http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCNi2i46IQE
Teamwork
Nature Is Calling For Love
Millennia from now, will we be just another figure on the evolutionary chart? Looking back, will our future generations know that at this point in time humanity became aware of its integral relationship with nature and each other? Right now, it appears the answer is ‘no’. If we continue on our present trajectory, there will be a mushroom cloud marking our place in the biological process.
We have insulated ourselves from nature so well in this age; our predicament comes from a conviction that we are beyond the laws of nature and its rules do not apply to us. Patrick Henry, one of America’s founding fathers confirms, “It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts… For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it”. Apparently, mankind has been utilizing the ostrich approach for a very long time…
Instead of inventing our own rules as we go along, we should study the laws of nature and learn to work within them. Knowing the rules was essential when our ancestors shared living area and hunting grounds with saber-toothed tigers and mammoths. The difference between surviving and becoming a quick snack depended upon their knowledge of the system and the ability to work within it. Failure meant a swift and merciless end. Even up until the 20th century, our forefathers wouldn’t have imagined themselves living outside this system.
Presently the majority of people still don’t realize that we operate under nature’s laws and these laws, unlike man’s, don’t change and can’t be manipulated without consequences. To avoid the mushroom cloud on the horizon, we must pull our heads out of the sand and learn the ground rules.
The law of development has been in operation since the beginning of time and works to ensure that our evolution unfolds properly. Our progress wasn’t left to blind chance or coincidence. There is an over-arching plan in the natural world and humanity is an integral part of it, not separate from and independent of it. Little by little, we are beginning to understand that countless negative circumstances occur because we don’t realize our role in this system correctly. Therefore, it benefits us to study these learn how to advance within them.
It is nature’s law of development that defined us as social animals. Hence, nature compels us to interact with each other and our natural environment. We cannot live or grow in isolation; science and history both support this truth. Being the willful animals we are, we continue to ignore the obvious and try to insulate ourselves from the very environment that our existence depends upon. This obstinacy is why the steps on our evolutionary ladder are often experienced as suffering.
By Angela Moore Duck
Photography: Marc Hollembeak
Continue to part 2: Sustainability and Advancement
The Happy Planet
Statistician Nic Marks asks why we measure a nation’s success by its productivity — instead of by the happiness and well-being of its people. He introduces the Happy Planet Index, which tracks national well-being against resource use (because a happy life doesn’t have to cost the earth). Which countries rank highest in the HPI? You might be surprised.
Declaration of Interdependence
directed by @tiffanyshlain, music by Moby
A DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE is a crowdsourced short film by the filmmakers behind the feature film Connected (in theaters now, http://www.connectedthefilm.com).
It premiered simultaneously at Interdependence Day Sept 12, 2011 in New York near Ground Zero and as a featured video on YouTube’s homepage.
Considering Ourselves From An Angle
The Global Revolution of Love
“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”
Martin Luther King Jr
We have been through crises at other times in history, although they were not as tragic or radical to justify calling them a “birth.” We regard them as developmental phases in the history of humankind. However, our current state differs from all the previous ones. Thus far, we have striven to achieve new goals. Changes happened as a result of new breakthroughs: the discovery of new lands, inventions of innovative weapons, and implementation of new technologies such as the Internet that unveiled a totally new level of connection between us.
Nevertheless, those innovations were not global upheavals that addressed all levels of human life in all its spheres. They did not extend to all of mankind, to all countries and continents, to every family and every person, so that today they are universal. Now, we are approaching this new birth and cannot state with confidence whether it is happening already or not, although we do see that we are coming closer to it. The crisis we are going through is similar to the one that precedes delivery. It presses us more and more with each passing day, both individually and collectively.
We see that people cannot live in peace within their families any longer, get divorced, avoid getting married, do not get along with each other, have hard time raising children and don’t know how to avoid unemployment and poverty. In all aspects of our existence, we suffer from absence of understanding and lack of organization. We can call this situation a total revolution, a universal re-birth of humankind rather than an appearance in one separate state or community because this is happening on a global, integral scale and concerns everybody. This situation has never emerged before. The worst is that we don’t sense the future.
Before, upcoming social and economic structures seemed more advanced than the previous ones. For example, when slavery ended, it was followed by a more highly developed society. Although we have to admit that drastic changes triggered new revolutions, religious and civil wars, at the same time, people still anticipated a brighter future to come. Some societies agreed with what they faced in the future, and some did not. Some countries went through transformations, but others did not. Presently, we all are going through a global process that has never occurred before.
Moreover, at this time, we all are witnessing comprehensive climate and ecological changes. Previously, dramatic climatic changes always caused vast changes in humankind. Global cooling once led northern nations, like those in southern Siberia and Asia to migrate to Europe. In the past, all revolutions occurred due to climate changes, new technologies, or countries that could no longer tolerate their heads of state.
At this time, all changes are happening simultaneously: environmental, ecological, and with the inner nature of man who is not able to be at peace with anything, people no longer can reconcile with the world. Even the systems which we are totally dependent on are dysfunctional: the food industry, job market, families, education, and security, essentially everything that man needs in order to sustain life from generation to generation. We have arrived at a general state of affairs in all spheres of our life where nothing works properly. And most importantly, we do not see in what form or how to proceed.
Is it possible to view our new stage and move towards it with understanding and awareness? Can we act as foresighted people? Are we able to look ahead and make sure that the path we have chosen is correct? Can we calculate our future beforehand? If the answer is yes, then we can facilitate our advancement and avoid wandering in blindness; otherwise, we will be making mistakes and triggering new troubles.
If we continue acting blindly making global mistakes, things eventually will turn out terribly. We simply cannot continue sightless attempts and continue making errors any longer. And this is why we need global, integrative education!
The Need For A Contemporary Understanding Of The World
Such education is necessary due to the fact that the crisis in the relations between crisis and society is growing, and the social demand for education, which is far beyond the narrow professionalism, is increasing as well.
A modern person must see the world in its entirety. Only the understanding of a general logic of the development of the world in which we live will help overcome the disastrous consequences of the relentlessly approaching crisis and perhaps even avoid it!
Such a course should precede the studying of social sciences and philosophy, for which it is a necessary introduction. It is particularly necessary to the future experts in the humanities and social sciences, for whom the natural sciences and ecology are on the periphery of their interests.
Future engineers and physicists also need it because the natural sciences and engineering departments lack the general knowledge about the processes of development of the contemporary world and the processes of cognition, although these professionals will have to solve many problems of modern ecology, politics, and ethics. But the foundation for such new education should be love, love as a selfless act.
Sense Of Self
If our interconnected universe is continually expanding, shouldn’t our identity do the same? In this short, entertaining video, we look at the dynamics that promote and inhibit our expanding sense of self.
Created by Global MindShift and Kenji Williams.
The Green Beautiful
The crisis is occurring in the family called humanity. By repairing our relationship, we would resolve all problems life is presenting us with. There are some amazing studies, which assert that if people were to start treating each other like family then even nature, climate, and other natural phenomena would also normalize.
Today many scientists are already discovering a connection between human society and other levels of nature: the still, vegetative, and animate. We need to explain to ourselves that we have no choice; we must come to negotiations and mutual understanding on a global scale. This is the first thing we must do.
There are also laws of inner, human nature: a person’s psychology, the psychology of the society and the family, relationships between parents and children, and relationships between children. It is necessary to know the psychology of all human relations, human animal nature: the small and the big, parents and children, the old and the young, all the human layers, in all directions. If I know human nature and the way to fix the relationships between us, I will be able to build a human society where everyone will be comfortable and happy.
Everyone will have to compromise. After all,everyone wants to be respected and admired. On the other hand, if we were to educate a person that one benefits and gains respect, support, and assistance when he is on equal terms with others, then he would gladly accept this. A person will see that in a system where everyone depends on each other things cannot be any other way.
It is clear that the human ego will constantly try to fight it and will wish to rule over others. To balance it, there is such a powerful instrument as public opinion. After all, it is the society who influences and educates us. Public opinion and the influence of society are the dominant and binding factors in forming a human being.
A One-Sided Struggle
Ego: Playing an Altruistic Game
There is little point in discussing how each of us should change since everyone is shaped by one’s immediate environment—family, school, and society. If, however, we begin to act as if we are playing a fun game called “altruism,” it will become the most engaging game we have ever played, a life-changing one. It will be so much fun that we will gladly dedicate all our free time to building a good environment, founded on mutual responsibility. Our egos will gladly join the game because all the ego cares about is feeling good.
Indeed, it is easy to change when motivated by each other’s support. We need only agree to mutual responsibility. This is our “red carpet” to the future we all desire, a life of balance, peace, prosperity, and security. Responsibility is an ability to choose how we respond to our egoism, and at this stage in our individual and collective evolution, we are required to start using it to serve our common interest.
A question may arise: If it is so easy, why haven’t we done this before? The truth is that our egoism has been evolving, and until now, we couldn’t recognize its magnitude and how far it is willing to push us in pursuit of pleasure. We convinced ourselves that the ego helps us advance through competition and winning, and that it drives progress, both personal and collective. We did not regard it as destructive.
Yet, look at how we’ve grown apart. We are separated, alienated, and engrossed in self-entitlement. We never dreamed that this would lead us to the devastating destruction that we are witnessing today. Only now are we beginning to realize the treacherous path we have been treading, the perilous condition we are in. Therefore, now is the time to understand that the only way to reform ourselves is to build a new society.
Like an incubator or a greenhouse, this mutually responsible society can make us able and willing to rise above personal interests for the sake of common good. And the amazing part about it is that with everybody’s support and participation, even our egos will get their pleasures since society will value the unique input of each and everyone of us, for our unique contributions are both crucial and desired.
Imagine how incredible our future will be if all of humanity begins to apply egoism in positive, benevolent ways, so when a person connects with others, he or she will feel affinity and affection toward them, as if we are all family, or a single organism. We will be able to feel and understand every person and the entire world.
Once we begin this process, we will be able to experience humanity within us. We will realize that Nature has brought us to this remarkable stage in our evolution in order for us to feel that we are an integrated collective made of all and every one. When we can feel it, we will be able to utilize the main driving force of our lives correctly—our egoism, which distinguishes us from and lifts us above the animal level. Using it constructively, we will transform ourselves and rise above the human level in which we were born, and into the humane level of existence.
In the pictures: Dr. Patch Adams, MD