The trapeze artistes were doing what they do best, keeping the crowd spellbound with their death-defying leaps and acrobatics.
Spectators were gaping open-mouthed as they watched, stunned by the gravity-defying acts. But they were oblivious to the net that was stretched much below their line of vision. It was stretched tautly to arrest any misjudgement. It was visible only from above as the gymnasts flung themselves from dizzying heights, to be caught by a colleague in the nick of time.
The net was totally self-effacing, and could hardly be called a participant in that wondrous spectacle of human stunts. But no matter how much it underplayed itself, the net was, without doubt, very crucial for the entire act to unfold smoothly.
The presence of that net merely eased the nerves rather than improve the skills. The visual cue of that net eased the grip of every performer, as letting go of the bar or a colleague's hand was as important as holding on tight in this acrobatic orchestra.
Many achievers in life very often steal the spotlight as they go about their lives, prompting onlookers to stare in utter disbelief. Their confidence, poise, their ability to take risks and their tremendous gumption for life – all these appear enviable indeed. Very rarely is mention made of that invisible net that gave these achievers the liberty to just take off. It provided, almost unseen, a kind of security which initiated and propelled them towards their achievements. The uniqueness of that person or force is his unobtrusiveness and being virtually a non-participatory observer. Very often, involvement with a dear one or concern for that person prompts interference or meddlesome behaviour. This concern at times becomes counter-productive as it can stifle and even extinguish the spirit of exuberance.
Love and concern for a dear one often is like walking a tight rope. Or it could be like knowing the art of holding a snake as do trained herpetologists. The grip should be loose enough so as not to frighten the animal and tight enough to prevent it from escaping. Anything less than or more than that optimum hold and you have lost the plot. Concern or love that restricts you can never be conducive to your growth. Very often, extreme form of love becomes an exercise of ownership or control. And getting the object of one's affection to yield, resorting to a form of emotional blackmail, is quite commonplace. Having a very magnanimous mindset that releases, rather than holds captive is what true relationships are all about. If you love someone, set him free – an often quoted line sums it up beautifully.
An important aspect of nurturing involves the ability to let go. Like the proverbial haemoglobin that carries oxygen. The selection of this complex molecule to transport oxygen to the tissues is not because it binds very strongly to oxygen, but more importantly, its ability to release oxygen at the opportune place and time.
The most genuine of relations are the ones that never need constant reaffirmation. They are ones that transcend dependence, and never beg reciprocity. They remain uncharacteristically somewhere in the background, and serve to stimulate and encourage silently, always bordering on selflessness -- till that day of reckoning when the trapeze artistes would perform without that net. That would be the defining moment and to disappear totally would be the net's only salvation.
__,_._,___
Monday, January 17, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Of Sages and Scientists
Friends,
Life is one Integral whole and this needs to be explored. There is a widespread misconception that science and spirituality are opposed to each other.The conference, being organized by the Chopra Foundation, promises to go a long way in dispelling this erroneous assumption. I'm forwarding this for those who may be interested in this subject,as we should all be.
These are, indeed, urgent times. All of us have a very vital role to play in the nurturing and flowering of Life. Let us not underestimate our brilliance which, for the moment, lies buried within reams and reams of Maya.We need to break this spell for a brighter future of ourselves and of this planet.We all bear a Responsibility and this is a constant jihad to renew ourselves for the common good of humankind and of this glorious Life.
Best regards,
Avinash
http://poshaning.blogspot.com/
----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Integral Life
To: asahays@yahoo.com
Sent: Fri, January 14, 2011 2:14:17 AM
Subject: Sages and Scientists: The Merging of a New Future
Having trouble viewing this email? Click here
Dear friends,
I am very pleased to send you below an announcement for Sages and Scientists, an important and compelling event hosted by our friend Deepak Chopra. For those of us interested in the intersection of mysticism and science, there are few events that bring together such a deep group of researchers and practitioners like those assembled there, including Victor Chan, Stuart Hameroff, James Doty, Duane Elgin and many others. I can still remember studying almost ten years ago the "orchestrated objective reduction" theory that Penrose and Hameroff created to explain how consciousness arises/is (have fun with that one) in the microtubules of the brain. This and many other exciting frontiers of human consciousness research will be explored and debated. I think you'll find this worthy of your attention, I hope to see you there!
Warmly,
Robb
Dear Friends,
Recent advances in science are posing new questions for spirituality:
Are we in the midst of a major paradigm shift in science?
Is there an ultimate reality?
Does consciousness conceive, govern, construct and become the
physical universe?
Is the universe becoming self aware in the human nervous system?
Is the next stage of human development conscious evolution?
Do we have the ability to influence the future evolution of the cosmos?
How does our understanding of consciousness as pure potentiality enhance our capacity for intuition, creativity, conscious choice making, healing, and the awakening of dormant potentials such as non-local communication and non-local sensory experience?
How does our understanding of consciousness also enhance our capacity for total well being (physical, emotional, spiritual, social, community, financial and ecological)?
If you find the above questions intriguing, I would love for you to join me and my colleagues (who I consider Sages and Scientists) at the second annual Chopra Foundation International Symposium: Sages and Scientists—The Merging of a New Future from February 25-27, 2011 at La Costa Resort and Spa (Carlsbad, California).
The speakers include:
Victor Chan, Trustee and founding Director of the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education; co-authored with His Holiness The Dalai Lama Wisdom of Forgiveness: Intimate Conversations and Journeys.
James Doty, M.D., Director and Founder of Project Compassion, Stanford University, inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist
Duane Elgin, MBA and MA, GOI International Peace recipient, internationally recognized visionary speaker and author - The Living Universe
Bernard Haisch, astrophysicist and author - The God Theory
Stuart Hameroff, MD, physician and researcher at the University Medical Center and Center for Consciousness Studies, and co-author with Sir Roger Penrose - Orchestrated Reduction Of Quantum Coherence In Brain Microtubules: A Model For Consciousness?
Mae Wan Ho, Ph. D., Biochemistry, 1993, 1998 Director of The Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) and author - The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms
Menas Kafatos, physicist, Founding Dean, Schmid College of Science, Vice Chancellor for Special Projects, Director of the Center for Excellence in Applied, Fundamental and Computational Science Professor, and author - The Nonlocal Universe and The Conscious Universe
Robert Lanza, M.D., Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, author - Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe
Leonard Mlodinow, Physicist, co-author – The Grand Design
Dean Radin, PhD, Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Psychology at Sonoma State University, and author, The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds
V.S. Ramachandran, MD, PhD, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and Professor with the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University, co-author with Sandra Blakeslee - Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D., evolution biologist, futurist, speaker, and author - Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution
Masami Saionji, Chairperson of Byakko Shinko Kai, The World Peace Prayer Society, The Goi Peace Foundation, author – The Golden Key to Happiness, You Are the Universe, and Vision for the 21st Century
Allan Savory, winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, President and Co Founder of the Savory Institute
Marilyn Schlitz, PhD., President and CEO of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and author - Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life.
Henry Stapp, physicist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, author - Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics
Timothy P. Shriver, Ph.D., Chairman & CEO of Special Olympics
Ian Somerhalder, actor, humanitarian, environmentalist, Ian Somerhalder Foundation
Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy, Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School; Director, and author - Decoding Darkness: The Search for the Genetic Causes of Alzheimer's Disease.
Elizabeth Thompson, Executive Director, The Buckminster Fuller Institute
Jim Tucker, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, University of Virginia Health System, author - Life Before Life: Children's Memories of Previous Lives
Alexander Tsiaras, Founder and CEO of TheVisualMD.com
Deepak Chopra, MD
Everything will be examined from the perspectives of both sages and scientists, with a view to finding common ground. I will be moderator for the symposium.
Come and be enlightened about your emerging future. At the end of the symposium, we will summarize the current understanding of the issues that deeply affect all of us at the core of our being. The proceedings will be published by the Chopra Foundation in various media for distribution to academicians, scientists, and others throughout the world. National media has also been invited to attend. We aim to propel scientific investigation and research in the areas of consciousness.
The Foundation is requesting a gift of $1,995 (in which $1,000 is tax deductible) for general participation. Your contribution will be used for collaborative research on the realization of consciousness, support of other charitable work, and underwrite the program costs. Your participation is valued because of your influence in society and because it's my belief you are deeply interested in these deeper issues of our existence, and will use your circle of influence to spread this message of "advaita".
A
Space is limited so please RSVP as soon as possible if you intend to come.
Phone: Carolyn Rangel at 760-494-1600
Online: www.choprafoundation.org
Email: foundation@chopra.com
As I personally find myself in the autumn of my life, I find myself facing my own mortality with great awe and a deep reverence for the mystery of existence. It's my sincere hope that as we share our sense of wonder, our common understanding will further our insights into the nature of compassion, love, healing and the bond of Being that we all share.
It is my sincere hope that you will join us as a participant and audience member in this exciting event. We will have a unique opportunity to see where the future of science is going.
With warmest regards,
Deepak
Life is one Integral whole and this needs to be explored. There is a widespread misconception that science and spirituality are opposed to each other.The conference, being organized by the Chopra Foundation, promises to go a long way in dispelling this erroneous assumption. I'm forwarding this for those who may be interested in this subject,as we should all be.
These are, indeed, urgent times. All of us have a very vital role to play in the nurturing and flowering of Life. Let us not underestimate our brilliance which, for the moment, lies buried within reams and reams of Maya.We need to break this spell for a brighter future of ourselves and of this planet.We all bear a Responsibility and this is a constant jihad to renew ourselves for the common good of humankind and of this glorious Life.
Best regards,
Avinash
http://poshaning.blogspot.com/
----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Integral Life
To: asahays@yahoo.com
Sent: Fri, January 14, 2011 2:14:17 AM
Subject: Sages and Scientists: The Merging of a New Future
Having trouble viewing this email? Click here
Dear friends,
I am very pleased to send you below an announcement for Sages and Scientists, an important and compelling event hosted by our friend Deepak Chopra. For those of us interested in the intersection of mysticism and science, there are few events that bring together such a deep group of researchers and practitioners like those assembled there, including Victor Chan, Stuart Hameroff, James Doty, Duane Elgin and many others. I can still remember studying almost ten years ago the "orchestrated objective reduction" theory that Penrose and Hameroff created to explain how consciousness arises/is (have fun with that one) in the microtubules of the brain. This and many other exciting frontiers of human consciousness research will be explored and debated. I think you'll find this worthy of your attention, I hope to see you there!
Warmly,
Robb
Dear Friends,
Recent advances in science are posing new questions for spirituality:
Are we in the midst of a major paradigm shift in science?
Is there an ultimate reality?
Does consciousness conceive, govern, construct and become the
physical universe?
Is the universe becoming self aware in the human nervous system?
Is the next stage of human development conscious evolution?
Do we have the ability to influence the future evolution of the cosmos?
How does our understanding of consciousness as pure potentiality enhance our capacity for intuition, creativity, conscious choice making, healing, and the awakening of dormant potentials such as non-local communication and non-local sensory experience?
How does our understanding of consciousness also enhance our capacity for total well being (physical, emotional, spiritual, social, community, financial and ecological)?
If you find the above questions intriguing, I would love for you to join me and my colleagues (who I consider Sages and Scientists) at the second annual Chopra Foundation International Symposium: Sages and Scientists—The Merging of a New Future from February 25-27, 2011 at La Costa Resort and Spa (Carlsbad, California).
The speakers include:
Victor Chan, Trustee and founding Director of the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education; co-authored with His Holiness The Dalai Lama Wisdom of Forgiveness: Intimate Conversations and Journeys.
James Doty, M.D., Director and Founder of Project Compassion, Stanford University, inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist
Duane Elgin, MBA and MA, GOI International Peace recipient, internationally recognized visionary speaker and author - The Living Universe
Bernard Haisch, astrophysicist and author - The God Theory
Stuart Hameroff, MD, physician and researcher at the University Medical Center and Center for Consciousness Studies, and co-author with Sir Roger Penrose - Orchestrated Reduction Of Quantum Coherence In Brain Microtubules: A Model For Consciousness?
Mae Wan Ho, Ph. D., Biochemistry, 1993, 1998 Director of The Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) and author - The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms
Menas Kafatos, physicist, Founding Dean, Schmid College of Science, Vice Chancellor for Special Projects, Director of the Center for Excellence in Applied, Fundamental and Computational Science Professor, and author - The Nonlocal Universe and The Conscious Universe
Robert Lanza, M.D., Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, author - Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe
Leonard Mlodinow, Physicist, co-author – The Grand Design
Dean Radin, PhD, Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Psychology at Sonoma State University, and author, The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds
V.S. Ramachandran, MD, PhD, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and Professor with the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University, co-author with Sandra Blakeslee - Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D., evolution biologist, futurist, speaker, and author - Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution
Masami Saionji, Chairperson of Byakko Shinko Kai, The World Peace Prayer Society, The Goi Peace Foundation, author – The Golden Key to Happiness, You Are the Universe, and Vision for the 21st Century
Allan Savory, winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, President and Co Founder of the Savory Institute
Marilyn Schlitz, PhD., President and CEO of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and author - Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life.
Henry Stapp, physicist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, author - Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics
Timothy P. Shriver, Ph.D., Chairman & CEO of Special Olympics
Ian Somerhalder, actor, humanitarian, environmentalist, Ian Somerhalder Foundation
Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy, Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School; Director, and author - Decoding Darkness: The Search for the Genetic Causes of Alzheimer's Disease.
Elizabeth Thompson, Executive Director, The Buckminster Fuller Institute
Jim Tucker, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, University of Virginia Health System, author - Life Before Life: Children's Memories of Previous Lives
Alexander Tsiaras, Founder and CEO of TheVisualMD.com
Deepak Chopra, MD
Everything will be examined from the perspectives of both sages and scientists, with a view to finding common ground. I will be moderator for the symposium.
Come and be enlightened about your emerging future. At the end of the symposium, we will summarize the current understanding of the issues that deeply affect all of us at the core of our being. The proceedings will be published by the Chopra Foundation in various media for distribution to academicians, scientists, and others throughout the world. National media has also been invited to attend. We aim to propel scientific investigation and research in the areas of consciousness.
The Foundation is requesting a gift of $1,995 (in which $1,000 is tax deductible) for general participation. Your contribution will be used for collaborative research on the realization of consciousness, support of other charitable work, and underwrite the program costs. Your participation is valued because of your influence in society and because it's my belief you are deeply interested in these deeper issues of our existence, and will use your circle of influence to spread this message of "advaita".
A
Space is limited so please RSVP as soon as possible if you intend to come.
Phone: Carolyn Rangel at 760-494-1600
Online: www.choprafoundation.org
Email: foundation@chopra.com
As I personally find myself in the autumn of my life, I find myself facing my own mortality with great awe and a deep reverence for the mystery of existence. It's my sincere hope that as we share our sense of wonder, our common understanding will further our insights into the nature of compassion, love, healing and the bond of Being that we all share.
It is my sincere hope that you will join us as a participant and audience member in this exciting event. We will have a unique opportunity to see where the future of science is going.
With warmest regards,
Deepak
Thursday, January 13, 2011
These Are Urgent Times
Sages and Scientists: The Merging of a New Future
Dear friends,
I am very pleased to send you below an announcement for Sages and Scientists, an important and compelling event hosted by our friend Deepak Chopra. For those of us interested in the intersection of mysticism and science, there are few events that bring together such a deep group of researchers and practitioners like those assembled there, including Victor Chan, Stuart Hameroff, James Doty, Duane Elgin and many others. I can still remember studying almost ten years ago the "orchestrated objective reduction" theory that Penrose and Hameroff created to explain how consciousness arises/is (have fun with that one) in the microtubules of the brain. This and many other exciting frontiers of human consciousness research will be explored and debated. I think you'll find this worthy of your attention, I hope to see you there!
Warmly,
Robb
Dear Friends,
Recent advances in science are posing new questions for spirituality:
Are we in the midst of a major paradigm shift in science?
Is there an ultimate reality?
Does consciousness conceive, govern, construct and become the
physical universe?
Is the universe becoming self aware in the human nervous system?
Is the next stage of human development conscious evolution?
Do we have the ability to influence the future evolution of the cosmos?
How does our understanding of consciousness as pure potentiality enhance our capacity for intuition, creativity, conscious choice making, healing, and the awakening of dormant potentials such as non-local communication and non-local sensory experience?
How does our understanding of consciousness also enhance our capacity for total well being (physical, emotional, spiritual, social, community, financial and ecological)?
If you find the above questions intriguing, I would love for you to join me and my colleagues (who I consider Sages and Scientists) at the second annual Chopra Foundation International Symposium: Sages and Scientists—The Merging of a New Future from February 25-27, 2011 at La Costa Resort and Spa (Carlsbad, California).
The speakers include:
Victor Chan, Trustee and founding Director of the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education; co-authored with His Holiness The Dalai Lama Wisdom of Forgiveness: Intimate Conversations and Journeys.
James Doty, M.D., Director and Founder of Project Compassion, Stanford University, inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist
Duane Elgin, MBA and MA, GOI International Peace recipient, internationally recognized visionary speaker and author - The Living Universe
Bernard Haisch, astrophysicist and author - The God Theory
Stuart Hameroff, MD, physician and researcher at the University Medical Center and Center for Consciousness Studies, and co-author with Sir Roger Penrose - Orchestrated Reduction Of Quantum Coherence In Brain Microtubules: A Model For Consciousness?
Mae Wan Ho, Ph. D., Biochemistry, 1993, 1998 Director of The Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) and author - The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms
Menas Kafatos, physicist, Founding Dean, Schmid College of Science, Vice Chancellor for Special Projects, Director of the Center for Excellence in Applied, Fundamental and Computational Science Professor, and author - The Nonlocal Universe and The Conscious Universe
Robert Lanza, M.D., Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, author - Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe
Leonard Mlodinow, Physicist, co-author – The Grand Design
Dean Radin, PhD, Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Psychology at Sonoma State University, and author, The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds
V.S. Ramachandran, MD, PhD, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and Professor with the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University, co-author with Sandra Blakeslee - Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D., evolution biologist, futurist, speaker, and author - Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution
Masami Saionji, Chairperson of Byakko Shinko Kai, The World Peace Prayer Society, The Goi Peace Foundation, author – The Golden Key to Happiness, You Are the Universe, and Vision for the 21st Century
Allan Savory, winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, President and Co Founder of the Savory Institute
Marilyn Schlitz, PhD., President and CEO of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and author - Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life.
Henry Stapp, physicist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, author - Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics
Timothy P. Shriver, Ph.D., Chairman & CEO of Special Olympics
Ian Somerhalder, actor, humanitarian, environmentalist, Ian Somerhalder Foundation
Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy, Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School; Director, and author - Decoding Darkness: The Search for the Genetic Causes of Alzheimer's Disease.
Elizabeth Thompson, Executive Director, The Buckminster Fuller Institute
Jim Tucker, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, University of Virginia Health System, author - Life Before Life: Children's Memories of Previous Lives
Alexander Tsiaras, Founder and CEO of TheVisualMD.com
Deepak Chopra, MD
Everything will be examined from the perspectives of both sages and scientists, with a view to finding common ground. I will be moderator for the symposium.
Come and be enlightened about your emerging future. At the end of the symposium, we will summarize the current understanding of the issues that deeply affect all of us at the core of our being. The proceedings will be published by the Chopra Foundation in various media for distribution to academicians, scientists, and others throughout the world. National media has also been invited to attend. We aim to propel scientific investigation and research in the areas of consciousness.
The Foundation is requesting a gift of $1,995 (in which $1,000 is tax deductible) for general participation. Your contribution will be used for collaborative research on the realization of consciousness, support of other charitable work, and underwrite the program costs. Your participation is valued because of your influence in society and because it's my belief you are deeply interested in these deeper issues of our existence, and will use your circle of influence to spread this message of "advaita".
Accommodations are available at The La Costa Resort and Spa. For reservations, please call (800) 854-5000. When making your reservation, please mention "THE CHOPRA FOUNDATION SAGES AND SCIENTISTS SYMPOSIUM" to get the special rate: $169.00 per night, excluding Resort fees and taxes (Based on availability). In addition to the specified room rates, there will be an Automatic Daily Resort charge of $10, plus California Tourism Assessment Fee (which is currently 0.13%) per room, per night, plus applicable taxes, which are currently 10%.
Space is limited so please RSVP as soon as possible if you intend to come.
Phone: Carolyn Rangel at 760-494-1600
Online: www.choprafoundation.org
Email: foundation@chopra.com
As I personally find myself in the autumn of my life, I find myself facing my own mortality with great awe and a deep reverence for the mystery of existence. It's my sincere hope that as we share our sense of wonder, our common understanding will further our insights into the nature of compassion, love, healing and the bond of Being that we all share.
It is my sincere hope that you will join us as a participant and audience member in this exciting event. We will have a unique opportunity to see where the future of science is going.
With warmest regards,
Deepak
Dear friends,
I am very pleased to send you below an announcement for Sages and Scientists, an important and compelling event hosted by our friend Deepak Chopra. For those of us interested in the intersection of mysticism and science, there are few events that bring together such a deep group of researchers and practitioners like those assembled there, including Victor Chan, Stuart Hameroff, James Doty, Duane Elgin and many others. I can still remember studying almost ten years ago the "orchestrated objective reduction" theory that Penrose and Hameroff created to explain how consciousness arises/is (have fun with that one) in the microtubules of the brain. This and many other exciting frontiers of human consciousness research will be explored and debated. I think you'll find this worthy of your attention, I hope to see you there!
Warmly,
Robb
Dear Friends,
Recent advances in science are posing new questions for spirituality:
Are we in the midst of a major paradigm shift in science?
Is there an ultimate reality?
Does consciousness conceive, govern, construct and become the
physical universe?
Is the universe becoming self aware in the human nervous system?
Is the next stage of human development conscious evolution?
Do we have the ability to influence the future evolution of the cosmos?
How does our understanding of consciousness as pure potentiality enhance our capacity for intuition, creativity, conscious choice making, healing, and the awakening of dormant potentials such as non-local communication and non-local sensory experience?
How does our understanding of consciousness also enhance our capacity for total well being (physical, emotional, spiritual, social, community, financial and ecological)?
If you find the above questions intriguing, I would love for you to join me and my colleagues (who I consider Sages and Scientists) at the second annual Chopra Foundation International Symposium: Sages and Scientists—The Merging of a New Future from February 25-27, 2011 at La Costa Resort and Spa (Carlsbad, California).
The speakers include:
Victor Chan, Trustee and founding Director of the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education; co-authored with His Holiness The Dalai Lama Wisdom of Forgiveness: Intimate Conversations and Journeys.
James Doty, M.D., Director and Founder of Project Compassion, Stanford University, inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist
Duane Elgin, MBA and MA, GOI International Peace recipient, internationally recognized visionary speaker and author - The Living Universe
Bernard Haisch, astrophysicist and author - The God Theory
Stuart Hameroff, MD, physician and researcher at the University Medical Center and Center for Consciousness Studies, and co-author with Sir Roger Penrose - Orchestrated Reduction Of Quantum Coherence In Brain Microtubules: A Model For Consciousness?
Mae Wan Ho, Ph. D., Biochemistry, 1993, 1998 Director of The Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) and author - The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms
Menas Kafatos, physicist, Founding Dean, Schmid College of Science, Vice Chancellor for Special Projects, Director of the Center for Excellence in Applied, Fundamental and Computational Science Professor, and author - The Nonlocal Universe and The Conscious Universe
Robert Lanza, M.D., Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, author - Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe
Leonard Mlodinow, Physicist, co-author – The Grand Design
Dean Radin, PhD, Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Psychology at Sonoma State University, and author, The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds
V.S. Ramachandran, MD, PhD, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and Professor with the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University, co-author with Sandra Blakeslee - Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D., evolution biologist, futurist, speaker, and author - Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution
Masami Saionji, Chairperson of Byakko Shinko Kai, The World Peace Prayer Society, The Goi Peace Foundation, author – The Golden Key to Happiness, You Are the Universe, and Vision for the 21st Century
Allan Savory, winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, President and Co Founder of the Savory Institute
Marilyn Schlitz, PhD., President and CEO of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and author - Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life.
Henry Stapp, physicist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, author - Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics
Timothy P. Shriver, Ph.D., Chairman & CEO of Special Olympics
Ian Somerhalder, actor, humanitarian, environmentalist, Ian Somerhalder Foundation
Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy, Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School; Director, and author - Decoding Darkness: The Search for the Genetic Causes of Alzheimer's Disease.
Elizabeth Thompson, Executive Director, The Buckminster Fuller Institute
Jim Tucker, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, University of Virginia Health System, author - Life Before Life: Children's Memories of Previous Lives
Alexander Tsiaras, Founder and CEO of TheVisualMD.com
Deepak Chopra, MD
Everything will be examined from the perspectives of both sages and scientists, with a view to finding common ground. I will be moderator for the symposium.
Come and be enlightened about your emerging future. At the end of the symposium, we will summarize the current understanding of the issues that deeply affect all of us at the core of our being. The proceedings will be published by the Chopra Foundation in various media for distribution to academicians, scientists, and others throughout the world. National media has also been invited to attend. We aim to propel scientific investigation and research in the areas of consciousness.
The Foundation is requesting a gift of $1,995 (in which $1,000 is tax deductible) for general participation. Your contribution will be used for collaborative research on the realization of consciousness, support of other charitable work, and underwrite the program costs. Your participation is valued because of your influence in society and because it's my belief you are deeply interested in these deeper issues of our existence, and will use your circle of influence to spread this message of "advaita".
Accommodations are available at The La Costa Resort and Spa. For reservations, please call (800) 854-5000. When making your reservation, please mention "THE CHOPRA FOUNDATION SAGES AND SCIENTISTS SYMPOSIUM" to get the special rate: $169.00 per night, excluding Resort fees and taxes (Based on availability). In addition to the specified room rates, there will be an Automatic Daily Resort charge of $10, plus California Tourism Assessment Fee (which is currently 0.13%) per room, per night, plus applicable taxes, which are currently 10%.
Space is limited so please RSVP as soon as possible if you intend to come.
Phone: Carolyn Rangel at 760-494-1600
Online: www.choprafoundation.org
Email: foundation@chopra.com
As I personally find myself in the autumn of my life, I find myself facing my own mortality with great awe and a deep reverence for the mystery of existence. It's my sincere hope that as we share our sense of wonder, our common understanding will further our insights into the nature of compassion, love, healing and the bond of Being that we all share.
It is my sincere hope that you will join us as a participant and audience member in this exciting event. We will have a unique opportunity to see where the future of science is going.
With warmest regards,
Deepak
Monday, January 10, 2011
Right Knowledge Leads to Right Action
Dear Avinash,
Urban aggragation, Mega cities, nations, consumerism , individualism etc. are the concepts propagated bt westurn culture. Our culture talks about Vasudev Kutumka, Atithi devobhav, Darindra Narayan, love and respect to all living beings including plants etc. frugality in consumption. Zero wastage of anything is ingrained. Emphasis on unity of all being. Jeevatma is one etc. We had distributed industry based on skill etc. Industrialisation based on mechnisation has fueled concentration of wealth in microscopic minority. We had custodian kind of approach for weathly. CSR is inbuilt in our grains. Rahiman be nar mar chuke jo kahi magan jai, unse pahle be mue jin muh niksat nai. We do not have culture of returning anybody empty handed from our door signifying distributive nature.
Spiritualism may be again the domail of microscoping minority where as culture is for the majority & have wider influence. We are talking perhaps the same thing possibly in different words.
regards
Manoj Kumar Sharma
S.E.(P), NDZ-3, CPWD,
--- On Mon, 10/1/11, avinash sahay wrote
Dear Manoj,
I'm unable to agree that greed for endless profits are in any way a "Western" product.It is endemic to the present stage of evolution of mankind where the mind has not internalized the fact of love,eternal brotherhood and interconnectedness of all creation.The mind is caught up in the Separateness of the body without understanding the working of the universal Spirit which manifests,in myriad ways,in its creation.
Ofcourse, there are very powerful forces in the West, as elsewhere,which ensure that mankind remains overwhelmed by the forces of Separateness which comes in many colours. Foremost among this is Nationalism and Religion. Infact there is an extremely sophisticated, and very,very subtle,Hate Industry(read Secret Services of powerful nations) which will ensure that mankind remains caught up in Separateness and Hate.
That is why Knowledge of who we essentially are is our only Saviour. When we Know our real Selves, we'll readily realize that Love, universal brotherhood and interconnectedness of all Creation is the ONLY reality. The rest is Maya and utter delusion.With Right Knowledge, Right action is just a small step away
Best regards,
Avinash
http://poshaning.blogspot.com/
From: manoj sharma
Dear Avinash,
West is at the initial stage of spiritual development. They want to increase their material possesions. May be when see the futility of it, they may renounce it. If you westurn kind of devolopement, its not sustainabkle in the long term . You look at it in any way, analyse it in any way. The Hot Flat and Crowed World by Thomas Friedman also talks on this lines. We are trying to enrich at the cost of the other specicies from animal kingdom or from vegetation kingdom etc. We may have to learn to balance it.
regards
Manoj Kumar Sharma
--- On Wed, 5/1/11, avinash sahay wrote:
From: avinash sahay
Subject: [IT-BHU-BatchOf1982] Freedom from Greed and Want
Friends,
This article by Dr Vandana Shiva, physicist and ecologist, is a must read.This civilization is premised on the spirit of the machine which must move and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel. And, now Globalisation has spread the virus of power and greed based on the power of the machine worldwide and we are drunk with the paranoia of power and endless profits.
This is obviously a dreadful situation. And the irony is that we are all complicit in this crime as the notion of Inequality is embedded in all our blood and sinews. That's precisely why there is so much of violence, disease and suffering all around where 1% of the super elites own more wealth than 90% of the denizens below.
I want to expand Dr Shiva's thesis by postulating that when we are bold enough to turn upside down this paradigm of Inequality that courses through our veins right now, we would have begun the processof regeneration, not only of ourselves but of this planet.
Let us not be deluded by the false notion that we don't matter in the larger scheme of things.We have the power to change everything but, first,we have to offer ourselves in the transormational pyre.
Forests and freedom
2011 is the year of the forest. It is also Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary. Forests were central to Tagore’s works and institution building as they have been for India’s creative expressions through the centuries.
As Tagore wrote in The Religion of the Forests, the ideal of perfection preached by the forest dwellers of ancient India runs through the heart of our classical literature and still dominates our mind. The forests are sources of water as the women of Chipko showed in the 1970s. They are the storehouse of biodiversity.
The biodiversity of the forest teaches us lessons of democracy, of leaving space for others while drawing sustenance from the common web of life. (In his essay Tapovan, Tagore writes: “Indian civilisation has been distinctive in locating its source of regeneration, material and intellectual, in the forest, not the city. India’s best ideas have come where man was in communion with trees and rivers and lakes, away from the crowds. The peace of the forest has helped the intellectual evolution of man. The culture of the forest has fuelled culture of Indian society. The culture that has arisen from the forest has been influenced by the diverse processes of renewal of life, which are always at play in the forest, varying from species to species, from season to season, in sight and sound and smell. The unifying principle of life in diversity, of democratic pluralism, thus became the principle of Indian civilisation.”
It is this “unity in diversity” that is the basis of both ecological sustainability and democracy. Diversity without unity becomes the source of conflict and contest. Uniformity without diversity becomes the ground for external control. This is true of both nature and culture.
In Tagore’s writings, the forest was not just the source of knowledge and freedom it was the source of beauty and joy, of art and aesthetics, of harmony and perfection. It symbolised the universe. In The Religion of the Forest, the poet says our attitude of mind “guides our attempts to establish relations with the universe either by conquest or by union, either through the cultivation of power or through that of sympathy”.
The forest teaches us union and compassion. For Tagore, our relationship with the forest and nature is a relationship that allows us to experience our humanity. Humans and nature are not separate we are one.
“In our dreams, nature stands in her own right, proving that she has her great function, to impart the peace of the eternal to human emotions”.
It is this permanence, this peace, this joy of living not by conquest and domination, but by co-existence and cooperation that is at the heart of a forest culture. The forest also teaches us “enoughness” as equity, enjoying the gifts of nature without exploitation and accumulation. In Religion of the Forest, Tagore quotes from the ancient texts, written in the forest: “Ishavasyam idam sarvam yat kinch jagatyam jagat
Yena tyak tena bhunjitha
Ma gradha kasyasvit dhanam”
(Know all that moves in this moving world as enveloped by god, and find enjoyment through renunciation not through greed of possession)
No species in a forest appropriates the share of other species to nutrients, water, and the sun’s energy. Every species sustains itself in mutual cooperation with others. This is Earth Democracy.
The end of consumerism and accumulation is the beginning of the joy of living. That is why the tribals of contemporary India from Kalinganagar to Niyamgiri and Bastar are resisting leaving their forest homes and abandoning their forest culture. The conflict between greed and compassion, conquest and cooperation, violence and harmony that Tagore wrote about continues today. And it is the forest which can show us the way beyond this conflict by reconnecting to nature and finding sources for own freedom. For the powerful it means freedom from greed. For the excluded it means freedom from want, from hunger and thirst, from dispossession and disposability.
Diversity is at the heart of the living systems of Gaia, including her forests. Tagore defined monocultures as the “exaggeration of sameness” and he wrote: “Life finds its truth and beauty not in exaggeration of sameness, but in harmony.”
Harmony in diversity is the nature of the forest, whereas monotonous sameness is the nature of industrialism based on a mechanical worldview. This is what Tagore saw as the difference between the West and India.
“The civilisation of the West has in it the spirit of the machine which must move; and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel, keeping up the stream power” (The Spirit of Freedom).
Globalisation has spread the civilisation based on power and greed and the spirit of the machine worldwide. And the global spread of the “passion of profit-making and the drunkenness of power” is spreading fear of freedoms.
A civilisation based on power and greed is a civilisation based on fear and violence.
“The people who have sacrificed their souls to the passion of profit making and the drunkenness of power are constantly pursued by phantoms of panic and suspicion, and therefore they are ruthless. They are morally incapable of allowing freedom to others” (The Spirit of Freedom).
Greed and accumulation must lead to slavery.
Today the rule of money and greed dominates our society, economy and politics. The culture of conquest is invading into our tribal lands and forests through mining of iron-ore, bauxite and coal.
Every forest area has become a war zone. Every tribal is defined as a “Maoist” by a militarised corporate state appropriating the land and natural resources of the tribals. And every defender of the rights of the forest and forest dwellers is being treated as a criminal. This is the context of Dr Binayak Sen’s life sentence.
If India is to survive ecologically and politically, if India has to stay democratic, if Indian citizen is to be guaranteed, we need to give up the road of conquest and destruction and take the road of union and conservation, we need to cultivate peace and compassion instead of power and violence.
We need to turn, once again, to the forest as our perennial teachers of peace and freedom, of diversity and democracy.
* Dr Vandana Shiva is the executive director of Navdanya Trust
.
Urban aggragation, Mega cities, nations, consumerism , individualism etc. are the concepts propagated bt westurn culture. Our culture talks about Vasudev Kutumka, Atithi devobhav, Darindra Narayan, love and respect to all living beings including plants etc. frugality in consumption. Zero wastage of anything is ingrained. Emphasis on unity of all being. Jeevatma is one etc. We had distributed industry based on skill etc. Industrialisation based on mechnisation has fueled concentration of wealth in microscopic minority. We had custodian kind of approach for weathly. CSR is inbuilt in our grains. Rahiman be nar mar chuke jo kahi magan jai, unse pahle be mue jin muh niksat nai. We do not have culture of returning anybody empty handed from our door signifying distributive nature.
Spiritualism may be again the domail of microscoping minority where as culture is for the majority & have wider influence. We are talking perhaps the same thing possibly in different words.
regards
Manoj Kumar Sharma
S.E.(P), NDZ-3, CPWD,
--- On Mon, 10/1/11, avinash sahay
Dear Manoj,
I'm unable to agree that greed for endless profits are in any way a "Western" product.It is endemic to the present stage of evolution of mankind where the mind has not internalized the fact of love,eternal brotherhood and interconnectedness of all creation.The mind is caught up in the Separateness of the body without understanding the working of the universal Spirit which manifests,in myriad ways,in its creation.
Ofcourse, there are very powerful forces in the West, as elsewhere,which ensure that mankind remains overwhelmed by the forces of Separateness which comes in many colours. Foremost among this is Nationalism and Religion. Infact there is an extremely sophisticated, and very,very subtle,Hate Industry(read Secret Services of powerful nations) which will ensure that mankind remains caught up in Separateness and Hate.
That is why Knowledge of who we essentially are is our only Saviour. When we Know our real Selves, we'll readily realize that Love, universal brotherhood and interconnectedness of all Creation is the ONLY reality. The rest is Maya and utter delusion.With Right Knowledge, Right action is just a small step away
Best regards,
Avinash
http://poshaning.blogspot.com/
From: manoj sharma
Dear Avinash,
West is at the initial stage of spiritual development. They want to increase their material possesions. May be when see the futility of it, they may renounce it. If you westurn kind of devolopement, its not sustainabkle in the long term . You look at it in any way, analyse it in any way. The Hot Flat and Crowed World by Thomas Friedman also talks on this lines. We are trying to enrich at the cost of the other specicies from animal kingdom or from vegetation kingdom etc. We may have to learn to balance it.
regards
Manoj Kumar Sharma
--- On Wed, 5/1/11, avinash sahay
From: avinash sahay
Subject: [IT-BHU-BatchOf1982] Freedom from Greed and Want
Friends,
This article by Dr Vandana Shiva, physicist and ecologist, is a must read.This civilization is premised on the spirit of the machine which must move and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel. And, now Globalisation has spread the virus of power and greed based on the power of the machine worldwide and we are drunk with the paranoia of power and endless profits.
This is obviously a dreadful situation. And the irony is that we are all complicit in this crime as the notion of Inequality is embedded in all our blood and sinews. That's precisely why there is so much of violence, disease and suffering all around where 1% of the super elites own more wealth than 90% of the denizens below.
I want to expand Dr Shiva's thesis by postulating that when we are bold enough to turn upside down this paradigm of Inequality that courses through our veins right now, we would have begun the processof regeneration, not only of ourselves but of this planet.
Let us not be deluded by the false notion that we don't matter in the larger scheme of things.We have the power to change everything but, first,we have to offer ourselves in the transormational pyre.
Forests and freedom
2011 is the year of the forest. It is also Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary. Forests were central to Tagore’s works and institution building as they have been for India’s creative expressions through the centuries.
As Tagore wrote in The Religion of the Forests, the ideal of perfection preached by the forest dwellers of ancient India runs through the heart of our classical literature and still dominates our mind. The forests are sources of water as the women of Chipko showed in the 1970s. They are the storehouse of biodiversity.
The biodiversity of the forest teaches us lessons of democracy, of leaving space for others while drawing sustenance from the common web of life. (In his essay Tapovan, Tagore writes: “Indian civilisation has been distinctive in locating its source of regeneration, material and intellectual, in the forest, not the city. India’s best ideas have come where man was in communion with trees and rivers and lakes, away from the crowds. The peace of the forest has helped the intellectual evolution of man. The culture of the forest has fuelled culture of Indian society. The culture that has arisen from the forest has been influenced by the diverse processes of renewal of life, which are always at play in the forest, varying from species to species, from season to season, in sight and sound and smell. The unifying principle of life in diversity, of democratic pluralism, thus became the principle of Indian civilisation.”
It is this “unity in diversity” that is the basis of both ecological sustainability and democracy. Diversity without unity becomes the source of conflict and contest. Uniformity without diversity becomes the ground for external control. This is true of both nature and culture.
In Tagore’s writings, the forest was not just the source of knowledge and freedom it was the source of beauty and joy, of art and aesthetics, of harmony and perfection. It symbolised the universe. In The Religion of the Forest, the poet says our attitude of mind “guides our attempts to establish relations with the universe either by conquest or by union, either through the cultivation of power or through that of sympathy”.
The forest teaches us union and compassion. For Tagore, our relationship with the forest and nature is a relationship that allows us to experience our humanity. Humans and nature are not separate we are one.
“In our dreams, nature stands in her own right, proving that she has her great function, to impart the peace of the eternal to human emotions”.
It is this permanence, this peace, this joy of living not by conquest and domination, but by co-existence and cooperation that is at the heart of a forest culture. The forest also teaches us “enoughness” as equity, enjoying the gifts of nature without exploitation and accumulation. In Religion of the Forest, Tagore quotes from the ancient texts, written in the forest: “Ishavasyam idam sarvam yat kinch jagatyam jagat
Yena tyak tena bhunjitha
Ma gradha kasyasvit dhanam”
(Know all that moves in this moving world as enveloped by god, and find enjoyment through renunciation not through greed of possession)
No species in a forest appropriates the share of other species to nutrients, water, and the sun’s energy. Every species sustains itself in mutual cooperation with others. This is Earth Democracy.
The end of consumerism and accumulation is the beginning of the joy of living. That is why the tribals of contemporary India from Kalinganagar to Niyamgiri and Bastar are resisting leaving their forest homes and abandoning their forest culture. The conflict between greed and compassion, conquest and cooperation, violence and harmony that Tagore wrote about continues today. And it is the forest which can show us the way beyond this conflict by reconnecting to nature and finding sources for own freedom. For the powerful it means freedom from greed. For the excluded it means freedom from want, from hunger and thirst, from dispossession and disposability.
Diversity is at the heart of the living systems of Gaia, including her forests. Tagore defined monocultures as the “exaggeration of sameness” and he wrote: “Life finds its truth and beauty not in exaggeration of sameness, but in harmony.”
Harmony in diversity is the nature of the forest, whereas monotonous sameness is the nature of industrialism based on a mechanical worldview. This is what Tagore saw as the difference between the West and India.
“The civilisation of the West has in it the spirit of the machine which must move; and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel, keeping up the stream power” (The Spirit of Freedom).
Globalisation has spread the civilisation based on power and greed and the spirit of the machine worldwide. And the global spread of the “passion of profit-making and the drunkenness of power” is spreading fear of freedoms.
A civilisation based on power and greed is a civilisation based on fear and violence.
“The people who have sacrificed their souls to the passion of profit making and the drunkenness of power are constantly pursued by phantoms of panic and suspicion, and therefore they are ruthless. They are morally incapable of allowing freedom to others” (The Spirit of Freedom).
Greed and accumulation must lead to slavery.
Today the rule of money and greed dominates our society, economy and politics. The culture of conquest is invading into our tribal lands and forests through mining of iron-ore, bauxite and coal.
Every forest area has become a war zone. Every tribal is defined as a “Maoist” by a militarised corporate state appropriating the land and natural resources of the tribals. And every defender of the rights of the forest and forest dwellers is being treated as a criminal. This is the context of Dr Binayak Sen’s life sentence.
If India is to survive ecologically and politically, if India has to stay democratic, if Indian citizen is to be guaranteed, we need to give up the road of conquest and destruction and take the road of union and conservation, we need to cultivate peace and compassion instead of power and violence.
We need to turn, once again, to the forest as our perennial teachers of peace and freedom, of diversity and democracy.
* Dr Vandana Shiva is the executive director of Navdanya Trust
.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
We Have Never Been Modern
Friends,
You may like to check out this exciting interview with Bruno Latour, whose provocative book is the Subject of this story.
The point that this scholar seems to be making is this.Science and Technology likes to think of itself as being rational, objective,separate and universal.But a study of the history of Science shows that it is deeply connected to the rest of cultures and the rest of politics.You may also like to check out J.D.Bernal's seminal work Science in History for this proposition.That seems to be obvious given the fact that everything operates in a particular social, political and economic context. The bulk of the money spent on scientific research goes in the areas where Corporates stand to gain endless profits, such as in armaments relating to war or in the pharmaceutical industry, both of which have very little correlation to the well being of the common people at large.
The stupendous success of science and technology of the last hundred years has certainly revolutionized the lives of people at large. But, thanks to the social, political and economic context in which Science and Technology operates, the majority of the poor are yet to reap its benefits. For example, solar energy can revolutionize life on this planet,but we are still stuck with fossil fuels because fast bucks lies in peddaling the latter.
Just like the popular media and organized religion, Science and Technology has also been tied to the apron strings of the vested interests. That is okay but let not Science,as it is practised,pretend that it represents"progress" when, in fact,it is only the handmaiden of the super elites.
Best regards,
Avinash
http://poshaning.blogspot.com/
OPINION » INTERVIEW
January 4, 2011
‘I would define politics as the composition of a common world'
SHARE · COMMENT · PRINT · T+
BRUND LATOUR: 'On governments the question becomes complicated becuase we are now talking about the politics of Nature and that's a rather new quandary. Photo: Denis Rouvre
BRUND LATOUR: 'On governments the question becomes complicated becuase we are now talking about the politics of Nature and that's a rather new quandary. Photo: Denis Rouvre
Interview with Bruno Latour, thinker and social anthropologist.
Bruno Latour is one of France's most innovative, provocative and stimulating thinkers and social anthropologists. Given French Cartesian orthodoxy, it is not surprising that he is more appreciated in the Anglo-Saxon world, where his books such as “We Have Never Been Modern” (1993) are better known than in his native France. Jon Thompson, the publisher and chief editor of Polity Press, London, described him as France's most original and interesting thinker and in 2007, Bruno Latour was listed as the 10th most-cited intellectual in the humanities and social sciences by The Times Higher Education Guide.
Mr. Latour's seminal work has been in the field of Science and Technology Studies. With his “Actor Network Theory” he has advanced the notion that the objects of scientific study are socially constructed within the laboratory. Thus scientific activity is viewed as a system of beliefs, oral traditions and culturally specific practices, reconstructed, not as a procedure or as a set of principles but as a culture. Mr. Latour will be in India this week conducting workshops in New Delhi. In this exclusive interview with TheHindu's Vaiju Naravane in Paris, he discusses the new challenges facing humanity and of India's role in the climate debate.
I wish to start this interview with a discussion of one of your most famous books — “We Have Never Been Modern”. Could you explain what you meant by that? What made you write this book and where do you go now?
The Great Narrative of the Western definition of the world was based on a certain idea of Science and Technology and once we began, 30 or 40 years ago to study the practices of the making of science and technology, we realised that this definition could not sustain the old idea of western rationality taking, in a way the place of archaic attachment to the past.
The Great Narrative was based on the idea of Science which was largely mythical. Science has always been linked to the other cultures of the Western World, although it has always described itself as apart — separated from politics, values, religion and so on. But when you begin to work on a history of Science — Galileo, Newton, Pasteur, Einstein, Kantor or whoever, you find on the contrary, that things have never been severed, that there has always been a continuous re-connection with the rest of cultures and especially with the rest of politics.
So until the end of the 20th century the western Great Narrative was caught in a contradiction between its practice which was constant attachment between Science and Culture and its official description of itself as being rational, objective, separate, as being universal in that it operated everywhere in the same way. Now what is interesting from the Indian perspective is that the whole discourse about modernising or not modernising, about progressing or not progressing, between being archaic or not, was based on the baseline shibboleth provided by this idea of modernisation. Now if you change this baseline and if modernisation is not what has been going on in the so-called West, the “we” of We Have Never Been Modern, then it opens up many new conversations between the former modernising and the former modernised. And of course this fits very well with the large body of literature, mainly from India on post-colonial studies.
I would like to refer to a recent essay of yours in which you say and I quote: “… the meteorologists don't agree with the chemists; they are talking about cyclical fluctuations unrelated to human activity. … The horizons, the stakes, the time frames, the actors — none of these is commensurable and yet, there they are, caught up in the same story…” So what is going on in this debate over climate change and what happens to the role of governments?
On governments the question becomes complicated because we are now talking about the politics of Nature and that's a rather new quandary. Nature was not supposed to be part of anything — it was supposed to be out there. Not in the ancient tradition where there was no separation to begin with between Nature and society but now, when we have returned to a most interesting position, where Nature is back in politics. However, Nature is not able to unify the discussion so far because people are entering into controversies about Nature. And these controversies cannot be quashed by saying — you are not a scientist or you are not the government or from the West or whatever, and this is a very new arena for politics as well as for scientists and citizens. And that is the new area I am trying to map, so to speak. But no one has answers for that. No one has ever had to bring the climate into parliament! We are struggling collectively and India again is very important here because of its new role in Cancun and the climate debate.
In New Delhi you are holding talks with ecologists, engineers who develop digital technologies with social science applications and those engaged in both the climate change and globalisation debate from the emerging countries' point of view. Where do you think the meeting ground lies?
The responses have to be issue-specific, of course. But the first thing is to have a meeting ground which is defined neither by the need of Nature, as if Nature was able to exist universally and outside politics, nor by defining it only by market forces, although market forces have to be defined and organised as well. So it's more of a negative common ground, I would say. Do we agree that the problem cannot be solved by other than composing a common world? The composition of a common world would be the definition of politics.
You are one of France's most original, stimulating and provocative thinkers and yet, you are much better known and better appreciated outside France. Do you think this has to do with France's rigid Cartesian mindset and orthodoxy?
In France there is a specific reason. Science and Modernisation have been so entangled from the time of the French Revolution that it is difficult in here to reopen this question of universality, science, colonial expansion and so on without entering into many, many delicate and “hot” issues about identities. So the French identity has largely been based on a certain idea of Science and expansion and all these questions are now being debated and put into jeopardy. Everything here hinges on a certain idea of science and it's an idea of science that I am tackling and they don't like that too much! Of course there is the same discourse in India where attacking Science and Technology is considered reactionary and so forth. So the idea that there is no other alternative, that is, if you do not talk about Science and Technology in a “progress” mode, you are a reactionary is the same everywhere. In India, France or America, the same temptation is there. That is now changing because of the ecology crisis.
You have been working on the idea of eco-theology. Could you talk about that?
Given that we have to look for alternatives to the politics of Nature, I was interested in seeing if there is in the old tradition of Christian theology – I don't know enough about Indian tradition — about respect for Creation. Not about Nature but respect for Creation. And it happens that in the Orthodox Christian tradition of Central and Eastern Europe there is a large body of theological work around the question of Creation. My interest is that there is a disconnect between the science and the size of the threat that people mention about Nature, the planet and the climate and the emotion that this triggers. So we are supposed to be extremely frightened people, but despite that we appear to sleep pretty well. So either the threat is not that strong, or we have not built the kind of emotion we have built for war, for religious conflict and all sorts of other issues which make us very emotive.
Or that our fright is so great that it has numbed us …
That's also a very clear possibility and that's not a very good attitude either, nonetheless. That's why I'm interested in seeing and checking if there is in religious tradition where you fathom this question about emotion about Creation. And again, India is a very interesting place for that.
You may like to check out this exciting interview with Bruno Latour, whose provocative book is the Subject of this story.
The point that this scholar seems to be making is this.Science and Technology likes to think of itself as being rational, objective,separate and universal.But a study of the history of Science shows that it is deeply connected to the rest of cultures and the rest of politics.You may also like to check out J.D.Bernal's seminal work Science in History for this proposition.That seems to be obvious given the fact that everything operates in a particular social, political and economic context. The bulk of the money spent on scientific research goes in the areas where Corporates stand to gain endless profits, such as in armaments relating to war or in the pharmaceutical industry, both of which have very little correlation to the well being of the common people at large.
The stupendous success of science and technology of the last hundred years has certainly revolutionized the lives of people at large. But, thanks to the social, political and economic context in which Science and Technology operates, the majority of the poor are yet to reap its benefits. For example, solar energy can revolutionize life on this planet,but we are still stuck with fossil fuels because fast bucks lies in peddaling the latter.
Just like the popular media and organized religion, Science and Technology has also been tied to the apron strings of the vested interests. That is okay but let not Science,as it is practised,pretend that it represents"progress" when, in fact,it is only the handmaiden of the super elites.
Best regards,
Avinash
http://poshaning.blogspot.com/
OPINION » INTERVIEW
January 4, 2011
‘I would define politics as the composition of a common world'
SHARE · COMMENT · PRINT · T+
BRUND LATOUR: 'On governments the question becomes complicated becuase we are now talking about the politics of Nature and that's a rather new quandary. Photo: Denis Rouvre
BRUND LATOUR: 'On governments the question becomes complicated becuase we are now talking about the politics of Nature and that's a rather new quandary. Photo: Denis Rouvre
Interview with Bruno Latour, thinker and social anthropologist.
Bruno Latour is one of France's most innovative, provocative and stimulating thinkers and social anthropologists. Given French Cartesian orthodoxy, it is not surprising that he is more appreciated in the Anglo-Saxon world, where his books such as “We Have Never Been Modern” (1993) are better known than in his native France. Jon Thompson, the publisher and chief editor of Polity Press, London, described him as France's most original and interesting thinker and in 2007, Bruno Latour was listed as the 10th most-cited intellectual in the humanities and social sciences by The Times Higher Education Guide.
Mr. Latour's seminal work has been in the field of Science and Technology Studies. With his “Actor Network Theory” he has advanced the notion that the objects of scientific study are socially constructed within the laboratory. Thus scientific activity is viewed as a system of beliefs, oral traditions and culturally specific practices, reconstructed, not as a procedure or as a set of principles but as a culture. Mr. Latour will be in India this week conducting workshops in New Delhi. In this exclusive interview with TheHindu's Vaiju Naravane in Paris, he discusses the new challenges facing humanity and of India's role in the climate debate.
I wish to start this interview with a discussion of one of your most famous books — “We Have Never Been Modern”. Could you explain what you meant by that? What made you write this book and where do you go now?
The Great Narrative of the Western definition of the world was based on a certain idea of Science and Technology and once we began, 30 or 40 years ago to study the practices of the making of science and technology, we realised that this definition could not sustain the old idea of western rationality taking, in a way the place of archaic attachment to the past.
The Great Narrative was based on the idea of Science which was largely mythical. Science has always been linked to the other cultures of the Western World, although it has always described itself as apart — separated from politics, values, religion and so on. But when you begin to work on a history of Science — Galileo, Newton, Pasteur, Einstein, Kantor or whoever, you find on the contrary, that things have never been severed, that there has always been a continuous re-connection with the rest of cultures and especially with the rest of politics.
So until the end of the 20th century the western Great Narrative was caught in a contradiction between its practice which was constant attachment between Science and Culture and its official description of itself as being rational, objective, separate, as being universal in that it operated everywhere in the same way. Now what is interesting from the Indian perspective is that the whole discourse about modernising or not modernising, about progressing or not progressing, between being archaic or not, was based on the baseline shibboleth provided by this idea of modernisation. Now if you change this baseline and if modernisation is not what has been going on in the so-called West, the “we” of We Have Never Been Modern, then it opens up many new conversations between the former modernising and the former modernised. And of course this fits very well with the large body of literature, mainly from India on post-colonial studies.
I would like to refer to a recent essay of yours in which you say and I quote: “… the meteorologists don't agree with the chemists; they are talking about cyclical fluctuations unrelated to human activity. … The horizons, the stakes, the time frames, the actors — none of these is commensurable and yet, there they are, caught up in the same story…” So what is going on in this debate over climate change and what happens to the role of governments?
On governments the question becomes complicated because we are now talking about the politics of Nature and that's a rather new quandary. Nature was not supposed to be part of anything — it was supposed to be out there. Not in the ancient tradition where there was no separation to begin with between Nature and society but now, when we have returned to a most interesting position, where Nature is back in politics. However, Nature is not able to unify the discussion so far because people are entering into controversies about Nature. And these controversies cannot be quashed by saying — you are not a scientist or you are not the government or from the West or whatever, and this is a very new arena for politics as well as for scientists and citizens. And that is the new area I am trying to map, so to speak. But no one has answers for that. No one has ever had to bring the climate into parliament! We are struggling collectively and India again is very important here because of its new role in Cancun and the climate debate.
In New Delhi you are holding talks with ecologists, engineers who develop digital technologies with social science applications and those engaged in both the climate change and globalisation debate from the emerging countries' point of view. Where do you think the meeting ground lies?
The responses have to be issue-specific, of course. But the first thing is to have a meeting ground which is defined neither by the need of Nature, as if Nature was able to exist universally and outside politics, nor by defining it only by market forces, although market forces have to be defined and organised as well. So it's more of a negative common ground, I would say. Do we agree that the problem cannot be solved by other than composing a common world? The composition of a common world would be the definition of politics.
You are one of France's most original, stimulating and provocative thinkers and yet, you are much better known and better appreciated outside France. Do you think this has to do with France's rigid Cartesian mindset and orthodoxy?
In France there is a specific reason. Science and Modernisation have been so entangled from the time of the French Revolution that it is difficult in here to reopen this question of universality, science, colonial expansion and so on without entering into many, many delicate and “hot” issues about identities. So the French identity has largely been based on a certain idea of Science and expansion and all these questions are now being debated and put into jeopardy. Everything here hinges on a certain idea of science and it's an idea of science that I am tackling and they don't like that too much! Of course there is the same discourse in India where attacking Science and Technology is considered reactionary and so forth. So the idea that there is no other alternative, that is, if you do not talk about Science and Technology in a “progress” mode, you are a reactionary is the same everywhere. In India, France or America, the same temptation is there. That is now changing because of the ecology crisis.
You have been working on the idea of eco-theology. Could you talk about that?
Given that we have to look for alternatives to the politics of Nature, I was interested in seeing if there is in the old tradition of Christian theology – I don't know enough about Indian tradition — about respect for Creation. Not about Nature but respect for Creation. And it happens that in the Orthodox Christian tradition of Central and Eastern Europe there is a large body of theological work around the question of Creation. My interest is that there is a disconnect between the science and the size of the threat that people mention about Nature, the planet and the climate and the emotion that this triggers. So we are supposed to be extremely frightened people, but despite that we appear to sleep pretty well. So either the threat is not that strong, or we have not built the kind of emotion we have built for war, for religious conflict and all sorts of other issues which make us very emotive.
Or that our fright is so great that it has numbed us …
That's also a very clear possibility and that's not a very good attitude either, nonetheless. That's why I'm interested in seeing and checking if there is in religious tradition where you fathom this question about emotion about Creation. And again, India is a very interesting place for that.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Freedom from Greed and Freedom from Want
Wed, January 5, 2011 11:48:51 AM[itbhuchn] Freedom from Greed and Want
From: avinash sahayView Contact
To: IT BHU
Cc: itbhu chennai; Avinash K. Sahay ; Atul Pranay ; Devashish Roy Choudhury ; Anuradha Mukherjee ; Durga Charan Dash ... more
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friends,
This article by Dr Vandana Shiva, physicist and ecologist, is a must read.This civilization is premised on the spirit of the machine which must move and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel. And, now Globalisation has spread the virus of power and greed based on the power of the machine worldwide and we are drunk with the paranoia of power and endless profits.
This is obviously a dreadful situation. And the irony is that we are all complicit in this crime as the notion of Inequality is embedded in all our blood and sinews. That's precisely why there is so much of violence, disease and suffering all around where 1% of the super elites own more wealth than 90% of the denizens below.
I want to expand Dr Shiva's thesis by postulating that when we are bold enough to turn upside down this paradigm of Inequality that courses through our veins right now, we would have begun the processof regeneration, not only of ourselves but of this planet.
Let us not be deluded by the false notion that we don't matter in the larger scheme of things.We have the power to change everything but, first,we have to offer ourselves in the transormational pyre.
Forests and freedom
2011 is the year of the forest. It is also Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary. Forests were central to Tagore’s works and institution building as they have been for India’s creative expressions through the centuries.
As Tagore wrote in The Religion of the Forests, the ideal of perfection preached by the forest dwellers of ancient India runs through the heart of our classical literature and still dominates our mind. The forests are sources of water as the women of Chipko showed in the 1970s. They are the storehouse of biodiversity.
The biodiversity of the forest teaches us lessons of democracy, of leaving space for others while drawing sustenance from the common web of life. (In his essay Tapovan, Tagore writes: “Indian civilisation has been distinctive in locating its source of regeneration, material and intellectual, in the forest, not the city. India’s best ideas have come where man was in communion with trees and rivers and lakes, away from the crowds. The peace of the forest has helped the intellectual evolution of man. The culture of the forest has fuelled culture of Indian society. The culture that has arisen from the forest has been influenced by the diverse processes of renewal of life, which are always at play in the forest, varying from species to species, from season to season, in sight and sound and smell. The unifying principle of life in diversity, of democratic pluralism, thus became the principle of Indian civilisation.”
It is this “unity in diversity” that is the basis of both ecological sustainability and democracy. Diversity without unity becomes the source of conflict and contest. Uniformity without diversity becomes the ground for external control. This is true of both nature and culture.
In Tagore’s writings, the forest was not just the source of knowledge and freedom it was the source of beauty and joy, of art and aesthetics, of harmony and perfection. It symbolised the universe. In The Religion of the Forest, the poet says our attitude of mind “guides our attempts to establish relations with the universe either by conquest or by union, either through the cultivation of power or through that of sympathy”.
The forest teaches us union and compassion. For Tagore, our relationship with the forest and nature is a relationship that allows us to experience our humanity. Humans and nature are not separate we are one.
“In our dreams, nature stands in her own right, proving that she has her great function, to impart the peace of the eternal to human emotions”.
It is this permanence, this peace, this joy of living not by conquest and domination, but by co-existence and cooperation that is at the heart of a forest culture. The forest also teaches us “enoughness” as equity, enjoying the gifts of nature without exploitation and accumulation. In Religion of the Forest, Tagore quotes from the ancient texts, written in the forest: “Ishavasyam idam sarvam yat kinch jagatyam jagat
Yena tyak tena bhunjitha
Ma gradha kasyasvit dhanam”
(Know all that moves in this moving world as enveloped by god, and find enjoyment through renunciation not through greed of possession)
No species in a forest appropriates the share of other species to nutrients, water, and the sun’s energy. Every species sustains itself in mutual cooperation with others. This is Earth Democracy.
The end of consumerism and accumulation is the beginning of the joy of living. That is why the tribals of contemporary India from Kalinganagar to Niyamgiri and Bastar are resisting leaving their forest homes and abandoning their forest culture. The conflict between greed and compassion, conquest and cooperation, violence and harmony that Tagore wrote about continues today. And it is the forest which can show us the way beyond this conflict by reconnecting to nature and finding sources for own freedom. For the powerful it means freedom from greed. For the excluded it means freedom from want, from hunger and thirst, from dispossession and disposability.
Diversity is at the heart of the living systems of Gaia, including her forests. Tagore defined monocultures as the “exaggeration of sameness” and he wrote: “Life finds its truth and beauty not in exaggeration of sameness, but in harmony.”
Harmony in diversity is the nature of the forest, whereas monotonous sameness is the nature of industrialism based on a mechanical worldview. This is what Tagore saw as the difference between the West and India.
“The civilisation of the West has in it the spirit of the machine which must move; and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel, keeping up the stream power” (The Spirit of Freedom).
Globalisation has spread the civilisation based on power and greed and the spirit of the machine worldwide. And the global spread of the “passion of profit-making and the drunkenness of power” is spreading fear of freedoms.
A civilisation based on power and greed is a civilisation based on fear and violence.
“The people who have sacrificed their souls to the passion of profit making and the drunkenness of power are constantly pursued by phantoms of panic and suspicion, and therefore they are ruthless. They are morally incapable of allowing freedom to others” (The Spirit of Freedom).
Greed and accumulation must lead to slavery.
Today the rule of money and greed dominates our society, economy and politics. The culture of conquest is invading into our tribal lands and forests through mining of iron-ore, bauxite and coal.
Every forest area has become a war zone. Every tribal is defined as a “Maoist” by a militarised corporate state appropriating the land and natural resources of the tribals. And every defender of the rights of the forest and forest dwellers is being treated as a criminal. This is the context of Dr Binayak Sen’s life sentence.
If India is to survive ecologically and politically, if India has to stay democratic, if Indian citizen is to be guaranteed, we need to give up the road of conquest and destruction and take the road of union and conservation, we need to cultivate peace and compassion instead of power and violence.
We need to turn, once again, to the forest as our perennial teachers of peace and freedom, of diversity and democracy.
* Dr Vandana Shiva is the executive director of Navdanya Trust
__,_._,___
From: avinash sahay
To: IT BHU
Cc: itbhu chennai
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friends,
This article by Dr Vandana Shiva, physicist and ecologist, is a must read.This civilization is premised on the spirit of the machine which must move and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel. And, now Globalisation has spread the virus of power and greed based on the power of the machine worldwide and we are drunk with the paranoia of power and endless profits.
This is obviously a dreadful situation. And the irony is that we are all complicit in this crime as the notion of Inequality is embedded in all our blood and sinews. That's precisely why there is so much of violence, disease and suffering all around where 1% of the super elites own more wealth than 90% of the denizens below.
I want to expand Dr Shiva's thesis by postulating that when we are bold enough to turn upside down this paradigm of Inequality that courses through our veins right now, we would have begun the processof regeneration, not only of ourselves but of this planet.
Let us not be deluded by the false notion that we don't matter in the larger scheme of things.We have the power to change everything but, first,we have to offer ourselves in the transormational pyre.
Forests and freedom
2011 is the year of the forest. It is also Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary. Forests were central to Tagore’s works and institution building as they have been for India’s creative expressions through the centuries.
As Tagore wrote in The Religion of the Forests, the ideal of perfection preached by the forest dwellers of ancient India runs through the heart of our classical literature and still dominates our mind. The forests are sources of water as the women of Chipko showed in the 1970s. They are the storehouse of biodiversity.
The biodiversity of the forest teaches us lessons of democracy, of leaving space for others while drawing sustenance from the common web of life. (In his essay Tapovan, Tagore writes: “Indian civilisation has been distinctive in locating its source of regeneration, material and intellectual, in the forest, not the city. India’s best ideas have come where man was in communion with trees and rivers and lakes, away from the crowds. The peace of the forest has helped the intellectual evolution of man. The culture of the forest has fuelled culture of Indian society. The culture that has arisen from the forest has been influenced by the diverse processes of renewal of life, which are always at play in the forest, varying from species to species, from season to season, in sight and sound and smell. The unifying principle of life in diversity, of democratic pluralism, thus became the principle of Indian civilisation.”
It is this “unity in diversity” that is the basis of both ecological sustainability and democracy. Diversity without unity becomes the source of conflict and contest. Uniformity without diversity becomes the ground for external control. This is true of both nature and culture.
In Tagore’s writings, the forest was not just the source of knowledge and freedom it was the source of beauty and joy, of art and aesthetics, of harmony and perfection. It symbolised the universe. In The Religion of the Forest, the poet says our attitude of mind “guides our attempts to establish relations with the universe either by conquest or by union, either through the cultivation of power or through that of sympathy”.
The forest teaches us union and compassion. For Tagore, our relationship with the forest and nature is a relationship that allows us to experience our humanity. Humans and nature are not separate we are one.
“In our dreams, nature stands in her own right, proving that she has her great function, to impart the peace of the eternal to human emotions”.
It is this permanence, this peace, this joy of living not by conquest and domination, but by co-existence and cooperation that is at the heart of a forest culture. The forest also teaches us “enoughness” as equity, enjoying the gifts of nature without exploitation and accumulation. In Religion of the Forest, Tagore quotes from the ancient texts, written in the forest: “Ishavasyam idam sarvam yat kinch jagatyam jagat
Yena tyak tena bhunjitha
Ma gradha kasyasvit dhanam”
(Know all that moves in this moving world as enveloped by god, and find enjoyment through renunciation not through greed of possession)
No species in a forest appropriates the share of other species to nutrients, water, and the sun’s energy. Every species sustains itself in mutual cooperation with others. This is Earth Democracy.
The end of consumerism and accumulation is the beginning of the joy of living. That is why the tribals of contemporary India from Kalinganagar to Niyamgiri and Bastar are resisting leaving their forest homes and abandoning their forest culture. The conflict between greed and compassion, conquest and cooperation, violence and harmony that Tagore wrote about continues today. And it is the forest which can show us the way beyond this conflict by reconnecting to nature and finding sources for own freedom. For the powerful it means freedom from greed. For the excluded it means freedom from want, from hunger and thirst, from dispossession and disposability.
Diversity is at the heart of the living systems of Gaia, including her forests. Tagore defined monocultures as the “exaggeration of sameness” and he wrote: “Life finds its truth and beauty not in exaggeration of sameness, but in harmony.”
Harmony in diversity is the nature of the forest, whereas monotonous sameness is the nature of industrialism based on a mechanical worldview. This is what Tagore saw as the difference between the West and India.
“The civilisation of the West has in it the spirit of the machine which must move; and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel, keeping up the stream power” (The Spirit of Freedom).
Globalisation has spread the civilisation based on power and greed and the spirit of the machine worldwide. And the global spread of the “passion of profit-making and the drunkenness of power” is spreading fear of freedoms.
A civilisation based on power and greed is a civilisation based on fear and violence.
“The people who have sacrificed their souls to the passion of profit making and the drunkenness of power are constantly pursued by phantoms of panic and suspicion, and therefore they are ruthless. They are morally incapable of allowing freedom to others” (The Spirit of Freedom).
Greed and accumulation must lead to slavery.
Today the rule of money and greed dominates our society, economy and politics. The culture of conquest is invading into our tribal lands and forests through mining of iron-ore, bauxite and coal.
Every forest area has become a war zone. Every tribal is defined as a “Maoist” by a militarised corporate state appropriating the land and natural resources of the tribals. And every defender of the rights of the forest and forest dwellers is being treated as a criminal. This is the context of Dr Binayak Sen’s life sentence.
If India is to survive ecologically and politically, if India has to stay democratic, if Indian citizen is to be guaranteed, we need to give up the road of conquest and destruction and take the road of union and conservation, we need to cultivate peace and compassion instead of power and violence.
We need to turn, once again, to the forest as our perennial teachers of peace and freedom, of diversity and democracy.
* Dr Vandana Shiva is the executive director of Navdanya Trust
__,_._,___
Monday, January 3, 2011
Inequality Destroys our Souls
Friends,
The beauty of this article is that even the leading economists have understood that inequality destroys the fabric of the nation and is fatal for the longevity of the way of life as we know it.When intellectuals and dominant thinking changes in this fashion, we can be hopeful of better times.
I would also add that we have to understand that any suffering in the world is our own suffering. And when we have imbibed the lesson of equality, we will also have equality in the external world.While, at the theoretical level,we may pay lip service to Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam, it has yet to translate that as a living force in our lives.
Equality: A true soul food for a nationJanuary 3rd, 2011
Nicholas D. Kristof , NYT Share Buzz up!John Steinbeck observed that “a sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ”.
That insight, now confirmed by epidemiological studies, is worth bearing in mind at a time of such polarising inequality that the wealthiest one per cent of Americans possess a greater collective net worth than the bottom 90 per cent.
There’s growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul. The upshot appears to be high rates of violent crime, high narcotics use, high teenage birthrates and even high rates of heart disease.
That’s the argument of an important book by two distinguished British epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. They argue that gross inequality tears at the human psyche, creating anxiety, distrust and an array of mental and physical ailments — and they cite mountains of data to support their argument.
“If you fail to avoid high inequality, you will need more prisons and more police”, they assert. “You will have to deal with higher rates of mental illness, drug abuse and every other kind of problem.” They explore these issues in their book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.
The heart of their argument is that humans are social animals and that in highly unequal societies those at the bottom suffer from a range of pathologies. For example, a long-term study of British civil servants found that messengers, doormen and others with low status were much more likely to die of heart disease, suicide and some cancers and had substantially worse overall health.
There’s similar evidence from other primates. For example, macaque monkeys are also highly social animals, and scientists put them in cages and taught them how to push a lever so that they could get cocaine. Those at the bottom of the monkey hierarchy took much more cocaine than high-status monkeys.
Other experiments found that low-status monkeys suffered physical problems, including atherosclerosis in their arteries and an increase in abdominal fat. And as with monkeys, so with humans. Researchers have found that when people become unemployed or suffer economic setbacks, they gain weight. One 12-year study of American men found that when their income slipped, they gained an average of 5.5 pounds.
The correlation is strong around the world between countries with greater inequality and greater drug use. Paradoxically, countries with more relaxed narcotics laws, like the Netherlands, have relatively low domestic drug use — perhaps because they are more egalitarian.
Professors Wilkinson and Pickett crunch the numbers and show that the same relationship holds true for a range of social problems. Among rich countries, those that are more unequal appear to have more mental illness, infant mortality, obesity, high school dropouts, teenage births, homicides, and so on.
They find the same thing is true among the 50 American states. More unequal states, like Mississippi and Louisiana, do poorly by these social measures. More equal states, like New Hampshire and Minnesota, do far better.
So why is inequality so harmful? The Spirit Level suggests that inequality undermines social trust and community life, corroding societies as a whole. It also suggests that humans, as social beings, become stressed when they find themselves at the bottom of a hierarchy.
That stress leads to biological changes, such as the release of the hormone cortisol, and to the accumulation of abdominal fat (perhaps an evolutionary adaptation in preparation for starvation ahead?). The result is physical ailments like heart disease, and social ailments like violent crime, mutual distrust, self-destructive behaviours and persistent poverty. Another result is the establishment of alternative systems in which one can win respect and acquire self-esteem, such as gangs.
Granted, humans are not all equal in ability: There will always be some who are more wealthy — and others who constitute the bottom. But inequality does not have to be as harsh, oppressive and polarised as it is in America today. Germany and Japan have attained modern, efficient economies with far less inequality than we have — and far fewer social problems. Likewise, the gap between rich and poor fell during the Clinton administration, according to data cited in “The Spirit Level”, even though that was a period of economic vigour.
“Inequality is divisive, and even small differences seem to make an important difference”, Professors Wilkinson and Pickett note. They suggest that it is not just the poor who benefit from the social cohesion that comes with equality, but the entire society.
So as we debate national policy in 2011 — from the estate tax to unemployment insurance to early childhood education — let’s push to reduce the stunning levels of inequality in America today. These inequities seem profoundly unhealthy, for us and for our nation’s soul.
The beauty of this article is that even the leading economists have understood that inequality destroys the fabric of the nation and is fatal for the longevity of the way of life as we know it.When intellectuals and dominant thinking changes in this fashion, we can be hopeful of better times.
I would also add that we have to understand that any suffering in the world is our own suffering. And when we have imbibed the lesson of equality, we will also have equality in the external world.While, at the theoretical level,we may pay lip service to Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam, it has yet to translate that as a living force in our lives.
Equality: A true soul food for a nationJanuary 3rd, 2011
Nicholas D. Kristof , NYT Share Buzz up!John Steinbeck observed that “a sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ”.
That insight, now confirmed by epidemiological studies, is worth bearing in mind at a time of such polarising inequality that the wealthiest one per cent of Americans possess a greater collective net worth than the bottom 90 per cent.
There’s growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul. The upshot appears to be high rates of violent crime, high narcotics use, high teenage birthrates and even high rates of heart disease.
That’s the argument of an important book by two distinguished British epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. They argue that gross inequality tears at the human psyche, creating anxiety, distrust and an array of mental and physical ailments — and they cite mountains of data to support their argument.
“If you fail to avoid high inequality, you will need more prisons and more police”, they assert. “You will have to deal with higher rates of mental illness, drug abuse and every other kind of problem.” They explore these issues in their book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.
The heart of their argument is that humans are social animals and that in highly unequal societies those at the bottom suffer from a range of pathologies. For example, a long-term study of British civil servants found that messengers, doormen and others with low status were much more likely to die of heart disease, suicide and some cancers and had substantially worse overall health.
There’s similar evidence from other primates. For example, macaque monkeys are also highly social animals, and scientists put them in cages and taught them how to push a lever so that they could get cocaine. Those at the bottom of the monkey hierarchy took much more cocaine than high-status monkeys.
Other experiments found that low-status monkeys suffered physical problems, including atherosclerosis in their arteries and an increase in abdominal fat. And as with monkeys, so with humans. Researchers have found that when people become unemployed or suffer economic setbacks, they gain weight. One 12-year study of American men found that when their income slipped, they gained an average of 5.5 pounds.
The correlation is strong around the world between countries with greater inequality and greater drug use. Paradoxically, countries with more relaxed narcotics laws, like the Netherlands, have relatively low domestic drug use — perhaps because they are more egalitarian.
Professors Wilkinson and Pickett crunch the numbers and show that the same relationship holds true for a range of social problems. Among rich countries, those that are more unequal appear to have more mental illness, infant mortality, obesity, high school dropouts, teenage births, homicides, and so on.
They find the same thing is true among the 50 American states. More unequal states, like Mississippi and Louisiana, do poorly by these social measures. More equal states, like New Hampshire and Minnesota, do far better.
So why is inequality so harmful? The Spirit Level suggests that inequality undermines social trust and community life, corroding societies as a whole. It also suggests that humans, as social beings, become stressed when they find themselves at the bottom of a hierarchy.
That stress leads to biological changes, such as the release of the hormone cortisol, and to the accumulation of abdominal fat (perhaps an evolutionary adaptation in preparation for starvation ahead?). The result is physical ailments like heart disease, and social ailments like violent crime, mutual distrust, self-destructive behaviours and persistent poverty. Another result is the establishment of alternative systems in which one can win respect and acquire self-esteem, such as gangs.
Granted, humans are not all equal in ability: There will always be some who are more wealthy — and others who constitute the bottom. But inequality does not have to be as harsh, oppressive and polarised as it is in America today. Germany and Japan have attained modern, efficient economies with far less inequality than we have — and far fewer social problems. Likewise, the gap between rich and poor fell during the Clinton administration, according to data cited in “The Spirit Level”, even though that was a period of economic vigour.
“Inequality is divisive, and even small differences seem to make an important difference”, Professors Wilkinson and Pickett note. They suggest that it is not just the poor who benefit from the social cohesion that comes with equality, but the entire society.
So as we debate national policy in 2011 — from the estate tax to unemployment insurance to early childhood education — let’s push to reduce the stunning levels of inequality in America today. These inequities seem profoundly unhealthy, for us and for our nation’s soul.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)