Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

'Reflections on Machine Consciousness,' by William Irwin Thompson

Ron — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:57:32 -0700

I've taken the liberty of typing in all of Chapter 4 of my copy of this important book, because it powerfully addresses one of the main themes of SCIY, the manifold relationships between science, culture, and consciousness. (ron)

"It is a paradox of the work of Artificial Intelligence that in order to grant consciousness to machines, the engineers first labor to subtract it from humans, as they work to foist upon philosophers a caricature of consciousness in the digital switches of weights and gates in neural nets. As the caricature goes into public circulation with the help of the media, it becomes an acceptable counterfeit currency, and the humanistic philosopher of mind soon finds himself replaced by the robotics scientist. ...

"Both the mechanists and the mystics say that we are now at a great bifurcation in human evolution. The mechanists like Ray Kurzweil, Danny Hillis, and Hans Moravec prophesy that we are at the end of the human era, and that 'nanobots' are about to be embedded in our bodies until our antique organs of flesh are entirely surrounded by a new silicon noosphere of networked computers. Like ancient mitochondria or chloroplasts surrounded by the gigantic eukaryotic cells, we are about to be engulfed in the next evolutionary stage. So the mechanists see noetic technologies surrounding human culture and consciousness and compressing it into an endosymbiont in a larger and swifter and more elegant evolutionary vehicle. ...

"Mystics flip this literalism over to see technology as a system of externalized metaphors that derive from pre-existing ontological modes at play and at large in the universe... For the mystic — be she Cabbalist or Sufi — an angel is a 'Celestial Intelligence' — a form of cosmic noetic organization that does not require a detour through animal evolution. So when Kurzweil claims that by 2030 implanted nanobots in the bloodstream will enable humans to turn off to the outside world to attune to a virtual reality, the mystic would recognize a literalist rendering of the process of meditation. Kurzweil's vision of the world in 2030 reminds me of Borges's 'Library of Babel'. 'I suspect that the human species — the unique species — is about to be extinguished, but the Library will endure: illuminated, solitary, useless, incorruptible, secret'. [2] And here we need to be sensitive to the full force of Borges's use of the word 'Babel'. ... "

James Howard Kunstler: April 28, 2008 - A Collective Psychic Bubble

Ron — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:00:34 -0700

...This has been a pretty remarkable month, actually, with all the problems of "The Long Emergency" accelerating impressively. Oil is now testing the $120 mark, the airline industry is imploding (largely over fuel costs), the housing scene has reached a degree of collapse unseen since the 1930s, food shortages have strayed out of the Third World and begun to affect Japan and the USA, bats are dying of a mysterious disease in the Northeast, and the Arctic sea ice is shrinking away to nothing.

We're in a strange collective psychic bubble. We'd like to forget about all these troubling rumors of hardship and bad weather and just get on with the daily task of making a living and paying for stuff and enjoying our customary entertainments. The comforting ceremonies of everyday life seem to continue. The freeways are still full of cars. Nancy Grace comes on TV dependably at 8 p.m. and is there deploring the latest pervert arrest. The baseball season has ramped up and the teams are criss-crossing the nation in their chartered airplanes. The stock market is actually going up -- what's wrong with that?

But there's an equally eerie vibe out there that things are seriously out-of-whack. We're on the edge of something. We're at the entrance of a dark passage where some of the ceremonies of daily life meet resistance. You go to the WalMart and five of your six credit cards are refused. Uh oh. It begins to dawn on you that you're spending a quarter of your take-home pay filling up the gas-tank every week. There's no dial tone when you pick up the telephone. How could all the supermarkets in town be out of rice? The local hospital just declared bankruptcy. The neighbors down the street auctioned off all their furniture in the driveway last week. Why does the cat pick up so many ticks these days? ...

Integral Ideology

Rich — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:23:18 -0700

The shadow side of these integral theories or practices I have narrowed to three main thrusts which for lack of better terms I will define as:

1) Fundamentalist

2) Neo-liberal

3) Neo-conservative

For example, if as Althusser asserts, that ideologies construct the imaginary relationship between a subject and his/her real conditions of existence, then Spiral Dynamics literally colors the imagination of the subjective view it constructs. It does this by reducing complex individual and social phenomena to a color coded map of reality which its spiral wizards have constructed and by ordering all value systems by its own valorizing meta-system in a perfect hermeneutic circle...

One Laptop Per Child Versus Intel--Who Speaks for India and China?

Ron — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:48:28 -0800

Here's an interesting article re the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Project. I disagree with the article's conclusion (it omits the vast online support to be provided to olpc students), but I think it deserves further discussion here on SCIY. What do you think?

At the Consumer Electronic Show this week, the One Laptop Per Child foundation was supposed to make two announcements—the number of computers it sold under the Give One, Get One holiday program and a new olpc machine made jointly with Intel. But now Intel has pulled out or been pushed out of the project with olpc, depending on who you believe. It’s a mess and a mess of huge dimensions that encompasses a conversation of profit vs. nonprofit, nationalism vs. colonialism, technology vs. pedagogy, rote vs. experiential learning, Western design vs. Eastern design, good intentions vs. bad intentions. It doesn’t get bigger, or nastier. ...

Laptop With a Mission Widens Its Audience, by David Pogue, NYT

Ron — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:52:50 -0700

Wearing a new hat in Galadima, a hamlet in Abuja, Nigeria [photo added by ronjon]

In November, you’ll be able to buy a new laptop that’s spillproof, rainproof, dustproof and drop-proof. It’s fanless, it’s silent and it weighs 3.2 pounds. One battery charge will power six hours of heavy activity, or 24 hours of reading. The laptop has a built-in video camera, microphone, memory-card slot, graphics tablet, game-pad controllers and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration.

And this laptop will cost $200... It’s an effort by One Laptop Per Child (laptop.org) to develop a very low-cost, high-potential, extremely rugged computer for the two billion educationally underserved children in poor countries...

OLPC slightly turned its strategy when it decided to offer the machine for sale to the public in the industrialized world — for a period of two weeks, in November. The program is called “Give 1, Get 1,” and it works like this. You pay $400 (www.xogiving.org). One XO laptop (and a tax deduction) comes to you by Christmas, and a second is sent to a student in a poor country. ...

The biopolitical/dromological reversal, by Ian R. Douglas

Ron — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:11:19 -0700

I came across this interesting article when Googling the term "dromology" -- which Rich used in an earlier comment.

For Foucault, biopower was the essential missing link in genealogy of capitalist modernity. As he insisted in 'Discipline and Punish': " ... the two processes - the accumulation of men and the accumulation of capital - cannot be separated." On the other side of the equation, Paul Virilio has stressed that his focus on speed in no way detracts from the importance of capital. As he insisted in 'Pure War': "Wealth is the hidden side of speed and speed is the hidden side of wealth." And lest we forget, Marx also understood the political advantages of the collision of dromological/biopolitical technology: ...

Nowhere better do we find resonances of this "vulgar stimulation" than the ensemble of discourses that seem now in the ascendant (the discourses of globalism and globalization), fast overtaking the globe, and in the same movement creating anew a fast globe. These discourses, and their subsidiaries (informatisation, risk, competition, efficiency) - reflected and enacted in a whole panoply of specific practices - are all linked in the double movement sketched out above (the "will-to-speed" and "modern governmentality"). Taken together - I argue - we stumble across the unwritten history of globalization, and in that, the unwritten history of contemporary advanced capitalism.

The links are fairly simple. Dromology: the will-to-speed finds its final realisation in the destruction of the space (astronautical flight, space obliterated in proportion to the velocity of the vehicle). This destruction, as a social principle (Mumford's "desire to get somewhere"), has reduced the expanse of the world to naught, thrusting us into the global epoch. Governmentality: we need look only to the proliferating discourses of risk, competition, informatization, self-monitoring, self-organization, efficiency, effectiveness and excellence to get a taste of the ways in which the discourse of speed works to order the world into which individuals - indeed whole societies - are thrown. Each element feeds of the other: dromocratic power has encouraged the release of the will-to-speed through which we face what Virilio has termed the "negative horizon" (the implosion of space under the violence of speed). In parallel, disciplinary society has actively sought to produce this violence of speed (first in the military, then in the factory, then in the school, then in the prison) as a technical instrument in the ordering of populations ("populations at speed"). ...

Off to Burning Man for the next 10 days

Ron — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 11:11:56 -0700

Burning Man 2006 satellite view. (~ 40,000 participants)

Well, I'm off to Burning Man 2007 tomorrow (Saturday) and will be pretty much out of touch with SCIY (no phones or Internet access out there on the remote playa). Rumors are that this year's festival will be the biggest in its 18 years, even more than the record 40,000 last year. This is truly a remarkable experience when you realize that all the infrastructure for a self-contained international city is literally created by volunteers out of nothing in a few days on a barren, hot, lifeless desert site. It's fully populated for a week, and then completely dismantled, in accordance with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management regulations for use of the site, with no evidence of it having been there, not even a flake of glitter! ...

Burning Man 2007 Art Theme: "The Green Man"

Ron — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 10:55:11 -0700

His name means the Green One or Verdant One, he is the voice of inspiration to the aspirant and committed artist. He can come as a white light or the gleam on a blade of grass, but more often as an inner mood. The sign of his presence is the ability to work or experience with tireless enthusiasm beyond one's normal capacities ...

And I have felt....a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

~ William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

Burning Man 2007: What is Burning Man?

Ron — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 09:31:24 -0700

Every year, tens of thousands of participants gather to create Black Rock City in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, dedicated to self-expression, self-reliance, and art as the center of community. They leave one week later, having left no trace. Read Burning Man's mission statement, 10 Principles, and learn more about this incredible experience. ...

Entheon Village at Burning Man

Ron — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:59:26 -0700

Entheon, meaning “a place to discover the spirit within,” is an effort to promote sustainable cultural re-evolution that heals relationships between the people of the earth and our planet. The mission of Entheon is to demonstrate a future in which sustainability, ecological responsibility, environmental stewardship, and meditative and mystical consciousness are a welcomed and integrated part of society, and where art, spirituality and creativity is central to that vision.

[The] Entheon [camp at Burning Man 2007] will be a grounded gathering place offering an intellectual, therapeutic, artistic and creative cornucopia of interactive opportunities. Lectures, workshops, renewable energy demonstrations, visionary art, zen meditation in a zendo, holotropic breathwork sessions, and performance come together in the spirit of celebration to co-create our shared vision of global healing and a broader awareness of ecological responsibility. ...

Myths of the War on Terrorism

Ron — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 10:40:12 -0700

... Though, al Qaeda may—emphasize "may"—still have the capacity to mount the occasional major operation, that doesn't mean terrorism should be treated as an omnipresent, existential threat. -- In reality, this fight bears only a faint resemblance to a real war. Only rarely can al Qaeda and its imitators manage a strike against their prime enemies, Britain and the United States, and even more rarely can they succeed. Like the alleged terrorists who planned to attack Fort Dix and JFK International Airport, the perpetrators in Britain were not trained professionals but bumbling amateurs.

On Sept. 12, 2001, it was easy to believe that we would suffer dozens of major attacks on U.S. soil over the next six years, and almost impossible to imagine we would suffer none. Instead of being the opening blitz of a "long, global war," 9/11 was a freak event that may never be replicated.

In a real war, such as the ones we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, many people die, week in and week out. But John Mueller, a national security professor at Ohio State University, notes that in a typical year, no more than a few hundred people are killed worldwide in attacks by al Qaeda and similar groups outside of war zones. ...

'The Great Turning' by David Korten

Ron — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 09:25:08 -0700

In The Great Turning, Korten argues that corporate consolidation of power is merely a contemporary manifestation of what he calls “Empire”: the organization of society by hierarchies of domination grounded in violent chauvinisms of race, gender, religion, nationality, language, and class. The result has been the same for 5,000 years, fortune for the few and misery for the many. Increasingly destructive of children, family, community, and nature, the way of Empire is leading to environmental and social collapse.

The Great Turning makes the case that we humans are a choicemaking species that at this defining moment faces both the opportunity and the imperative to choose our future as a conscious collective act. We can no longer deny the need nor delay our response. A mounting perfect economic storm is fast approaching. A convergence of climate change, peak oil, and the financial instability inherent in an unbalanced global trading system will bring an unraveling of the corporate-led global economy and a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life.

Thanks to Mario Santonm for recommending this book. ...

ISEC: The International society for Ecology & Culture

Ron — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:47:52 -0700

I got to know the remarkable Helena Norberg-Hodge, the Founder of ISEC, back in the 70's, when she was setting up the Ladakh Project, for which she shared the 1986 Right Livelihood Award, otherwise known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize.' –- Her selfless, Buddhist commitment to protecting the indigenous peoples of the Tibetan high plateau from Western commercial development deeply impressed me. I'll always remember her inspiring photos of the unique and glowing faces of the Ladakh people who hadn't yet been exposed to Western culture. Knowing Helena, I can unreservedly attest to the quality and integrity of ISEC. ... ~ ron

Forty Initiatives that are changing our world (Resurgence Mag.)

Ron — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:12:56 -0700

This informative list of annotated links compiled by Resurgence Magazine includes interesting initiatives in the areas of Activism, Agricultural Development, Ecology, Economics, Education & Community, the Internet, Political & Corporate, Publishing, and Scientific Principles. The few I’ve had a chance to check out so far look like they’re indeed doing important work; e.g., ISEC (the International society for Ecology & Culture), which I’ll post more info about in my next article. — Recommended.

Al Gore "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary wins Oscar

Ron — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 23:46:23 -0800

Former vice president Al Gore used the success of his documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," to expand his efforts to educate people about global warming — and to tell a few jokes. — The film turned Gore's road show about climate change into a film that won Academy Awards for best documentary and best song.

Earlier in the evening, Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio took the stage to unveil a series of efforts the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took to make this year's awards more environmentally friendly. ... The win was especially pleasing to Gore because it came during a year when the academy had taken steps to save energy and preserve the environment.

Oscar ballots were made from partially recycled paper and organic produce was served at the Gov.'s Ball. The academy joined with the Natural Resources Defense Council to reduce energy usage and increase recycling. — "For the first time in the history of the Oscars, this show has officially gone green," DiCaprio said. ...

"Prophets Facing Backward," by Meera Nanda

Ron — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 21:26:26 -0800

The leading voices in science studies have argued that modern science reflects dominant social interests of Western society. Following this logic, postmodern scholars have urged postcolonial societies to develop their own "alternative sciences" as a step towards "mental decolonization". These ideas have found a warm welcome among Hindu nationalists who came to power in India in the early 1990s. In this passionate and highly original study, Indian-born author Meera Nanda reveals how these well-meaning but ultimately misguided ideas are enabling Hindu ideologues to propagate religious myths in the guise of science and secularism.

At the heart of Hindu supremacist ideology, Nanda argues, lies a postmodernist assumption: that each society has its own norms of reasonableness, logic, rules of evidence, and conception of truth, and that there is no non-arbitrary, culture-independent way to choose among these alternatives. What is being celebrated as "difference" by postmodernists, however, has more often than not been the source of mental bondage and authoritarianism in non-Western cultures. The "Vedic sciences" currently endorsed in Indian schools, colleges, and the mass media promotes the same elements of orthodox Hinduism that have for centuries deprived the vast majority of Indian people of their full humanity.

By denouncing science and secularization, the left was unwittingly contributing to what Nanda calls "reactionary modernism." ...

Prof. Suarez-Villa’s website on the rise of technocapitalism

Ron — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 16:06:32 -0800

Thanks to RY Deshpande for the reference to Prof. Suarez-Villa’s website on the rise of technocapitalism:

Technocapitalism is a new form of market capitalism that is rooted in technological invention and innovation. It can be considered an emerging era, now in its early stage, that is supported by such intangibles as creativity and knowledge.

Intangibles are at the core of technocapitalism. Creativity and knowledge are to technocapitalism what tangible raw materials, factory labor and capital were to industrial capitalism. During industrial capitalism, tangible resources acquired the greatest value, as factory production, repetitive labor and massive output ruled the day. In the emerging technocapitalist era, however, those material resources are becoming secondary in importance.

Intangibles are therefore vital for technocapitalism. Creativity and knowledge are the most valuable resources of this emerging new era. They, for example, already account for as much as three-quarters of the value of most products and services in existence, and that proportion is bound to increase over time. In contrast, the material resources that were most valuable for industrial capitalism are losing value relative to those intangibles in most every product or service.

New economic activities are emerging that are representative of technocapitalism. Biotechnology, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, software design, genomics, molecular computing and biorobotics, for example, are likely to be hallmarks of the twenty-first century, as electronics and aerospace were in the twentieth. This new ecology of activities and sectors is more reliant on creativity and knowledge than any of the old industries of industrial capitalism. ...

Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation (LA Times Investigative Report)

Ron — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 16:07:15 -0800

Ebocha, Nigeria — Justice Eta, 14 months old, held out his tiny thumb.

An ink spot certified that he had been immunized against polio and measles, thanks to a vaccination drive supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
But polio is not the only threat Justice faces. Almost since birth, he has had respiratory trouble. His neighbors call it "the cough." People blame fumes and soot spewing from flames that tower 300 feet into the air over a nearby oil plant. It is owned by the Italian petroleum giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Justice squirmed in his mother's arms. His face was beaded with sweat caused either by illness or by heat from the flames that illuminate Ebocha day and night. Ebocha means "city of lights."

The makeshift clinic at a church where Justice Eta was vaccinated and the flares spewing over Ebocha represent a head-on conflict for the Gates Foundation. In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment holdings, a Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works. ...

The MIT Media Lab's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project: a New Prototype for Philanthropy?

Ron — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 13:28:42 -0800

...The concept behind the project, which Negroponte unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, less than two years ago, is as simple as its name: give all children in the developing world laptop computers of their own. If we achieved that, he believes, we could bridge what's usually termed the "digital divide." The laptops would offer children everywhere the opportunity to benefit from the Internet and would enable them to work with and learn from each other in new ways. OLPC, the nonprofit organization that Negroponte set up to manage the project, has taken responsibility for designing the computer and engaging an outside manufacturer to produce it. But the nonprofit is not going to buy the computers. That, at least for now, is the responsibility of governments, ...

"Changing How We Work Together," Peter Senge & Margaret Wheatley

Ron — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 14:44:10 -0800

I'm posting the following interview with Peter Senge and Margaret Wheatley, by Melvin McLeod, the Editor of the Buddhist magazine Shambhala Sun, to provide a bit more depth on Peter's views than given by my partial transcript of his 5-minute 'QuickTalk' that I posted a few days ago ...

Increasingly, we’re directly incorporating into our work different practices that have been around for a long time, such as various types of meditation. It started with the work on dialogue. We found that dialogue often involved silence, and so maybe we needed to actually cultivate the capacity to sit in silence. And guess what? That started to look a lot like traditional forms of meditation or contemplation. ...

"The Impact of Globalization," A 'QuickTalk' by Peter Senge

Ron — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:39:32 -0800

This posting is an experiment re listening to audio files on SCIY. The initial file we've posted was recommended by Rich. It's a 5-minute "QuickTalk" by Dr. Peter Senge, the Founding Chairman of the Society for Organization Learning (SoL), on the impact of globalization in today and tomorrow's world. I recommend listening to this; Peter has a way of saying things that can awaken us to new ways of thinking. -- And please let us know (by commenting to this article) how the audio quality sounded to you. Thanks! ~ ron ...

Comments on "Reflections on Sri Aurobindo's THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY" (cont.)

Ron — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 15:10:20 -0700

I've taken the liberty of re-posting here all of the comments ("Replies") to Debashish's earlier posting: "Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY By Debashish Banerji." -- My reasons:

1) The set of responses in this thread was getting so large that we were starting to experience some oddities in BlogHarbor's reply functions.
2) I was concerned that we could delete the entire thread due to some technical or human error, thus losing this fascinating & important discussion.
3) By posting all of the comments as this article, we can go back in and re-format them if we wish; e.g., correcting typos & adding italics for quoted passages.

PLEASE CONTINUE OUR REPLIES ON THIS TOPIC HERE, IN THIS ARTICLE, NOT IN THE PREVIOUSLY POSTED ONE.

Thanks,
~ ron

Grokking the Transparent Network: Reflections on the 13th Digital Be-In, by Michael Gosney

Ron — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 13:01:49 -0700

On May 29, 2004, the 13th edition of the Digital Be-In beamed in to San Francisco. The annual cyber culture happening featured Ram Dass and Wavy Gravy, luminaries digital and beyond, exhibits, live bands, DJs and an immersive visual environment. The theme of the event was “The Transparent Network. -- Be-In 13’s many co-creators addressed The Transparent Network theme through speeches, a curated art gallery, exhibits and installations, a video theater, more than 20 performances on three stages and immersive projections throughout the venue. Like past Be-In memes — “Freedom of Speech on the Internet,” “Cultural Diversity in Cyberspace,” and “Human Rights in the Digital Age” — The Transparent Network idea refers to current technical initiatives and social issues. But it is also an emerging archetype with broader meanings, and these more esoteric dimensions were explored as well. ...

Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY By Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:33:43 -0700

In these last chapters of The Ideal of Human Unity, Sri Aurobindo draws together the threads that he has introduced earlier in the work, leading to his conclusion. Though Jan Smuts was yet to coin the word "Holism" to encapsulate the idea that a directed tendency towards the formation of ever-larger aggregates is observable in Nature, each such distinct stage marked by the presence of an identity and properties exceeding those of the sum of their parts, Sri Aurobindo's model of History follows this course. Indeed, this teleology follows naturally from Sri Aurobindo's master-idea of the progressive manifestation of intrinsic spiritual Oneness in Time, expressing itself politically as the drive towards world-union.

The new 'Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics,' in Waterloo, Canada

Ron — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 15:08:02 -0700

Perimeter Institute is a community of theoretical physicists dedicated to extending theories of space, time and matter. It's home is an innovative building in Waterloo, Canada, whose archetectonics are designed to foster interaction and creative community across normally disparate disciplines.
In just five years, Perimeter researchers have contributed over 500 meaningful, peer-reviewed, scientific findings and transferred this knowledge to all manner of partners in the entire research chain. Their current areas of cross-disciplinary research include: * Foundations of Quantum Theory * Quantum Information Theory * Quantum Gravity * Superstring Theory * Particle Physics * Cosmology ...

Goethe = Toyota vs Newton = Ford

Rich — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:44:10 -0700

To understand (ba) Basho is is essential to understand Fields, or the creative space from which ideas arise.
This entails a way of seeing fields since they are not readily visibile and in fact are invisible to the human eye.
To even envision this way of seeing takes some rewriing of the manner in which we normally view the world. This involves a non-analytical approach to seeing which operates by taking structures apart to know ...

more ba

Rich — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 09:17:17 -0700

Here are some more links on Ba from the real innovators Nonaka and Ohasi.

The last article is how Ba can be employed in large organizations . In this case to facilitate the creation of Toyota Prius ...

Peter Senge's comments on "Illuminating the Blind Spot"

Ron — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 17:38:34 -0700

These comments by Peter Senge, the Founding Chair of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) have helped provide me with further context to understand Rich's previously posted papers re "Creative Imagination and a Theory of Strategy Formation." As I read them, I found myself flashing on many fond memories of the inspriing dialogues Peter and I had in the mid-70s when he was my doctoral thesis advisor at the MIT System Dynamics Group. Here's an example of his incisive thinking:

"...I have been especially struck by the depth of personal reflection and disclosure in many of the interviews. In these intimate glimpses into the lives of many leading scientists, I have been very surprised to see how many have deep personal commitments to disciplines for their own cultivation. Moreover, their personal work is inseparable from their science, both the process and the substance of their science. I cannot but believe that this is a new development of potentially great importance.

Many have noted that science is the religion of this day. Scientists occupy a position of respectability and deference, whether rightly or wrongly, not unlike the position accorded to religious leaders in other eras. They represent society’s quest for truth. They are typically seen as having a degree of professional integrity, unlike business or public leaders, that places precepts like honesty and fairness above personal gain.

Yet the mainstream western scientific epistemology has, for several hundreds of years, fragmented the scientist’s insights from who they were as a person. Objectivity has come to mean producing declarative statements about the world independent of the observer. While some of these cornerstone ideas about the separation of observation and observer began to break down in the early 20th century physics, the mainstream scientific worldview, the way science is taught to children, and the core professional practices were not affected by this.

Yet many of the people in these interviews, leading scientists, are living and articulating a very different view of interconnection between personal cultivation and scientific inquiry. They are seeking a new synthesis, such has precedents in the west, like Goethe, but has always been relegated to an outlier.

I believe the underlying intent behind western science has always been to dominate and control. What might be the new intent emerging behind a new synthesis of science and spirituality? Might it lead to new orientation and ultimately new capabilities in shaping social realities? ..."

"Illuminating the Blind Spot: Leadership in the Context of Emerging Worlds"

Ron — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 15:19:31 -0700

I came across this white paper while following up on some of the references in Rich's fascinating 3-part work in progress, "Creative Imagination and a Theory of Strategy Creation," which he posted to SCIY earlier this week. Reading this summary white paper from the "dialog on leadership" website has helped provide a context for me to better understand Rich's perspective.

If Pine and Gilmore are right that we have moved from product- and service-driven stages of the economy to an era that is driven by staging and co-creating customer experiences, then the capacity to facilitate the co-creation of experience along the lines that John Kao described above are of the utmost importance for the future of leading and organizing. ...

"Evolutionary Letter #3," Barbara Marx Hubbard's "Evolutionary Edge"

Ron — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 01:24:40 -0700

Here's one example of the many, many people and organizations inspired by the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and deeply involved in "the wake up call for humanity." Barbara is an old friend and former colleague who is an amazing example of someone who has been deeply vitalized by personal experiences of the sacred. (She's well over 70 years old and keeps on going in spite of a serious bout with cancer that would have hospitalized or killed most of us.)

"It is clear that we have reached “Critical Mess.” Our problems cannot be resolved by doing more of the same. The dysynergy among these problems is rapidly leading to devolution. Yet, out of the crisis, even in the last few months since the awareness of global warming, there has been an increase in mass awakening. This crisis is vital for the next stage of our evolution. It is the wake up call for humanity. ..."

The Role of Money and the Internet in Social Development

Ron — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 12:00:00 -0700

... We witness today the confluence of factors that characterize the mental stage: unprecedented political freedom, a global affirmation of the individual and the rights of the common man, abundant and overflowing social energy, an irrepressible drive of mental inquisitiveness, the accumulation and codification of knowledge in all fields, the universal aspiration for and spread of education, a worldwide revolution of rising expectations, a veritable explosion of technological inventiveness, and the accelerating pace of organizational creativity and innovation, which is the technology of social development. These factors coming together in the mental stage have given birth to a new form of organization whose creativity and potential contribution to social advancement rival in importance the role played by money over the past millenium.

The emergence of the Internet as a worldwide system of communication, information exchange, education and commerce is opening up vast opportunities for more rapid development. It is eliminating barriers to communication imposed by space and time, leveling the playing field between rich and poor, and making possible universal access to information and services at very low cost. ...

The International Center for Peace and Development

Ron — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 16:33:54 -0700

The International Center for Peace and Development was established as a non-profit, non-governmental organization in 1997 to continue the work initiated by the International Commission on Peace and Food (ICPF). The Commission was constituted in 1989 by a group of 25 concerned scientists, professionals, international administrators, business, social and political leaders from 15 nations to promote global peace and development in the post-Cold War world. Over a six year period ICPF conducted a series of international conferences and research projects on a wide range of issues concerning global security, conversion of resources from military to civilian purposes, food security, employment, economic development, and the environment. ...

A Comprehensive Theory of Social Development (TMSS)

Ron — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 15:04:00 -0700

... This paper identifies the central principle of development and traces its expression in different fields and levels of social advancement. Development is a function of society’s capacity to organize human energies and productive resources to respond to opportunities and challenges. The paper traces the emergence of higher, more complex, more productive levels of social organization through the stages of nomadic hunting, rural agrarian, urban, commercial, industrial and post-industrial societies. It examines the process by which new activities are introduced by pioneers, imitated, resisted, accepted, organized, institutionalized and assimilated into the culture.

Organizational development takes place on a foundation of four levels of infrastructure – physical, social, mental and psychological. Four types of resources contribute to development, of which only the most material are inherently limited in nature. The productivity of resources increases enormously as the level of organization and input of knowledge rises. The theory identifies the human resource as the driving force and primary determinant of development. ...

The Mother's Service Society (TMSS)

Ron — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 14:42:01 -0700

The Mother's Service Society was founded in 1969 in Pondicherry, South India, with a view to studying the basic laws of human development based on the theory of creation propounded by Sri Aurobindo, the sage of Pondicherry, who declared that humanity is not the final goal of creation. Humankind will evolve beyond mind into Supramental being.

This web site includes numerous original essays written over a period of thirty years by members of the Society on a wide range of theoretical and applied subjects including development theory and strategy, economics, business management, literary criticism, science, education and spirituality in life.

The Values Center: Supporting Leaders in Building Values-Driven Cultures

Ron — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 12:00:00 -0700

The Values Centre website was created by Richard Barrett & Associates to provide information on the application of the Seven Levels of Consciousness model and the Cultural Transformation Tools® to the cultural transformation of corporations, non-profits, NGO’s, government institutions, schools, communities and nations, as well to provide details on the use of the model and tools for personal transformation and leadership development.

Between June 1997 and December 2004, the Cultural Transformation Tools were used to map the values of 500+ organizations in 31 countries. The tools are available in 18 languages. More than 1000 Organisation Development (OD) consultants and Human Resource (HR) professionals from 32 countries have been trained in the use of the Cultural Transformation Tools.

'Give Peace A Chance,' by John Tierney, New York Times

Ron — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 11:04:07 -0800

You would never guess it from the news, but we're living in a peculiarly tranquil world. The new edition of ''Peace and Conflict,'' a biennial global survey being published next week by the University of Maryland, shows that the number and intensity of wars and armed conflicts have fallen once again, continuing a steady 15-year decline that has halved the amount of organized violence around the world. By JOHN TIERNEY New York Times, May 28, 2005

Interview: Dr Karan Singh re India Center in D.C., Talk re "The Auroville Experiment"

Ron — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 17:51:27 -0800

Dr Karan Singh, Deputy Leader of the Congress Party in the Rajya Sabha and the new president of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, is optimistic that during his tenure, the much-talked about India Center in Washington will finally become a reality. ... Dr Singh, who also currently serves as chairman of the Auroville Foundation -- a UNESCO-sponsored international community in South Asia where residents from over 30 countries and many states of India are trying a 'hands-on' experiment in spiritual and ecological harmony -- also delivered a lecture at the Asia Society in New York on 'An Alternative Approach to Resolving Sectarian and Communal Conflict: The Auroville Experiment.' He spoke to Managing Editor Aziz Haniffa recently..