The more I think about this, the more I realize that it is ... us to US. Each person. In each of their world corners. Whatever is unfair or unjust in your corner of the world, we should address it. That is what i am trying to do as I write my book showing what living in an HOA (essentially an authoritarian society) does to people. Writing it is an adventure, but a solitary one. Talking to this network of people makes it feel less solitary!
I love your essay. Great to do a book. It is so believable as how you started with corporate injustice in a category we don't think about, and got to saving the world. It is wonderful! Fighting the Behemoth. Reclaiming Our Souls: https://suespeaks.org/fighting-the-behemoth-reclaiming-our-souls. Talk to me anytime!
Hey, Suzanne. I like the idea of the Zoom follow-up. To follow on from 'How We Saved the World' essay competition, it could be called the 'Now We Save the World Voice-fest' in honour of the winning essay.
Although it wasn't immediately obvious that the critical turning point had been reached, because the effects of the essay contest would take a while to play out, but indeed, getting people excited about looking for a way forward generated ideas for how to do that where, lo and behold, it was just getting energy going in the right direction snowballed to do the trick!
Except! Except, as far as physicists and cosmologists know, the expanding universe is tending toward ever greater and vaster degrees of separation, isolation, entropy, until ... silence? Cosmic death?
This is perhaps why we experience the creative act of our coming together, our "dialogues," as a kind of vital transcendence, and why our coming together in the face of death, in particular, is so powerfully evocative of our fundamental predicament.
I haven't given up on tempting some of you here to consider our everyday encounters with dying as practical opportunities to transform the planetary mind!
PS: Suzanne, thanks for your shout-out to the Scientific and Medical Network. The Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness community at CIIS is very fond of SMN. It's a great venue for these ideas. Still, we must eventually break out from the scientific community and into the wider world of culture...
I thought it was the Victorian clockwork universe that was running itself down to entropy. The New Quantum Gravity universe is expanding itself into new potentials of relatedness repatterning. We are participators in it all, not mere observers of its demise. Shine a light, and others may come to play in it. We are all made of stardust, starlight, and star warmth.
That's the idea! Quantum gravity hopes to resolve a persistent paradox at the subatomic (and cosmic) level. What I'm suggesting is that we have powerful experiences of something analogous in our own lives, on the ordinary scale of human life. Our own mortality, and the inevitable passing away of every "thing" we care about, are invitations to shared vulnerability and togetherness, to creativity, collaboration and participation...
In my own life, looking from the perspective of being at its tail end, I shake my head at the absurdity of how much pain we self-inflict, as if there's time for that, like we'll live forever. I want to shake everyone and say to wake up, that life is short. For those who aren't struggling with survival, drop your suffering, Get a grip. Be altruistic instead of selfish. Midstream in life, generally we have so little perspective, as if it's our world we will own forever, instead of the truth that we are just passing through so to make the most loveliness in that brief trip.
Yes. There is something about that "tail end" -- the unique combination of wisdom looking back, and the impenetrable mystery, yearning, and searching looking forward. From that vantage point, moreso than any other I've seen, we reach out for one another, to give and receive vital truths.
Not the direction it's going that is meaningful to us. We are midway or so in the 13.8 billion years of the universe. I may be off by billions but it's a long long time before it heads south. It's still creating itself, with many many generations ahead in this miraculous process we're privileged to be a part of where we're one humanity, all interconnected in that realm that not material. And SMN is about infusing science with spirit -- nothing to break away from but to run towards.
I have the domain name WhyImNotAfraidToDie.com. No time to activate it with testimonials from near death people and others who can reassure us scared folks! A very hot topic!
My comment about SMN was meant to suggest that our "new cosmic story" has been gathering itself in the scientific community for a century. The question I'm most interested in, which seems true for you, too, Suzanne, is: by which avenues will this new story reach beyond the scientific community, and into the imaginations of everyone, and someday transform planetary consciousness?
Yes. How indeed? It's the big question for all of us, and why I did the contest. This is not a very curious world, where to me the answer starts with paying attention to the question. All that's happening now is lamenting how bad things are and thinking utopian thoughts, without even any conversation about how to get from here to there. I consider how much engagements has gone on about the essays to be a first step -- not aha, here are answers, but that that we are engaged looking for them is progress.
In a sense, I think perhaps the collective "looking" is not just progress, but the very destination. That is, a certain quality of "looking" - generous, collaborative, generative, and exquisitely receptive.
We ate moving into the true age of Aquarius. it is a time of rebellion and disruption. Our solutions will be group oriented through the Internet meta-universe. It’s uncomfortable, disorienting and answers will come from out of the blue unconventional thinking. We have to live through this uncomfortable time of difficult change but we are headed towards Universal group, networking miracles. I celebrate this process of sharing new big ideas. Thank you. Adonnah
Thus speaks a priestess of astrology, among other things, like this beautiful artistry: https://icejewelry.com/collections/chili-rose-beadz. What to make of you posting this a few days after my first reading in decades -- by a lovely essayist. Maybe it is a one-two, to lock in his news that my best is yet to come. He said he couldn't help it, it's in the stars!
The link to "Exploring the Relational Heart of the Cosmos" does not work. I was looking forward t reading it. It sounds close to Teilhard de Chardin's "The Phenomenon of Man", which made a great impact on me.
It's the grand plan that we've diverted from and so need to get back on track about. A Zoom today talked about how dehumanized kids are from Covid. No socialization. Epidemic of loneliness for adults. Not what we were made for.
One of the elements that's shows up in every idea about a future that works is a local focus, where we're somehow in small enough units to be personal with one another and with our economies, and not solely being party to the multinational, global world.
Although I feel that there's a place for larger organizations too. I wish, for example, that the UN was stronger and able to stop the genocide in Gaza.
The more I think about this, the more I realize that it is ... us to US. Each person. In each of their world corners. Whatever is unfair or unjust in your corner of the world, we should address it. That is what i am trying to do as I write my book showing what living in an HOA (essentially an authoritarian society) does to people. Writing it is an adventure, but a solitary one. Talking to this network of people makes it feel less solitary!
I love your essay. Great to do a book. It is so believable as how you started with corporate injustice in a category we don't think about, and got to saving the world. It is wonderful! Fighting the Behemoth. Reclaiming Our Souls: https://suespeaks.org/fighting-the-behemoth-reclaiming-our-souls. Talk to me anytime!
Hey, Suzanne. I like the idea of the Zoom follow-up. To follow on from 'How We Saved the World' essay competition, it could be called the 'Now We Save the World Voice-fest' in honour of the winning essay.
Omg, did we already do it? Here's that story:
Although it wasn't immediately obvious that the critical turning point had been reached, because the effects of the essay contest would take a while to play out, but indeed, getting people excited about looking for a way forward generated ideas for how to do that where, lo and behold, it was just getting energy going in the right direction snowballed to do the trick!
Except! Except, as far as physicists and cosmologists know, the expanding universe is tending toward ever greater and vaster degrees of separation, isolation, entropy, until ... silence? Cosmic death?
This is perhaps why we experience the creative act of our coming together, our "dialogues," as a kind of vital transcendence, and why our coming together in the face of death, in particular, is so powerfully evocative of our fundamental predicament.
I haven't given up on tempting some of you here to consider our everyday encounters with dying as practical opportunities to transform the planetary mind!
PS: Suzanne, thanks for your shout-out to the Scientific and Medical Network. The Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness community at CIIS is very fond of SMN. It's a great venue for these ideas. Still, we must eventually break out from the scientific community and into the wider world of culture...
I thought it was the Victorian clockwork universe that was running itself down to entropy. The New Quantum Gravity universe is expanding itself into new potentials of relatedness repatterning. We are participators in it all, not mere observers of its demise. Shine a light, and others may come to play in it. We are all made of stardust, starlight, and star warmth.
That's the idea! Quantum gravity hopes to resolve a persistent paradox at the subatomic (and cosmic) level. What I'm suggesting is that we have powerful experiences of something analogous in our own lives, on the ordinary scale of human life. Our own mortality, and the inevitable passing away of every "thing" we care about, are invitations to shared vulnerability and togetherness, to creativity, collaboration and participation...
In my own life, looking from the perspective of being at its tail end, I shake my head at the absurdity of how much pain we self-inflict, as if there's time for that, like we'll live forever. I want to shake everyone and say to wake up, that life is short. For those who aren't struggling with survival, drop your suffering, Get a grip. Be altruistic instead of selfish. Midstream in life, generally we have so little perspective, as if it's our world we will own forever, instead of the truth that we are just passing through so to make the most loveliness in that brief trip.
Yes. There is something about that "tail end" -- the unique combination of wisdom looking back, and the impenetrable mystery, yearning, and searching looking forward. From that vantage point, moreso than any other I've seen, we reach out for one another, to give and receive vital truths.
Not the direction it's going that is meaningful to us. We are midway or so in the 13.8 billion years of the universe. I may be off by billions but it's a long long time before it heads south. It's still creating itself, with many many generations ahead in this miraculous process we're privileged to be a part of where we're one humanity, all interconnected in that realm that not material. And SMN is about infusing science with spirit -- nothing to break away from but to run towards.
I have the domain name WhyImNotAfraidToDie.com. No time to activate it with testimonials from near death people and others who can reassure us scared folks! A very hot topic!
My comment about SMN was meant to suggest that our "new cosmic story" has been gathering itself in the scientific community for a century. The question I'm most interested in, which seems true for you, too, Suzanne, is: by which avenues will this new story reach beyond the scientific community, and into the imaginations of everyone, and someday transform planetary consciousness?
Yes. How indeed? It's the big question for all of us, and why I did the contest. This is not a very curious world, where to me the answer starts with paying attention to the question. All that's happening now is lamenting how bad things are and thinking utopian thoughts, without even any conversation about how to get from here to there. I consider how much engagements has gone on about the essays to be a first step -- not aha, here are answers, but that that we are engaged looking for them is progress.
In a sense, I think perhaps the collective "looking" is not just progress, but the very destination. That is, a certain quality of "looking" - generous, collaborative, generative, and exquisitely receptive.
We ate moving into the true age of Aquarius. it is a time of rebellion and disruption. Our solutions will be group oriented through the Internet meta-universe. It’s uncomfortable, disorienting and answers will come from out of the blue unconventional thinking. We have to live through this uncomfortable time of difficult change but we are headed towards Universal group, networking miracles. I celebrate this process of sharing new big ideas. Thank you. Adonnah
Thus speaks a priestess of astrology, among other things, like this beautiful artistry: https://icejewelry.com/collections/chili-rose-beadz. What to make of you posting this a few days after my first reading in decades -- by a lovely essayist. Maybe it is a one-two, to lock in his news that my best is yet to come. He said he couldn't help it, it's in the stars!
The link to "Exploring the Relational Heart of the Cosmos" does not work. I was looking forward t reading it. It sounds close to Teilhard de Chardin's "The Phenomenon of Man", which made a great impact on me.
My bad: https://cac.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/TCW_Transcript_S2_E7.pdf.
You got it right -- Brian Swimme is on Teilhard de Chardin's shoulders.
Thanks for sharing these uplifting and inspiring words about community, Suzanne!
It's the grand plan that we've diverted from and so need to get back on track about. A Zoom today talked about how dehumanized kids are from Covid. No socialization. Epidemic of loneliness for adults. Not what we were made for.
Rebuilding a sense of community?
One of the elements that's shows up in every idea about a future that works is a local focus, where we're somehow in small enough units to be personal with one another and with our economies, and not solely being party to the multinational, global world.
Although I feel that there's a place for larger organizations too. I wish, for example, that the UN was stronger and able to stop the genocide in Gaza.
No salvation out there. It's up to us chickens.