Born to Learn is the first animation in a fascinating series aimed to provide easy-access to the exciting new discoveries constantly being made about how humans learn!
Born To Learn
Global Mind Change
A visualization of a recorded talk given by the late Dr. Willis Harmanon how our problems, and therefore solutions, are al interconnected.
Harman was a social scientist, academic, futurist, writer, and visionary, best known for his work with SRI International, for being President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California, and for his work in raising consciousness within the international business community. (Source: Wikipedia.)
I Am
Any crisis creates an impression that a collapse is imminent, and then it seems that everything is going to be okay. Only through such gradual, step-by-step development do we become aware that we must change.
Generally, it is necessary to understand that the collapse must be internal. It has to occur in our consciousness, in our awareness of how wrongly we treat ourselves and the world. It’s not in the fact that I was hit by a painful event, a disease, even death…
All of this is necessary solely in order to pull us out of our own swamp of egoism, elevate us, and force us to start thinking. As a matter of fact, these particularly consistent acts—a sudden blow and its retreat until the next blow hits, then another blow and retreat—gradually pull a person out of himself.
With each new step, we think it is all the same, but in fact, it is not so. Each new time, we process another type of egoism, its greater part. One blow to the ego, the second, and the third one, but we don’t feel the difference and don’t realize that each time, our egoism processes completely new states of understanding and existence.
Egoism is diverse, and until it reaches its culmination, nothing will change. This is why we need to pass through so many small blows. There is nothing accidental; nothing can happen out of the blue, by leaping over the states of internal development. We have to swallow every pill, which is the only way to learn. There is no other option.
Perceptions Perceptions
Power of Environment
Funny examples of how group pressure affects an individual. Can we use group pressure for something good?
The Farmer’s Story
Sometimes we feel that we’ve had enough and it’s time to make a revolution: change the environment and society. But it is not the same this time around. This time it is about evolution rather than revolution.
We have been living in societies for thousands of years and had a social life because we were unable to provide everything we needed on our own. In fact, everyone wants a better life for himself, confident and peaceful. Everyone wants to be more successful than others. Envy and ambition rule, and push us to develop.
Yet, while a person develops within society, his personal life changes through the society. One depends on the other. Today we depend on thousands of people around the world because of what we wear, eat, and generally consume; there is no country which did not participate in providing us with everything we have.
And when it does not happen directly, it happens through another several countries: one country supplies materials, another supplies machine parts, and another produces the goods we buy. Studies show that everyone in the world depends on everyone else. And in order for us to live well, we have to make sure that everybody around us also lives well, be it a neighbor’s family or another country.
Connected
Have you ever faked a restroom trip to check your email? Slept with your laptop? Or become so overwhelmed that you just unplugged from it all? In this funny, eye-opening, and inspiring film, director Tiffany Shlain takes audiences on an exhilarating rollercoaster ride to discover what it means to be connected in the 21st century. From founding The Webby Awards to being a passionate advocate for The National Day of Unplugging, Shlain’s love/hate relationship with technology serves as the springboard for a thrilling exploration of modern life…and our interconnected future. Equal parts documentary and memoir, the film unfolds during a year in which technology and science literally become a matter of life and death for the director. As Shlain’s father battles brain cancer and she confronts a high-risk pregnancy, her very understanding of connection is challenged. Using a brilliant mix of animation, archival footage, and home movies, Shlain reveals the surprising ties that link us not only to the people we love but also to the world at large. A personal film with universal relevance, Connected explores how, after centuries of declaring our independence, it may be time for us to declare our interdependence instead.
Living Systems – Nature Is Calling for Love: Part 3
Fortunately for us, there are a few foresighted individuals that are already planning and building living systems based on ecological strategy. For instance, Living Systems breaks their plan down into five concepts and offers their information to all via the website. Examining their ideas for sustainable living, we see the same composition as an ecosystem.
- Mutually empowering communication skills – networks. Conflict is necessary in order for human beings to learn, grow, and advance; but it must be handled delicately and intelligently. It then becomes an asset rather than a liability because it is based on mutual responsibility. Each person searches for a way that the society can benefit from.
- Permaculture/biodynamics – nested systems. A garden is the foremost environment to nurture both humanity and the planet: living systems within living systems.
- Eco-villages/Eco-cities – development. With a super efficient infrastructure, mutually empowering communication skills, and a social environment, where we know most of the people we deal with regularly, the community is set up as a meta-organism ( in the place of a microorganism).
- Environmentally beneficial manufacturing – dynamic balance. Currently, our manufacturing technology is environmentally damaging and depletes our non-renewable resources. Buckminster Fuller’s idea of a mobile factory is only one of many new models being explored.
- Internal economies – cycles and flows. With our own economy, we can control what is considered valuable, such as mutually empowering communication skills. By holding this skill in high esteem, it could become enormously useful and therefore more valuable. Combining this with the Local Exchange and Trading System (LETS) would create an internal economy, which could be easily exchanged for local currency, until such time as currency exchange is no longer required.
The benefits of clean air and water, renewable fuel sources, and fresh food will be immediately felt by a population that is weary of fighting to maintain a meager existence. Because eco-living environments are not conducive to the practice of using others for personal gain, huge income disparity will become obsolete. By investing our time and effort to create such systems, we will assure a level playing field for all and encourage sustainable, universal, and reasonable prosperity.
As as result, much of the animosity that pervades society today will disappear, and a sense of mutual responsibility and a concern for the whole will appear in its place. We can rest and recuperate in the loving boughs of Mother Nature that will no longer wreak havoc across the land. ‘I’ has to be replaced by ‘we,’ and the entire system will feel less stress. This will allow human nature and Mother Nature to evolve harmoniously together.
After all, mankind’s ultimate goal is to reach its highest internal potential, and as we study and learn to navigate an integrated world, we must cooperate with the laws of nature.
If we do not, we will have to face undesirable consequences. Mother Nature cannot be fooled; nor can it be compromised a compromise with her. Inevitably, the truth will be unveiled in cooperation with her laws. Mankind must adjust. Then, our great-great-grandchildren will look back and proudly say, “Our ancestors were intelligent enough to transform the world”.
One Way – A Familiar Sign
Sustainability and Advancement – Nature Is Calling for Love: Part 2
To establish a sustainable society and begin a less painful advance toward our objective we must understand and observe certain social principles that work much like a large family:
- each member receives their needs from society,
- each member provides for the well-being of that society through their work.
As good parents we all want our children and grandchildren to have a better life than we did. That desire represents the essence of a sustainable society. According to Fritjof Capra, PhD (physics), “a sustainable society is one that is able to fulfill its needs without diminishing the chances for future generations”. For the perfect example of a sustainable society we need only to look at nature, whose ecosystems represent sustainable communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms. The Center for Ecoliteracy has identified six of Mr. Capra’s principles for a sustainable community as core ecological concepts, which are:
- Networks – All living things in an ecosystem are interconnected through networks of relationship. They depend on this web of life to survive. For example, in a garden, a network of pollinators promotes genetic diversity; plants, in turn, provide nectar and pollen to the pollinators.
- Nested systems – Nature is made up of systems that are nested within systems. Each individual system is an integrated whole and, at the same time, part of larger systems. Changes within one can affect the sustainability of the others that are nested within it, as well as the larger systems in which it exists. For example, cells are nested within organs within organisms within ecosystems.
- Cycles – Members of an ecological community depend on the exchange of resources in continual cycles. Cycles within an ecosystem intersect with larger regional and global cycles. For example, water cycles through a garden and is also part of the global water cycle.
- Flows – Each organism needs a continual flow of energy to stay alive. The constant flow of energy from the sun to Earth sustains life and drives most ecological cycles. For example, energy flows through a food web when a plant converts the sun’s energy through photosynthesis; a mouse eats the plant; a snake eats the mouse, and a hawk eats the snake. In each transfer, some energy is lost as heat, which requires an ongoing energy flow into the system.
- Development – All life, from individual organisms to species and ecosystems, changes over time. Individuals develop and learn, species adapt and evolve, and organisms in ecosystems co-evolve. For example: Hummingbirds and honeysuckle flowers have developed in ways that benefit each other; the hummingbird’s color vision and slender bill coincide with the colors and shapes of the flowers.
- Dynamic Balance – Ecological communities act as feedback loops, so that the community maintains a relatively steady state that also has continual fluctuations. This dynamic balance provides resiliency in the face of ecosystem change. For example, ladybugs in a garden eat aphids. When the aphid population falls, some ladybugs die off, which permits the aphid population to rise again, which supports more ladybugs. The populations of the individual species rise and fall, but balance within the system allows them to thrive together.
By its own definition a sustainable community and an ecosystem share the same structure. Therefore, what causes one to flourish or perish will have the identical effect on the other. Taking all of this into consideration, it is evident that we must act more responsibly as stewards of the family resources if we sincerely want a world left for our offspring.
By Angela Moore Duck