htm Rising sea levels, desertification and shrinking freshwater supplies will create up to 50 million environmental refugees by the end of the decade, experts warn today. Janos Bogardi, director of the Institute for Environment and Human Security at the United Nations University in Bonn, said creeping environmental deterioration already displaced up to 10 million people a year, and the situation would get worse. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1589883 ,00.html Scholars are predicting that 50 million people worldwide will be displaced by 2010 because of rising sea levels,
2B-19 Narrator: the industrial worlds demand for oil, minerals, and timber is having devastating effects on the land, air, water, and people.
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desertification, dried up aquifers, weather-induced flooding and other serious environmental changes, says Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation in the United Kingdom and the author of a book entitled Environmental Refugees: The Case for Recognition. For in-depth discussion, see: http://www.neweconomics.org 2B-20 Narrator: An example is the Niger Delta of Nigeria where hundreds of millions of dollars of oil have been extracted and exported, yet most of the people live in poverty on less than one US dollar a day. 2B-21 Wangari Maathai To look at the human conditions at the Niger Delta of Nigeria, look at an account from a person who lived there. http://www.dawodu.com/adejumobi1.htm
Wangari Maathai is a Kenyan environmental and political activist. She was educated in the United States at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. In the 1970s, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 2004 she became the first African woman, and the first environmentalist, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace. Maathai was an elected member of Parliament and served as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki between January 2003 and November 2005. She is of Kikuyu ethnicity. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2004/ maathai-bio.html A system is a set of interacting or interdependent entities forming an integrated whole. The study of complex systems brings an old approach to the many scientific questions that are a weak fit for the usual mechanistic view of reality present in science. Complex system is therefore often used as a broad term encompassing a research approach to problems in many diverse disciplines including anthropology, artificial life, chemistry, computer science, economics, evolutionary computation, earthquake prediction,
2B-22 Wangari Maathai: What we do not understand is that we humans are only part of this ecosystem. And when we kill part of the system we are killing ourselves.
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meteorology, molecular biology, neuroscience, physics, psychology and sociology. Human societies (and probably human brains) are complex systems in which neither the components nor the couplings are simple. Nevertheless, they exhibit many of the hallmarks of complex systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_systems 2B-23 Robert Reich Robert Reich is presently Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written ten books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages. http://www.robertreich.org/reich/biography.asp Various organizations have created declarations of interdependence. Read some of them here: http://www.cointelligence.org/DeclarationsOfInterdep.html
2B-24 Robert Reich: The principal of social justice is that there is a social contract. We are not just individuals. We are part of a society, a worldwide society. Were interdependent and that interdependence flows at many levels. Its spiritual, it is psychological, it is economic. The notion that we can exist and prosper just individually based purely on what we do and what we earn is a rather new notion in history and it doesn't work. 2B-25 Maude Barlow
Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of The Council of Canadians and the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, working internationally for the right to water. She serves on the boards of the International Forum on Globalization and Food and Water Watch, as well as being a Councilor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. Maude is the recipient of six honorary doctorates degrees for her global water justice work. She is also the best-selling author or co-author of sixteen books, including Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the Worlds Water and Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maude_Barlow 2B-26 Maude Barlow: I think for a lot of people who are born in privilege theres a sense that what a friend of mine calls the right not to know. I dont have to know about poverty, I dont have to know about racism, I dont have to know about environmental degradation or environmental justice or injustice because its not me, Ive got my life and Ive you know got my family and I can do what I want. The sense of entitlement that one race or class has, the sense that they deserve all that they have by reason of birth or position, that they have an inherent right to it, and that they do not have a responsibility for others well being, that other less fortunate peoples problems are not their problem, has been termed white privilege. Peggy McIntosh, Associate Director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, describes white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets, which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was meant. to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks. http://www.unh.edu/residentiallife/diversity/aw_article17.pdf Also see Whiteness is ownership of the earth by W.E.B. Du Bois. Van Jones is the founding director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Founded in 1996 and named for an unsung civil rights heroine, the Center seeks to replace the U.S. incarceration industry with youth opportunities and community-based solutions. Van Jones is also a passionate advocate for the environment and for responsible business. He serves on numerous governing boards, including: Rainforest Action Network, WITNESS, Bioneers, the New Apollo Project and the Social Venture Network. Van's efforts have earned him many honors. See: http://www.forefrontleaders.org/partners/northamerica/van-jones or http://www.ashoka.org/fellows/viewprofile3.cfm? reid=97101 and the Ella Baker Center at: http://www.ellabakercenter.org/page.php?pageid=10 Social justice refers to the concept of a society in which justice is achieved in every aspect of society, rather than merely the administration of law. It is generally thought of as a world which affords individuals and groups fair treatment and an impartial share of the benefits of society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice
2B-27 Van Jones
2B-28 Van Jones: A socially just world is a world in which, if you had to draw a lot, and it would put you anywhere in that society, you would feel perfectly confident, you wouldnt be worried, because you knew
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whatever lot you drew would be a good lot. It doesnt mean everythings equal -- it just means that every single person in that society has a decent shot at living the fullest life that they can. But if you close your eyes and you think to yourself, would you want to be black? Would you trade places? Well if you wouldnt trade places, then theres work to be done.
V-2 Module 2C: Where are We? Spiritual, Psychological & Emotional Impact
Key Points: 2C-1 Spiritual, Psychological, and Emotional Impact Source/Reference: We submit that in terms of our spiritual/emotional health, the costs resulting from our modern worldview and how were living arent out in the future somewhere; they are presentright here, right now. If we tell the truth, most of us would admit that something is seriously "off course" about our lives and the lives of those around us. The pace of life in the modern world is getting faster and faster. Stress levels are rising as our culture supposedly advances. People around us seem increasingly isolated, alienated, mistrusting, angry, cut off from one another and from their own hearts, lacking any deep or abiding connection to spirit or sense of purpose in their lives. In The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty (2004), David G. Myers writes that this diagnosis of spiritual poverty has come from many perspective: The real problem of modernity is the problem of belief, observed sociologist Daniel Bell. To use an unfashionable term, it is a spiritual crisis. In this Harvard commencement address, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn deplored the Western worlds material obsession and spiritual poverty. We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to
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find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession, our spiritual life. There is within us a crisis, a kind of spiritual surrender, agreed Jesse Jackson. Can we rebuild the wall (of hope)? We have the money. We have the education, but there is something within us that is in trouble. There is a yawning hole in the psyche of American and Americans where our sense of common purpose, of community and connection, of hope and spiritual satisfaction should be, echoed former NY columnist Anna Quindlen. We liberals must acknowledge this: that while the rights of the individual are precious, at some deep level individualism alone does not suffice. And the ability of the radical right to seize and exploit the terrain of the soul has been helped immeasurably by the failure of so many of the rest of us to even acknowledge the souls existence. Television producer Norman Lear concurred, saying, at no time in my life has our culture been so estranged from spiritual valuesOur problems are not economic and political. They are moral and spiritualand must be addressed on that level if real solutions are to be found. Rabbi Michael Learner, editor of Tikkun, called for a politics in the image of God, an attempt to reconstruct the world in a way that takes seriously the uniqueness and preciousness of every human being and our connection to a higher ethical and spiritual purpose that vies meaning to our lives. Alienation and spiritual yearnings can also be found in popular music, as in these lyrics from Sting: Everyone I know is lonely/and Gods so far away/and my heart belongs to no one/ s now some times I pray/please take this peace between us/ and fill it up some way. Looking beyond America, Czech poet-president Vaclav Havel saw the present global crisis as directly related the spiritual condition of modern civilization. This condition is characterized by loss: the loss of metaphysical certainties, of an experience of the transcendental, of any personal moral authority, and of any kind of higher horizon. Havel believes that if the
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world is to change for the better it must star with a change in human consciousness. We must discover a deeper sense of responsibility toward the world, which means responsibility toward something higher in the self. 2C-2 Sheikh Bentounes Sheikh Bentounes is the designated spiritual leader of the Sufi congregation known as Al Alawiya. Writer, teacher, and speaker, Sheikh Bentounes has been traveling around the world for many years now, mainly in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, carrying the traditional education of Sufism. Sheikh Bentounes states that if Islam is a body, Sufism is its heart, a place where we learn anew to taste the savor of God in the silence of the moment. http://www.nazr-e-kaaba.com/sheikh_bentounes.php Crisis has four defining characteristics. Seeger, Sellnow and Ulmer explain that a crises are "specific, unexpected, and non-routine events or series of events that [create] high levels of uncertainty and threat or perceived threat to an organization's high priority goals. Thus the first three characteristics are that the event is 1. unexpected (i.e., a surprise), 2. creates uncertainty, and 3. is seen as a threat to important goals. However, Venette argues that crisis is a process of transformation where the old system can no longer be maintained. Therefore the fourth defining quality is 4. the need for change. If change is not needed, the event could more accurately be described as a failure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis John Robbins is a food activist, author and plant diet enthusiast who has made a generation aware of the linkages between agriculture, health and the environment. According to him, the choices that we make today as to the way we treat each other, the way we raise our children, the kinds of families and communities we create, will determine how the future unfolds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robbins_%28author %29 Are Americans lonelier, more isolated? - A recent study reported that American adults, who shocked pollsters in 1985 when they said they had only three close friends, today say they have just two. And the number who say
2C-3 Sheikh Bentounes : "The model of the society of consumerism is a model bringing us to a catastrophe at all levels. Todays world is in crisis; economic, financial, energetic; a crisis of meaning."
2C-4 John Robbins
2C-5 John Robbins: There is a great loneliness of spirit today. Were trying to live,
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were trying to cope in the face of what seems to be overwhelming evidence that who we are doesnt matter, that there is no real hope for enough change, that the environment and human experience is deteriorating so rapidly and increasingly and massively. This is the context, psychically and spiritually, in which we are working today. This is how our lives are reflected to us. Meanwhile, were yearning for connection with each other, with ourselves, with the powers of nature, the possibilities of being alive. When that tension arises, we feel pain, we feel anguish at the very root of ourselves, and then we cover that over, that grief, that horror, with all kinds of distraction with consumerism, with addictions, with anything that we can use to disconnect and to go away.
they have no one to discuss important matters with has doubled to 1 in 4. See: http://crookedtimber.org/2006/06/23/social-isolation-inamerica/ As a society we are deeply troubled, and many of us are beginning to wake up to the fact that material success will not bring us the satisfaction and fulfillment, meaning and happiness that we thought would come with it. A number of books explore the spiritual hunger in American culture, including: Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Dont Need, and Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline in Leisure by Juliet B. Shor The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies by Robert Lane Psychology and Consumer Culture: The Struggle for a Good Life in a Materialistic World by Tim Kasser A recent study by the University of Chicago showed that 25% of all Americans report they have no one in their lives they can confide in, and another 25% reports they have just one person in their lives that they can confide in. Both of these figures had approximately doubled over the past 20 yearsshowing a rapid loss of close relationships by half of all Americans. The report Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades, Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and Matthew E. Brashears, (June 2006) can be studied in depth at: http://www.asanet.org/galleries/defaultfile/June06ASRFeature.pdf Alternatively a commentary can be viewed at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-06-22friendship_x.htm In the United States 700,000 people receive treatment for alcoholism on any given day (and those are the ones seeking treatment). The number of people treated for alcoholism on any given day appears in Alcoholism Treatment in the
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United States, a report available on the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and A. 10th Special Report to the U.S. Congress on Alcohol and Alcoholism, 2002. See: http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/ http://www.defeataddictions.com/Treatment/CourtOrdered.html Record Sales of Sleeping Pills Are Causing Worries, appeared in the New York Times on February 7, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/07/business/07sleep.ht ml? ei=5088&en=8fd30fa48137535e&ex=1296968400&part ner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print More statistics on alcoholism and substance abuse: In U.S. alcohol abuse is increasing, while alcohol dependence is declining. http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/jun2004/niaaa-10.htm and/or http://alcoholism.about.com/od/homework/a/blnih04 0610.htm Excessive alcohol consumption is the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm53 37a2.htm In 2002, almost 5 million adults were alcoholdependent or alcohol-abusing and had at least one child younger than age 18 living in their home. http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k4/ACOA/ACOA.htm More than one-fourth of all children in the United States are exposed to alcohol abuse or dependence in their families before they are 18 years of age. http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/children/a/aa000108. htm In 2002, 6.2 million Americans were current abusers of prescription drugs. http://www.defeataddictions.com/index.html 2C-6 Juan Manuel Carrion Juan Manuel Carrion is an artist, ornithologist and environmentalist living near Quito in Ecuador. For many years he has worked to raise Ecuador's public awareness about the need to preserve and protect its natural environment and its bio-diversity. To hear him speak, go to: http://www.globalonenessproject.org/interviewee/juanmanuel-carrion
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2C-7 Juan Manuel Carrion: The problem is that we have created artificial needs that make us consume more than we really need. 2C-8 Van Jones: The reason that people are into this mass consumption nightmare dream is because people are lonely and people are hurt, and people really believe that more income more stuff more consumption more things the relationship with things -- will fix the hunger in the human heart, and it will never work.
To look at an article on artificial needs and the capitalistic model, see: http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/apr98/scarcity.html
This article on consumerism and its lack of fulfillment echoes want Van says in a lighthearted way: http://www.enough.org.uk/enough11.htm Here is an report on consumerism and the planet: http://www.enough.org.uk/ Vicki Robbins and Joe Dominguez, in their book, Your Money or Your Life, argue that our time is more precious than working to accumulate wealth and urge people to express their values through their money. See the New Roadmap Foundation website for more information: http://www.newroadmap.org/default.asp Not only is consumerism not filling our loneliness, it is also eroding our fiscal security and impacting the environment: http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/Spring2008/abstract-consumerism.html Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, and author. Starting at age 20, he dedicated his life to sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. His practice has included starting and running ecological businesses, writing and teaching about the impact of commerce on living systems, and consulting with governments and corporations on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy. http://www.paulhawken.com/biography.html
2C-9 Paul Hawken
2C-10 Paul Hawken: This is not the best of all possible worlds, even though it appears that way on TV and advertisements. I think people in their most poignant and honest moments will admit that this is really hard right now. For everybody. 2C-11 Narrator: A World Health Organization study released in 2004 (published in JAMA in June) shows that, rates of most
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The idea that material gain leads to personal fulfillment has been demonstrated not to be the case. Although incomes have skyrocketed in economicallyadvanced countries, study after study have shown that levels of reported happiness have remained the same or even declined. Developed nations also generally have higher rates of mental illness.
mental illness are far higher in the U.S. than in any other country in the world. These numbers are absolutely staggering, says Ronald C. Kessler, PhD, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and one of the study's co-researchers. http://www.webmd.com/content/article/88/99740.htm 2005 Update: One in 4 adult Americans surveyed by Harvard researchers (2001-2003) had symptoms consistent with a diagnosable mental disorder. The most common is anxiety. http://www.aurorahealthcare.org/yourhealth/healthgate/g etcontent.asp?URLhealthgate="94086.html See statistics on mental disorders from National Institute of Mental Health at: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/numbers.cfm Are we over-diagnosing? Read a counter view at Web MD: http://www.webmd.com/content/article/85/98464.htm? z=2950_00000_5022_pe_01 The American Psychological Association reports that between 75 and 90% of all visits to physicians are for stress-related conditions. http://www.apahelpcenter.org/articles/article.php?id=11 A Time magazine article reported that insurance claims for stress, depression, and job burnout are now the USs fastest growing disability category. http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1580401,00.ht ml
2C-12 Luke Tayor 2C-13 Luke Tayor: For people of my generation who are just coming into their experience of despair as the details of whats happening around the globe become clearer and begin to click into place, theres no language for us quite yet. I think it must be unprecendented on an individual level, on a human level, that we In her new book The Work That Reconnects, Joanna Macy discusses the angst of our era, and the pain, fear, guilt and inaction it has engendered. Then it points forward to the way out of apathy, to the work that reconnects.
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are facing that kind of loss. 2C-14 Joanna Macy Joanna Macy, Ph.D., is an eco-philosopher and a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. A respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with four decades of activism. She has created a ground-breaking theoretical framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application. The current crisis invites each of us to explore our personal relationship to the natural world. In the following comments, Joanna Macy uses the example of Saint Francis who established a mystic bond with the Earth. Participation at this level of caring and intimacy is an exciting venture. It is to know the heart of the Earth as Saint Francis did. t could well be that our work now is to grow a new planetary consciousness. Carl Jung said theres no birth of consciousness without pain. We are discovering that we are the sensory organs of our living planet, and that discovery involves pain. All of a sudden we realize that we care, that our hearts are breaking over people who arent even born yet. This is truly a noble thing. Over twenty years of doing this work I have found that people would rather hurt and feel connected than be anesthetized and feel isolated. www.consciousnessinaction.com/contributors/macy.html In The Coming of the Cosmic Christ he wrote, the Pascal Mysteries of the Third Millennium will have to do with the death and resurrection of the Earth, where Earth, Herself, plays the role of Christ crucified. According to Joanna Macy, we cannot deny our grief. We must deepen our hearts to allow it to come out and be expressed, and it can become part of the ground that supports us we move forward. Many of us feel called to respond to the ecological destruction of our planet, yet we feel overwhelmed, immobilized, and unable to deal realistically with the threats to life on Earth. This beautiful article on Gratitude and how that is the beginning of healing, by Joanna Macy, tell of a way to transform grief: http://www.joannamacy.net/html/Nov07Sun.pdf
2C-15 Joanna Macy: The anguish we feel for what is happening to our world is inevitable and normal and even healthy. Pain is very useful. Just dont be afraid of it. Because if we are afraid to feel that, we wont feel where it comes from, and where it comes from is love, our love for this world. Thats what is going to pull us through.
2C-16 John Robbins: There is the possibility that the energy that has been bound in the repression of it can now flow through us and energize us, make us clearer, more alive, more passionate, committed, courageous, determined people.
V-2 Module 3A: How Did We Get Here? Worldviews and Assumptions
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Key Points: 3A- 1 Worldviews, Assumptions
Source/Reference: What is a worldview? Worldview might be imagined as a giant lens-bubble that encases us entirely but invisibly, translating events and experiences into forms that fit our patterned expectations. http://www.tapestryinstitute.org/howwework/worldview.ht ml The western scientific view tends to analyze and dissect things in order to understand them. This taking apart, or seeing things as made up of their component parts is one of the bases of our perception of separateness. Over the centuries, the story thats been communicated to us, consciously or unconsciously, has been that the world is a huge machine, made up of separate parts, like a big clock or something that has no meaning, and that, aided by our technology we can strategize how to use and even master it. The Clockwork Universe was the metaphor, the story that shaped the dream of Western civilization for hundreds of years. According to the Wikipedia, the Clockwork Universe is a theory as to the origins of the universe. In this theory, the universe can be thought of as a machine--a clock wound up by God that ticks along, like a perfect machine, governed by the laws of physics. The task of scientists, then, was to discover those laws. The theory has its roots in the work of Isaac Newton. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton The popularity of this theory swelled during the European Age of Enlightenment (18th century), as scientists looked to Newton's laws of motion to explain the behavior of the solar system. The second law of thermodynamics and quantum physics has now undermined this theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clockwork_universe_theory In the modern world in which we are living, We are separate has been a deep and fundamental part of the cultural story of western civilization, especially since the development of the scientific method of inquiry about 400 years ago. Given that assumption, its perfectly understandable how we could behave the way weve behaved in our culture; it makes sense. If we're here,
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and the world is out there, then wed naturally use it for our own well-being and prosperity. Why not? The scientific method is an approach to understanding the phenomena of the world we live in through a process of hypothesis and then gathering evidence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method Rupert Sheldrake, one of the worlds most innovative biologists said, I think that many of the problems we have come from a too narrow scientific paradigm or model of reality which creates a split between the mind... feelings and experience. This creates a split in our entire culture which is at the root of our ecological crisis and the sense of alienation and loss of meaning. I think a more holistic and inclusive scientific approach will help heal this split and improve our relations with the natural world around us and each other. Find out more about Rupert Sheldrake at: http://www.sheldrake.org/homepage.html 3A-2 More on Assumptions Come Together: Can we discover a depth of wisdom far beyond what is available to individuals alone? by Craig Hamilton: For Bohm, all the problems of human affairs could be traced to the incoherence of our thought, and particularly, of our collective thought. Looking at the way our unexamined cultural presuppositions, beliefs, and ideas prevent us from coming together in meaningful exchange on matters of importance, he proposed a new mode of inquiry that would both reveal this incoherence and point the way beyond it. Drawing from the Greek dialogos, which he defined as meaning moving through, Bohm explained that in this new form of dialogue, a new kind of mind . . . begins to come into being which is based on the development of a common meaning that is constantly transforming in the process of the dialogue. People are no longer primarily in opposition, nor can they be said to be interacting, rather they are participating in this pool of common meaning, which is capable of constant development and change. http://www.wie.org/j25/collective.asp?page=3 Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. However, we do not need to do the same thing over and over once
3A-3 Narrator: Now that we have looked
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squarely at where we are, a good question to ask might be: How did an intelligent, well-meaning species who, for the most part, only wanted to make the world better and more secure for their children, end up in such a condition? What could possibly explain how we got into our current predicament? 3A-4 Thomas Berry
realize what we are doing is self-destructive. See more about the human capacity to learn and change at these websites: http://www.biologyonline.org/8/5_IQ_creativity_learning.htm http://www.holisticeducator.com/ http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/stratplan2003/draf t/chapter11.htm We don't have to make human beings smart. They are born smart. All we have to do is stop doing the things that made them stupid." ~ John Holt Thomas Berry is a Catholic priest, a cultural historian, and a cosmologist or Earth scholar, as he prefers to be called. He is an advocate for deep ecology and ecospirituality. As the Wikipedia describes him, Berry proposes that a deep understanding of the evolving universe is a necessary inspiration and guide for our own effective functioning as individuals and as a species. He is considered a leader in the tradition of Teilhard de Chardin. His books include: The Dream of the Earth, The Universe Story From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era, A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos (with physicist Brian Swimme, 1992) , and The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Berry http://www.ecoethics.net/ops/berrybio.htm http://www.earthlight.org/mfoxontberry.html You can read about A Dream of the Earth here: http://www.sierraclub.org/books/catalog/0871566222.as p Co-intelligence is a capacity that goes far beyond individual IQ-based intelligence. It is intelligence that's grounded in wholeness, interconnectedness and cocreativity. It is collective, collaborative, synergistic, wise, resonant, heartful, and connected to greater sources of intelligence. We find co-intelligence -- and its opposite, co-stupidity -- in individuals groups organizations communities societies processes
3A-5 Thomas Berry: The great work of our times, I would say, is moving the human community from its present situation as a destructive presence on the planet to a benign or mutually enhancing presence. Its that simple.
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systems and institutions Each of these can be co-intelligent whenever it calls forth collective wisdom in and around it -- usually by using diversity creatively. According to Co-Intelligence, the story as pattern forms one of the underlying structures of reality, comprehensible and responsive to those who possess what we call narrative intelligence. Our psyches and cultures are filled with narrative fields of influence, or story fields, which shape the awareness and behavior of the individuals and collectives associated with them. http://www.co-intelligence.org/I-powerofstory.html 3A-6 Drew Dellinger Drew Dellinger is a poet, teacher, and activist. He is founder of Poets for Global Justice, and author of the collection of poems, love letter to the milky way. Dellinger has presented and performed at hundreds of events across the country, speaking on justice, cosmology, ecology, and democracy. Dellingers poetry has been widely published and his work is featured in the film, "Voices of Dissent," and the books Igniting a Revolution, Children of the Movement, and Global Uprising. In 1997 he received Common Boundary magazines national Green Dove Award. Dellinger has studied cosmology and ecological thought with Thomas Berry since 1990, and has taught at Prescott College, Naropa University-Oakland, and Esalen Institute. http://www.drewdellinger.org/ According to the Tapestry Institute website, modern culture has lost the kinship with nature that is its birthright. The dead and dying pieces of the great and ancient relationship between humans and the earth lie scattered like bleached bones across the landscapes of our exile. But they can be collected again, reassembled into the whole, sung back to life for us all. http://www.tapestryinstitute.org/ On the myth of separation, Einstein said, a human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons
3A-7 Drew Dellinger: Thomas Berry says that the primary problem with western civilization is that it creates and perpetuates a radical separation between the human world and the natural world -- that weve given all the rights to the human and no rights to the natural world. We think we're behaving very rationally - creating jobs, gross domestic product is rising, that we're on this kind of a logical economic course, but actually
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we're heading toward our destruction. And the only way to explain this is that we've been locked into a kind of mythic entrancement, a worldview that's become dysfunctional and therefore destructive. 3A-8 Narrator: According to Berry, our industrial age is a period of technological entrancement in which our obsession with progress has us marching toward an ill-defined magical paradise somewhere in the future a future in which we have mastered the Earth and everything on it without any limits. 3A-9 Narrator: It could be said that we in the modern world are living in a kind of trance something the indigenous people would call the dream of the modern world. This dream is our current worldview a point of view we dont even know that we have. Our worldview is held in place by a set of beliefs and unexamined assumptions that we are completely unaware of like glasses weve worn so long, we dont even know were looking through them any more. Peoples actions correlate with their worldview. We take the actions appropriate to how we see the world. So when our actions produce outcomes we are not intending, it is important to identify the unconscious,
nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Thomas Berry spent most of his life looking at the question of why humans would behave the way we have, and he offers this as an explanation of whats going on with our human presence on this planet at this time. Berry says that the whole Industrial Age is a period of technological entrancement, an altered state of consciousness, a mental fixation that alone can explain how we came to ruin our air and water and soil and to severely damage all our basic life systems (Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred, 1991). For the transcript of an interview with Jerry Mander, see: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/AoS/theSun.html The idea of mental models may be useful here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_model Here is one womans story of waking up from a trance: http://ecopsychology.athabascau.ca/0597/brown.htm In this article on creating a spacious center for transformation, Dr. Aftab Omer, of the Institute of Imaginal Studies states that the cultural center of the historical era that we refer to as modernity has collapsed. Its norms, values, and practices no longer have credibility and legitimacy. In the wake of this collapse, our planets ecological crisis calls for global cultural transformation. The ways in which we consume and share our planets resources are ecologically unsustainable as well as painfully oppressive for millions of people. Extreme economic injustice and other oppressive conditions engender chronic conflict at a global level. Our contemporary challenge is to create a postmodern culture that once again has a centera spacious center where the creative potentials of diversity, conflict, and chaos can be actualized. http://imaginal.edu/documents/shift_article_the_spaciou s_center.pdf
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unexamined assumptions that generated those actions in the first place. 3A-10 Brian Swimme: One way to characterize the cosmology that really is at work in our culture is this: That the natural world, the Earth, is there for us to satisfy our needs and desires, whatever they might be. So we want to make things, and we use the Earth. We make things. And we think of it as something like a lumberyard. In fact, we use the word resource, so that the Earth is full of resources that are there for us to use as we see fit. Now that orientation actually is not that bad so long as humans are not that powerful. But suddenly, when we become so massively present, that orientation turns out to be completely pathological. You cant call a forest a resource. Its filled with amazing beings. You cant call the ocean with all those fish and the marine mammals a resource. Each of these species is the end result of 13.7 billion years of evolution. Theyre spectacular; theyre stupendous; they have a right to be here. So to think of them as resources and to use them however we like is really what is driving our destruction. 3A-11 Narrator: In a world we assume to be full of resources for our use, clearNASA describes cosmology is the scientific study of the large scale properties of the Universe as a whole. It endeavors to use the scientific method to understand the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the entire Universe. Like any field of science, cosmology involves the formation of theories or hypotheses about the universe which make specific predictions for phenomena that can be tested with observations. Depending on the outcome of the observations, the theories will need to be abandoned, revised or extended to accommodate the data. The prevailing theory about the origin and evolution of our Universe is the so-called Big Bang theory. http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/index.html
We act upon our beliefs. So the way we behave reflects how we see ourselves and the world. Our belief system is the actual set of precepts from which we live our daily life, those beliefs which govern our thoughts, our words,
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cutting of forests makes perfect sense. Another example of an unexamined assumption is that competition alone is the fundamental law of nature. But, when we really look, does that assumption hold true? 3A-12 Dr. Vandana Shiva
and our actions. Without these precepts, we could not function. http://www.fringewisdom.com/your_belief_system.php
Dr. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, philosopher, environmental activist, eco feminist and author of several books. She is currently based in Delhi and has authored over 300 papers in leading scientific and technical journals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandana_Shiva Competition is a contest between individuals, groups, nations, animals, etc., for territory, a niche, or allocation of resources. It arises whenever two or more parties strive for a goal which cannot be shared. Competition occurs naturally between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. For example, animals compete over water supplies, food, and mates, etc. Humans compete for water, food, and mates, though when these needs are met deep rivalries often arise over the pursuit of wealth, prestige, and fame. Business is often associated with competition as most companies are in competition with at least one other firm over the same group of customers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition Cooperation is the process of working or acting together, which can be accomplished by both intentional and non-intentional agents. In its simplest form it involves things working in harmony, side by side, while in its more complicated forms, it can involve something as complex as the inner workings of a human being or even the social patterns of a nation. It is the alternative to working separately in competition. Cooperation can also be accomplished by computers, which can handle shared resources simultaneously, while sharing processor time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperation Humans, like all animals, form cooperative groups to compete for limited resources. All life is ultimately competitive, because the natural tendency of any population is to explode, although it is kept in check by
3A- 13 Dr. Vandana Shiva: So much sort of pseudo-science being done trying to show that the world is in competition. Survival of the fittest and all that. I think human beings are more prone to compassion and cooperation. If we look at the work thats being done in science, its about cooperation: cells must cooperate, species must cooperate. Cooperation rather than competition is the way nature works.
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the limited food supply (and other factors). Because there are more animals than food, animals must compete to survive. In situations where the food supply is somehow sufficient, deadly competition falls. Liberals therefore advocate the creation of a sustainable economy, where the population is kept constant (through birth control) and resources are used no faster than they can be replaced. The result will be a more cooperative and civil society. http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-spectrumfive.htm 3A-14 Narrator: In modern society, many of us believe that our job as smart shoppers is to get the highest level of comfort and convenience at the lowest possible price. We assume that when we buy something, the price we pay reflects the full cost of making it. According to Annie Leonard in the Story of Stuff, maybe not. 3A-15 Annie Leonard: I was walking to work and I wanted to listen to the news, so I found this cute little green radio for 4 dollars and 99 cents. I was standing there in line to buy this thing, and I was thinking how $4.99 could possibly capture the costs of making this radio and getting it to my hands. The metal was probably mined in South Africa; the petroleum was probably drilled in Iraq; the plastics were probably produced in China; and maybe the whole thing was assembled in Mexico. $4.99 wouldnt even pay the rent for the shelf space it occupied until I came along, let alone part of the staff guys salary that If you use an internet search engine and enter in the search box smart shopper, you will see many, many websites emerging, which reflects that our way of life in the industrialized world is oriented toward making us, or reducing us, into smart shoppers.
Think of the things that you have purchase in the past that cost under $10 and were made overseas often by hand. What would happen if we paid the true cost of things? Here are some links with information about sweatshops: http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/stop/ http://www.sweatshopwatch.org/index.php?s=67
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helped me pick it out, or the multiple ocean cruises and truck rides pieces of this radio went on. Thats how I realized, I didnt pay for the radio 3A-16 Lynne Twist: We have a lot of unexamined assumption around money. One of them is that people have equated their own value with money... 3A-17 Julia Butterfly Hill To learn more about the importance we place on the value on money in our lives, visit: http://www.soulofmoney.org/
Julia Butterfly Hill is an activist who, in 1997, climbed up an ancient Redwood to save it from being felled. She stayed in the tree for over two years before the timber company agreed not to cut it down (nor any of the trees immediately surrounding it). Julia helped found the Circle of Life Foundation (an offshoot of the Earth Island Institute) to promote the sustainability, restoration, and preservation of life. As a writer and poet, Julia reflects on what it will take to make sustainability mainstream. Julia has been the recipient of many honors and awards, and is a frequent speaker for environmental conferences around the world. She is also a policy board member of Organic Consumers Association and an activist leader for Earth First! See: http://www.ecotopia.org/ehof/hill/index.html; For a visual interpretation of paper consumption (as well as visual representation of the consumption of other commodities such as plastic and cell phones) , see the Running the Numbers exhibit by artist Chris Jordan at his website: http://www.chrisjordan.com/
3A-18 Julia Butterfly Hill: When you say youre going to throw something away, wheres away? Theres no such thing. And where away actually is, is social justice issues and environmental justice issues. Every plastic bag, plastic cup, plastic to-go container -- that is the petroleum complex in Africa, Ecuador, Colombia, Alaska, you name it. Every paper bag, paper plate, paper napkin -- that is a forest. Everything that is called
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waste or disposable is the ways in which we are saying that it is acceptable to throw our planet and its people away Disposables are one of the huge magnifiers of how we've lost our connection to the sacred. 3A-19 Every 30 seconds, the US throws away 106,000 aluminum cans 3A-20 Every day, the US throws away 426,000 cell phones 3A-21 Every hour, the US throws away 1.14 million paper bags 3A-22 Every 5 minutes, the US throws away 2 million plastic bottles 3A-23 Every 15 minutes, the US throws away 410,000 coffee cups 3A-24 Julia Butterfly Hill: We just take it for granted that we are just going to go to the coffee shop and get coffee that came from an exploited community where a forest was destroyed for a monoculture, put it in a paper cup that used to be a forest, put a plastic lid on top of it that used to be an indigenous http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throwaway_societycommunity somewhere in a beautiful area, drink it and then throw it away where it goes back and pollutes a nature community or a human community at the end. I am so fiercely passionate about For a visual interpretation of consumption, see the Running the Numbers exhibit by artist Chris Jordan at his website: http://www.chrisjordan.com/ For a visual interpretation of consumption see the Running the Numbers exhibit by artist Chris Jordan at his website: http://www.chrisjordan.com/ For a visual interpretation of consumption see the Running the Numbers exhibit by artist Chris Jordan at his website: http://www.chrisjordan.com/ For a visual interpretation of the human consumption of plastic, see the Running the Numbers exhibit by artist Chris Jordan at his website: http://www.chrisjordan.com/ For a visual interpretation of consumption see Running the Numbers exhibit by artist Chris Jordan at his website: http://www.chrisjordan.com/ The throw-away society is a human society strongly influenced by consumerism. The term describes a critical view of over-consumption and excessive production of short-lived or disposable items. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throw-away_society
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it, because I know in my heart that as long we are trashing the planet and trashing each other, a healthy and a holistic, and a healed world is not possible. We cannot have peace on the Earth unless we also have peace with the Earth. 3A-25 Van Jones: See, we dont just have unexamined assumptions about how we relate to the planet. We have underlying assumptions that we havent examined about how we relate to each other. We have a society that believes that we have throwaway resources, throwaway species, and throwaway people. The same mindset that says I can ball up this can and throw it away, the same mindset that says I can ball up this child and throw that child into a prison forever for a mistake that that child made, similar to a mistake my child might be making with drugs or whatever -- thats the core mindset. Children in prison American prisons are home to 73 inmates locked up for life for crimes they committed when they were 13 or 14. Bump that age limit up three years and we have 2,225 prisoners locked up for the rest of their lives for crimes they committed when they were 17 or younger. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/336139_prisoned. html According to the UN, more than 1 million children worldwide are living in detention as a result of being in a position of conflict with the law, without access to a fair judicial process or legal representation. http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2006/issue4/0406p38. htm Children in poverty The organization CARE estimates that Of the 57 million people worldwide who died last year, 10.5 million of them were children less than five years old. The majority of these children some 98 percent were in developing nations. http://www.unicef.org/why/why_poverty.html Child in labor/slavery http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/10/29/gap.lab or/index.html Image of child laborers: http://www.postnewseducation.com/nieimages/571102.j pg Traditional Lakota spiritual beliefs tell us that when a child experiences trauma his or her spirit is hurt. A first step toward healing is nagi kicopi, or "calling the spirit back". What we find is that the problem of the child, whatever it is-drugs, alcohol, rebelliousness, violence or suicidal tendencies does not happen in isolation. Rather it is an individual reflection of the larger pain of the family and the community.
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(Ethleen Iron Cloud Two Dogs) http://www.honorearth.org/ On traditional medicine: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/06/25/AR2005062500876_pf.ht ml 3A-26 Narrator: The dream of the modern world is constructed almost entirely out of assumptions that have simply been accepted for generations. Questioning these assumptions is a powerful way to begin to awaken from our collective trance. Separating from our illusion is described here: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m5QWD/is_3_4/ai_n 25001365 For more information on assumptions or paradigms from an indigenous viewpoint, see: http://www.tapestryinstitute.org/paradigm.html When we begin to look, we find that we are swimming in unexamined assumptions. By beginning to identify them, we at least have a chance of separating ourselves from them and consciously making different choices. An example of one of our unexamined assumption is that we must have economic growth. One of the most prevalent assumptions in our society is that a healthy economy is a growing economy. Right? We must have growth! The economy depends on consumers consuming. This unexamined assumption makes us into consumers, not citizens! You may remember a time when people used to be referred to as citizens, when we were talked to and related to as citizens, as people who actually had some responsibility for generating the well-being of the common good or caring for it. Were now not that anymore. Now our primary label is consumers. http://www.soulofmoney.org/ http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0929-12.htm This idea is also discussed in Lynne Twists book, The Soul of Money: Transforming your Relationship with Money and Life (W.W. Norton, 2003). Economic growth is the increase in value of the goods and services produced by an economy, and is most commonly measured as a percentage change in GDP. GNP is a measure of the total value of final goods and services produced in a year by a country's nationals (including profits from capital held abroad). Another measure is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The two terms GDP and GNP are almost identical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Product http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product:
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As the Wikipedia points out, GDP per capita is often used as an indicator of how well a country is doing economically, with the implication that this is related to peoples standard of living. http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/economy/ However, it is not, strictly speaking, a measure of standard of living. For instance, in an extreme example, a country which exported 100 per cent of its production would still have a high GDP, but a very poor standard of living. Efforts are underway to institutionalize more meaningful measures of well-being based on criticisms. Some say that the relentless pursuit of GDP growth has been the defining characteristic of Western politics over the last 50 years. The report exposes the comfortable assumption that economic growth is a good indicator of human progress and well-being as a myth. Economic growth is leading to unacceptable environmental risks, failing to guarantee social progress and doesnt make us any happier. You can view the report Chasing Progress: Beyond measuring economic growth, The power of Well-being at: http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/z_sys_publicationdet ail.aspx?pid=176 3A-27 Narrator: The dream of the modern world is constructed almost entirely out of assumptions that have simply been accepted for generations. Questioning these assumptions is a powerful way to begin to awaken from our collective trance.
V-2 Module 3: How Did We Get Here? Another Worldview

Key Points: 3B-1 Narrator: Source/Reference: The myth of the industrialized world is that we are separate. Another way of being able to see our own
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Of all the countless assumptions that make up our modern industrialized world, there is one that is primary and allencompassing. The assumption that we are separate from every one and every thing. This assumption shapes virtually all of our perceptions and actions.
trance or worldview is to recognize that there are people on this planet who arent doing the things were doing, who arent caught in this dream of progress; people who have a very different worldview. These are people of the Condor, intact indigenous cultures, many of whom, incidentally, have been living sustainably, in sacred reciprocity with (the) Earth for thousands of years. http://www.tapestryinstitute.org/howwework/indigenousw orldview.html For more on this idea, see this excerpt from Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution (1999) by Elizabeth Sahtouris at: http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/Erthdnce/chapter19.html For more information, see: http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/curriculum/Articles/BarnhardtKa wagley/EIP.html http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/Curriculum/Articles/BarnhardtK awagley/Indigenous_Knowledge.html http://origin.org/ucs/sbcr/indigenous.cfm Jakada Imani is the Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Previously, he was a lead strategist on some of the Ella Baker Centers most high profile campaigns including Books Not Bars, the ongoing campaign to replace Californias abusive youth prisons with effective rehabilitation programs. Before joining Ella Baker Center, Mr. Imani was a Constituent Liaison for Oakland City Councilwoman Nancy Nadel. He helped launch or lead a number of important San Francisco Bay Area organizations. A Mayan elder had this to say: We hold this reality together. We are the keepers of the Earth. When we truly honor ourselves and our awesome creative power we will again live in a sacred way where we honor all life. When we honor all live the essence/spirit of all living things will manifest. (Hunbatz Men)
3B-2 Jakada Imani
3B-3 Jakada Imani: There is a fundamental misconception that we are separate and more than one. And I think we're learning that that's not true. If there's only one, whatever I do to you I do to me, if there's only one, whatever I do to the air I do to me. If there's only one, whatever I do in society is what I'm actually doing to myself, doing to my family, doing to my children.
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3B-4 Narrator: Spiritual traditions have long taught that separation is an illusion. Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh puts it this way. 3B-5 Thich Nhat Hanh
Sharing Indigenous Wisdom website: http://www.sharingindigenouswisdom.org/presentations/ default.asp
Thich Nhat Hanh is an expatriate Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet and peace activist. In the early 1960s, he founded the School of Youth for Social Services (SYSS) in Saigon, a grassroots relief organization that rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools and medical centers, and resettled families left homeless during the Vietnam War. He traveled to the U.S. a number of times to study at Princeton University, and later lecture at Cornell University and teach at Columbia University. His main goal of those travels, however, was to urge the U.S. government to withdraw from Vietnam. He urged Martin Luther King, Jr. to oppose the Vietnam War publicly, and spoke with many people and groups about peace. In a January 25, 1967 letter to the Nobel Institute in Norway, King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Nhat Hanh led the Buddhist delegation to the Paris Peace Talks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nhat_Hanh Need for social contact: George Gallup said that Americans are the loneliest people on the planet, despite their busy lives and their constant activity and interaction. We long for deeper community, something outside of commerce. In their book, Creating Community: Five Keys to Building a Small Group Culture, Andy Stanley and Bill Willits assert that People Need Community. It is medically proven that social isolation has bad effects on health and well-being: http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/cgi/reprint/63/2/2 73.pdf Indigenous values have always reflected the importance of community: http://www.indigenousexchange.com/
3B-6 Thich Nhat Hanh: We have the word to be, but what I propose is that a word to interbe. Because it is not possible to be alone, by yourself. You need other people in order to be. You need other beings in order to be. Not only (do) you need father, mother, but also uncle, brother, sister, society, but you also need sunshine, river, air, trees, birds, elephants, and so on. So it is impossible to be yourself, alone. You have to inter-be with everyone and everything else, and therefore to be means to inert-be.
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3B-7 Narrator: Over the centuries, the story thats been communicated in the modern world, consciously or unconsciously, has been that the world operates like a huge machine made up of separate parts like a big clock. For the past 400 years, the scientific tradition has been trying to take the clock apart and figure out how it works so we can master it and use it for our own purposes. 3B-8 Carl Anthony
One form of the mechanistic view is Universal Mechanism, which holds that the universe is best understood as a completely mechanical system--that is, a system composed entirely of matter in motion under a complete and regular system of laws of nature. Somewhat similar to the Mechanistic view is the Clockwork Universe Theory established by Isaac Newton. A "clockwork universe" can be thought of as being a clock wound up by God and ticking along, as a perfect machine, with its gears governed by the laws of physics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_%28philosophy %29 . Carl Anthony, PhD. is a Ford Foundation Senior Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley. Before joining the Ford Foundation, he was Founder and Executive Director of the Urban Habitat Program. He served as President of Earth Island Institution and co-founded and published the Race, Poverty and the Environment Journal, the only environmental justice periodical in the United States. Dr. Anthony is co-founder with Margaret Paloma Pavel, of the Earth House Leadership Center. He is writing a book on the Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race. The cosmological world-views reflect a belief that nature is controlled by something which is bigger than and extends beyond the limits of the universe - God or the gods. The mechanistic world-views have no need for such supernatural control; indeed, they deliberately exclude it. They view the natural world like a machine. These world-views can be traced back to the Renaissance in Europe, through the work of early scientists such as Bacon, Galileo and Newton. The Industrial Revolution helped to promote them further. Modern ideas about technocracy and scientism closely reflect these mechanistic views about the world and how it functions. (Earth Care) http://members.lycos.co.uk/ChrisPark/mechanistic.html
3B-9 Carl Anthony: A mechanistic view meant that instead of seeing the interconnection between things, there was a way of analyzing what people were coming into contact with and taking it apart. So what evolved was kind of a fragmented view of the natural world. And we became hypnotized, really, with the power that came out of this technology, and we lost our connection to each other, we lost our connection to the mystery of the universe. 3B-10
As an Achuar indigenous leader said, because they live
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Narrator: Even though the modern worldview is dominant on Earth, its important to recognize that its not the only worldview. Traditional indigenous cultures, for example, are no so focused on progress; rather, they concern themselves with the health and durability of their community and see the interconnection of all things. 3B-11 Tom Goldtooth
here, they preserve the forest, they love the forestso that it can be sustained and give life to nature for all living beings. They believe that life is under the ground, on the surface of earth, and in the atmosphere. These three things are interrelated so that the world can exist. Therefore, its not possible to say, I'll take the oil and ignore the forest. Everything is connected to everything else in this world. The territory of the Achuar is sacred to them as they explain on this website: http://www.achuarperu.org/en/20achuar_people/
Tom Goldtooth is Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network and oversees its policy work around environmental protection, environmental justice, climate justice, energy, toxics, water, globalization and trade, and sustainable development. http://www.ienearth.org/ Tom speaks about the indigenous way in this article, which appeared in Yes! Magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=473
3B-12 Tom Goldtooth: We use another terminology called Mitakuye Oyasin, which is All My Relations. We try to recognize that we are related to everything as indigenous people Mitakuye Oyasin is also, defines our relationship to the animals, to the fish, to the plants, to the trees, to the birds, to the even the microorganisms, OK. So that we are all related. 3B-13 Jeannette Armstrong
Jeanette Armstrong is Okanagan author and Executive Director of the Enowkin Centre from Okanagan in British Columbia, Canada. She is the first Native woman novelist from Canada. While growing up on the Penticton Indian Reserve, Armstrong received a traditional education from Okanagan Elders and her family. As an indigenous civil rights activist, Armstrong fights for the right of Native people to keep land that legally belongs to them. To learn more about Jeanette, see: http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/armstrong_jea nette.html
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3B-14 Jeannette Armstrong: The foundational understanding from my point of view, or an indigenous point of view, is that you are a part of that land in a very interdependent way. And that that interdependence arose with thousands of years of intelligence in terms of being a part of that land. You are part of that land. Its your body its you. And you can't do things to the land that in the end comes back and destroys you. 3B-15 Bob Randall
An example of the indigenous point of view is explained in this article from Yes Magazine by Jeanette Armstrong: http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1346
Bob Randall is part of the Stolen Generations of Australia and former Indigenous Person of the Year. He is credited with bringing to light the issue of forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families, in 1970. His song, "My Brown Skin Baby They Take Him Away," written at the time, is described as an "anthem" for the Stolen Generations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Randall#Biography Non aboriginal people are rediscovering their intent to be caretakers of the Earth, for example, see: http://www.thehollowbone.com/caretakerEarth.html
3B-16 Bob Randall: Were only caretakers for our time on this Earth, for our childrens children, whos gone come after us. 3B-17 Kiritapu Allan
Kiritapu Allan is an indigenous activist from Aotearoa/New Zealand who has been engaged with the Native Movement. She is CoDirector of the NonGovernmental Organization, Conscious Collaborations. http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2007/10/who-is-kiritapuallan.html Western society has gone through many traumatic episodes over the past five centuries to separate secular knowledge from spiritual knowledge. This is generally not the case for indigenous and local communities. Their knowledge is often embedded in a cosmology, and the distinction between "intangible" knowledge and physical things is often blurred. Indigenous peoples often say that their knowledge is holistic, and cannot be separated
3B-18 Kiritapu Allan: Im a young indigenous woman, but I am born in a colonized world. My worldview begins with an intrinsic understanding of what is balance. If I step on or take away or do
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something to upset the balance, then we go through a process of restoring it. 3B-19 Cormac Cullinan
from our lands and resources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_knowledge Cormac Cullinan is a senior environmental lawyer and adviser on institutional, policy and regulatory reform in the fields of environment and natural resource management. His work in pioneering a legal philosophy that restores an ecological perspective to governance systems (Earth jurisprudence) is internationally recognized and in 2008 led to his inclusion in Planet Savers: 301 Extraordinary Environmentalists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormac_Cullinan This point of view about the importance of the role to be played by indigenous people at this moment in time is echoed in the following article: http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/Mak.htm
3B-20 Cormac Cullinan: I think that the indigenous peoples of the world have a particularly important role to play at this moment in history, this moment in the life of Pachamama, of the Earth. We need them to come forward and explain how they see things, because these are things which have been forgotten. 3B-21 Tom Goldtooth: Somehow, industrialized society has not caught up with itself to really appreciate and respect what indigenous peoples have to offer, but its something thats very important, I think, thats going to save the planet. 3B-22 Narrator: By combining the technological brilliance of the industrialized world with the Earth-honoring spirit of indigenous cultures, we have the opportunity now to merge the genius of the human mind with the wisdom of the human heart.
Another indigenous leader echoes this stand. In Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge, what the world needs today is a good dose of Indigenous realism, says Native American scholar Daniel Wildcat in this thoughtful, forward-looking treatise. The Native response to the environmental crisis facing our planet, Red Alert! seeks to debunk the modern myths that humankind is the center of creation and that it exerts control over the natural world. As an example, the contribution of indigenous peoples' knowledge to the development of pharmaceuticals and herbal remedies is being recognized in the industrialized world. www.ocs.mq.edu.au/~cjone005/Conference %20Report.doc
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3B-23 Bill Twist: And now that we are starting to wake up to how the world is really organized, thats a real moment of hope for us. Were not flawed, evil people; were misinformed and, informed properly, we can count on ourselves.
As an example, in Reinventing the Sacred, the renowned biologist and complexity theorist Stuart A. Kauffman says that one view of God is that God is our chosen name for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, biosphere, and human cultures. Because of this ceaseless creativity, we typically do not and cannot know what will happen. We live our lives forward, as Kierkegaard said. We live as if we knew, as Nietzsche said. We live our lives forward into mystery, and do so with faith and courage, for that is the mandate of life itself. But the fact that we must live our lives forward into a ceaseless creativity that we cannot fully understand means that reason alone is an insufficient guide to living our lives. Reason, the center of the Enlightenment, is but one of the evolved, fully human means we use to live our lives. Reason itself has finally led us to see the inadequacy of reason. We must therefore reunite our full humanity. We must see ourselves whole, living in a creative world we can never fully know. (Think About This: Living Forward, 6.26.08, at www.wie.org) http://www.icore.ca/research_biocomplex.htm
3B-24 Narrator: We are mistaken -- not flawed! This is good news, because theres not much hope for an inherently flawed species. But there is hope for one that has recognized and is waking up from a trance. That opens up some new possibilities for the future. Eco-Spot: Island Home Narrator: What if you lived in a home on an island you could not leave with limited amounts of food and safe drinking water? It would be very important to use only what you need. Well it doesnt matter where your home is because we all live on an island we cant leave. A non-profit Earth Communication Office (ECO) created the 60-second video spots we have been showing today. They would love to get them distributed as much as possible, in movie theaters, in any and all settings. There is a CD with about 20 of the spots on it available at their website www.oneEarth.org Earth Communications is working to change the way that media is used, refocusing it from a tool for selling things, to a tool to help re-imagine a sustainable future. See: www.oneearth.org
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V-2 Module 4: The Universe Story

Key Points: 4-1 Narrator: One way to describe our collective worldview and the unexamined assumptions that comprise it would be to call it our story. Anthropologists tell us that a cultures story about how the Universe came to be created and how the human community came to be a part of the Universe is really the background for everything else the culture believestheir values, ethics, laws, institutions. Everything. A new cultural story is emerging at this time in history, and its a story that says we are not separate, but rather we are profoundly connected at both the macro and micro level. Our children are being raised within this new operating system already, and its beginning to shape the consciousness on our planet. 4-2 Narrator: One way of telling this story comes from cultural historian Thomas Berry and mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme who wrote a book called The Universe Story. Here is an excerpt from a film by Neal Rogin about this new way of seeing the world. Source/Reference: Stories are critical to culture. Every culture has its stories. Stories tell us who we are and teach us our cultural worldview. In The Power of Story in Social Movements, Marshall Ganz analyzes the link between story telling and the development of agency, reformulation of identity, the accessing of motivational resources to form a leadership group, found a new organization and launch a new social movement. Social movements are not merely reconfigured networks and redeployed resources. They are new stories of whom their participants hope to become. http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~MGanz/Current %20Publications/MG%20POWER%20OF %20STORY.pdf
The book entitled The Universe Story by cosmologists Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme inspired the film entitled The Awakening Universe. http://www.thomasberry.org In this book, cosmologists Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry fashion a new cosmology from the "Primordial Flaring Forth" at the beginning of time through the successive stages of the universe culminating with the emergence of consciousness. In the last eighty years or so, the vast majority of the
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scientific community has gradually come to espouse a single story of how the Universe and all living things were created. What is the new cosmology? Brian Swimme writes that, we live in a moment of breakdown and creativity similar to the moment in 1543 when Copernicus announced to a startled Europe that the Earth was not stationary, but was sailing rapidly through space as it spun around the Sun. This was difficult news to take in all at once, he says, but over time the Europeans reinvented their entire civilization in light of this strange new fact about the Universe. The fundamental institutions of the medieval world, including the monarchies, the church, the feudal economic system, and the medieval sense of self, melted away as a radically different civilization was constructed. Today we face a similar challenge. The cosmological discovery that shatters nearly everything upon which the modern age was built is the discovery that the Universe came into existence 13.7 billion years ago and is so biased toward complexification that life and intelligence are now seen to be a nearly inevitable construction of evolutionary dynamicsAs a consequence, the major institutions of the modern period, including that of agriculture and religion and education and economics, need to be reimagined within an intelligent, self-organizing, living Universe, so that instead of degrading the Earth's life systems, humanity might learn to join the enveloping community of living beings in a mutually enhancing manner. This great work will surely draw upon the talents and energies of many millions of humans from every culture of our planet and throughout the rest of the 21st century. http://www.brianswimme.org/ Wikipedia defines cosmology as the study of the Universe in its totality, and by extension, humanity's place in it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmology See also definition on NASA website: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni.html Here is a website for the current PBS series, Faith and Reason: http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/ 4-3 Author Michael Colebrook describes two key elements
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Thomas Berry: We will be alienated from the universe until we have a story, an adequate story of the universe that tells the story of the human as well as the story of everything else, because it is part of one single process that has been going through a sequence of transformative episodes.
in Thomas Berrys thinking. Firstly, the primary status of the universe. The universe is, the only self-referential reality in the phenomenal world. It is the only text without context. Everything else has to be seen in the context of the universe. The second element is the significance of story, and in particular the universe as story. The universe story is the quintessence of reality. We perceive the story. We put it in our language, the birds put it in theirs, and the trees put it in theirs. We can read the story of the universe in the trees. Everything tells the story of the universe. The winds tell the story, literally, not just imaginatively. The story has its imprint everywhere, and that is why it is so important to know the story. If you do not know the story, in a sense you do not know yourself; you do not know anything. http://www.thomasberry.org/Essays/IntroductionToTheS pecialEdition.html Berry connected the primal awakening to an awesome universe permeated with numinous energy to the primordial experience of human consciousness, and considers this era to be the archetypical period of human history. Although the modern techno-progress myth presides over Eurowestern human consciousness, there are fragments of the primal sensitivities that still reside in the deeper realms of the unconscious. It is this recovery or reintegration of the primal numinous experiences of the universe, genetically encoded within the human psyche, which needs to be retrieved into consciousness. This can be accomplished best through myth, which connects the paradigmatic structure of the depth of the human psyche to the human context of cultural narrative. Berry wrote that the mythic dimension of the ecological age is neither romanticism nor an idealism. It is rather a depth insight into the structure and functioning of the entire earth process. The revelatory aspect of the ecological age finds expression in the ecological archetype which finds its most effective expression in the great story of the universe. These archetypical symbols are the main instruments for the evocation of the energies needed for our future renewal of the earth. Twelve Principles for Understanding the Universe and the Role of the Human in the Universe Process (Thomas
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Berry): http://www.astepback.com/12principles.htm 4-4 Miriam MacGillis Miriam MacGillis is a Dominican Sister who lives and works at Genesis Farm, a 140-acre community farm that practices biodynamic agriculture. Miriam coordinates programs exploring the work of philosopher and cosmologist Thomas Berry, including a graduate and undergraduate Earth Literacy program. In her international lectures she seeks to convey that a new understanding of cosmology is essential for a response to the present ecological crisis and for shaping our planet's future. Her work at Genesis Farm is rooted in a belief that the Universe, Earth, and all reality are permeated by the presence and power of that ultimate Holy Mystery. A Sacred Mystery that has been so deeply and richly expressed, and is the common thread, in the world's spiritual traditions. http://www.genesisfarm.org/ Mary Evelyn Tucker is a Senior Lecturer and Senior Scholar at Yale University where she has appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as the Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies. She is a co-founder and co-director with John Grim of the Forum on Religion and Ecology. Together they organized a series of ten conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. They is a series of ten volumes from the conferences distributed by Harvard University Press. http://www.religionandecology.org/About/founders.php Mary Evelyn Tucker has authored many books on religion and ecology including, Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase. She is the coeditor of books on ecological views of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism. She has published the volume Confucian Spirituality co-edited with Tu Weiming, and her newest book, The Record of Great Doubts: The Philosophy of Ch'i, is forthcoming. http://www.wie.org/bios/mary-evelyn-tucker.asp
4-5 Miriam MacGillis: This idea of an emergent universe is very, very new. There is no culture, no tradition, no sage, no prophet that could know that the way our generation is blessed to know it. 4-6 Mary Evelyn Tucker
4-7 Mary Evelyn Tucker: When we begin to realize this tremendous sense of time thats orienting us and space thats grounding us, we are energized in a new way to take responsibility for the planet and its ecosystems. In other words, our response to the magnificence of cosmology and this story is a responsibility to its continuity.
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4-8 Brian Swimme: The Universe Story shows how profoundly related we are It shows that we are involved with each other and have been for a long time. It is not the case that the Earth was assembled and then we were added to the Earth, and it was there for our purposes. Rather, we came out of the Earth.
In a complementary perspective, the Earth is understood as emerging from an intelligent design.Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago. This scientific model needs to be distinguished from creationism. http://www.intelligentdesign.org/whatisid.php Matthew Fox is an American Episcopal priest and theologian. He is an exponent of Creation Spirituality, a movement grounded in the mystical philosophies of medieval visionaries Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa. His books have sold millions of copies and by the mid 1990s had a huge and diverse following. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Fox_(priest)
4-9 Matthew Fox
4-10 Matthew Fox: Now the recovery of cosmology brings back a sense of community, or it ought to, to rediscover that we are kin with all other beings. And if you run the film of the universe backward 14
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billion years, you realize we all descend from an original pin prick smaller than a zygote. Its really one being here. Were all relatives. 4-11 Narrator: Imagine nothing. No space. Not darkness. Not even a vast emptiness. But nothing. Now imagine everything! In a stupendous explosion of light, heat and energy, radiating out in every direction, the Universe erupted into existence 13.7 billion years ago. 4-12 Drew Dellinger: We can see that everything that ever was, is or will be, was compressed into a space smaller than a seed, tinier than a tear, more minuscule than a molecule. All space, all time, and the potential for everything that would ever exist started as a single point. So in a very real sense science has discovered what indigenous people have known all along: we are all one; we are all connected; we all come from the very same source. 4-13 Narrator: This massive fireball continued expanding, eventually cooling enough for the very first atoms to form. This refers to the Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang Theory is an effort to explain what happened at the very beginning of our universe. Discoveries in astronomy and physics have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that our universe did in fact have a beginning. Prior to that moment there was nothing; during and after that moment there was something: our universe. The big bang theory is an effort to explain what happened during and after that moment. http://www.big-bang-theory.com/ For similar thoughts about the Earth as an amazing and The Big Bang Theory is an effort to explain what happened at the very beginning of our universe. Discoveries in astronomy and physics have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that our universe did in fact have a beginning. Prior to that moment there was nothing; during and after that moment there was something: our universe. The big bang theory is an effort to explain what happened during and after that moment. http://www.big-bang-theory.com/
To read more about Drews point of view on this point, visit: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2004/ maathai-bio.html
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Brian Swimme: If the expansion has just been a little bit slower, the universe would have collapsed into an enormous black hole. Or if the expansion had just been a little bit faster the universe would have expanded just too fast for the galaxies to form and so wed have simply dust. If you altered the expansion just 1 millionth of 1% the entire universe would collapse. So what it suggests is that there is a profound wisdom at work in the universe. 4-15 Miriam MacGillis: Earth, as we see her now, has arrived at such a complexity, such a development, such a journey of that original fireball, that she is now alive in her own right. In other words, the universe, in earth, has reached a complexity in which universe awakens into life and is alive. 4-16 Drew Dillinger: Think about it. Everything we see around us has developed from the boiling cauldron of the early Earth, a sphere of lava that miraculously gave rise to the sea and the atmosphere, and then life in its infinite expressions. As Brian Swimme says, the Earth was once molten rock and now sings operas. So all creativity and all consciousness arises, in some mysterious way, from the depths of the Earth itself. 4-17 Miriam MacGillis:
designed creation, see the book and movie entitled The Privileged Planet by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards. http://www.privilegedplanet.com/
The Gaia hypothesis states that Earth herself, including its atmosphere, is an organism. Its author, James Lovelock defined Gaia as a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis
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Why out of stardust has this come to be? Why songbird? Why green? Why the lushness of palm and the stability of cypress, and the grandeur of the mountains? And why the oceans with their billions of teeming life forms? We are part of a journey so much more than we ever could even imagine. 4-18 Brian Swimme: As we move into this understanding, we have a new identity of ourselves as cosmological beings. We are the universe in the form of a human. And it is true of everyone. Its an amazing new understanding of ourselves that is so profoundly inclusive and everyone is part of this. Everything is part of this, and we discover as well a profound kinship. That no matter what being we talk about on the planet, we are related. We are related in terms of energy. Were related in terms of genetics. Were all in one way or another like a form of kin and that just Its overwhelming. So its just now coming into human awareness. Its going to take a lot of reflection to embody this fully, but it is a massive change in human consciousness. What is the new cosmology? In 1543 Copernicus announced to a startled Europe that the Earth was not stationary, but was sailing rapidly through space as it spun around the Sun. This was difficult news to take in all at once, but over time the Europeans reinvented their entire civilization in light of this strange new fact about the Universe. The fundamental institutions of the medieval world, including the monarchies, the church, the feudal economic system, and the medieval sense of self, melted away as a radically different civilization was constructed. We live in a similar moment of breakdown and creativity. The cosmological discovery that shatters nearly everything upon which the modern age was built is the discovery that the Universe came into existence 13.7 billion years ago and is so biased toward complexification that life and intelligence are now seen to be a nearly inevitable construction of evolutionary dynamics. Our new challenge is to reinvent our civilization. The major institutions of the modern period, including that of agriculture and religion and education and economics, need to be re-imagined within an intelligent, self-organizing, living Universe, so that instead of degrading the Earth's life systems, humanity might learn to join the enveloping community of living beings in a mutually enhancing manner. This great work will surely draw upon the talents and energies of many millions of humans from every culture of our planet and throughout the rest of the 21st century (Brian Swimme), http://www.brianswimme.org/ Another book entitled The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos: Humanity and the New Story by Brian Swimme states that the really surprising thing is that the news of the
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birthplace of the universe was always here.
4-19 Joanna Macys Milling exercise
For a description of the Milling exercise by Joanna Macy, you can visit: http://books.google.com/books? id=eWy06p6ropcC&pg=PA94&lpg=PA94&dq=milling+ex ercise+joanna+macy&source=bl&ots=Bztr_JdmiK&sig=d WnSvtwcIxkvGV_zzbRJH1kOilk&hl=en&ei=5GwUS4iUE oi2swPDobmKBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&res num=2&ved=0CA8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false
V-2 Module 5: What Is Possible for the Future? History and The Emerging Dream
Key Points: 5-1 History Source/Reference: Howard Zinn, historian, wrote that there is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. What leaps out from history is its utter
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unpredictability. The quote is from The Optimism of Uncertainty by Howard Zinn (2004.) Howard Zinn is an American historian and political scientist who has been active in the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in the United States. A Professor Emeritus in the Political Science Department at Boston University, he is the author of 20 books. The best known is the popular A People's History of the United States. Read about him on Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn and http://howardzinn.org/default/ 5-2 Creativity/Imagination Two more of Einsteins quotes are applicable to creativity. Here he calls us to find new thinking to solve our problems. We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. And this one extols the power of creativity. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. In his book A New Reformation, Matthew Fox gives the 97 Theses, one of which says that creativity is both humanitys greatest gift and its most powerful weapon for evil and so it ought to be both encouraged and steered to humanitys most God-like activity which all religions agree is: Compassion. Another of Foxs theses is that to honor the ancestors and celebrate the communion of saints does not mean putting heroes on pedestals but rather honoring them by living out lives of imagination, courage and compassion in our own time, culture and historical moment as they did in theirs. What is emerging, the new way of seeing the world is called the Great Turning. (David Korten, The Great Turning, from Empire to Earth Community). It has also been called the Great Emergence. This is a turning away from what is unsustainable a turning toward what is sustainable. See this website on The Great Turning: http://thegreatturning.net/ Joanna Macy has done extensive writing on this idea: http://www.joannamacy.net/html/great.html
5-3 The emerging dream
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In an article from Yes! Magazine, Joanna Macy talks about the three dimensions of the Great Turning: http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=333 Something is emerging. Some call it the Great Turning. Others call it the Turning Tide, or the Great Emergence, or the Emergence of Earth Community. However we name it, its being recognized widely that something is now coming into existence, very powerfully. Everett Rogers pioneering research on diffusion of innovations found that when 5% of a population adopts an idea its embedded, when 20% adopt it its unstoppable. For more about Everett Rogers see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_Rogers For more on this concept of the adoption of innovation see: Rogers, Everett M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations, From a more philosophical/scientific perspective, Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the history of science and developed several important notions in the philosophy of science. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn argued that science does not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, but undergoes periodic revolutions, also called "paradigm shifts" (although he did not coin the phrase), in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field is abruptly transformed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/ Our dream or concepts about this world have changed through history. Four hundred years ago Galileo tried to get the church fathers to look through a telescope to see that the Earth was not the center of the universe, but they refused. But not being willing to look through the telescope didnt disprove the existence of the planets. Outdated worldviews can be very entrenched and quite difficult to replace. Galileo, often referred to as the father of modern science was a philosopher, astronomer and physicist living in 16th and 17th century Italy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo 5-4 Martin Luther King, Jr. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was the most famous voice for civil rights in US history. Van Jones
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recommends the book Bearing The Cross by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David J. Garrow. Being educated on social justice issues and the history of the struggle for social justice is a first step in creating a socially just world. 5-5 Martin Luther King, Jr.: Let us remember that there is a creative force in the universe, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice (Southern Christian Leadership Conference Presidential Address, 1967). http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/628.html http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr. http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/sermon s/680331.000_Remaining_Awake.html The British leaving India nonviolently. India was regarded as the Jewel of the British Empire and a source of great wealth to the colonial masters. The activities leading up to its independence in 1947 and the role played by M.K. Gandhi. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_independence The Berlin wall coming down. The Berlin wall was constructed in 1961 to separate East Berlin from the West. It was dismantled in 1989. From the Wikipedia, when a government statement that crossing of the border would be permitted was broadcast on November 9, 1989, masses of East Germans approached and then crossed the wall, and were joined by crowds of West Germans in a celebratory atmosphere. The wall was subsequently destroyed by a euphoric public over a period of several weeks, and its fall was the first step toward German reunification, which was formally concluded on October 3, 1990. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall The fall of the Soviet Union. An exemplar of hospicing the old, Mikhail Gorbachev
5-6 Male voice: There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in peoples thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyranny, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out of the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability.
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ended the political supremacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and dissolved the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorbachev http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Block Substantial smoking decrease. How many of you smoke? How many of your parents smoked? Smoking has decreased dramatically in one generation. CDC statistics: http://www.cdc.gov/ http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/yrbs/pdf/trends/2005_ YRBS_Tobacco_Use.pdf www.tobacco.org/resources/history/tobacco_history.html End of Apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid existed in South Africa from 1948 to 1991. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/ End of slavery. This reference refers to the end of the slavery of AfricanAmericans in the USA and the abolition of the legal trade in slaves. To this day many millions of people remain in slavery around the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_the_U nited_States http://www.stopthetraffik.org/problem/ Womans suffrage. This is the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to extend suffrage, the right to vote, to women. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage Man on the moon. Initially seen as the stuff of science fiction, J.F. Kennedy galvanized the American nation 1961 into putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth by the end of the 1960s. http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/special/moon/ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. : http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html 5-8 Mariya Shall: Demonstrations in Russia were The Revolutions of 1989, the Autumn of Nations, the Collapse of Communism or the Fall of Communism were a revolutionary wave that swept across Central
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like totally illegal. After one second holding a banner in front of you, you would be arrested. But we did it once, and we did it twice, and then we did it three times, and a year later demonstrations were common thing on the streets of Moscow. We didnt believe that we could change anything, but we did it anyway.
and Eastern Europe in late 1989, ending in the overthrow of Soviet-style communist states within the space of a few months. The largely bloodless political upheaval began in Poland, continued in Hungary, and then led to a surge of mostly peaceful revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. Romania was the only Eastern-bloc country to overthrow its communist regime violently and execute its head of state. Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 failed to end communism in China. In Slovenia, then part of former Yugoslavia, the same process started already in spring of 1988, but had little influence on the development in other Socialist countries, except for neighboring Croatia. The subsequent events that continued in 1990 and 1991 are sometimes also referred to as a part of the revolutions of 1989. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989
5-9 Narrator: After many centuries of warfare in Europe, who could have imagined the emergence of the political and economic power that is now the European Union? And, in a country with a history of slavery and segregation, who could have predicted that a man of color would be elected its president? Or that a nation would publicly apologize for the wrongs committed against its First Peoples?
The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union of 27 member states, located primarily in Europe. Committed to regional integration, the EU was established by the Treaty of Maastricht on 1 November 1993 upon the foundations of the European Economic Community. With almost 500 million citizens, the EU combined generates an estimated 30% share (US$18.4 trillion in 2008) of the nominal gross world product and about 22% of the PPP gross world product. The EU has developed a single market through a standardized system of laws which apply in all member states, ensuring the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital. It maintains common policies on trade, agriculture, fisheries and regional development. Sixteen member states have adopted a common currency, the euro, constituting the Eurozone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States and the first African American to hold the office, as well as the first president born in Hawaii. Obama previously served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barak_obama A long-awaited apology from the Canadian government
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to the country's native population was Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The apology, which took place as planned, involved Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper offering his regrets, on behalf of the government, for decades of racial discrimination towards natives in residential schools. These schools were operated during the 19th and 20th centuries by churches and funded by a branch of the federal government. The First Nations native children in the residential school system were forced to assimilate into non-native culture, were at times victims of physical and/or sexual abuse, and were exposed to poor sanitation and a lack of medical care.http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Politician %27s_remarks_overshadow_Canada %27s_historical_apology_to_natives http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAmUe17nUdY 5-10 Prime Minister Rudd Prime Minister Rudd is the 26th and current Prime Minister of Australia and federal leader of the centre-left Australian Labor Party (ALP). He majored in Chinese language and Chinese history, became proficient in Mandarin and acquired a Chinese alias, L Kwn. Rudd's thesis on Chinese democracy activist Wei Jingsheng was supervised by Pierre Ryckmans, the eminent Belgian-Australian sinologist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Rudd An apology has been offered to the Stolen Generations of Australia. According to some, it can be a hollow act when not supported by reparation. Current calls for compensation to the Stolen Generations have been endorsed by the UN Human Rights Committee in its April 2009 report on Australias performance on human rights. While applauding the Apology to the Stolen Generations, the Committee raised serious concerns about the lack of an adequately resourced national Indigenous representative body and the need to make adequate reparations to the Stolen Generations. The Committee urged Australia to establish a national compensation scheme. http://rightnow2009.wordpress.com/right-nowmagazine/letters-toeditor/your_say_6_meredith_gibbs_mq_ad/ Catherine Ingram is an international dharma teacher
5-11 Prime Minister Rudd: We apologize for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering, and loss on our fellow Australians. For the pain, suffering and hurt of those Stolen Generations, we say sorry
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Catherine Ingram 5-13 Catherine Ingram: Many years ago I interviewed Desmond Tutu, prior to the end of apartheid, about a year and a half before it ended. And he kept, in the interview, saying when we end apartheid, and I kept thinking as I was listening to him, yeah right, you know, like, dream on I mean, I didnt want to rain on his parade or anything, but in my heart of hearts I thought not in your lifetime And lo and behold, a year and a half later it was over. So it was really a profound lesson about what can happen when-when the will of people aligns. 5-14 Desmond Tutu
with communities in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. http://www.catherineingram.com/ The Apartheid Legislation in South Africa was a series of different laws and acts which were to help the apartheid-government to enforce the segregation of different races and cement the power and the dominance by the Whites, of substantially European descent, over the other race groups. Starting in 1948, the Nationalist Government in South Africa enacted laws to define and enforce segregation. With the enactment of apartheid laws in 1948, racial discrimination was institutionalized. What makes South Africa's apartheid era different from segregation in other countries is the systematic way in which the National Party, which came into power in 1948, formalized it through the law. The effect of the legislation was invariably favorable to the whites and detrimental to the other race groups. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid_legislation_in_Sou th_Africahttp://africanhistory.about.com/library/bl/blSAAp artheidFAQ.htm Archbishop Desmond Tutu is a South African cleric and activist who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. In 1984, Tutu became the second South African to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Tutu was the first black South African Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, and primate of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa). Tutu chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and is currently the chairman of The Elders. Tutu is vocal in his defence of human rights and uses his high profile to campaign for the oppressed. Tutu also campaigns to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, homophobia, poverty and racism. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2005[1] and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Tutu has also compiled several books of his speeches and sayings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu Archbishop Desmond Tutus opposition to apartheid brought him worldwide notice in the 1980s. Apartheid is a system of racial segregation that was enforced in
5-15 Desmond Tutu: We have defeated awful things
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like Nazism, like communism, like apartheid. And we have also seen some wonderful human beings -Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama. And so you say, you know what that says is that ultimately good prevails. It is a moral universe, despite all appearances to the contrary. Hahahaha! It is that theres no way in which evil will ultimately triumph. 5-16 Rob Hopkins
South Africa from 1948 to 1991. Desmond Tutu stood for "a democratic and just society without racial divisions" with equal civil rights for all. Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. After the fall of apartheid, he headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, for which he was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in 1999. http://www.theelders.org/elders/tutu.aspx Desmond Tutu now has Peace Center, the mission of which is to nurture peace by promoting ethical, visionary, and values-based human development. See: http://www.tutu.org/ Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Town Totnes and of the Transition Network. He has many years experience in education, teaching permaculture and natural building, and set up the first 2 year full-time permaculture course in the world, at Kinsale Further Education College in Ireland as well as co-ordinating the first eco-village development in Ireland to be granted planning permission. He is author of Woodlands for West Cork!, Energy Descent Pathways and most recently The Transition Handbook: from oil dependence to local resilience. http://transitionculture.org/about/
5-17 Rob Hopkins: We sit at a point in time which is extraordinarily pregnant with possibilities. And that whats really important, is that we shift our thinking from being focused on probabilities as in well, whats the probability that well have runaway climate change --- to possibilities. And so once you start to look at possibilities, then theres huge energy that is unlocked from that. 5-18 Narrator: New possibilities for the future are emerging in all sectors of One area where radical changes in thinking have occurred is in the scientific world. This article on paradigm shifts in Wikipedia gives examples of changes in scientific thinking:
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society in national and international government, in business and commerce, and the myriad organizations of civil society. Now, governments worldwide are beginning to step up to address our global challenges. 5-19 Ed Miliband
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift According to scientists we are even evolving more quickly than humans use to evolve: http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN1043 228620071210
Ed Miliband is a British Labour politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Doncaster North since 2005 and is the current Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (2009). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Miliband The UK has today announced its strategy for meeting carbon emissions targets and to a massive increase in renewable energy. Plans announced this morning by UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, have been met with cautious praise by industry and environment groups (July 2009). http://www.pennenergy.com/index/articles/display/36627 5/articles/power-engineering/environmental/ukannounces-long-term-carbon-reduction-strategy.html Every time we travel or turn on our computers, we add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. This is because most of the energy we use comes from fuels like oil, coal, and gas. Other types of energy, like solar and wind power, do not contribute to climate change. But they are often more expensive. Being "carbon neutral" means removing as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as we put in. How can we remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? One way is to buy "carbon offsets". This supports projects like a wind farm or solar park. It helps make clean energy more affordable. It reduces future greenhouse gas emissions to make up for our travel and electricity use today. http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/climate/ne utral.html&portal=cmmap Natalia Greene is ??? In September 2008 Ecuador became the first country in the world to declare constitutional rights for nature,
5-20 Ed Miliband: For the proposals published today are the first time weve set out a comprehensive plan for carbon across every sector.
5-21 Narrator: Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Costa Rica are racing to become the worlds first developed nation to go entirely carbon neutral.
5-22 Natalia Greene 5-23 Natalia Greene:
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Ecuador is the first country in the world to recognize the rights of nature in its constitution. Recognizing the rights of nature means treating nature as a somebody, as someone to protect and not as something to be destroyed or exploited.
thus codifying a new system of environmental protection. Reflecting the beliefs and traditions of the indigenous peoples of Ecuador, the constitution declares that nature has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution. This right, the constitution states, is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people that depend on the natural systems. The new constitution redefines peoples relationship with nature by asserting that nature is not just an object to be appropriated and exploited by people, but is rather a rights-bearing entity that should be treated with parity under the law. http://www.projectcensored.org/topstories/articles/18-ecuadors-constitutional-rights-ofnature/ Time is short. We must seize this historic moment to act responsibly and decisively for the common good. With only six years until the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, UN SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon chose these words to strongly urge Governments to engage constructively in the preparations for a high-level meeting in September 2010 to review progress towards the MDGs and other international development goals. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ Hunter Lovins is President and founder of the Natural Capitalism Solutions. NCS educates senior decisionmakers in business, government and civil society to restore and enhance the natural and human capital while increasing prosperity and quality of life. In partnership with leading thinkers and implementers, NCS creates innovative, practical tools and strategies to enable companies, communities and countries to become more sustainable. http://www.natcapsolutions.org/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=247&Itemid=54 Many businesses are taking the lead through environmental policies and actions. Internet companies have been formed to help organizations formulate a carbon footprint management plan, set realistic
5-24 Narrator: The United Nations Millenium Development Goals represent a worldwide effort to end hunger and poverty by 2015. Businesses and corporations are recognizing that success in the twenty-first century means paying attention to the triple bottom line: People, Planet, and Profit. 5-25 Hunter Lovins
5-26 Hunter Lovins: The worlds largest corporation has announced aspirational goals
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to be 100% renewable energy, zero waste, and sell only sustainable products. Sixty to ninety thousand companies that sell products to Wal-Mart will now have to show that they are measuring and tracking their carbon footprint and beginning to reduce it. 5-27 Narrator: The economic landscape is also being remade with new green collar jobs 5-28 Van Jones: If you give them the tools and the training and the technology, they can retrofit a nation 5-29 Eric Lombardi
carbon reduction targets, and meet them. http://www.carbonfootprint.com/minimisecfp.html
There are many websites providing opportunities to companies, organizations and workers to post or offer green collar jobs. http://www.greenjobs.net/ (any idea?)
Eric Lombardi is currently the Executive Director of Eco-Cycle, Inc. Eric has had a long career in resource conservation, social enterprise development and nonprofit (NGO) organizational management. www.ecocycle.org Eco-Cycle, Inc. is an organization working to build zero waste communities. Find lots of resources and information for reducing waste at www.ecocycle.org Eco-Cycle, founded in 1976, is considered a nationwide pioneer in the recycling industry. Some recycling facts from the Eco-Cycle website: If every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of 1,000 sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissues with 100% recycled ones, we could save: 373,000 trees, 1.48 million cubic feet of landfill space, and 155 million gallons of water. Seventh Generation Co. Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 trees, 2 barrels of oil (enough to run the average car for 1,260 miles), 4,100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for 6 months), 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space, and 60 pounds of air pollution. Trash to Cash Americans throw away enough aluminum to
5-30 Eric Lombardi: A lot of people think that trash is inevitable its one of those necessary evils of life. But thats not true. Waste is actually the product of bad design, and bad design can be changed.
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rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months. Environmental Defense Fund About 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable, yet our recycling rate is just 28%. Environmental Protection Agency You can take steps to prevent junk mail. Each year, the junk mail industry destroys about 100 million trees. The production and disposal of junk mail consumes more energy than 3 million cars. http://www.ecocycle.org/junkmail/index.cfm Some internet sites offer people the possibility to cancel magazine distribution in their mail boxes, that is, to reduce junk mail and wasting of paper, as well as to contribute to tree planting with their subscription. http://precycle.tonic.com/ 5-31 Narrator: Innovation design is also creating low-tech solutions for the developing world. Everywhere on Planet Earth in cities and towns, suburbs and villages a vast and unprecedented global phenomena is beginning to make itself know. At Ecomaximus.com, paper is made out of elephant dung. This paper is manufactured using a process that promotes environmental protection. The paper is sanitized and has good utility value. Variations is the elephants diet, age and dental state give each batch of paper a unique color and texture. Colour varies with the type of food consumed: Coconut, Kitul or Jak. Texture depends on whether the elephant is able to chew the food or not. Fully digested fiber gives the paper a smooth finish while half digested fiber makes the paper coarser. In buying and using this paper. People are making a contribution to the care of this magnificent animal which is being driven to extinction by loss of its natural habitat. A percentage of the proceeds of our sales goes to the Millennium Elephant Foundation affiliated to the World Society for protection of Animals (WSPA) which maintains a home for elderly and disabled elephants. http://www.ecomaximus.com/jumbo_poo.htm (Blessed Unrest definition here too?)
5-32 Paul Hawken: (Bioneers Conference 2004) There is another super power here on earth that is an unnamed movement. It is far different and bigger and more unique than anything we have ever seen. It flies under the radar of the media
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by and large. It is non-violent; it is grass-roots. It has no cluster bombs, no armies, and no helicopters. It has no central ideology. A male vertebrate is not in charge This unnamed movement You can clap for that The very word movement, I think, is too small to describe it. This movement is humanitys immune system to resist and heal political disease, economic infection, and ecological corruption caused by ideologies. This is fundamentally a civil rights movement, a human rights movement; this is a democracy movement; it is the coming world. 5-33 Paul Hawken: What you are seeing here is the beginning of a list of the two million organizations in the world that work towards social and environmental justice, and thats a minimum. To give you a sense of how big this movement is: If I start this tape on today at 9:00 am, and we watch this all day and all night, and the day after that, until a wee passed, and then for three more weeks, and then a month after that, we still would not have seen the names of all the groups in the world. Its the largest social movement in the history of humankind, by far. 5-34 Narrator: At the heart of a transition to a (any idea?)
(any idea?)
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new world are the communities, families, and individuals who are changing the way they are living making new choices based on the values that support a more sustainable, just, and fulfilling society. 5-35 Micheal Pollan Micheal Pollan is an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan Pollan's latest book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, released on January 1, 2008, explores the relationship with what he terms nutritionism and the Western diet, with a focus on late 20th century food advice given by the science community. Pollan holds that consumption of fat and dietary cholesterol do not lead to a higher rate of coronary disease, and that the reductive analysis of food into nutrient components is a flawed paradigm. He questions the view that the point of eating is to promote health, pointing out that this attitude is not universal and that cultures that perceive food as having purposes of pleasure, identity, and sociality may end up with better health. He explains this seeming paradox by vetting then validating the notion that nutritionism and, therefore, the whole Western framework through which we intellectualize the value of food is more a religious and faddish devotion to the mythology of simple solutions than a convincing and reliable conclusion of incontrovertible scientific research. Pollan spends the rest of his book explicating his first three phrases: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan The internet is one of the most significant technological developments of the present time. Through the World Wide Web humanity has been given a tool for global communication and interconnectivity. Its use has become central to the lives of millions of people, businesses and organizations, linking humanity together in ways unimaginable a few decades ago. But how does it relate to the emerging consciousness of oneness? The unified connectivity presented by the Internet has been long known to the mystic, who in meditation has
5-36 Micheal Pollan: When we think about global warming, we think about transportation, we think about how we heat our houses, but in fact how we eat has just as big an impact on climate change.
5-37 Narrator: Powering this global phenomenon is the explosive digital revolution that is revealing and connecting a planetary human community.
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access to a dimension of oneness in which everything is simultaneously present, and all knowledge is accessible. The experience of super-conscious state happens on this plane of oneness. But the Internet presents a model of a unified consciousness that is accessible on a more physical plane, to anyone who has access to a computer. http://www.workingwithoneness.org/internet.html 5-38 Muhammad Yunus Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi banker and economist. He previously was a professor of economics where he developed the concept of microcredit. These loans are given to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. Yunus is also the founder of Grameen Bank. In 1998 he was awarded with the Concorde Prince of asturias award. In 2006, Yunus and the bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus To see statistics about childrens internet use, visit: http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/69HomeC omputerUse.cfm
5-39 Muhammad Yunus: This generation is much more powerful than our generation was technology-wise, informationwise. Today, a little kid runs to Google to find out whats the latest, and challenges everybody else because he or she has the latest information. 5-40 Jon Warnow 5-41 Jon Warnow: People can now be connected nationwide to act locally in their communities and then have all that local action united into one synchronized beautiful harmonic voice 5-42 Niger Delta woman: The only voice we have is this
Jon Warnow has won the Brower Youth Awards 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6D2bFvLWUQ See his video about people connecting through the internet in order to create a new way of getting together toward activism and change: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLC_0Mehbqk
YouTube is a website that offers web services for uploading, viewing and sharing video files. The technology used for viewing the clips is a very popular
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video editing. They say we dont know books, we cant write much. But if we are able to make a small film about what is happening to us, it will go on the internet and the whole world will see it.
one and can be very easily viewed with the help of one of the numerous compatible software players currently available. Moreover, the video clips using this format can be very easily embedded in other websites, thus increasing YouTube's own customer base. However, practically, YouTube is a service which lets the users upload just about any type of video material, representing some sort of crossbreed between the file sharing networks, blogs and social networking websites. Oh, and it's also free and very user friendly. http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-YouTubePhenomenon-23600.shtml One publication that reports on creating positive social change is World Changing: http://www.worldchanging.com/about/
5-43 Narrator: Awake, committed people are discovering that a new future is possible, and they are becoming who they need to be to make it happen together.
Wombat Video
Global Mind Shift is an organization dedicated to bringing about global community and has created the wombat video. http://www.global-mindshift.org/ The Wombat video can be found at the following link: http://www.globalmindshift.org/amplify/spread/wombat.asp
V-2 Module 6A: Where Do We Go From Here? Personal Stand
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Pg:
Key Points: 6A-2 Drew Dellinger: Its 3:23 in the morning and I'm awake because my great-great grandchildren wont let me sleep. My great-great grandchildren ask me in dreams What did you do while the planet was plundered? What did you do when the Earth was unraveling? Surely you did something when the seasons started failing, as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying. Did you fill the streets with protest when democracy was stolen? What did you do once you knew? 6A-3 Narrator: So now we know. We know that our current worldview, and the industrial system it gave rise to, have run up against the limits of a finite planet. We know that the vitality of the Earth is declining every day. That the chasm between the few of us who have more than we need and the many of us who have not nearly enough gets wider every day. And we know that it is hurting all of us inside. 6A-4 Narrator: At the same time, we know that we are part of a worldwide awakening a grassroots movement for change that is unprecedented in human history. So now that we know, the question arises: what part do we play in this unfolding story? Where do we go from here? Where do you go from here?
Source/References: Drew Dellinger is a spoken work poet, teacher, and activist. Dellinger was listed as one of the "important musical voices" of the "new international, broad-based (global justice) movement" by YES! magazine. Dellinger has inspired minds at hundreds of conferences, colleges, rallies, and protests across the U.S. He has published poems in magazines and books, including the anthology Global Uprising. In 1997 he received Common Boundary magazine's national Green Dove Award for his work. Dellinger has studied cosmology with Thomas Berry since 1990, and currently teaches at Naropa University in Oakland and Prescott College in Arizona. He is founder of Poets for Global Justice, a project building movements for social and ecological change by unleashing the poetry in everyone. http://www.drewdellinger.com/ http://shiftinaction.com/discover/luminaries/drew_delling er Also see a short interview with M.C Mehta entitled The World Is On Fire at: http://www.globalonenessproject.org/videos/mcmehtacli p1
6A-5 Power of One Eco Spot Not so long ago, a little girl in Alabama wanted to go to the References - 9/13/2012as everyone else. same school And a gentle man from India wanted to raise consciousness
A non-profit Earth Communication Office (ECO) created the 60-second video spots we have been showing today. They would love to get them distributed as much as possible, in movie theaters, in any and all settings. There is95 CD with about 20 of the spots on it available a at their website www.oneEarth.org Earth Communications is working to change the way
V-2 Module 6B: Where Do We Go From Here? In Blessed Unrest, Choosing Action
Pg. Key Points: 6B-1 Narrator: Once we take a personal stand to change the dream of the modern world, the question becomes: Now what? Where do we start? 6B-2 Kenney Ausubel Kenney Ausubel is CEO and founder of Bioneers, an awardwinning social entrepreneur, author, journalist and filmmaker. Bioneers is a nationally recognized nonprofit dedicated to disseminating practical and visionary solutions for restoring Earths imperiled ecosystems and healing our human communities. Kenny launched the annual Bioneers Conference in 1990 with his producing partner and wife, Nina Simons, Bioneers co-founder. (any idea?) Source/Reference:
6B-3 Kenney Ausubel: People ask me what can I do, what can I do, I want to do something. Well the first choice, youve already made the first choice if youre saying that, because the first choice is you know you have to do something. 6B-4 Narrator: In looking at taking action, there are three areas that are useful to consider. First, what can I do in my personal life, right where I work and live? 6B-5 Dr. Vandana Shiva: I think the most important step to take to rebuild the environment, to rebuild the planets health, to rebuild our own health, and to
The need to first transform ourselves personally before attempting to transform our world is a central tenet to many spiritual traditions. For a more psychological perspective, see: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a 905697279~tab=content~order=page
This statement is consistent with motto Think Globally, Act Locally. It urges people to consider the health of the entire planet and to take action in their own communities. Long before federal and state agencies began enforcing environmental laws, individuals were coming together to protect habitats and the organisms that depend on them.
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rebuild the health of communities is to basically ask, what is it in my immediate surroundings that I can take a step towards in terms of healing? 6B-6 Hunter Lovins
These efforts are referred to as grassroots efforts. They occur on a local level and are primarily run by volunteers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Globally,_Act_Locally
Hunter Lovins is President and founder of the Natural Capitalism Solutions. NCS educates senior decision-makers in business, government and civil society to restore and enhance the natural and human capital while increasing prosperity and quality of life. In partnership with leading thinkers and implementers, NCS creates innovative, practical tools and strategies to enable companies, communities and countries to become more sustainable. http://www.natcapsolutions.org/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=247&Itemid=54
6B-7 Hunter Lovins: We need to demand of our government that they step forth and take action. But even more important is what each one of us does. What we do in our business, what we do in our communities, and what we do in our personal lives. 6B-8 Narrator: Another area of action is communication: using the power of words to engage others in seeing and creating the new possibilities before us; speaking out to friends, family, and coworkers in our own community as well as to those in the halls of power. The work of connecting goes against our competitive, cultural grain, but what we are learning is that through the principle of synergy, the power of connection is the power of 1+1=3. The Third Sector, Community Development and Social Justice; Theodore J. Hopkins, Jr., Delivered at the Seventh International Conference of the International Society for Third Sector Research, July 9-12, 2006, Bangkok, Thailand. http://www.istr.org/conferences/bangkok/WPVolume/Hopkins. Ted.pdf In the book entitled Forces for Good; The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, what authors Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant discovered came as a surprise. They initially assumed that there was something inherent to these organizations that led to great impactand that success was directly tied to organizational growth or management. Instead, they learned that becoming a high-impact nonprofit is not just about building a great organization, and then expanding it to
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reach more people. Rather, high-impact nonprofits work with and through other organizations and individuals to create more impact than they could have ever achieved alone. High-impact nonprofits build social movements and fields; they transform business, government, other nonprofits, and individuals; and they change the world around them. In the end, six patterns crystallized into the form presented here the six practices that high-impact nonprofits use to achieve extraordinary impact. These nonprofits: 1. Work with government and advocate for policy change 2. Harness market forces and see business as a powerful partner 3. Convert individual supporters into evangelists for the cause 4. Build and nurture nonprofit networks, treating other groups as allies 5. Adapt to the changing environment 6. Share leadership, empowering others to be forces for good http://www.forcesforgood.net/book.html Artists are working with environmentalists and residents to make a political change in Louisiana, where toxic waste is devastating communities along the Mississippi River. When people have the chance to witness their collective stories, they get energized, more critical, and more powerful as a group. http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2002/ 09/drawing_the_lin.php 6B-9 Juan Manuel Carrion: All the changes at the individual level are important. First comes the individual change, but since none of us exists on his own, isolated, and it isnt about me as an individual, but about us, collectively. Synergy means "together energy", i.e., the energy that can be released by bringing things into relationship, creating something new which is not predictable from the original things which were combined. "Project Synergy" was chosen as the name for this alternative careers and lifestyles project because people had experienced that, by trying to integrate their values and their working life and lifestyles, whole new solutions were discovered that they hadn't imagined before. Moreover, synergy was something you could get by bringing people into cooperative relationships. You've got synergy when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (Lee Altenberg). Theres another important point about the role of community in working on these issues. We know that for us to find our way to an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and
6B-10 Narrator: A third arena is collective,
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cooperative action. We know we cannot do this great work alone, and the good news is we dont have to. As we seek friends and partners in this do-it-yourself project, we can look to an example from nature from evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sathouris.
socially just human presence on this planet, it will completely and totally depend on each one of us doing our very best to find the pathway that will get us there (although it doesnt necessarily mean getting everyone to agree to do one right thing). The concept that the wisdom of the collective outweighs the wisdom of any individuals, even when the people making up the collective are not necessarily experts, is fascinating. It is written about in the book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, first published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds Elisabet Sathouris write about indigenous worldview. http://www.futurepositive.synearth.net/2002/05/13 Others speak about doing it with the Friend. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXWKpeoyd_g Jon Symes works at The Pachamama Alliance. Imaginal cells What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the rest of the world calls butterfly. Richard Bach Note: A cluster of imaginal cells makes up an imaginal disc. An imaginal disc that begins to develop into a wing or a leg or an eye is an imaginal bud. This concept of imaginal cells has been popularized by evolutionary biologist, Elizabet Sahtouris as a metaphor for transformation in the human realm. She sees the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly as having many parallels to our collective rite of passage. See: http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/Articles/AfterDarwin.html For more about Sahtouris, see: http://www.sahtouris.com/ and http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/sahtouris.html Note: The apparent originator of the metaphor is Norie Huddle. Her butterfly metaphor was featured in the Institute of Noetic Science (IONS) Magazine Issue 52, June-August 2000 in an article entitled What the Butterfly Knows/Wired for Wings by Keith Thompson. See: http://www.noetic.org/publications/review/issue52/r52_Thomp son.html See Huddle website: http://www.butterflyspirit.org/about/board/norie_huddle.html
6B-11 Jon Symes 6B-12 Jon Symes: Theres a moment in the life of a caterpillar when it begins to eat more and more. It becomes a voracious consumer, and eats many times its own weight in food. It eventually becomes bloated and immobile, and at that very moment inside the caterpillar there are these tiny cells waking up. The biologists call them imaginal cells. These cells keep popping up and joining together as clusters. The clusters become strings of imaginal cells. And at this point, well before the cells are a majority, the imaginal cells have become the genetic director of the whole of the caterpillar. The rest of the caterpillars cells collapse into a kind of nutritive soup, which feeds the emergence
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of the butterfly the unpredictable miracle that is a butterfly. 6B-13 Narrator: Those of us standing for a just, sustainable and fulfilling future find ourselves seeing the world through new eyes. We are in a particular state one that is at once uncomfortable and exhilarating a state that could be called Blessed Unrest. The term blessed unrest came from a quote by Martha Graham, who was an American dancer, teacher, and choreographer known as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance. See Wikipedia reference at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Graham The full quote is: There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time. This expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel openNo artist is pleased There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is on a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. --Martha Graham (to Agnes DeMille), Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham. Together we can be wiser than any of us can be alone. We need to know how to tap that wisdom. Healthy communities, institutions and societies -- perhaps even our collective survival -- depend on our ability to organize our collective affairs more wisely, in tune with each other and nature. This ability to wisely organize our lives together -- all of us being wiser together than any of us could be alone -- we call co-intelligence. In its broadest sense, co-intelligence involves accessing the wisdom of the whole on behalf of the whole. Co-intelligence is emerging through new developments in democracy, organizational development, collaborative processes, the Internet and systems sciences like ecology and complexity. Today millions of people are involved in cocreating co-intelligence. Our diverse efforts grow more effective as we discover we are part of a larger evolutionary enterprise, and as we learn together and from each other. The Co-Intelligence Institute works to further the
6B-14 Bill Twist: Blessed Unrest is a state where somebody sees, knows fully well where we are, whats going on around them, what the mechanisms are that keep us where we are, and yet sees a future that we all want to go to, and has the ability to create possibilities for holding that future as something that inspires their life.
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understanding and development of co-intelligence. It focuses on catalyzing co-intelligence in the realms of politics, governance and conscious evolution of ourselves and our social systems. We research, network, advocate, and help organize leading-edge experiments and conversations in order to weave what is possible into new, wiser forms of civilization. Find out more at http://www.co-intelligence.org/ 6B-15 Luke Tayor: Blessed Unrest is the willingness to keep showing up day after day, moment after moment, in spite of how uncomfortable it is. 6B-16 Alain Desouches: Its at the same time a state of happiness to be in sync, in synchronization with the Earth, and at the same time a state of being completely in touch with the pain that Earth experiences in this present time. 6B-17 Onno Koelman: Its not lie gotta do something, its more like I want to do something. The term blessed unrest came from a quote by Martha Graham, who was an American dancer, teacher, and choreographer known as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance. See Wikipedia reference at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Graham Joanna Macy writes beautifully about how our pain is linked to the pain of the Earth: Because the pain I feel when I allow myself to witness the pain of the world is no less than your pain--you, who perpetuate destruction and cut yourselves off from needs of the present and the generations of the future, I bow to you in compassion and touch the Earth. http://www.joannamacy.net/html/buddhism/practices.html
This statement refers to the psychological concept of intrinsic motivation, that is, motivation that comes from inside an individual rather than from any external or outside rewards, such as money or grades. The motivation comes from the joy one gets from the task itself or from the sense of satisfaction in completing or even working on a task. http://giftedkids.about.com/od/glossary/g/intrinsic.htm In its broadest sense, co-intelligence involves accessing the wisdom of the whole on behalf of the whole. Co-intelligence is emerging through new developments in democracy, organizational development, collaborative processes, the Internet and systems sciences like ecology and complexity. Today millions of people are involved in cocreating co-intelligence. Our diverse efforts grow more effective as we discover we are part of a larger evolutionary enterprise, and as we learn together and from each other. The Co-Intelligence Institute works to further the understanding and development of co-intelligence. It focuses on catalyzing co-intelligence in the realms of politics, governance and conscious evolution of ourselves and our
6B-18 Bill Twist: Yes, we will take action; well be impelled to get out, to do things, but equally important is that we become something well become an instrument of something being able to work through us.
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social systems. We research, network, advocate, and help organize leading-edge experiments and conversations in order to weave what is possible into new, wiser forms of civilization. http://www.co-intelligence.org/ 6B-19 Desmond Tutu: Every single one of us can do something to make a difference. You can you can you can you can; I can. God bless you. Some Websites of the Emerging Dream: 1. The Pachamama Alliance 2. Wiserearth 3. Green for all 4. Low carbon diet 5. Better World Shopping guide 6. Northwest Earth Institute 7. Native Americans 8. Ashoka Pachamama Alliance: www.pachamama.org Wiserearth: www.wiserearth.org Green For All: www.greenforall.org Low Carbon Diet : http://www.empowermentinstitute.net/lcd/ Better World Shopping Guide: http://www.betterworldshopper.org/book.html Northwest Earth Institute www.nwei.org Native Americans: www.nativeamericans.com Ashoka: www.ashoka.org
V-2 Module 7: Finale: Hope Committed in Action

Pg. Key Points: 7.1 Male voice: The kind of hope that I often think aboutI understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we hope within us, or we dont. It is a dimension of the soul. Hope is not a conviction that Source/Reference: The quote is from Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Huizdala by Vaclav Havel (1990), a collection of interviews that are at once Havels political autobiography, a history of Czechoslovakia under communism, a meditation on the social and political role of art, and a guide for all people of conscience facing conscienceless regimes (from the back cover). Here is the full text of the quote from pp. 181-182: I think I should probably say first that the kind of hope I
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something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we dont; it is a dimension of the soul, and its not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. I dont think you can explain it as a mere derivative of something here, of some movement, or of some favorable signs in the world. I feel that its deepest roots are in the transcendental, just as the roots of human responsibility are, though of course I cantunlike Christians, for instancesay anything concrete about the transcendental. An individual may affirm or deny that his hope is so rooted, but this does nothing to change my conviction (which is more than just a conviction; its an inner experience). The most convinced materialist and atheist may have more of this genuine, transcendentally rooted inner hope (this is my view, not his) than ten metaphysicians together. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from elsewhere. It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now. Vaclav Havel was a quizzical absurdist playwright
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when, in 1976, he agreed to become the spokesman for a group calling for a more tolerant and open Czechoslovakia. Thirteen years later, having endured harassment and multiple imprisonments for his political activities, Havel became his countrys president. You can read about him on the Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaclav_Havel, or at his official website: http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/ 7-2 Julia Butterfly Hill: What gives me hope? I reflect back again to a time when I was in the tree and its a time that as soon as I go there it begins tears, and I know that it will for the rest of my life. When I was listening to the chainsaws every day and having watched these ancient trees hit the ground every day and not being able to go and amuse myself and shut down and just bearing witness day in and day out and feeling myself and every last shred of hope being strangled and killed. And the answer that came to me was, Julia, if you have hope in your heart and even if youre the only person left who has hope in their heart is that hope is committed in action, then theres hope for the world. If youre the only person left, as long as your hope is committed in action, then hope is alive in the world. 7-3 David Ulansey: I believe that this is the moment when the human species can rise to its full potential. We have now created for ourselves the greatest Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best. When used in a religious context, hope carries a connotation of being aware as spiritual truth. In Christian theology, hope is one of the three theological virtues (faith, hope, and love), which are spiritual gifts of God. In contrast to the above, it is not a physical emotion but a spiritual grace. Hope is distinct from positive thinking, which refers to a therapeutic or systematic process used in psychology for reversing pessimism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope
In psychology, any new demanding situation can be seen as either a threat or a challenge. Depending on how we perceive the new situation will determine how we respond to it, that is, with fear and withdrawal, or with hope and engagement. (add reference)
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challenge we have ever faced. And that means that we are, we have the opportunity to live the most meaningful lives that have ever been lived. 7-4 Rob Hopkins: This is a historic process thats starting. This is a once-off window of opportunity to create something really, really extraordinary that future generations will tell stories about, sing songs about, put plates up to. 7 -5 Van Jones: Look to your left and look to your right. Look at the beautiful people who are around you right now. We dont need any hero on a white horse. Were the people weve been waiting for. You already have within you enough love to save the planet. 7-6 Al Gore: There is an old African proverb some of you know that says, If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. We have to go far quickly, so we have to have a change in consciousness, a change in commitment, a new sense of urgency, a new appreciation for the privilege that we have of undertaking this challenge. 7-7 Wangari Mathaai: In the course of history there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of This famous saying We are the ones we've been waiting for can be seen from a Hopi point of view at: http://www.spiritofmaat.com/messages/oct28/hopi.htm
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consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground, a time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now. 7-8 Narrator: We now have the unprecendented opportunity to set off in an entirely new direction, and together make real the world we so deeply yearn for: an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human presence on this planet. This statement is one part of The Pachamama Alliances two-fold mission. www.pachamama.org
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Symposium References V2 - 072612

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Background References for Awakening the Dreamer Symposium (V2)

V-2 Module 1A: Eco-Spot Connections

V-2 Module 1B: The Pachamama Story

1B-6 Indigenous people

1B-7 Lynne Twist

1B-13 Blessed unrest

One such legend is found

1B-16 Don Alverto Tazo

Source/References: For more about this complex topic read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaman

1B-17 Domingo Paez

V-2 Module 2A: Where Are We? Environmental Sustainability

2A-2 Ecology and biodiversity

Key Points: fulfillment

2A-13 Dr. Noel Brown

Key Points: 2A-14 United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP)

2A-15 Randy Hayes

2A-17 Randy Hayes: Weve got climate disruption

2A-19 Randy Hayes: Weve got soil erosion.

2A-21 Randy Hayes: the polluting of our rivers with poison .

2A-27 Micheal Meacher

Key Points: 2A-30 Mathis Wackernagel

2A-35 Maude Barlow

Key Points: weather

2A-38 Maude Barlow: The polar ice caps are melting...

2A-40 Janos Pasztor

2A- 42 Narrator: the impact we are having on other species.

2A-43 David Ulansey

2A-50 Brian Swimme

V-2 Module 2B: Where Are We? Social Justice

2B-3 Christine Loh

2B- 12 Enei Begaye

2B-27 Van Jones

2C-4 John Robbins

2C-9 Paul Hawken

Key Points: 3A- 1 Worldviews, Assumptions

3A-3 Narrator: Now that we have looked

V-2 Module 3: How Did We Get Here? Another Worldview

3B-2 Jakada Imani

Sharing Indigenous Wisdom website: http://www.sharingindigenouswisdom.org/presentations/ default.asp

As an Achuar indigenous leader said, because they live

V-2 Module 4: The Universe Story

4-9 Matthew Fox

birthplace of the universe was always here.

4-19 Joanna Macys Milling exercise

5-3 The emerging dream

5-15 Desmond Tutu: We have defeated awful things

5-22 Natalia Greene 5-23 Natalia Greene:

carbon reduction targets, and meet them. http://www.carbonfootprint.com/minimisecfp.html

V-2 Module 6A: Where Do We Go From Here? Personal Stand

6B-10 Narrator: A third arena is collective,

V-2 Module 7: Finale: Hope Committed in Action

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