re-1: Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, & lessons for today

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Richard Moore

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Jan 5, 2010, 5:58:20 AM1/5/10
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From: "A. Gayle Hudgens" 
Date: 2 January 2010 05:26:43 GMT
To: Richard Moore <r...@quaylargo.com>
Subject: Re: The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution: lessons   for today

What an uplifting way to ring in the new year, Richard. Bravo. 
My only quibble is so tiny I almost hesitate to mention it.... but wanted to say that the positive changes taking place in communities around the globe is not completely autonomous, in my view. That is because, in the total system of Nature and Society, everything spreads... and as new communities 'hear' about what is happening in a nearby community (and other parts of the total system), the ripple effect urges change (or new memes or a new enlightenment) in the new locales. And so it spreads. What is good for the whole benefits everyone.
And thanks for the reminder -- we must take advantage of facilitated and inclusive dialogue, an exceptionally appropriate technology in these times, especially if it can be culturally sensitive to diversity and human dignity.
Your thought piece reminded me of a motto of the early German Greens who, more than twenty years ago, envisioned what is beginning to happen now. They often said, our direction is "neither left nor right, but forward." Thus, part of our paradigm shift is to shed the old ideologies and embrace a sustainable future that works for all.
In this new year may we celebrate our "power to" challenge the legitimacy of institutions that threaten all life and our life-support systems.
Gayle

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Hi Gayle,

Nice to hear from you. Thank you for bringing up your 'tiny quibble'.

'Autonomous' does not mean 'in isolation', or 'free of outside influence'. Here are the main points from Dictionary.com:
   au⋅ton⋅o⋅mous
1. self-governing; independent; subject to its own laws only.
2. having autonomy; not subject to control from outside; independent.
3. existing and functioning as an independent organism.

Apart from globalization and imperialism, our international model of governance has traditionally been based on autonomous nations. And yet nations depend on trading with one another, nations are always learning from one another, and ideas and trends can be seen as 'emerging holographically' on a global scale. 

In this regard we can compare the Transition Towns movement with the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club is a centralized organization, that makes its decisions centrally and whose official actions come from the top, from the board of directors and the executive committee. I quit the organization many years ago when I got a dismissive letter from headquarters in response to an objection of mine regarding their policies. In the Transition Towns movement, on the other hand, each adopting community is autonomous. There are semi-central organizations that help promulgate the movement, publish material, and maintain websites, but individual communities are free to introduce their own innovations or depart arbitrarily from 'standard practice'. And then there's the broader relocalization movement, of which the Transition Towns movement is one autonomous thread. 

My model of self-governance has the community as an autonomous political entity, but embedded in expanding circles of collaboration and mutual learning up to the global scale. And ideas and trends can cut across the circles. Holographic, locally autonomous, self-governance. It seems we are in considerable agreement, and your quibble gives me a chance to clarify the terminology I'm using.

As regards facilitation, there are many different kinds. Similarly, the term 'consensus' has different meanings for different people. The Wise Democracy (capital letters) movement, is based on Dynamic Facilitation. DF is a very special process, ideally suited to helping develop community consciousness and a sense of We the People:

The wise democracy (lower case) movement brings in other good methods as well, such as Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry, the circle process, and others:

In my efforts to promote facilitation among relocalization activists, people often say that they've 'tried group process and it didn't work well'. It is difficult to break through people's preconceptions about process and get them to understand that different processes have quite different properties. In general, the relocalization movement is excellent on ecological and economic consciousness, but weak on political consciousness. It understands that economic transformation must begin locally, but doesn't understand that the same principles apply to governance.

rkm
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From: Hélène CONNOR 
Date: 2 January 2010 09:33:43 GMT
To: "Richard K. Moore" <r...@quaylargo.com>
Subject: Re: The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution: lessons for  today

Dear Richard,
Thank you for this last piece. A real New Year’s gift! It is exactly the kind of explanation we need to pursue “logically” our own work. 
An international climate agreement may not be possible, but we see this succesful localisation already happening on climate and energy issues: the real movers are cities. Where the need for a global ecodevelopment has been understood it leads to a reappropriation of their actions/decisions by citizens and to real satisfaction. Obviously this is the best way to pursue at the moment and our association hasn’t wasted any opportunities to contribute to this effort.
Thanks again, Richard, and a very enlightened New Year!
Hélène

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Hi Hélène,

Thanks for your encouraging progress report.

Unfortunately, an international climate agreement has been reached, by a US-led 'coalition of the willing globalists'. And like all centralized 'solutions' this will only make all the problems worse. Persist in your local efforts and don't be co-opted by phony initiatives from sell-out deceivers like Obama. The wolf in sheep's clothing is the most dangerous wolf.

rkm
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From: j fadiman
Date: 3 January 2010 02:03:59 GMT
To: "Richard Moore" <r...@quaylargo.com>
Subject: Re: The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution: lessons for   today

a fine clear, you at your best essay. A good way to start what looks like a bad year.

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Hi Jim,

Thank you sir. As you will see in the video referenced in the next contribution, some see great hope in 2010. We can hope there is some truth in what they say. I know you do hold store with the concept of visualization, although we both know that demons can visualize as well. Duels with light swords?

rkm
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From: "TK Wilson" 
Date: 2 January 2010 12:46:55 GMT
To: "Richard Moore" <r...@quaylargo.com>
Subject: Re: The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution: lessons for today

This may be applicable to the next/current revolution in human consciousness.
Our (most of our) inate desire for connectedness is what powers the concept of dynamic facilitation.
(While the whole idea of "channeling" seems like a bunch of woowoo bullshit to me, it most certainly has an ancient and deep rooted tradition in all indigenous cultures. Maybe the circle is closing/coming to completion.)

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Hi TK,

I find it refreshing that you permit yourself to find value in something even when it goes against your preconceptions. That is the only way in which we can expand our consciousness. Those who reject information based on their preconceptions, such as the warming true-believers, keep themselves in a box of limited awareness. 

As regards channeling, and psychic phenomena generally, things have indeed come full circle. The leading edge of science, as in quantum physics, now understands that the universe is permeated by consciousness. People like Dawkins, on the other hand, remain in their box of preconceptions. "In the beginning was the Word" now has a scientific basis. It is not creationism vs. evolution, rather there is an ongoing synergy between a creative universe and the learning process that is evolution. Most of us have had psychic experiences, such as telepathy and precognition, and now science has caught up with what shamans have always understood. Unfortunately most scientists are unaware of advances outside their own narrow field. In science, or more accurately the 'scientific community', we find one of those unfortunate interpretations of the term 'consensus'.

rkm
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From: "laurence" 
Date: 2 January 2010 15:01:56 GMT
To: "Richard Moore" <r...@quaylargo.com>
Subject: Re: The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution: lessons for today

Hi Richard,
  I just do not see how creativity could be the culprit for unchecked greed as the new norm.  What I see is that reaction against blind dogmatic religious rule (by corrupted leaders) gave way to the loss of true spiritual connection.
What has justified abusive exploitation more than anything else was the new paradigma : neo-darwinism. No wonder why present rulers fight so fiercely against the new raising paradigma. Technical innovations were put ahead of critical psychological/sociological progress, at least in former kingdoms... Marx the perfect atheist had it right when he wrote that if humans were evolded enough, no rule would be necessary! He perfectly described a spiritualy matured society...
  I am convinced that implicit beliefs and social architecture are at the core of our ply. Our biology/psychology is such that only horizontal structures can succeed in solving our many problems. And that implies our shared cosmology, core beliefs and myths. I truly advise you read Eric Julien's books on his experience with the kogi indians, I doubt it has been translated into english, however it is such an essential read.....
It would take much time and energy to go into details, the main idea is that life is whole and systemic, if it gets out of balance, everything gets out of balance. The question is : "how to retrieve our collective balance?"
   regards

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Hi Laurence,

Thanks for a very interesting message, sprinkled with useful insights. I sense, however, one particular mental stuckness. That is, a tendency toward an 'either-or' approach to understanding. The god of creativity, Shiva, is also the god of destruction – they are two sides of the same coin. So often things include their opposite. When Darwin set off on his voyage aboard the Beagle, destined to see evolution revealed, his intended and announced mission was to discover the site of the Garden of Eden, and proof of the Bible's literal truth. Such irony. Marx may have been the perfect atheist, but Marxism became in all but name a religion, with excesses against 'heretics' that rivaled those of the Inquisition itself. 

The Kogi are fascinating. Here's a good web introduction: http://ayadoc.blogspot.com/2008/11/kogis.html . But of course they are not the only ones who recognize that humanity is out of balance, and that we need to rediscover wholeness. Indeed 'holistic' has become a very popular paradigm, or at least its buzzwords have become widely used. Even environmentalism has become to a large extent a cult, embracing balance in the ecological realm, while practicing factionalism in the political realm. Cults can be recognized by the uniformity of their thinking, and by their impenetrable defenses against contrary ideas.

Yes, the question is how to retrieve our collective balance. I suggest that preaching about it is not the way, and I'm not suggesting that's what you are doing (more likely I'm guilty of it). The lesson of Dynamic Facilitation is that more progress is made by listening than by teaching. In the phrase 'collective balance', the key word is collective, and collective must be inclusive. It is not the fierce resistance of rulers that holds back the new paradigms, but our inability, and unwillingness, to listen to those whose beliefs differ from ours. A healthy ecosystem is characterized by diversity of life forms. Similarly, in a species that has lost its aboriginal innocence, a healthy culture is characterized by diversity of beliefs and perspectives. 

rkm
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From: "Peggy Conroy"
Date: 2 January 2010 14:06:57 GMT
To: "Richard Moore" <r...@quaylargo.com>
Subject: Re: The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution: lessons for today

Hello All,
 
Even the best musicians need a worthy conductor for a laudable performance. 
 
Sincerely,
Peggy

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Hi Peggy,

Tell that to musicians in rock, blues, and jazz, or indigenous people with their versions of music and dance that evolved over millennia as a folk process. I've been in orchestras and choruses, I do love that form, and one even comes to love the unique artistic contribution of the conductor. But it's only one musical form among many.  I'll never forget one experience I had in a high-school chamber music group. We had practiced a piece with the conductor, and then he asked us to play it without him, and to listen carefully as we did so. It was like magic. We sounded better without the conductor! By taking responsibility for the collective sound, rather than depending on the 'leader' to provide coherence, new energy was brought to the process. 

rkm
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From: Molly Morgan
Date: 2 January 2010 20:10:56 GMT
Subject: Re: The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution: lessons for  today

Hi, Richard -
This piece is particularly excellent! I need to re-read it to fully absorb it. You have some extremely insightful points here, and also so delicious turns of phrase.
I tend to think of people like David Korten and John Perkins as the folks within today's establishment who are at least somewhat aligned with the new paradigm -- but maybe they are more accurately categorized as defectors. What do you think?
  happy new year,
  molly

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Hi Molly,

I didn't know where I was going with the essay, but it did turn out fairly well. It must have been channeled. 

Korten and Perkins, and also Chossudovsky, came from jobs in the establishment, but they were never really 'people of power'. Defectors is an apt term for them, and once they began speaking their own minds they became outcasts in the halls of power. No invitations to Bilderberger meetings will be coming through their letter boxes.

As I now reflect, I'd say there are there are people who have some degree of 'established power' and who are aligned with a liberatory paradigm. They are mostly conservatives. Like the leaders in Vermont and Texas who want to want to secede from the Union. And Sheriff Mack and the Oath Keepers. If liberals weren't so cultish, and began to embrace such potential allies, we'd see real sparks of of transformation begin to fly. But no, they won't even listen to Alex Jones, who's got a better take on world affairs than any liberal pundit I've seen. 

rkm


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