My First Workshop with Joanna Macy

Well, spending two days with Joanna and participating in the exercises she lead was wonderful. I loved being around all the people, getting to know some of them and generally doing more crying, hugging and looking at people in a deeply engaged and appreciative way. The permission to really connect with each other was, for [...]

Suburban Tree Dialog 6 (Singularity and Cyborg)

Me: I was curious about where our conversation ended during our last talk. I mentioned that I was aware of a lot of talk of cyborgs, human machine hybrids, but no talk of bio-borgs hybrids of animals and plants for instance. I did a little reading via the web to refresh my recollection about what [...]

Suburban Tree Dialog 5 (Behaviorally Modern Human 2)

Me: When we left off our last conversation we had been talking about thinking long ideas and I mentioned I had been thinking of what humans would become if we succeeded in living with power and not destroying our planet at the same time. I think I am ready to talk more about this and [...]

Our Cancer Cured, Now Our Recovery

The illness that we have struggled with since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1981 has been eliminated. We are like a people who have collectively been afflicted with a slow growing cancer that almost killed us during the Bush presidency. Last night we got the CT scan and lab work back and our doctor [...]

Obama, Tom Bradley, in Historical Context

There has been a lot of talk about Barack Obama and poll results that show him with a significant lead over John McCain in this year

Hope

I hope writing
Survives
Reading too

I hope children
Find a place
To grow
Plants too

I hope water
Survives
For the living
Ebb and Flow
Through
Cell walls

I hope we
Stop
Eating time
Faster
Than it lives us

Barack Obama and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”

Like many others Barack Obama’s historic speech, A More Perfect Union, touched me deeply. Why? Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” helps me answer that question.

Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready; [...]

Of Plants and People

In my mid to late 20

A Biological Model of Foreign Policy

Couldn’t we have a foreign policy that was based on biology instead of social rank competition. A foreign policy based on biological principals and functions would not abandon self defense, biological entities and processes engage in self defense all the time. A biologically based foreign policy also would not have to avoid resource acquisition and [...]

Single Savior Notion

The Messiah, the Great One, the One Beyond Compare
Is here, was there, will come, is truth, at last they dare
Some say Marx, or Adam Smith, Jesus or Mohamed
Sale of Single Saviors, an ongoing human drama

The world goes on and on, the marketing machine
Selling single saviors exploiting every dream

Violence, Boboons, Republicans, and Social Signals

We have to manage the Baboon level of our society in a way that decreases the effectiveness of violence as a tool for achieving social rank and control. Male baboons use violence to establish rank within the male hierarchy of their baboon troop. The highest ranking male then gets breeding rights with any female he [...]

Ic-R-Us

It all made sense at the start
Imagination fused with skill and great art
A driving need would pick everything
In this case it became a mighty wing

His dad was good at making things
He was a favorite of the kings

Free at last from the earth and the past
The sky his home now he could fly fast
Free to roam [...]

Climate Crisis = Identity Crisis

Three common ways of characterizing human existence in relation to the natural world

The first view is that Humanity is a Devine creation that exists in a non-material spiritual reality separate from the natural physical world. From the religious and spiritual viewpoint nature is often seen as infused with spiritual force, emanating from a spiritual [...]

Politics, Economics, and Change

When Bill Clinton focused his presidential campaign around the phrase