350.org – a global grassroots movement to slow down greenhouse gases

Here’s a 15-min. video of Bill McKibben, in front of 10,000 young climate leaders, laying out an inspiring vision for our movement and  an impassioned call to action.watch this video.

And here are some key points from the 350.org website:

• So, what is global warming and what’s the problem anyway?

The science is clear: global warming is happening faster than ever and humans are responsible. Global warming is caused by releasing what are called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The most common greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. Many of the activities we do every day like turn the lights on, cook food, or heat or cool our homes rely on the combustion of fossil fuels like coal and oil, which emit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases when burned. This is a major problem because global warming destabilizes the delicate balance that makes life on this planet possible. Just a few degrees in temperature can completely change the world as we know it, and threaten the lives of millions of people around the world.

• And what does this 350 number even mean?

350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide—measured in “Parts Per Million” in our atmosphere. 350 PPM—it’s the number humanity needs to get back to as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change.

• If we’re already past 350, are we all doomed?

No. We’re like the patient that goes to the doctor and learns he’s overweight, or his cholesterol is too high. He doesn’t die immediately—but until he changes his lifestyle and gets back down to the safe zone, he’s at more risk for heart attack or stroke. The planet is in its danger zone because we’ve poured too much carbon into the atmosphere, and we’re starting to see signs of real trouble: melting ice caps, rapidly spreading drought. We need to scramble back as quickly as we can to safety.

• How do we create the political change to steer towards 350?

This year, we can create a grassroots movement connected by the web and active all over the world.  We will focus on the systemic barriers to climate solutions, changing political dynamics whenever possible.  At the same time, we’ll get to work implementing real climate solutions in our communities, demonstrating the benefits of moving to a clean energy economy. If this global movement succeeds, we can get the world on track to get back to 350 and back to climate safety. It won’t be easy, that’s why we need all the help we can get.

What would it cost to restore the world environment and meet social goals. And guess who has the money?

Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute (www.earth-policy.org) put together the following very revealing cost comparisons, as part of his Plan B, budget. Published in the excellent quarterly journal Pop!ulation Press (www.populationpress.org).

Additional annual expenditures needed to meet social goals and restore the Earth.





PLAN B BUDGET: Additional Annual Expenditures Needed to Meet Social Goals and Restore the Earth

Basic Social Goals	Goal Funding (billion dollars)
Universal primary education	10
Eradication of adult illiteracy	4
School lunch programs	3
Aid to women, infants	4
Reproductive health & family planning	21
Universal basic health care	33
TOTAL	75
Earth Restoration Goals	Goal Funding (billion dollars)
Planting trees	23
Protecting topsoil on cropland	24
Restoring rangelands	9
Restoring fisheries	13
Stabilizing water tables	10
Protecting biological diversity	31
TOTAL	110
GRAND TOTAL	185
U.S. Military Budget	661
Plan B budget as share of this	28%
World Military Budget	1,522
Plan B budget as share of this	12%

Child musical prodigy joyfully play-conducts Beethoven symphony

For a totally upbeat explosion of joy and laughter and music, watch this five minute video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0REJ-lCGiKU

Richard Wolff on the meltdown of the American capitalist system

Richard Wolff is an Economics Professor at the University of Massachusetts, whose documentary film Capitalism Hits the Fan reveals with stunning clarity the undeniable and ever more glaring deficits in the inherent structure of the capitalist economic model. Viewing this film could be used as wonderful starting point for a discussion or series of discussions on our present situation. In the following article by Wolff, from The Guardian /UK, he expands on this theme:

Until the 1970s, US capitalism shared its spoils with American workers. But since 2008, it has made them pay for its failures…One aspect of “American exceptionalism” was always economic. US workers, so the story went, enjoyed a rising level of real wages that afforded their families a rising standard of living. Ever harder work paid off in rising consumption. The rich got richer faster than the middle and poor, but almost no one got poorer. Nearly all citizens felt “middle class”. A profitable US capitalism kept running ahead of labor supply. So, it kept raising wages to attract waves of immigration and to retain employees, across the 19th century until the 1970s.

Then everything changed. Real wages stopped rising, as US capitalists redirected their investments to produce and employ abroad, while replacing millions of workers in the US with computers. The US women’s liberation moved millions of US adult women to seek paid employment. US capitalism no longer faced a shortage of labor…US employers took advantage of the changed situation: they stopped raising wages. …

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/18-2

January 18, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

Avatar – A mythic masterpiece for our troubled time

In the Avatar film, James Cameron, the maker of Titanic, has taken the new computerized, digital, 3-D technologies to a new astounding level of brilliance and mastery. It’s a story of adventure, space exploration and the wonders of evolution on alien worlds, echoing the best of the Star Wars series; a searing critique of the military domination-exploitation agendas of our corporate empire and their devastating effects on indigenous, earth-centered cultures; and a Earth-human/indigenous-alien love story and cultural encounter that echoes the Pocahontas story and numerous similar “gone native” conversion experiences.

Avatar in Hindu mythology is a human form consciously assumed by a deity to function in our human Earth-world. In computerized gaming, your avatar is the humanoid form you assume to function in the virtual cyber environment of the game. In the film the avatars are the blue-skinned humanoid forms, mimicking the bodies of the native Na’avi of the alien moon, that the human military corporate raiders assume in a somatic exchange operation, while their normal human bodies are resting immobilized in a digital transfer chamber. Thus blending in with the natives, the hero, a paraplegic ex-Marine, is sent to scout out the alien world for information on how to take over it’s mineral-rich environment – but instead, becomes enamored of a native beauty and is so moved by the magic of their world and the peaceful animism of their culture – that he comes to their aid, with a few of his companions.

In the final Hollywood-obligatory battle, reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings saga, native warriors riding flying dragons battle with bows and arrows against monstrous armored space cruisers armed with missile launchers – but, with the unexpected aid of equally armored indigenous dinosaurs and the necessary doses of improbable luck, prevail. The final delicious twist in this tale, is that the rapacious alien invaders, i.e. the Earth-based humans, are sent packing, leaving the greatly damaged but still surviving world to its indigenous Na’avi and their formerly human, now true native avatar sympathizers.

The concept behind the Hindu mythology of avatar is that at higher levels of evolution (such as that of a deity), human bodies are consciously chosen for incarnation in the Earth time-space environment. Esoteric spiritual traditions of East and West teach that human incarnation is also by choice of a human soul, although ordinarily, the choice is heavily predetermined by karmic patterns left over from previous incarnations. I discuss this multi-dimensional view of the human being, which is inherent in shamanism, alchemy and yoga, in my book Alchemical Divination:

Humans are multi-dimensional spiritual beings, living in a multi-dimensional
universe…As the Sufis say, w human beings live in a many-storied mansion, but
have occupied the ground-floor for so log, we have forgotten even the existence
of the higher realms.(p. 59-60)

The concept behind the game and film adopts the theme of conscious deliberate choice of a humanoid form appropriate to the planetary environment. The spiritual element is eliminated, and the conscious creation of an avatar vehicle for planetary existence is subordinated to the classic capitalist-colonialist exploitation agenda: use scientific technology to trick the natives out of their planetary resources, and if that doesn’t work or takes too long, kill them and take what you want.

I discuss this historic pattern in my book The Roots of War and Domination:

The mega-corporations of the military-industrial complex…with the help of
their governmental clients, promote wars of aggressive invasion that destroy a
designated “enemy” country, complete with sophisticated PR campaigns to induce
psychological shock and economic paralysis. Finally, these same imperial
corporations appropriate the natural resources (oil, forests, minerals, water)
of the destroyed nation state into their corporate machines.(p.34)

There are many exquisitely beautiful image sequences in Cameron’s film. Two stand out for me. One – the way a native or hybridized humanoid on this world “tames” their horse for riding is by connecting the fibrils in their tails with analogous polarized fibrils in the horse’s mane – the result being that horse and rider become one being, functioning according to the thought intentions of the rider. The other image that I found truly magical are the phosphorescent jellyfish that float in the air and may land on your body. They are the emanations of the Mother Goddess Aiva, and when they touch your skin they infuse you with the essences of peace, healing, knowledge and delight.

Louis Pasteur versus Claude Bernard on the Causes of Disease

Two giants of scientific medicine in the 19th century, both French, propounded radically different paradigms for the understanding and treatment of disease, that are still relevant today. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), chemist and microbiologist, put forward the germ theory, according to which diseases are caused by infectious microbes, that impair the functioning and structures of different organ systems. This paradigm is the basis for the use of antibiotics to destroy these invasive microbes and vaccines with low doses of the microbe to challenge the body’s immune defenses and thereby prevent systemic infection.

Pasteur’s contemporary and friend, the physiologist Claude Bernard (1813-1878), argued instead for the importance of balance in the body’s internal environment – what he called le milieu intérieur. “The constancy of the interior environment is the condition for a free and independent life.” Bernard thought that the body becomes susceptible to infectious agents only if the internal balance – or homeostasis as we now call it – is disturbed. After all, there are billions of microbes and bacteria inhabiting our guts, our blood, our whole body. Why do we sometimes sicken from them, sometimes not? When a bacterial or viral agent is “going around,” as we say, why do some people sicken and others remain healthy ?

There is an apocryphal story that Pasteur renounced his germ theory on his death-bed, saying that “Bernard is right. The microbe is nothing. The environment is everything.” The renowned 20th century French-American microbiologist René Dubos (1901-1982) agreed with Bernard’s principle: “Most microbial diseases are caused by organisms present in the body of a normal individual. They become the cause of disease when a disturbance arises which upsets the equilibrium of the body.”

Today, Pasteur’s germ theory of disease provides the rationale for the pharmaceutical industry’s billions of dollars research and sales programs for ever more potent anti-bacterial and anti-viral drugs, the use of these antibiotics as a feed-additive in the disease-prone, overcrowded environments of industrial farming – with the predictable consequence that bacterial evolution is out-stripping the discovery rate of effective antidotes.

The Bernard/Dubos theory that health and resilience is a function of homeostatic balance in the internal environment is reflected in the growing influence of the ancient medical systems of India and China, as well as homeopathy and Dr. Andrew Weil’s integrative medicine. In all these approaches, the maintenance of health and prevention of disease involves conscious attention given to factors of life-style, environment, nutrition, exercise and recreation, as well as psychological well-being and spiritual practice.

Divination, altered states and psychedelics

There is a long history of different methods of inducing altered, heightened or trance-like states for divination. The word “trance” derives from Latin transire, “to pass or move across,” and is related to transit, transition and transient. All altered states involve a transition or disconnect of some kind from the waking state of ordinary life; then a period of time in which the psychological functioning of mind, emotion and perception are different; and then a return to the ordinary waking state for integration and application. Trances and altered states follow the pattern of a journey: departure, travelling through (interior) space, and then returning home. In the classic shamanic journey traditions, rhythmic drumming, rattling or chanting is used to facilitate the entering into, travelling through and returning from the spirit world – while the physical body lies prone on the ground. Research in consciousness and brain function suggest that something called auditory driving or entrainment takes place: the rhythmic beat of the drum brings the rhythms of breathing, of the heart, and of the brain into resonance or coherence with each other.

The other main method for inducing the divinatory journey trance in shamanic traditions worldwide involves psychoactive, visionary or entheogenic plants or fungi, such as ayahuasca in South America, iboga in Equatorial Africa, and the psilocybe mushroom (teonanácatl) in Meso-America. Among the Mazatecs in the highlands of Mexico there is the rare use of a infusions of a leafy plant called the “sage of the diviners” (salvia divinorum). It appears that the choice of which method is used is partly a function of ecology: in the Northern hemisphere areas of Asia (where the word shaman originates), Europe and America the use of rhythmic drumming is more common; whereas in the tropical regions, where plant diversity is greater, plants, roots and fungi have been found that profoundly alter consciousness.

The choice of method may be a function of history and the socio-political context: Michael Harner has suggested that in Central Europe the rhythmic drumming journey method (still used by the Sami in Northern Scandinavia) was, during the Middle Ages, abandoned by shamanic practitioners (known as “witches”), to avoid detection by the enforcers of the Inquisition. Instead, the silent and therefore safer use of plants was adopted for shamanic journey work, giving rise to the folklore of witches’ ointments and brews. Unfortunately, the psychoactive plants available in the Central European temperate zone are from the solanaceous nightshade family (datura, henbane, belladonna), in which the dissociative factor is particularly strong, making this method less reliable and more complicated.

It should be said too that in classic entheogenic plant divination ceremonies the ingestion of plant concoctions or preparations is usually combined with the rhythm method: the chants and songs of the mushroom curanderas and the ayahuasqueros have a soft, but persistent rhythm, and may be accompanied by the rattling of branches of dried leaves; and the ceremonies with peyote and iboga involve prolonged and vigorous drumming as well. The plant substances provide an amplification of perception, and the rhythmic auditory entrainment provides the sense of traveling through (inner) space. The Asiatic shamans say the beat of the drum is the hoof-beat of the spirit horse they are riding on their journey.

In modern societies, the successors to the shamans of indigenous peoples are the psychiatrists and psychotherapists, who seek to unravel the tangled skeins of dysfunctional mind-body patterns and integrate them into a more harmonious, less painful wholeness. The psychiatric anamnesis (“un-forgetting”) is exactly analogous to the shamanic soul retrieval, and the divinatory re-membering. The broken connections of one’s past history to one’s present condition are recalled and recollected, and can then be integrated and made whole again. Painful, traumatic or confusing experiences tend to freeze or distort the normal processing of our experience.

Though the use of entheogenic plants, fungi or psychedelic substances can amplify perception of the core question-and-answer process in divination or psychotherapy, it is not essential to it; and it does have some drawbacks, chief among them being that intensified awareness of somatic responses to the drug can make concentration more difficult, especially for an inexperienced person. Even the experienced shamans in South America, for example, will use low intensity psychoactive substances (such as tobacco) or dosages when they are dealing with particularly difficult diagnostic questions. When psychoactive drugs are used to amplify the psychotherapy process, the use of low-intensity graduated dosages, the “psycholytic” approach, is preferable to the high-dose “psychedelic” paradigm – with the probable exception of the treatment of alcohol or drug addiction, where the high dose intense experience may provide longer-lasting relief from relentless cravings and withdrawal sensations.

For contemporary seekers in the psychedelic sub-culture, the exclusive reliance on drugs when doing inner exploration (i.e. “tripping”) has the further liability of confusing the answers one receives in response to divination questions with a pharmacological drug effect. “I took this drug (or plant, or mushroom) and had this vision” is a typical account, which tends to overlook or minimize the crucial role of set (intention, question) and setting (context) in determining the contents of one’s experience.

Besides the two methods of divination we have discussed so far – the use of a non-rational symbol system and entering into an altered state of consciousness – there are some other methods that have been used traditionally to enhance perception of non-ordinary or hidden aspects of the past, present or future. Gazing into a crystal ball, also called scrying, is one of the traditional practices of focusing clairvoyant perception. Erroneously assumed to be limited to prophesying the future, the practice and the term refers to perception of normally hidden aspects of reality, past, present or future, i.e. divination.

Carlos Castaneda, in his writings on the teachings of the Yaqui Indian sorcerer Don Juan, lists a number of other practices to develop what he calls seeing (i.e. non-ordinary, clairvoyant perception). He stated that different individuals on the sorcerer’s path of learning to enhance their seeing ability might specialize in one or another of these natural phenomena for their concentrated gazing: fog or mist, clouds, smoke, rain, rock faces, stars, fire or streaming water. Gazing into fire is also the divinatory perception practice in Native American Church peyote ceremonies, which are held in a teepee, sitting around a fire. And gazing into streams or pools of water was a clairvoyance practice widespread in the classical period.

We can see that in all the different methods of divination, whether they involve an intuitive symbol system or an induced state of amplified perception, the core of the process is the posing of a question and the receiving of an answer. The questioner or seeker is the personal ego-self, in search of healing or guidance. The diagnostic or visionary insight is received from a source (wise self, intuition) or a being (deity, power animal, spirit guide) with access to higher, spiritual perspectives or hidden forms of knowledge. This source, is either mediated or channeled by another human being, called the diviner (or medium, psychic, teacher, sage); or it is accessed directly through a structured, intuitive inquiry process. In all cases a framework of appropriate set and setting, or intention and context, is essential to the effectiveness and usefulness of the outcome.