responsibility – Mutual Responsibility

March 25, 2012August 13, 2012

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.

March 22, 2012August 13, 2012

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

March 10, 2012August 13, 2012

How to Live in a New World

First, it is impossible to manage in the new world when each one thinks only about oneself. We have to think about everyone. There is no other choice. This is nature’s law that is being revealed in our times.

Second, every member of society should be concerned about others like organs in one body. In the global world, we need not build egoistic systems for media, governments, social systems, health care, education, etc., which today do not care about what happens to others. What we need to be concerned with is how to build a healthy person in a healthy society. All the systems should be focused on this purpose. This means that there must be one general plan.

The leaders of society must understand that we need to integrate and embrace mutual responsibility, and use our voices and votes to insist on this. Otherwise, each will continue with his protectionism, which will lead to opposition to and destruction of nature.

We should aspire for this same mutually beneficial relationship to exist in the family, children’s education, neighborhoods, cities, nations, and the whole world. This means that we don’t have to develop separate, specific systems for education, culture, and health, but rather we need to work in circles, moving from small circles to wider ones, and eventually encompassing all of humanity.

We have to restructure all international organizations differently, so that this will be their goal and how they aim all their activity at. All the laws in the world should reflect its integrated nature, so that integrality becomes the essential law of our existence. The leadership, courts, and systems for human rights should be aimed only at that.

What stems from the integrative laws influences all spheres of our lives, including factories, companies, and businesses. If a business doesn’t match the essential production system, it is like a splinter that enters a body and infects and harms the whole body.

This is a totally new perception according to which no one has the right make exorbitant profits off of others. Instead, we can discover that it is good business to work together to mutual advantage for everyone involved. This is totally opposite to our present approach and everything will change according to it.

Awaken Your Caring for the Whole World – Within You

How can we start caring for the whole world and feel it inside our hearts?

We all exist on one globe, in one circular, closed system, and it is impossible to selectively care for just one part of it, as one would care only about his arm or leg and not care about the rest of the body. Nothing exists “partially” in Nature.

If a person does not care for the common system, the whole of mankind as his body, he does not care for himself. We just have to open our eyes and see that the world is an imprint of what we have inside.
Therefore, the aim isn’t for “me to start caring for the world,” but to open my eyes and see the truth in order to understand that caring for the world and caring for myself is the exact same caring.

This is the inner revolution we have to go through. When a person begins connecting with others and identifying himself with what is outside of his self interest that he previously identified with, then this inner revolution occurs. This blindness and deception are the reason for all the anger, hate, bigotry, and crises we see now.