Sustainable Violence

In The Know: How Can We Make The War In Iraq More Eco-Friendly?

Materialism is bunk

Wholeness is a function of the coherence of a region of space, in the sense of the high degree of relatedness of the entities within that space to each other. We know that ecosystems naturally tend towards greater harmonization of beings, hence higher degrees of biodiversity and lower entropy. The experience of beauty makes us feel related to the world, makes us feel at home with something, that we can find our self within it, that we feel centered in the presence of it.

Wholeness is difficult for us moderns to perceive because our cosmological picture and understanding of material reality. We make the assumption that what is truly real – physical matter – lacks meaning, purpose, subjectivity, self. If you make this assumption, then the feeling of relatedness between your personal self and the universe is mere illusion and scientifically meaningless. The science of complex adaptive systems however is revealing that nature is not a machine (reactive, reducible and constructed) but rather an active self-organizing and evolving system. The concept of perception is coterminous with the concept of life, in the sense that to be alive is to have an inside and an outside and so a need to perceive what to let in and what to keep out. The study of wholeness expands considerably our idea of what life is, and therefore what can be said to perceive, to be sentient, have purposes. The wholeness of a structure is the degree of life it has.

The feeling of being grounded and centered which people often experience when finally alone with nature is not ‘subjective’, but rather a keen cognitive awareness of the geometry of the wholeness of living processes. What explains this deep affinity between us and the deep geometry of living processes? How is it possible for us to relate so deeply to the world? There is a startling, and yet ancient, belief that the sense of relatedness we feel in nature, in all beautiful things, things exhibiting wholeness, is that we are rediscovering a deeper identity of Self. To find the world beautiful and to feel that you belong there is to experience the limitations of your identity as an ego and to sense your deeper identity as a moment of the Self as a ground of the world.

Trust in Abundance

"The trouble begins when we start to be so impressed by the strategies of our systematized thought that we forget that it does relate to an obverse, that it is HEWN FROM NEGATION, that it is but very small security against the void of negation which surrounds it. And when that happens, when we forget these things, all sorts of mechanical failures begin to disrupt the functions of the human personality. When people who practice an art like music become captives of those positive assumptions of system, when they forget to credit that happening against negation which system is, and when they become disrespectful of the immensity of negation compared to system -- then they put themselves out of reach of that REPLENTISHMENT OF INVENTION which creative ideas depend, because invention is, in fact, a CAUTIOUS DIPPING INTO THE NEGATION THAT LIES OUTSIDE SYSTEM from a position firmly ensconced in system." - Glenn Gould

Glenn Gould is one of my biggest musical and philosophical heros. Like John Cage, Gould’s music is not about creating beautiful things, or mastering something. It is a part of a continuous 24/7/365 meditation, the lifelong cultivation of a state of expanding self-presence in which the Void beyond the everyday world, at the heart of the everyday world, is spoken to, communicated with, understood by.

The human arrogance which reveals itself as the celebration and shadow of the modern world denies the reality of emptiness when it teaches that the cosmos is meaningless and explainable mechanistically. It measures meaning against the cramped space of human concerns. That is when, as Gould puts it, mechanical failures begin to disrupt the human personality.

In order to be artists rather than narcissists, in order to be sustainable, we need to learn how to trust in that abundance again. Fear of scarcity leads to hoarding and desire to control, which leads to conflict and metaphysical anxiety, which cuts off our connection to the Void, which leads to mechanical failure in system, which leads to scarcity. A self-fulfilling belief.

The Psychology of 9/11 Truth

"If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death... And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past... Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary." - George Orwell, 1984.

In many circles of people who consider themselves to be progressive or fearless seekers of truth, the subject of 9/11 truth is still an unwelcome and impolite elephant in the room. Once you think about it, it makes sense. Like the psychology of money, the psychology of history is also very complex, filled with multiple, unconscious and often mutually inconsistent beliefs and desires. Even mentioning it invites smirks and nervous silence. People don't know how to even start to think about it.

People who reject outright questions about the official story of 9/11 instinctively point to a psychological - by which they mean irrational and subjective - motivation to believe in a government conspiracy. They say, history is messy and governments are incompetent, and if you are open to the possibility of a government conspiracy, then you must have an unconscious desire to find meaning and purpose in the world where there is none. Or you childishly believe that the world is run by a few evil men, when in fact the whole thing is out of control and too complex to be controlled. These responses to "9/11 conspiracy theories" are what philosophers call "Ad Hominem" arguments. Ad Hominem means "against the man," which means that instead of attacking someone's argument, you attack the person instead. While extremely effective rhetorically and politically, it is a fallacy of reasoning for obvious reasons. The truth and validity of an argument has logically nothing to do with the person uttering the argument. Logically, it's a desperate way to counter an argument.

The main problem with ad hominem arguments against conspiracy theories is that they also apply to the other side of the debate, and hence cancel themselves out. If there is a psychological tendency in some to believe in government conspiracies, then there is clearly a pronounced psychological tendency in others - I would say the majority - to believe in the moral righteousness of their government. Clearly there is more ego-gratification involved with the latter. There is nothing more disturbing than contemplating the possibility that your own government is being run as a criminal enterprise. After all, Tony Soprano might be bad, but he doesn't have the full weight of the law, finance, police and military systems to back up his racket.

Facts are important here, and my own process of coming to question the 9/11 story as certified by the 9/11 Commission Report was initiated by the jarring facts I learned about the many anomalies surrounding the events of 9/11, many of which are recounted in the video posted below. But as the history of theorizing about the JFK assassination shows so painfully, facts prove nothing. That is because if you find a fact to be just totally incompatible with what other things you believe about the world, then your response to the fact is to assume some explanation for why that fact just isn't a fact. Nothing is more ideological than the selection of facts. Not even pure science works by converting individuals through rational proof. Max Planck's observation about the nature of scientific proof applies even more directly to contrasting interpretations of contemporary political history:“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”

As it turns out, even high-ranking insiders to the official story of what happened on 9/11 have serious doubts about their government's version of the truth. Not only have many intelligence, military and government officials begun to reject the official account as physically impossible and self-contradictory, the chairmen of the 9/11 Commission - Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton - have themselves expressed utter frustration and suspicion over the Pentagon's and the FAA's answers to their questions as to why a $10 trillion air defense system experienced so many improbable and catastrophic failures on the morning of 9/11. This is an absolutely crucial issue. One of the greatest anomalies of the whole tragedy is how multiple highjacked airliners could prance easily through the most heavily monitored and defended airspace in the world without any resistance. In their new book, Kean and Hamilton describe how the Pentagon and FAA repeatedly lied to them about when and how the military responded to the hijackings. Why, they ask, did the shootdown order come only after all the highjacked planes had crashed, and why did the Pentagon and FAA conceal this fact? And how do you square the official Pentagon account - now rejected by Kean and Hamilton - with what actual air traffic controllers have said about the nature of the failure of the air defense system?

Many people who are loathe to contemplate a government conspiracy nevertheless will agree with George Orwell's statement that "History is written by the winners." They can appreciate how a certain sentimentality that people have about politics can mask the raw power and violence involved with the history of modern states. And anti-conspiracy theorists often appreciate Baron Acton's famous adage that power corrupts and "absolute power corrupts absolutely." And yet if these statements are approximately true, it implies that what passes as official history in the most powerful empire in world history must be saturated with ideology and concealing the true origins of its power and stability. Indeed, it would be highly improbable if the powers who benefit from a political-economic system designed from the beginning to centralize control felt some weird ethical obligation to publicize their plans for consolidation of wealth, therefore inviting public oversight, scrutiny, and ultimately resistance.

Apropos of 9/11 truth is the political philosophy of Neoconservatism, based on the thought of one of America's most infamous political philosophers, Leo Strauss. A key feature of Strauss's advocacy of the political theory developed in Plato's Republic is the justification for political leaders to tell "noble lies" to citizens not philosophical enough to appreciate the Truth.

For better or worse, conspiracy, which literally means "breathing together" is how things get done in this world. As one of my sustainability heros Catherine Austin Fitts says, "Don't worry whether there is a conspiracy because if you are not in one, you need to start one."



The painting at the top of this post is Graydon Parrish's The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy. It can be viewed at the New Britain Museum of Art.

Be a Trim-tab

A trim-tab is a miniature rudder on the edge of the main steering rudder on large ships or the wing flaps on airplanes. Due to profound water pressure on the rudder of a large ship, enormous force is required to exert enough pressure on the rudder in order to redirect the vessel. What a trim-tab does is to create a tiny vacuum, which literally sucks the rudder in the desired direction. Created with minimum effort, the small vacuum self-regenerates itself to build up larger vacuums which easily shift the hulking volume of ship into a new trajectory. Hence, a trim-tab is an example of something which is tiny that can have enormous changes in the direction and behavior of complex systems. The idea of a trim-tab is also a central design principle in the sustainability research of Buckminster Fuller who once wrote:

"Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary—the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing on the edge of the rudder called a trim-tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving that little trim-tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim-tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, 'Call me Trimtab'.” (From a R. Buckminster Fuller tape transcript for Barry Farrell for Playboy interview, 2/1972)

In a universe in which everything is in continuous, complex, changing motion following multiple patterns of least resistance, what we need therefore are trim-tab sized inventions to alter the “least resistant directions” of various macro-processes, in order to cause “man’s ecological patterning to evolve in preferred patterns.” So if you are thinking about the problem of fundamental change in society, the trim-tab concept is a very satisfying notion because it helps to counteract the numbing effect of ideology and propaganda, which is to make you believe that how things are now is inevitable and inexorable, and therefore that change is impossible. The trim-tab concept fits together with my own approach to sustainability activism, which is that we don’t need to push the town towards sustainability, we just need to take away the obstructions that are stopping the town from moving in that direction itself. Natural systems have their own goals, desires, intentions and values that are more profound than our human ideas about how the world should world.

Community-Supported Hitchhiking

What a brilliant idea! Use the internet to coordinate commuting and traveling plans with friends and/or strangers to save money, reduce carbon emissions, and to develop the new SHARING ECONOMY. And it's free too.

As in other areas of our chaordic transitional economy, the internet is making it possible to save money and energy by coordinating activities of individuals in ways which were impossible just a couple of years ago. GOLOCO is a company based on the ingenious and simple idea of using the internet to coordinate car-sharing plans. This kind of web-based cooperative activity is the future: cutting out the need for a costly system - requiring lots of physical and bureaucratic infrastructure - by using new technologies to maximize the benefit of productive resources through sharing and the decentralizing of control and responsibility. Capitalism could actually be evolving into something resembling the distant dream of a "free market."

GoLoco is a service that helps people and communities create their own personal public transportation network. Your cars, your friends, your trips, your expenses -- GoLoco puts them all together for a seamless way to share travel and expenses.

(Poster above by UCONN Communication Design student Kristi-Lynn Jacovino.)

A Beautiful Thing is a Tunnel into a Higher Dimension of Reality

"Somehow – whether it be in color, or in a harmonious garden, or in a room whose light and mood are just right, or in the awesome wall of a great building which allows us to walk near it – some placid, piercing unity occurs, sharp and soft, embracing, tying all things together, wrapping us up in it, allowing us to feel our own unity. What, physically, is this unity which seems to speak to us of I?" - Christopher Alexander

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN BEAUTY AND SUSTAINABILITY

by Justin Good

The cosmos is not indifferent to you. In fact, every act of creating or witnessing beauty is both an ethical act, and also a part of a larger cosmological process. It is a cosmological act which serves to bring forward the evolution of Nature, the evolution of the Spirit which created and creates the world.

Sustainability has a metaphysical significance. The reestablishing of social and ecological coherence within a community as a vehicle for sustainable living is metaphysically identical to a new moment of self-recognition of the Void (the universal self, the quantum vacuum, the Akashic Field). If we can discover our own deeper identity within the world, for example, in the sunlight dancing on the cool waters of a forest stream in the early spring, then the metaphysical conclusion is that the self that you find inside your skin-defined ego body and the self you find in the dancing light are two aspects of a single universal Self. This explains the unity of ethics and aesthetics, or of goodness and beauty.

Ethics and aesthetics are the same phenomenon viewed from reciprocal directions in the flow of energy-information-awareness. Both concern the essence of a coherent system: a system is coherent (has a high degree of life or wholeness) if its activity helps both the systems around it and those which it contains. A coherent system is therefore a just or ethical system, because it minimizes its destructive potential and works to harmonize the beings around which it lives. And when we perceive a coherent system, we experience it as beautiful, because we are naturally attuned to perceive wholeness and naturally directed by Spirit to work to nurture and evolve wholeness.

Ethics looks at information-awareness as informing reality. Aesthetics studies the experience of a reality informed by selfness as the universal medium or self-plenum. Beautiful objects are centers of space-time which create multi-dimensional tunnels connecting their spatio-temporally located, physical matter and properties to the universal self plenum which interconnects all centers in the cosmos, past and present. Since the connection one discovers in a moment of transcendent self-discovery is already there, what is being actualized is simply the recognition of an identity that was somehow forgotten.

This echos the Hindu cosmology. When Spirit creates the cosmos, she decided to play a game of hide and seek with herself by involving her self as the material world. Alongside the process of natural evolution, there is consequently a deeper process of spiritual involution – the process of wholeness. In the phenomenon of wholeness, the past meets the future. The new holistic worldview is more realistic than materialism, more meaningful than religion, more optimistic than capitalism, more idealistic than socialism, more alive than humanism. The cosmos is not only alive, it is conscious.

How does this relate to art? The Theory of Art as Unfolding Wholeness sees art making as in the service of the cosmological evolution of Spirit, of the universal Self-like stuff that unites all beings (every point of space-time) in the universe. On this view, the ultimate effort of all serious art is to make things which connect with the I of every person. This ‘I,’ not normally available, is dredged up, forced to the light, forced into the light of day, by the work of art. The more personal art is, the more universal it is. The more alive it is, the more divine it is. The less Ego it has, the more Self it manifests.

Poor Man's Credit Card: The History and Future of Money

Chester Mind-Body Philosophy Seminar Series ~
Seminar No. 6: Philosophy of Money

Friday, April 25th
5:30 to 7:30 PM
at the Cave, 19-1 Bates Road
Chester (directions)
Two hours of yoga, philosophy, refreshments, wonderment.
Suggested donation: $20

For more info call 526-9186 or email solarclarityct@aol.com

“From coin to paper currency, and from currency to credit card there is a steady progression toward commercial exchange as the movement of information itself. This trend toward an inclusive information is the kind of image represented by the credit card, and approaches once more the character of tribal money. For tribal society, not knowing the specialisms of job or of work, does not specialize money either. Its money can be eaten, drunk, or worn like the new space ships that are now designed to be edible. “Work,” however, does not exist in a nonliterate world. The primitive hunter or fisherman did no work, any more than does the poet, painter, or thinker today. Where the whole man is involved there is no work.” (Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media)

Primary text for seminar:

• Sarah Gelder, “Beyond Greed and Scarcity: An Interview with Bernard Lietaer”

Other recommended texts:

• Stephen Zarlenga, “A Brief Monetary History of the United States”

• E. C. Riegel, "Breaking The English Tradition"

• Catherine Austin Fitts, "Narcodollars for Beginners"

• Thomas Greco, "New Money for Healthy Communities"

Recommended videos:

• Money As Debt: Paul Grignon's brillian animated film about the history of money.

• G. Edward Griffin's The Creature From Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve

• Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve: Analysis of the American banking system from the Austrian School of Economics (Ludwig von Mises Institute)

• The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America

Sustain your Groove

You are the notes, and we are the flute.
We are the mountains, you are the sounds coming down.
We are the pawns and kings and rooks
you set out on a board: we win or we lose.
We are lions rolling and unrolling on flags.
Your invisible wind carries us through the world.
-Rumi

Earth Day in Chester

Chester Conservation Commission presents

Talking Green Energy for Chester's Future

Celebrate Earth Day with an evening of ecological awareness, discussion and communal celebration of empowering solutions to our most serious ecological and economic challenges.

This FREE program includes:

• FILM SCREENING of "The Connecticut Plan to Fight Global Warming" produced by the Connecticut Fund for the Environment.

• PANEL DISCUSSION by local green energy experts including Rick Hosley (Hale Hill Farm Biofuels) on biodiesel, Hans Lohse (Lifespace Architecture) on green building, and Errol Horner (architect) on solar voltaics.

• WHOLESOME REFRESHMENTS by Chester's River Tavern.

• INFORMATION from Chester's Energy Task Force about clean energy options for local residents and green energy projects for the whole community.

• DRUM CIRCLE bring your drum.

7:30 - 9 PM
Tuesday, April 22nd
Chester Meeting House

Buddhist Economics: Or, What is true wealth and how do you measure it?

Chester Mind-Body Philosophy Seminar Series ~
Seminar No. 5: Introduction to Sustainable Economics

Friday, April 11th
5:30 to 7:30 PM
at the Cave, 19-1 Bates Road
Chester (directions)
Two hours of yoga, philosophy, refreshments, wonderment.
Suggested donation: $20

For more info call 526-9186 or email vood@cummings-good.com



What is wealth? How do you measure true wealth? And what kind of economic system would actually produce real wealth? In this class we will explore the most famous essay by the legendary British economist E. F. Schumacher. This essay, "Buddhist Economics" appeared in Schumacher's seminal book "Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered," which articulated a compelling vision of a just and sustainable global economic system over thirty years ago.

Readings
1. E. F. Schumacher, "Buddhist Economics"

"From the point of view of Buddhist economics, production from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life, while dependence on imports from afar and the consequent need to produce for export to unknown and distant peoples is highly uneconomic and justifiable only in exceptional cases and on a small scale. Just as the modern economist would admit that a high rate of consumption of transport services between a man's home and his place of work signifies a misfortune and not a high standard of life, so the Buddhist would hold that to satisfy human wants from faraway sources rather than from sources nearby signifies failure rather than success. The former tends to take statistics showing an increase in the number of ton/miles per head of the population carried by a country's transport system as proof of economic progress, while to the latter-the Buddhist economist-the same statistics would indicate a highly undesirable deterioration in the pattern of consumption." - E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beauty Economics As If People Mattered

Remembering Who You Are

"Somehow – whether it be in color, or in a harmonious garden, or in a room whose light and mood are just right, or in the awesome wall of a great building which allows us to walk near it – some placid, piercing unity occurs, sharp and soft, embracing, tying all things together, wrapping us up in it, allowing us to feel our own unity. What, physically, is this unity which seems to speak to us of I?" - Christopher Alexander, The Luminous Ground.

Letter to the Connecticut River Watershed Council

Letter to the Connecticut River Watershed Council

April 3, 2008

Megan Hearne, River Steward (Connecticut)
Alan Morgan, Regional Office Manager
15 Bank Row
Connecticut River Watershed Council
Greenfield, MA 01301

Dear Mr. Morgan and Ms. Hearne,

As someone firmly committed to the ideals of environmentalism and the promise of sustainable economics, I applaud the efforts of your organization, the Connecticut River Watershed Council, to protect the Connecticut River. Growing up in Chester, Connecticut and supremely fortunate to have had access to the miracle of the lower estuary via a 13-ft Boston Whaler, I developed a deep bond to this place and all of its life. Thank you for your valuable work and mission.

I am writing to express my deep disappointment and anger, however, in your views and media efforts last year advocating for a sewer expansion project in my town. In your 2007 annual report you proudly claim to have educated Chester residents about the realities of their wastewater problems, a campaign which resulted in a 2-1 victory at referendum vote supporting a $2.5 million sewer project. Your report fails to mention other interesting facts about the vote; for example, that the town had already voted the project down, by a 2-to-1 margin earlier that year and that the town’s First Selectman and WPCA Board had simply ignored the outcome; that the WPCA Board illegally used public funds to advocate for its position on the vote, outspending the environmental citizen groups opposed to the project 50-to-1; that the engineering firm justifying the necessity of the sewer project faced a patent conflict of interest in being the same firm chosen to design the system; or that the central sewer treatment plants you advocate as the solution to water pollution have their own massive, unresolved and likely unresolvable environmental problems.

During a very contentious debate in town, of which I was a vocal member, the CRWC ran an advertisement in the Hartford Courant on October 18th advocating that Chester citizens vote yes on the October 23 sewer expansion project referendum. The ad was titled “Raw sewage in our rivers” and I’m sure that anyone who was confused over the real facts of the matter was greatly impressed by such a stark fact being asserted by a reputable steward of the environment. As an evironmentalist and a philosopher, I was quite shocked to see your ad, and amazed that an organization like yours dedicated to a healthier world was willing to lie so brazenly.

I asked myself, well, were they lying or were they just ignorant? Perhaps you can enlighten me. In fact, there is no engineering report I’m aware of that says anything about raw sewage being released into the river. Such a condition was never asserted at any WPCA meeting I attended, nor was it even the position of the DEP which was advocating a sewer solution. At worst, the pollution problem concerned trace amounts of phosphorus in a small stream near the community septic system. In fact, in part thanks to you, we still don’t know whether or not we even have a problem. The travesty is that, after spending hundreds of thousands $$ of public money on testing and project design, the Chester WPCA Board had yet (by Oct 23rd) to do the inexpensive tests – for pathogen travel time and measuring nitrogen levels closer to the actual points of concern on the septic system site – that the town’s own engineering firm Nathan Jacobson Assoc. had called for in a 2005 assessment of the site’s potential for onsite remediation using aeration technology. So to this day, it is an open question whether the site could have been remediated without recourse to sewer expansion.

Nitrogen removal from the river is a noble end, but nitrogen was never even measured at the true points of concern on the septic system leeching field, and there’s no evidence that any nitrogen ever so much as made it into the stream. Now – or if and when our grant comes through to build this dinosaur - our waste will be going to Deep River for pretreatment and then on to the Mattabessett plant where it will become sludge. The Mattabessett Plant is currently being considered for a long-term, multi-million dollar upgrade since it wasn’t even designed to remove nitrogen. Meanwhile, instead of composting most of our waste material using a community septic system, we will be sending it away to a central treatment plant which produces a toxic waste - sewage sludge – as an inevitable result of a high entropy treatment process.

Not only is there currently no safe way to dispose of sludge, Mattabassett has been repeatedly cited for illegal mercury emissions from the burning of sludge. Moreover, the entire process is extremely energy intensive, and so essentially unsustainable in a period of spiking energy costs. Cities need to use central sewage treatment plants, but small towns like Chester have a choice, and the new low footprint green technologies are changing the rules about how to deal with our “waste.” There are people at the CT DEP who understand these matters, and others schooled in 1950s sewer science who will never understand the challenge of sustainable economics.

This is a very complicated issue to understand and the only way to make informed decisions that will benefit the long-term health of the community is open debate. What your advertisement actually helped to do was to close down an extremely important community debate by scaring citizens into a false sense of urgency and fear. But the urgency was only legal, not ecological, and politics and money had everything to do with the interpretation of the problem. Becoming a sustainable, healthy society means that we learn to take a whole systems perspective on our infrastructure, and that means that we don’t just remove waste from awareness, but we consider the entire future consequences of our lifestyles. When special interests are making the decisions with obvious short-term payoffs for themselves, nothing is more ideological than “facts.”

I hope that you will consider a broader, whole systems perspective in the future, and that you will adopt a more realistic nose for the ways that politics and money get in the way of healing our beloved river.

Sincerely,
Justin Good

NOTES

• While necessary for large urban areas, centralized sewer treatment plants are dangerous, environmentally-risky, energy-intensive ways to treat water and they have the known, unresolved, and potentially unresolvable problem of producing sewer sludge: the solid residue left over from the water treatment process. As a hazardous waste, sewage sludge cannot be monitored, regulated or remediated. Containing upwards of 80,000 known chemical agents, unknown numbers of biological organisms, virulent and resistant strains of disease organisms as well as synthetic pharmaceutical drugs of every kind, sludge has a chemical make up which is constantly changing, too complex to monitor and too toxic to simply regulate. Centralized treatment methods like central sewers increase the production of sludge. In contrast, onsite biological based wastewater technologies help to increase the natural abilities of leeching fields to break down and filter wastewater on location. Easier to monitor and maintain, onsite systems use less energy, require minimal infrastructure, reduce the production of sludge, incentivize responsibility in the user to be mindful of careless disposal of toxic agents, and do not accelerate growth in by building in spare capacity. (Resource Institute for Low Entropy Systems)

• “No Dumping on the Sound”, Hartford Courant, Aug.16th, 2007: “The Environmental Protection Agency notes that untreated sewage in a 20-gallon holding tank (a typical size for many boats) contains the same amount of fecal coliform bacteria as several thousand gallons of discharge from a well-run sewage treatment plant.”

• “City weighing options on sewage,” Middletown Press, Aug. 25th 2007: “The 43-year-old Mattabassett sewage treatment plant has undergone numerous upgrades since it went into operation in 1964. Mattabassett - which is renowned for its superior odor-control technology - is already in the process of planning the next round of improvements, the most expensive of which would satisfy the Department of Environmental Protection's regulations to keep nitrogen out of Long Island Sound. Nitrogen acts as a fertilizer, which causes algae to grow and deprive fish of oxygen... There are some upgrades we are going to do whether Middletown comes in or not," said the plant's Executive Director Brian Armet. "We have one of the best operating waste-water treatment plants. But we were not designed to remove nitrogen." Mattabassett is hoping to produce no more than of 1,040 pounds of a nitrogen a day, which isn't much, considering the plant discharges some 15 to 20 million gallons a day into the Connecticut River. Armet estimated that the upgrades will cost $38 million to $50 million…”

• From Toxics Action Center, Mattabassett won a 2002 Dirty Dozen Award for being an environmental threat of special distinction to the state: "Mattabassett District, Cromwell, 
A Dirty Dozen recipient in 1999 for mercury emissions into the Connecticut River, the Mattabassett District has yet to clean up its act. This year the Mattabassett's sewage treatment plant failed emissions inspections, yet again releasing mercury into the environment. The plant's sewage outfall pours into the Connecticut River, leaving its noxious outflow to hug the banks of the river, and the plant's sludge incinerator burns out-of-district sludge, exposing the Cromwell community to harmful air emissions. The Mattabassett District board has been unresponsive to the community's concerns about the plant's impact on public health and the local environment. Concerned Citizens of Cromwell are calling on the Mattabassett District to stop the out-of-district importation of sludge and to promote policies that ensure the protection of public health and the environment."

The Metaphysics of Collaboration

Presented at the New England Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA)
Building Energy Conference, March 2008, Boston

THE METAPHYSICS OF COLLABORATION

By Justin Good

§1. Ecological collapse is caused by wholeness-destroying systems.

There is a deep integrity, coherence and meaningfulness to the world that is being destroyed by our political-economic system, its design culture and its standard operating system. Despite the beauty of their ecological rationality, large-scale wind farms still jar many visual sensibilities with their industrial look. The truth contained in that nimby response is that industrial infrastructure, and often modernist architectural icons, tends to have a fragmenting effect on the unity of natural landscapes and the systems which unfold that unity or wholeness in stable patterns following multiple patterns of least resistance through time. Although the reality of evil need not be denied, global ecological unsustainability is largely a design problem, although design is an evolutionary process with a cultural and metaphysical dimension.

§2. Sustainability requires wholeness-enhancing systems.

Every great crisis is also a great opportunity. The design flaws of industrial modernism reveal a deeper level of order in the world. When understood in terms of the new science of complex systems theory – a view with interesting similarities to Buddhist and Hindu cosmology - nature is grasped as a nested hierarchy of interrelated whole-parts, or holons, generating a pattern called wholeness. Wholeness is a structure of space-time coherence which causes - and is caused by - systems which preserve and enhance natural and social wealth (i.e. energy-information potentiality). From the light of this dynamic view of natural systems as self-organizing, tending towards low-entropy and coherence, sustainability can be mathematically defined as a property of a system: a system is sustainable if its activity is beneficial to the sub-systems contained within it and the macro-systems within which it is contained. In evolutionary terms, the smallest viable unit affected by natural selection is not the individual organism, nor even the species, but the organism-in-communion with the biosphere, or Gaia. Nature ultimately selects against organisms which act as if they are closed systems. This is why ethics is an objective science. The myth that ethical values are relative and subjective is based on the myth that the individual person is a closed system whose well-being depends in no way on the well-being of the community of beings within which the individual finds herself.

§3. Building systems that enhance wholeness requires systemic change.

It is the process through which new environmental structures emerge that determines the wholeness of those structures. Industrial-era political and economic institutions, and the behaviors they incentivize, rupture wholeness with impunity, causing the genocidal destruction of life. Corporately-managed markets tend to institutionalize irresponsibility by not distinguishing between renewable and non-renewable resources, being biased towards the near future, externalizing costs, centralizing political and economic power, and introducing criminal activity into every aspect of public and private life. Sustainability doesn’t just require ecological accounting and social investment, but structural-evolutionary changes in markets, corporations and governments. Complex systems are capable of existing in different stable states, e.g. a collection of water molecules can exist as liquid, solid or gas. Sustainability requires creating the conditions for system evolution to occur.

§4. Systemic change requires collaborative action.

The system is too complex and dynamic to be controlled. Given enough integration of information, however, the system can adapt itself to a higher condition of balance and efficiency, stabilizing itself better than any individual human efforts ever could. Redesigning and reprogramming political and economic institutions to function in ways which harmonize with stable natural systems requires a whole-systems perspective. Whole-systems planning and building requires “getting the system into the room,” ideally, integrating and coordinating information and interests from every relevant sub-system, i.e. every being affected by planning efforts. Without coordinated effort and participation from all stakeholders, mitigation attempts amount to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. With the synergistic integration of information that occurs in genuine collaboration, complex systems evolve themselves, following new paths of least resistance assembled through the collaboration. Complex systems do not behave like objects, they behave like minds, like selves. They literally have selves, have minds.

§5. Collaborative action requires a common interest.

The maximizing of personal autonomy is taken to be one of the chief ethical virtues of free markets, where a larger coordination occurs, like order out of chaos, from the unplanned actions of individuals seeking their own “personal self-interest.” In this picture, the boundary of the self is taken to be the personal skin-defined ego, and its interest is characterized as the maximization of personal pleasurable well-being via the maximizing of the consumption of resources. Both assumptions, while politically useful for a while back, are ecologically, psychologically and metaphysically false. A sustainable economics will be built on the more venerable, and old-fashioned premise of trust in abundance, rather than postulated greed and scarcity. If social and natural wholeness structures (i.e. wealth) are included in the accounting of capital, then economic institutions and economic relationships will be required which support, and are supported by, a broader sense of self and of interest. Sustainability requires the psychological development of selves past the stage of ego-centric and tribal-centric perception to a genuinely transpersonal identity.

§6. Common interest requires the fusing of separate interests.

Given the improbable condition of perfect information and perfect economic freedom, transactional (e.g. monetary) economic interactions between individuals can lead to efficient allocation of resources, but never to long-term commitments to each other, to a place, or to the experience of the sacredness of the world. As Marshall Mcluhan put it, capitalism obsolesces community responsibility. The geometrical integrity of a healthy social and natural environment is a value and an end in itself which the individualism incentivized by “free markets” transforms into the abstract wealth of financial capital. Without economic opportunities to transcend the narrow logic of “self-interest,” individuals can never evolve past narrow selfish regard to perception of the whole system.

§7. The fusing of separate interests requires a transformation of self.

One can only form the intention to support the evolution of human society if one can grasp one’s own true identity with this larger system of Life. Merely thinking or believing that one’s true identity transcends the concern-boundaries of one’s own body-ego is not enough to empower true change. One can only grasp one’s true transpersonal identity if one has had a transforming experience and discovers this larger and deeper identity as a perceivable fact. Transformation of self is necessary in order to liberate the energy required to work for change. All the energy necessary for opening up to the infinite possibilities for change in one’s daily life is potentially available inside, but has been captured by addictive relationships to ego-boosting substances, technologies, images and daily comfort-inducing rituals. One’s ability to enact system change in the world rests on one’s ability to release one’s inner spiritual energies from the grip of fear, judgment, self-narcissism and self-doubt. Moreover, by laying down ego-boosting fears and judgments, one’s spiritual pores are opened up, allowing one to capture and transform ambient energy in the environment into self-intensifying energy. Self-intensifying energy, often experienced in moments when one’s dignity and creativity as a divine and living being are acknowledged, is what makes one feel alive and awake.

§8. A transformation of self requires the perception of a transpersonal self in the experience of mutual self-discovery.

Ordinary transactional interactions with others reassert the illusion of the independence of the ego-self. The efficiency of monetary transactions is spiritually the lowest level of interaction. A slightly higher level of interaction is involved with the giving of professional or friendly advice or the sharing of information, where a common interest in mutual well-being is tacitly acknowledged. Still higher are moments of giving, where a gift is offered without the condition of reciprocity, which explicitly actualizes awareness of a deeper underlying unity of identity between the giver and the receiver. Gift giving transcends by dis-empowering the illusion of separateness. The highest level of interaction involves a moment of mutual self-discovery, where one discovers something about oneself that could only have been uncovered through the interaction with the other. Discovering that one’s own self-knowledge is bound up necessarily with the self-knowledge of others directly reveals the deeper metaphysical unity of self – an experience sufficient for releasing spiritual transformation.

§9. The experience of mutual self-discovery in a community requires a special learning process.

Moments of mutual self-discovery can occur just about anywhere. In a clothing store, for example, a person might discover something about herself through a particular article of clothing or fashion which releases part of her identity she was unaware of. That person will now go to that store not simply to buy things, but to find herself. That deeper connection is the basis for the kind of long-term commitments to each other which sustainability requires. In the communal process of working collaboratively towards sustainability, what is required are contexts where such moments can arise for whole sections of the community. Call these contexts “learning ecologies.” A learning ecology is a project or situation in which individuals work towards understanding an aspect of their natural, social or economic environment which reveals something fundamental about their collective fate, their values, their identities. Constructing a town-wide energy audit, which paints a landscape image of a community’s energy consumption, is an example of a community learning ecology. Without healthy learning ecologies which afford such moments, individual efforts at collaboration will degenerate into a focus on “building political leverage and power rather than creating new knowledge and possibilities together" (Peter Senge).

§10. A special learning process frees the transpersonal self to unfold wholeness-helping structure spontaneously within the biotic community.

When one experiences a larger self, a community-sized self, an invisible bond is uncovered, through which information from a deeper pool of life activity can be transmitted to the individual. This information is a source of energy which not only empowers the individual to the level of spontaneous, patient, loving commitment to the long-term health of the community. It empowers her to attain literally super-human (relative to her ordinary expectations) level of openness to the inherent ambient wisdom of the community-organism. This openness literally elevates her intelligence, dramatically increases the acuteness of her perceptions, the force of her compassion, and feels like pure ecstasy. As an agent of a larger process of Becoming, the “individual” draws upon a source of energy and wisdom which transcends her own experiences and capacities.
“Things happen for a reason.” I used to smile when I heard someone utter that thought, that feeling, and I would think to myself: Things happen for trillions reasons, each of which is equally significant, hence equally insignificant. But that materialist picture of reality is an unrealistic view of the world based on the cumbersome mechanistic metaphysics of 18th century science. More directly, it contradicts our feeling for wholeness in the world. The science of wholeness in fact reveals that “profound coordination of the whole is occurring" (Christopher Alexander). Things do happen for a reason, and the cosmic system has purposes for us whose true meaning and beauty and cosmic significance easily overwhelm our sense of wonder and understanding and expectations when we are lucky enough to grasp them.

§11. When the transpersonal self is freed to unfold wholeness in the world, the cosmos recognizes herself (himself or itself) again as the underlying metaphysical unity within materially-evolving systems.

The reestablishing of social and ecological coherence within a community as a vehicle for sustainable living is metaphysically identical to a new moment of self-recognition of the Void (the universal self, the quantum vacuum, the Akashic Field). If we can discover our own deeper identity within the world, for example, in the sunlight dancing on the cool waters of a forest stream in the early spring, then the metaphysical conclusion is that the self that you find inside your skin-defined ego body and the self you find in the dancing light are two aspects of a single universal Self. This explains the unity of ethics and aesthetics, or of goodness and beauty. Ethics and aesthetics are the same phenomenon viewed from reciprocal directions in the flow of energy-information-awareness. Ethics looks at information-awareness as informing reality. Aesthetics studies the experience of a reality informed by selfness as the universal medium or self-plenum. Beautiful objects are centers of space-time which create multi-dimensional tunnels connecting their spatio-temporally located, physical matter and properties to the universal self plenum which interconnects all centers in the cosmos, past and present. Since the connection one discovers in a moment of transcendent self-discovery is already there, what is being actualized is simply the recognition of an identity that was somehow forgotten. This echos the Hindu cosmology. When Spirit creates the cosmos, she decided to play a game of hide and seek with herself by involving her self as the material world. Alongside the process of natural evolution, there is consequently a deeper process of spiritual involution – the process of wholeness. In the phenomenon of wholeness, the past meets the future. The new holistic worldview is more realistic than materialism, more meaningful than religion, more optimistic than capitalism, more idealistic than socialism, more alive than humanism. The cosmos is not only alive, it is conscious.

Sustainable Love

Chester Mind-Body Philosophy Seminar Series ~
Seminar No. 3: Can Love Last? Philosophy of Romantic Intimacy

Friday, March 28th
5:30 to 7:30 PM
at the Cave, 19-1 Bates Road
Chester (directions)
Suggested donation: $20

For more info call 526-9186 or email vood@cummings-good.com



In this class we will explore the ancient question concerning the sustainability of romantic intimacy. Does romantic love necessarily fade with familiarity and time, or can it be maintained and even intensified?

Our class will focus on the views of the late Stephen Mitchell, the now legendary psychoanalyst who wrote his last book on this pressing topic. Mitchell’s theory is the most optimistic theory by any psychologist we know of, since he argues that romance can in fact be sustained and that the reasons it dies have to do with our unconscious sabotoging of our desires. We mentally reduce the charms of our love in order to protect ourselves from disappointment.

Readings

1. You can read selections from his last great work Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance through Time here at Google Books.

2. There is also a nice review of the book here at Salon.com.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

The special role that Artists have in healing the planet

Dr. Vood’s Beginner’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan’s theory of media and art: How to study media-technologies ecologically? Or, The special role that Artists have in healing the planet

§1. Ecological definition of medium-technology. Technology as an environment.

Media (technology) always must be understood as an extension of the human mind-body. This is a broader definition of a medium than is usually meant, since it applies not just to communication but every technological innovation starting with language. By altering the relationship between our self-system and the environmental systems within which we live, we unintentionally cause changes to both our self and the environment. Because media are extensions of our mind body, We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.

E.g. Clothing extends skin, shoes extend soles of feet, chairs extend the back, automobiles extend legs and stomach, phonetic literacy extends eyes and mind, electric media extend the entire nervous system.

§2. Psychological obstructions to studying media-technologies. The medium is the message.

As extensions of our body-mind, our use of media technologies changes us psychologically and socially. There are two basic reasons why it is very difficult for us to become aware of these changes.

• Rearview-mirror view of the world
The immediate sensory environment – the context within which things are experienced - is itself very difficult to experience because it ‘saturates the whole field of attention so overwhelmingly.’ Perception is always only aware of changes in the field of awareness. Unless the field of awareness is itself changing quickly, it cannot become an object of perception. So we tend to experience the present in terms the prior environment which is visible from the outside.

• Narcissus narcosis, or Auto-amputation
Extensions of the human mind-body result in new relationships between our perceptual and bodily capacities, disrupting our self-system and giving rise to auto-protective measures, i.e. numbness (psychic anaesthesia, emotional dissociation, PTSD. One part of the system is isolated from the other parts in order to protect the whole nervous system. Our use of technologies easily becomes addictive, where we block out the psychic dissonance of the new media environment by absorbing ourselves in sense of control offered by the new technology.

§3. Ecological study of technology requires holism. Pattern recognition vs. classification

Because the environment is not a thing but a changing network of relationships which itself shapes our attention and awareness, there is no technical or specialized study of media ecology. An effective approach must be flexible, creative, not rooted in a particular theory or fixed point of view, and general enough to ‘encompass the entire environmental matrix which is in constant flux.’ Traditionally Artists have been the only people to develop this approach to perceiving ground rather than just figure.

§4. Art as anti-narcotic. Aesthetics is the new ethics.

Technical knowledge cannot solve the problem of numbness since technical knowledge is always about how to do something, not why something should be done or how personal and social identity are unconsciously altered by the use of a technological solution to a problem. So what kind of knowledge can help us avoid cultural narcosis? Only ART can. Art is the ability to overcome perceptual dissonance, not by becoming numb to the dissonance, but by REVEALING it, and therefore discovering a new way to reach a DEEPER LEVEL OF EQUILIBRIUM with the environment. The artist bridges the gap between past and future, reveals the dangers of the new media environment to others, unifies her experience rather than remaining fragmented, studies the distortions of experience created by our OUT-OF-BALANCE RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE, is the canary in the mineshaft warning us of spiritually-poisonous ways of relating to each other and the world, allows us to accept our experiences for what they truly are, frees our mind. Artists are the only people who actually live in the Present. The technical side of art is the technology of creating effects. The artist can see the present environment because she studies how to reproduce effects of the environment, but in a way that slows down the process to make it perceivable.

§5. Mcluhan’s conceptual toolbox for enhancing pattern recognition. Ideas as probes.

Marshall Mcluhan’s approach is pragmatic, not about explaining technological change but exploring and revealing its unconscious effects on personal and social behavior, experience and self-awareness. His many obwservations can be fit into three basic ways to approach the study of technology: (1) historical studies of the interface between technological innovation and social/psychological change, (2) hot-cool information interface characteristics, and (3) the tetrad form, or the four laws of media.

(a) Environmental history of technology

Looking at the history of technology is a powerful way to see patterns in experience which are otherwise impossible to perceive in the present environment. An overview of western history reveals that societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media with which men communicate than by the content of the communication. Mcluhan’s analysis reveals four basic technological epochs which are defined in terms of the primary vehicle of communication: oral, phonetic-literate, typographic, and electric.

Pre-literate 1.00,000 - 4000 BCE (stone age society was amazingly stable and in touch)
Phonetic Literate 4000 BCE -1500 CE (explosive growth)
Typographic Literacy 1500 - 1950 (industrial modernism)
Post-literacy (retribalized) 1850 - 2010? (can the noosphere, the global nervous-cognitive system, restore balance to the biosphere?)

People living within these different periods have different experiences of space/time, different sensory balances, different ideas about knowledge, reality, causality, different social,political and economic institutions, and different self-conceptions.

(b) Hot-cool information interface characteristics

All media technologies can be compared with respect to the quality of their interface with the human mind.

HOT medium:
• extends a single sense
• offers high definition (complete filling in of) information
• little completion or active participation by recipient req.
• tends to exclude (sense from awareness, individual from group)
• leads to specialization, fragmentation
• numbs larger awareness, lessens total perception
• short, intense experiences
• tends to hijack attention

COOL medium:
• extends multiple senses
• offers low definition (incomplete filling in of) information
• requires high participation, active completion
• tends to include/integrate information and individuals into communities)
• leads to generalization, consolidation
• engages background awareness
• longer, sustained experiences

(c) Four ecological laws of media.

The environmental effects of technological innovations can be classified according to four laws of media which articulate four aspects involved in technological change. Normally, we only think of the first two categories of change.

• ENHANCE: What does the new medium improve or enhance, make possible or accelerate?
• OBSOLESCE: What is pushed aside or obsolesced by the new medium?
• RETRIEVE: What earlier action or service is brought back into play by the new form? What older, previously obsolesced ground is brought back and becomes an essential part of the new form?
• REVERSE: When pushed to its limits, of its potential, the new form will reverse what was its original characteristics. What is the potential reversal of the new form?

E.g. Automobile: enhance speed, obsolesces horse and buggy, retrieves nomadism, reverses into gridlock.

Cellphone: enhances voice, obsolesces phone booth, retrieves childhood yelling, reverses freedom into being a leash.

Capitalism: enhances liberty (of trade), obsoleses community responsibility, retrieves hunter-gatherer patterns, reverses abundance into starvation-scarcity.

§6. Themes from the environmental history of technology

(a) Visuality, literacy and detribalization

Many of our modernist assumptions, regarding either the neutrality or the intrinsic goodness of technological development, have obscured the cultural sacrifice we made in leaving oral-tribal society, which had established a balance with the environment, a harmonious internal balance of sensory experiences, a stable economic and political order, a deeply immersive involvement in the world. Literacy and symbolic consciousness generally, spreads our awareness past the present into the past and future, and into abstract possibilities which empowers us while at the same time impoverishing and dimming down the fullness of our experience. Literacy extends vision into a master sense, leading to the detached, linear, systematizing mentality of rationalism. Vision can touc h without being touched.

(b) Civilization has been a process of imbalance, ecological Instability, system slippage

Depression, mental illnesses, apathy, drug addictions and other compulsive-obsessive behaviors occur in ‘civilized’ or ‘modern’ societies, i.e. societies suffering from a continuous process of uncontrolled explosion/implosion, creating perpetual disequilibrium and stress from constant perceptual dissonance. Some technologies that are involved with our current civilizational disequilibrium with the world: phonetic literacy and typography, automobiles, paper/digital currency system, electricity, internet, totalitarian agriculture, certain ideas about: development, what it means to be human, to be happy, to be in control, to be alive. The ills of technology have nothing to do with it being unnatural, but with its introducing perpetual disequilibrium into a process which strives for equilibrium or BALANCE. Is there a way out of this pattern?

(c) Electric culture, space-time compaction and retribalization

Electric media do not merely extend one sense, they extend the entire nervous system, therefore extending self-awareness or consciousness past the body-defined self. The virtually instantaneous effect of electricity speeds up the form of every technology, leading to the establishment of a truly global consciousness (noosphere). We are now faced with trying to understand the infinite ramifications of INFORMATION SOCIETY while we still have time to effect its development. A key tension concerns the differences between the SELF as a disembodied, placeless cyberanimal which simply processes information and the self as a living being connected, and needing to be connected to a place and a time.

(d) Ethics of technology: comfort versus joy

Ignorance is not blissful, it is at best comfortable. True bliss requires optimal experience: i.e. a balance between being challenged and being in control. Technology presents us with a basic problem: how do we avoid narcissus narcosis in the use of new technologies?

Image above by Daniel Buttrey

Local continuing education for seriously playful thinkers

Spring 2008 Chester Mind-Body Philosophy Seminar Series

No.1: "Issues in Twenty-First Century Philosophy"

An innovative mix of philosophy and yoga in a relaxed salon setting.

This seminar offers a casual but intense survey of exciting issues in contemporary philosophy. It is designed to be both cumulative and also modular, so that later classes do not presuppose knowledge from earlier classes. The reading materials for each class are available online, at the course blog, so no books are required. Students who sign up for the entire series receive a discount per course and are entitled to detailed feedback on an optional paper assignment.

SCHEDULE

• 10 Fridays, 5:30 to 7:30 PM starting March 7th.

• $20 per session. $180 for the whole ten week course. Each session includes 20 minutes of circus yoga mind-body relaxation and a 90 minute directed philosophy seminar. Refreshments served.

• Classes will be held at The Cave, 19-1 Bates Road, Chester.

INSTRUCTORS

• Jen Taylor (BA Vassar) is a philosopher, Yoga instructor and political activist who studied engaged Buddhism with the legendary Buddhist leader Thich Nhat Hanh. Her philosophical work focuses on gender and sexual politics, metaphysics, ecofeminism and the cultural mythology of partnership societies.

• Justin Good (BA SUNY Purchase, PHD Boston University) is a philosopher and community organizer whose philosophical work focuses on the philosophy of mind, political and environmental philosophy, aesthetics and epistemology. He teaches philosophy at the University of Connecticut and the University of Hartford.

CURRICULUM

3/7 The Sense of Being Stared At:
The Mind-Body Problem and the Extended Mind Hypothesis

3/14 Metaphysics of Pool:
Exploring the Experiential Body-Mind

3/21 Clowning as a Spiritual Vocation:
The Laughing Body and the Trickster Archetype

3/28 Can Love Last?
Philosophy of Romantic Intimacy

4/4 Gross Domestic Happiness:
Buddhist Economics and Essence of True Wealth

4/11 Art and Truth:
Plato’s Challenge to All Future Artists

4/18 Xena Studies:
Cultural Mythology of Gender Archetypes

4/25 Poor Man’s Credit Card:
The History and Future of Money

5/2 Legendary Female Warriors:
Resistance Movements in the History of Patriarchy

5/9 The Aesthetics of Green Energy:
Wind Farms and the Theory of Wholeness


To reserve a spot for the complete course, or for individual sessions call 860-526-9186 or email vood@cummings-good.com.

Visit the course blog at www.chestermindbody.wordpress.com. Readings for courses will be available soon!

What is the philosophy of the future?

Listen Globally, Groove Locally

Chester's "Exit 6" Blues, Rhythm and Roll (+ Banjo) band, featuring Jason Baker, Justin Good, Chris Gosman, Joell Jacob, Hans Lohse, Leif Nilsson, Mark Zanardi, and Jeremy Ziemann will perform live on Saturday Night, March 1, 2008 at Haddam Pizza, 1617 Saybrook Road, Haddam, CT, starting at 9:30 PM.

Call (860) 345-4472 for more information on Haddam Pizza.
Call (860) 526-2077 for information about "The Exit 6 Band" or visit Nilsson Studios.

Community Cinema

Where would Jesus bank?

"Where would Jesus bank?" by Catherine Austin Fitts.

"Jesus acted with ferocious and bold integrity when he threw the money changers out of the temple. Needless to say, he hiccuped their cash flows on what otherwise would have been a big grossing day. Their business model threatened, the priests who managed the money changers insisted that the Romans crucify Jesus. The Romans tried to pawn the problem off on the local king, Herod, who ducked and sent Jesus back to the Romans. The Romans, still looking for a way out, tried a flogging. That did not work. The priests meanwhile had succeeded in persuading the crowd to support them and scapegoat Jesus. Thirsting for a crucifixion, the crowd voted to set the criminal Barabbas free instead of Jesus.

"Jesus died because the crowd voted for the criminal enterprise. The crowd voted for the priests and their rich endowments and their alliance with the money changers. The crowd did not ask “Cui Bono?” which is Latin for “who benefits?” If they had, they would have seen the real deal on who was making money on the death of Jesus and voted with their conscience, and for their own best interests instead. It's 2000 Years Later and We're Still Voting for the Criminals..." (read on)

if you do not know Catherine Austin Fitts and are interested in how sustainable economics requires changing the way money works, you must read her! Start with this interview with her about Tape Worm Economics.

King's Call for a Worldwide Fellowship Still Ringing

King gave this speech one year before he was assassinated. The way of love is the path of fire.

What is the way of love? The following text is excerpted from Martin Luther King Jr.'s book "Strive Towards Freedom" (1958). In this section, King articulates six principles of non-violence which he believes reflect the political and moral embodiment of love, as practiced by Gandhi.

"First, it must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one used this method because he is afraid, he is not truly nonviolent. That is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight. He made this statement conscious of the fact that there is always another alternative: no individual or group need ever submit to any wrong, nor need they use violence to right the wrong; there is the way of nonviolent resistance. This is ultimately the way for the strong man. It is not a method of stagnant passivity. The phrase "passive resistance" often gives the false impression that this is a sort of "do-nothing method" in which the resister quietly and passively accepts evil. But nothing is further from the truth. For while the nonviolent resister is passive in the sense that he is not physically aggressive toward his opponent, his mind and emotions are always active, constantly seeking to persuade his opponents that he is wrong. The method is passive physically, but strongly active spiritually. It is not passive resistance to evil, it is active nonviolent resistant to evil.

"A second basic fact that characterizes nonviolence is that is does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister may often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that these are not ends in themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.

"A third characteristic of this method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the person victimized by the evil. If he is opposing racial injustice, the nonviolent resister has the vision to see that the basic tension is not between races. As I like to say to the people in Montgomery: "The tension in the city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And if there is a victory, it will be a victory not merely for 50,000 Negroes, but a victory for justice and the forces of light. We are out there to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be unjust."

"A fourth point that characterizes nonviolent resistance is a willingness to accept suffering without retaliation, to accept blows from the opponent without striking back. "Rivers of blood may have to flow before we gain our freedom, but is must be our blood," Gandhi said to his countrymen. The nonviolent resister is willing to accept violence if necessary, but never to inflict it. He does not seek to dodge jail. If going to jail is necessary, he enters it "as a bridegroom enters the bride's chamber."

"One may well ask: "What is the nonviolent resister's justification for this ordeal to which he invites men, for this mass political application of the