(note, since we already have an active philosophy/science/religion thread, I won't post visionaries in those fields here, but there instead. The emphasis here is more about what visionaries say about how we live in the world, and what a liveable, workable and sustainable world would be like; although there is obvious overlap since we're talking "consciousness"). I admire these visionaries a lot, and say that they offer resources we need to draw upon for our 4T and beyond, but that is not to say I myself agree with everything they say 100%. This thread is not just about my own views on things.

Visionaries from the Consciousness Revolution: Charlene Spretnak

wikipedia bio:

Charlene Spretnak (b. 1946) is an American author, activist, academic, and feminist. Born in 1946 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Spretnak was raised in Columbus, Ohio. She earned her B.A. from St. Louis University and her M.A. in English and American Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1981. Spretnak began her professional career as an activist and scholar in the 1970's. In 1989 she was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame for her writings on spirituality and social justice. In 2006, she was named by the United Kingdom Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as one of the "100 Eco-Heroes of All Time." As of 2010 she is a professor of women's spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies and a research fellow at the Green Institute.

The Green Alternative
An ecologically based political movement
is starting to emerge In America

By Charlene Spretnak

One of the articles in Governance (IC#7)
Originally published in Autumn 1984 on page 48
Copyright (c)1984, 1997 by Context Institute

How might the widespread hope for a humane and sustainable society be translated into political reality? One promising route is the development of "Green" political movements in which the many strands of social and ecological concern that have grown during the past decade or so are starting to coalesce and find political expression. Green movements are flourishing in nearly every country in Western Europe, as well as in Japan, Canada and Australia. Given all this activity in the rest of the industialized West, what are the prospects for Green politics here in the United States?

This is a major question addressed in the new Green Politics: The Global Promise, by Fritjof Capra and Charlene Spretnak (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1984, 244pp, $11. 95). The first part of the book provides a fascinating examination of the development of The Greens (Die Grunen) in West Germany, where they have become an established political party with representatives in the West German Federal Parliament as well as many state and local offices. Their program is based on the "four pillars’ of deep ecology, social responsibility, grassroots democracy, and nonviolence.

The following article is based on excerpts from the American chapter, written by Spretnak, in which she reflects on the lessons we can learn from Die Grunen and suggests how we might proceed with a Green Movement in the U.S.. For a more complete understanding of the Green experience, I encourage you to look at the full book. Reprinted with permission.


THE ROOTS OF GREEN IDEAS in American culture reach back to our earliest origins. For more than 20,000 years Native Americans have maintained a deeply ecological sense of the subtle forces that link humans and nature, always emphasizing the need for balance and for reverence toward Mother Earth. Spiritual values are inherent in their politics, as they were for the many colonists who came to this land for the protection of religious pluralism. The Founding Fathers of our government, who were familiar with the federal system of the Iroquois nation, created a democratic federalism that reflects the shared values comprising national identity but entrusts extensive powers to the states and to the people’s representatives, who can block the designs of federal authoritarianism. The young nation spawned a network of largely self-sufficient communities that flourished through individual effort and cooperation – the barn railings, the quilting bees, the town meetings. Yet local self-sufficiency and self- determination eventually gave way to control by such huge institutions as the federal bureaucracy, the military establishment, massive corporations, big labor unions, the medical establishment, the education system, institutionalized religion, and centralized technology.

The inability of our centralist "dinosaur institutions" to address the multifaceted crisis we face is stimulating the growth of the Green alternative in this country. Not only do we – like the other polluted, nuclearized economically imperiled societies – see the writing on the wall, but we also have an outpouring of books and articles that, taken together, are unique in the world for the breadth and depth of the new-paradigm solutions they propose. Stimulated by the civil rights, feminist, counterculture, ecology, anti-nuclear power, and peace movements – and especially by the rise of the holistic paradigm in science and society – visionary thinkers in the United States have been brainstorming in print for the past decade, each contributing to the evolution of a coherent view that could guide an ecologically wise society free of exploitation and war. It is true, however, that these works are not widely known as body and that the visionary thinkers do not always agree. Moreover, the concrete, practical side to most of their theories has not been developed.

We do have years of experience, though, in certain kinds of holistic political practice. The ecology and peace movements have discovered their common ground, the feminists have held ecofeminist conferences and peace actions, and countless networks working toward comprehensive, nonviolent social change have developed. Numerous positive steps have been taken toward realizing that our existence is part of a subtle web of interrelationships – yet these fall far short of creating an effective political manifestation of the new paradigm. We believe it is essential that Green ideas enter American political debate at all levels. Currently the Democratic and Republican parties struggle fruitlessly to apply outdated and irrelevant concepts and priorities to our burgeoning crisis. As the quality of life in this country declines and hardships in the Third World increase, the old-paradigm parties are losing credibility.

John Kenneth Galbraith

(a visionary from the 1T AND 2T)

John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith, OC (properly pron.: /ɡælˈbreɪθ/ gal-brayth, but commonly /ˈɡælbreɪθ/ gal-brayth; 15 October 1908 – 29 April 2006), was a Canadian economist, public official, and a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism. He was a Keynesian, an institutionalist, His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 2000s and he filled the role of public intellectual from the 1950s to the 1970s on matters of economics.
Galbraith was a prolific author who produced four dozen books and over a thousand articles on various subjects. Among his most famous works was a popular trilogy on economics, American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958), and The New Industrial State (1967). He taught at Harvard University for many years. Galbraith was active in Democratic Party politics, serving in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson; he served as United States Ambassador to India under Kennedy. His prodigious literary output meant he was arguably the best known economist in the world during his lifetime[1] and was one of a select few people to be awarded the Medal of Freedom, in 1946, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2000, for services to economics. The government of France made him a Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur.

The New Industrial State by John Kenneth Galbraith

A Summary by Tracy R. Carpenter

As far as the economic system goes, the producers are the head honchos not the consumers. This is the main point of John Kenneth Galbraith's article The New Industrial State. Companies use strategies and planning to insure that they--one make a profit and--two have sufficient consumer support and need for their wares. Galbraith argues that certainly planning is economically motivated but planning is even more so technologically motivated. His example: If a road needs to be built, then all the ditch diggers of the town get together and make a road. No special skills are needed to dig ditches, every man helps out. Now with the new technologies that have emerged and automobiles, a simple dirt road is not sufficient. Now roads not only need to be smoother, they must go farther, overlap, and be durable. Now sophisticated machines as well as skilled machine operators are needed to keep up with the technology of roads and machines that make those roads. Corporations learn about consumer interests and that easily allows them to mold consumer interests. Galbraith says that there are 3 factors involved in the corporations' strategy for planning required to insure profit--vertical integration, production, and distribution.

In earlier times the market economy worked a bit differently as far as the Consumer-producer relationship. The consumer offered to pay some price for goods, and that is what determined the market value for goods for the producer. The producer strictly relied on the consumer and their willingness to pay. Planning soon evolved because this way of business was not producing the desired effect for the producers--profit. Planning required that corporation be able predict what the consumer will want and need by months ahead or even years. Companies must plan ahead for labor and wages for those laborers and must incorporate those costs into the price that will be charge to the consumer in order to make a profit. Planning for the needs of the consumer far in advance carries with it some risk, however. The more technological the product, the riskier the fore planning. Technology moves so fast and is so sporadic that what is in demand now might not be in demand in 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years, etc. As technology changes and become more sophisticated, the planning involved must be elaborately anticipated and arranged. The raw materials, skilled workers, and ability to pay for specialized labor must come together in harmony in order for a company to work. Galbraith put it simply: "As viewed by the industrial firm, planning consists in foreseeing the actions required between the initiation of production and its completion and preparing for the accomplishment of these actions." There are two kinds of planning involved here. There is the planning by the firm, which is its long-range accommodation to the market influences to which it is subject, and there is the planning that stipulates what its prices and production will be. The two are undeniably interrelated. A firm cannot foresee and schedule future action or prepare for contingencies if it does not know what its price will be, sales, cost, including labor and capital cost, what will be available at theses cost. Planning doesn't always prove to be foolproof. To combat this dilemma, companies become conglomerate corporations, being diverse in its goods and offering many types of goods. If one product doesn't do well at any one given time, the company has other products to fall back on, so loss is minimal. A small company offering that same product and only that product would suffer economical loss and possibly fold. Size is key here. Size is also power. Companies also do away with uncertainties by entering into purchase agreements with each other. It becomes the "I'll scratch your back, and you scratch mine" idea. The dairy farmer only gets his fertilizer from the fertilizer company and the fertilizer producer only gets his milk from the dairy farmer--reciprocity. Before you know it a lot of small farmers and businesses become matrices of contacts by which uncertainty is eliminated. The name of the economical game is profit. "Big business will only undertake such innovations as promise to enhance its profits and power, or protect it market position." "Size is the general servant of technology, not the special servant of profits." Small businesses have no need for technological innovations and can hardly afford to keep up with new technologies(as big businesses do) and therefore struggle to survive in the economical whirlwind of production and profit. The enemy is advanced technology, the specialization and organization of men and process that this requires and the resulting commitment of time and capital.

Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered is a collection of essays by British economist E. F. Schumacher. The phrase "Small Is Beautiful" came from a phrase by his teacher Leopold Kohr. It is often used to champion small, appropriate technologies that are believed to empower people more, in contrast with phrases such as "bigger is better".

First published in 1973, Small Is Beautiful brought Schumacher's critiques of Western economics to a wider audience during the 1973 energy crisis and emergence of globalization. The Times Literary Supplement ranked Small Is Beautiful among the 100 most influential books published since World War II. A further edition with commentaries was published in 1999.

Small Is Beautiful received the prestigious award Prix Européen de l'Essai Charles Veillon in 1976.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful

Schumacher was a respected economist who worked with John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith, and for twenty years as the Chief Economic Advisor to the National Coal Board in the United Kingdom. He was opposed to the tenets of neo-classical economics, declaring that single-minded concentration on output and technology was dehumanizing. He held that one's workplace should be dignified and meaningful first, efficient second, and that nature (like its natural resources) is priceless.

Schumacher proposed the idea of "smallness within bigness": a specific form of decentralization. For a large organization to work, according to Schumacher, it must behave like a related group of small organizations. Schumacher's work coincided with the growth of ecological concerns and with the birth of environmentalism and he became a hero to many in the environmental movement.


The book is divided into four parts: "The Modern World," "Resources," "The Third World," and "Organization and Ownership."

In the first chapter, "The Problem of Production", Schumacher argues that the modern economy is unsustainable. Natural resources (like fossil fuels), are treated as expendable income, when in fact they should be treated as capital, since they are not renewable, and thus subject to eventual depletion. He further argues that nature's resistance to pollution is limited as well. He concludes that government effort must be concentrated on sustainable development, because relatively minor improvements, for example, technology transfer to Third World countries, will not solve the underlying problem of an unsustainable economy.

Schumacher's philosophy is one of "enoughness," appreciating both human needs, limitations and appropriate use of technology. It grew out of his study of village-based economics, which he later termed "Buddhist economics," which is the subject of the book's fourth chapter.

He faults conventional economic thinking for failing to consider the most appropriate scale for an activity, blasts notions that "growth is good," and that "bigger is better," and questions the appropriateness of using mass production in developing countries, promoting instead "production by the masses." Schumacher was one of the first economists to question the appropriateness of using gross national product to measure human well being, emphasizing that "the aim ought to be to obtain the maximum amount of well being with the minimum amount of consumption."

Quotes

Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful.

...Since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.... The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity.

It is clear, therefore, that Buddhist economics must be very different from the economics of modern materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilisation not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character. Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man's work. And work, properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it and equally their products.

The most striking thing about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one's ordinary powers of imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed.
Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.

The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds. If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid, uninteresting, petty, and chaotic.

Visionaries from the Consciousness Revolution: Hazel Henderson

Hazel Henderson (born 1933 in Bristol, England) is a futurist and an economic iconoclast. In recent years she has worked in television, and she is the author of several books including Building A Win-Win World, Beyond Globalization, Planetary Citizenship (with Daisaku Ikeda), and Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazel_Henderson

Henderson is now a television producer for the public television series Ethical Markets. She has been Regent's Lecturer at the University of California (Santa Barbara) and held the Horace Albright Chair in Conservation at the University of California (Berkeley). She has also been a traveling lecturer and panelist. Recently, she has served on the boards of such publications as Futures Research Quarterly, The State of the Future Report, and E/The Environmental Magazine (US), Resurgence, Foresight and Futures (UK). She advised the US Office of Technology Assessment and the National Science Foundation from 1974 to 1980. Listed in Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in Science and Technology, and in Who's Who in Business and Finance.

Henderson has been in good part concerned with finding the unexplored areas in standard economics and the "blind spots" of conventional economists. Most of her work relates to the creation of an interdisciplinary economic and political theory with a focus on environmental and social concerns. For instance, she has delved into the area of the "value" of such unquantifiables as clean air and clean water, needed in tremendous abundance by humans and other living organisms. This work led to the development, with Calvert Group, of the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators.

In 2005, Henderson started Ethical Markets Media, LLC,[1] to disseminate information on green investing, socially responsible investing, green business, green energy, business ethics news, environmentally friendly technology, good corporate citizenship and sustainable development by making available reports, articles, newsletters and video gathered from around the world.

Creating an Alternative Economy
http://www.motherearthnews.com/natur...#axzz2O87Oxvz2

Senator Edward M. Kennedy has called Hazel Henderson "a unique contemporary pioneer in the effort to humanize modern science and technology".

E.F. Schumacher once stated, "Mrs. Henderson's essays — every one of them — have more 'reality' than almost any other writings on societal problems I know."

And Jacques-Yves Cousteau has said of Hazel Henderson's collected writings, "In this book are most of the ideas we are fighting for. Anybody longing for a better life must read it."

And just who is this Hazel Henderson that all these people are talking about? She's an internationally published thinker, activist, and a founder of many public interest (particularly environmental) organizations . . . who, perhaps, sees things more clearly than most of today's Establishment "leaders" because she's never attended a day of college in her life.

Furthermore — with her husband, Carter F. Henderson — Hazel currently (as of 1978) directs the Princeton Center for Alternative Futures, Inc. . . . a deliberately small and independent think tank.

Mrs. Henderson is also a director of the Council on Economic Priorities and of the Worldwatch Institute, a member of the U.S. Association for the Club of Rome, an advisor to The Cousteau Society and to the Environmental Action Foundation, and a member of the Advisory Council of the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment.


This excerpt from "Creating Alternative Futures: The End of Economics" by Hazel Henderson (1978), an environmental activist, provides an excellent framework for imagining and working toward an alternative economy.

There are many signs, both physical and metaphysical, that industrial cultures are breaking down. But I want to emphasize that the breakdown of an old culture can also signify a needed breakthrough. Times of crisis, as the Chinese say, are times of both danger and opportunity.

From ecological theory, we know that all biological systems (including human societies and those abstractions they call their "economies") involve continuous cycles of entropy and syntropy: the breaking down and building up of structure and the constant recycling of the detritus that releases the nutrients for new growth, synthesis, and evolution. So let us now look at what is being born: the emerging, regenerative, "counter-economy" now beginning to grow amid the old industrial systems.

This basic model of the entropy/syntropy cycle and the irreversible evolution of all natural and biological systems is crucial to our understanding of the particular subsystem we call our "economy" and in helping us see current economic difficulties in longer time perspectives as the onset of the decline of industrialism.

This decline will undoubtedly prove uncomfortable, as it already is for the millions of unemployed in mature industrial countries. But it will only affect the unsustainable modes of production and consumption it has fostered. With leadership and foresight, adjustments can be made without severe consequences.

Meanwhile the declining system is already releasing "nutrients": capital, management, and human energy and initiative . . . which are spurring the development of this already visible counter-economy, now beginning to flourish in the interstices of our existing institutions.

While economists struggle to recycle themselves in order to address these new conditions and unfamiliar variables, it seems to those whose vision has remained unclouded by economists' mystification that this transition is obvious, that it can be inferred from extremely simple metaphors; e.g., "There is no such thing as a free lunch", "Nothing fails like success", "Growth can be cancer". Indeed, average citizens in these societies have learned to tune out their leaders and mass media and are well on their way to understanding the true situation, in spite of the obfuscations of legions of intellectual day laborers and the divinations of "experts".

In fact, it is fairly self-evident that these mature industrial societies could not continue expanding at past rates, simply because such rates are always in relation to the size of a base. Any citizen knows that as a base grows, the rate of its expansion must sooner or later decline . . . whether one is looking at the rate of increase of today's shares in IBM or Xerox, compared with their past spectacular performance . . . or the rate of growth in the size of oil tankers, airplanes, or human settlements. In fact, the only current exception to this rule appears to be bureaucracies, but they too may decline like the over-centralized, unsustainable technologies that gave rise to them.

And yet, I still find a great deal of hand wringing and rubbish talked in Washington today, about falling rates of economic growth (GNP-defined) and falling rates of technological innovation and "productivity" (inadequately defined), where the base for calculating such rates — the giant U.S. socio-technical system — is the largest on the planet! Surely we know by now that human cultures have a habit of rising and then declining as they exceed some resource limit, run out of technological adaptability, or simply lose creative steam.

So I am not impressed when U.S. rates of technological innovation and "productivity" are compared with official horror to the higher rates of Japan (with a postwar base about an order of magnitude smaller than our own). I am not upset when I'm warned that new "science and technology gaps" are widening and when Congress is urged by science and high-technology-promoting groups to appropriate ever more tax dollars to save us from this fate. Their underlying assumption in all these exhortations is that the health of the scientific and technological enterprise, as currently defined and constituted, is coterminous with the health of the country as a whole. I and many others reject this proposition.


Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/natur...#ixzz2O87hzqeX

Visionaries from the Consciousness Revolution: Barbara Marx Hubbard
http://www.enlightennext.org/magazin...rx-hubbard.asp

A graduate of Bryn Mawr College with a B.A. cum laude in Political Science, Dr. Hubbard studied at La Sorbonne and L'Ecole des Sciences Politiques in Paris during her junior year. In the 1960's she published one of the first newsletters on evolutionary transformation called The Center Letter in collaboration with Abraham H. Maslow, founder of Humanistic Psychology. She worked closely with Dr. Jonas Salk and was one of the original contributors to the Salk Institute.

In the 1970's she co-founded The Committee for the Future in Washington D.C., which developed the New Worlds Educational and Training Center based on her work. She co-produced 25 SYNCON conferences to bring together people from every field and function to seek common goals and match needs and resources in the light of the growing edge potentials of humanity. She was one of the original directors of the Center for Soviet American Dialogue and served as a citizen diplomat during the late 1980's. She has been instrumental in the founding of many important organizations and initiatives including the World Future Society, New Dimensions Radio, Global Family, Women of Vision and Action, The Foundation for the Future, and the Association for Global New Thought. She was awarded the first Doctorate in Conscious Evolution by Emerson Institute.

Dr. Hubbard's books include Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential, Emergence: The Shift from Ego to Essence, The Evolutionary Journey: Your Guide to a Positive Future, and Revelation: A Message of Hope for the New Millennium.


http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/hubbard.html
Conscious Evolution presents an overview of what futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard calls the emerging "social potential movement" — the burgeoning network of forward-looking scientists, scholars, activists, innovators, and practitioners working at the frontiers of social change. Like the human potential movement of the 1960s and 70s, it is rooted in an expanded concept of individual consciousness and human possibility. But unlike its forerunner, it is explicitly outer-directed; its chief objective is to foster a more humane, sustainable, and life-enhancing global society.

The "social potential movement is not revolutionary, but evolutionary," Hubbard asserts. "Its purpose is to evolve all of us, our communities, and our world so that all people are free to fulfill their highest potential." Once confined to a small group of writers and thinkers, the movement is now spawning think tanks and institutes around the world committed to systematically exploring its ideas and proposals, from the reintegration of community through alternative currency systems and socially responsible investing to visionary leadership based on participatory management and the principles of stewardship.

Hubbard discusses the social potential movement against the backdrop of a broader visionary perspective on social and personal transformation. She believes that the human species is poised to take its next evolutionary leap and that the many crises we now face — from environmental devastation and overpopulation to social alienation and dire poverty — represent a dangerous yet natural stage in the birth of a more highly evolved species. Citing recent research in the fields of evolutionary biology, systems theory, and chemistry, she contends that living systems do not change and evolve in a linear fashion, but rather by upheaval, or what she calls "quantum change."

For example, the work of Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine has thrown new light on how open systems in nature are subject to constant fluctuations or perturbations, sudden shifts that allow for novelty and unpredictable change. The chief characteristic of these systems is that apparently random fluctuations inevitably culminate in a sudden shift in which the system's parts reorganize into a more complex pattern. Hubbard sees this process as a metaphor for the sort of change that lies in store for human civilization. Social breakdowns are a lot like to the perturbations which precede a sudden whole-system shift.

In her view, the challenge is to make this process conscious and to "co-create" our fate as a species — that is, to shape our future by choice and willful participation. To do this requires not only that we understand the nature of evolution and "the astonishing capacity for novelty, emergence, and transformation that has brought us from subatomic particles to our current condition," but also that we reframe our current predicament and see it as a painful yet necessary process of giving birth to the next stage of our evolution. The social potential movement has a key role to play during this transition by highlighting the social breakthroughs and innovations that signal the emergence of a more highly evolved global society.

At bottom, Hubbard says, we need to rethink our standard approach to global problem-solving. Rather than analyze what does not work, we need to learn from the many "golden innovations" that do work — those projects in the fields of business, education, urban planning, and other fields that are working successfully and which, if further developed and applied, could not only transform the systems in which they function but also foster greater cooperation, creativity, optimism, tolerance for diversity, and faith in the potential of all human beings.

Visionaries from the Consciousness Revolution: Allen Cohen

Allen Cohen founded the multicolored San Francisco Oracle in 1966.

Allen Cohen (1941-2004), founder of the rainbow-colored San Francisco Oracle underground newspaper and a joyful, bearded and bemused spirit of the Haight- Ashbury counterculture

He was born in Brooklyn and graduated from Brooklyn College in 1962 before leaving for San Francisco after reading the classic beat novel "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. He soon found work at the Psychedelic Shop, a "head shop" in the Haight-Ashbury district.

While perhaps under the influence of something he had ingested, he got the idea for a multicolored alternative newspaper, the San Francisco Oracle, which he founded with a $500 loan.

The first issue came out in September 1966, combining beat poetry and fiction with avant-garde art, articles and interviews. It soon became required reading on the street, even though the dizzying design often made that a challenge.

It was also in 1966 that Mr. Cohen was arrested on obscenity charges for selling a collection of erotic poetry called "The Love Book." After a widely publicized five-week trial, Mr. Cohen was convicted and fined $50.

The next year, the pages of the Oracle announced to the world the coming "Gathering of the Tribes" in Golden Gate Park, the first "be-in," which featured beat regulars Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Gary Snyder.

The Oracle ceased publication in 1968, and Mr. Cohen moved to a commune in Albion, near Mendocino, and lived in a teepee. In 1970, he co-wrote "Childbirth is Ecstasy," a poetic and photographic account of the natural birth of his son, River. A Chronicle reviewer said it was full of the "beauty of the childbirth experience and the deep enrichment of life for all concerned. "

In the book, Mr. Cohen railed, poetically, against the "myths descended and guarded by fearful priest craft of doctors/with surgeries, analgesics and anesthetics in their fists/the miracle veiled/behind a white sheet ..."

In the 1970s, Mr. Cohen was back in San Francisco, working at the Schlock Shop store on Grant Avenue, writing poetry and putting together a bound collector's edition of the Oracle.

In later years, Mr. Cohen conducted slide shows and musical lectures about the 1960s scene in San Francisco, performed at poetry readings in the United States and Europe, organized events that he called "digital be-ins," worked as a substitute public school teacher in Oakland, and operated a day care center with his wife, Ann, in their Walnut Creek home.

In a 1990 interview, Mr. Cohen was asked to describe the influence of the New Age movement.

"That movement, along with the anti-war movement, was a renaissance of American culture," he said. "Everything that's happened since -- both reactionary and progressive -- has come out of that movement. The religious fundamentalism of the '70s and '80s was a reaction to the seeming immorality of the hippie movement, and to the religious and spiritual thrust of psychedelics. You had a breakthrough in the awareness of spiritual experience, with people saying, 'God just isn't out there, and he doesn't just talk to the priests.' "

Mr. Cohen was the co-editor of "An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind," a poetry anthology dealing with the Sept. 11 attacks. The book won the 2003 PEN National Literary Award.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/articl...#ixzz2O8HaxAYZ

http://www.sfheart.com/cohen.html

THE VISION THING

Are we at the beginning of the turning,
of the yearning for the dream of unity,
of the dawning sun of true justice,
of the rising direct vision of beauty and equality
in each other, in each race, country, religion,
of healing the wounded earth?
Is it coming in the manger, in the compassion
for the poorest, for the children, for the homeless?
Is it coming through forgiveness,
through knowledge applied,
through action that lifts us all on a wave?
Yes, a wave of love for the children
through the millennium
with war denied, with hunger overcome,.
Are we at the beginning of the turning,
of the yearning for the dream of unity?

by Allen Cohen All rights reserved.
with illustrations by Ann Cohen

This poem is included in Allen Cohen's newest book, "Like A Radiant Dove".

Prof. Manfred Max-Neef, Pioneer of 'Barefoot Economics' (b. October 26, 1932)

Professor Manfred Max-Neef is a Chilean economist who focuses on ‘development alternatives’. After teaching economics at Berkeley in the early 1960s, he served as a visiting Professor at a number of US and Latin American universities. He has worked on development projects in Latin America for the Pan-American Union, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Labour Organisation. In 1981 he wrote the book ‘From the Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics’, published by the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Sweden, for which he is best known. The book elaborates on practicing ‘economics as if people matter’. In 1991 he published ‘Human Scale Development’. He was Rector of the Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia and currently teaches and lectures globally. He received the Right Livelihood Award in 1983 and has received honorary degrees from Japan, Jordan and Colombia.

http://youtu.be/bBLDh0Rug14


Part 2 http://youtu.be/MTIpWUvoQl4

Visionaries from the Consciousness Revolution: Jeremy Rifkin
(2T, 3T and 4T!)

Jeremy Rifkin (born January 26, 1945) is an American economist, writer, public speaker, political advisor and activist. He is the founder and president of the Foundation On Economic Trends. Rifkin's work explores the potential impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment.

Rifkin grew up on the southwest side of Chicago. He was president of his graduating class at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (BS, Economics, 1967) and recipient of the school's General Alumni Association's Award of Merit.[1] He had an epiphany when one day in 1966 he walked past a group of students protesting the Vietnam War and picketing the administration building and was amazed to see, as he recalls, that "my frat friends were beating the living daylights out of them. I got very upset." He organized a freedom-of-speech rally the next day. From then on, Rifkin quickly became an active member of the peace movement. He attended the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (MA, International Affairs, 1968) where he continued anti-war activities. Later he joined Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA).

In 1973, Rifkin organized a mass-protest against oil companies at the commemoration of the 200th Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party at Boston's Harbor. Thousands joined the protest, as activists dumped empty oil barrels into Boston's Harbor. The protest came in the wake of the increase in gasoline prices in the fall of 1972, following the OPEC oil embargo.[2] This was later called "Boston Oil Party" by the press.[3]

In 1977, with Ted Howard, he founded the Foundation on Economic Trends (FOET),[4] which is active in both national and international public policy issues related to the environment, the economy, and climate change. FOET examines new trends and their impacts on the environment, the economy, culture and society, and engages in litigation, public education, coalition building and grassroots organizing activities to advance their goals. Rifkin became one of the first major critics of the nascent biotechnology industry with the 1977 publication of his book, Who Should Play God?

Rifkin's 1980 work "Entropy" was called "A comprehensive worldview" and "an appropriate successor to ... Silent Spring, The Closing Circle, The Limits to Growth, and Small Is Beautiful."[5]

In 1988, Rifkin brought together climate scientists and environmental activists from 35 nations in Washington, D.C. for the first meeting of the Global Greenhouse Network.[6] In the same year, Rifkin did a series of Hollywood lectures on global warming and related environmental issues for a diverse assortment of film, television and music industry leaders[clarification needed], with the goal of organizing the Hollywood community for a campaign. Shortly thereafter, two Hollywood environmental organizations, Earth Communications Office (ECO), and Environmental Media Association, were formed.[7]

In 1992, Rifkin launched the Beyond Beef Campaign, a coalition of six environmental groups including Green Peace, Rainforest Action Network, and Public Citizen, with the goal of encouraging a 50% reduction in the consumption of beef, arguing that methane emissions from Cattle has a warming effect 23 to 50 times greater than carbon dioxide.[8][9]

Beginning in 1994, Rifkin was a senior lecturer at The Wharton School's executive education program at the University of Pennsylvania, where he instructs CEOs and senior corporate management from around the world on new trends in science and technology.[10]

His 1995 book, The End of Work, is credited by some with helping shape the current global debate on automation, technology displacement, corporate downsizing and the future of jobs. Reporting on the growing controversy over automation and technology displacement in 2011, The Economist pointed out that Jeremy Rifkin drew attention to the trend back in 1995 with the publication of his book The End of Work. The Economist asked "what happens... when machines are smart enough to become workers? In other words, when capital becomes labor." The Economist noted that "this is what Jeremy Rifkin, a social critic, was driving at in his book, "The End of Work," published in 1995... Mr. Rifkin argued prophetically that society was entering a new phase, one in which fewer and fewer workers would be needed to produce all the goods and services consumed. 'In the years head,' he wrote, 'more sophisticated software technologies are going to bring civilisation ever closer to a near-workerless world. The process has already begun."

His 1998 book, The Biotech Century, addresses issues accompanying the new era of genetic commerce. In its review of the book, the journal Nature observed that "Rifkin does his best work in drawing attention to the growing inventory of real and potential dangers and the ethical conundrums raised by genetic technologies...At a time when scientific institutions are struggling with the public understanding of science, there is much they can learn from Rifkin's success as a public communicator of scientific and technological trends."

After the publication of The Hydrogen Economy (2002), Rifkin worked both in the U.S. and Europe to advance the political cause of renewably generated hydrogen. In the U.S., Rifkin was instrumental in founding the Green Hydrogen Coalition, consisting of thirteen environmental and political organizations (including Greenpeace and MoveOn.Org) that are committed to building a renewable hydrogen based economy.[12] His 2004 book, The European Dream, was an international bestseller and winner of the 2005 Corine International Book Prize in Germany for the best economics book of the year.

Rifkin is the principal architect of the Third Industrial Revolution long-term economic sustainability plan to address the triple challenge of the global economic crisis, energy security, and climate change.[13] The Third Industrial Revolution was formally endorsed by the European Parliament in 2007 and is now being implemented by various agencies within the European Commission.[14] Rifkin has lectured before many Fortune 500 companies, and hundreds of governments, civil society organizations, and universities over the past thirty five years.[15]

Rifkin is the founder and chairperson of the Third Industrial Revolution Global CEO Business Roundtable, comprising more than 100 of the world's leading renewable energy companies, construction companies, architectural firms, real estate companies, IT companies, power and utility companies, and transport and logistics companies.[16] Rifkin's global economic development team is working with cities, regions, and national governments to develop master plans to transition their economies into post- carbon Third Industrial Revolution infrastructures. In 2009, Rifkin and his team developed Third Industrial Revolution master plans for the cities of San Antonio, Texas and Rome, Italy, to transition their economies into the first post carbon urban areas in the world.[17]

In 2011, Rifkin published The Third Industrial Revolution; How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World. The book was a New York Times best-seller,[18] and has been translated into 15 languages.

In 2011, Rifkin's Third Industrial Revolution vision and economic development plan was embraced by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). Quoting Dr. Kandeh K. Yumkella, Director-General of (UNIDO)and chairman of UN Energy,"[The Third Industrial Revolution is] A provocative strategy for transforming the global energy system. This book may help frame the social and economic solutions for the 1.5 billion poorest people who lack access to clean, reliable, and efficient energy services.”[19] Speaking along side Mr. Rifkin at a joint press briefing at the UNIDO biennual conference in 2011, Director-General Yumkella said "We believe we are at the beginning of a Third Industrial Revolution and I want all member countries of UNIDO to hear the message and ask the key question, how does this apply to our economies, how can we be part of this revolution, and of course how do we share knowledge, share capital, and investments around the world to make this revolution really happen."

On May 29, 2012, Rifkin delivered the keynote address at the European Commission Conference: Mission Growth; Europe at the Lead of the New Industrial Revolution. At the conference, hosted by Jose-Maunuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, and Antonio Tajani, the Vice President of the European Commission and the Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship, Mr. Rifkin presented the European Union's long term economic development plan to transition the European economy into the Third Industrial Revolution era.

Rifkin received the America Award of the Italy-USA Foundation in 2012. He currently works out of an office in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.

European Union consultancies:

Rifkin has advised both the European Commission and the European Parliament. Rifkin has also advised Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain during its presidency of the European Union. Rifkin also served as an adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Jose Socrates of Portugal, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, and Prime Minister Janez Janša of Slovenia, during their respective European Council Presidencies, on issues related to the economy, climate change, and energy security. Rifkin is currently working with European officials to help shape a Third Industrial Revolution long-term economic development plan for the European Union.[20]

Reception

According to the The "European Energy Review" "Perhaps no other author or thinker has had more influence on the EU's ambitious climate and energy policy than the famous American 'visionary' Jeremy Rifkin.[21] In the United States, he has testified before numerous congressional committees and has had success in litigation to ensure responsible government policies on a variety of environmental, scientific and technology related issues.[22] The Union of Concerned Scientists has cited some of Rifkin's publications as useful references for consumers[23] and The New York Times once stated that "many in the scholarly, religious, and political fields praise Jeremy Rifkin for a willingness to think big, raise controversial questions, and serve as a social and ethical prophet".

Rifkin's work has also been controversial. Opponents have attacked the lack of scientific rigor in his claims as well as some of the tactics he has used to promote his views. The Harvard scientist Stephen Jay Gould characterized Rifkin's 1983 book Algeny as "a cleverly constructed tract of anti-intellectual propaganda masquerading as scholarship".[24] A 1989 Time article about Rifkin was entitled "The Most Hated Man in Science."[25]

Visionaries from the Consciousness Revolution: Fritjof Capra

Fritjof Capra (born February 1, 1939) is an Austrian-born American physicist.[1] He is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, and is on the faculty of Schumacher College.

Capra is the author of several books, including The Tao of Physics (1975), The Turning Point (1982), Uncommon Wisdom (1988), The Web of Life (1996), and The Hidden Connections (2002).

http://www.fritjofcapra.net/bibliography.html

The Tao of Physics, Capra's first book, challenges much of conventional wisdom by demonstrating striking parallels between ancient mystical traditions and the discoveries of 20th century physics. Originally published by a small publisher with no budget for promotion, the book became an underground bestseller by word of mouth before it was picked up by a major American publishing house. Since then, The Tao of Physics has been published in 43 editions in 23 languages.

In The Turning Point, the author expands his focus to show how the revolution in modern physics foreshadows a similar revolution in many other sciences and a corresponding transformation of world views and values in society. In particular, he explores paradigm shifts in biology, medicine, psychology, and economics. The book has been published in 25 editions in 16 languages.

In Uncommon Wisdom, the author describes dialogues and personal encounters between himself and the thinkers who helped shape the theme of The Turning Point. The book has been published in 16 editions in 12 languages.

The Web of Life starts from the conceptual framework presented in The Turning Point, summarizes the mathematics of complexity, and offers a synthesis of recent nonlinear theories of living systems that have dramatically increased our understanding of the key characteristics of life. The book has been published in 14 editions in 10 languages.

In The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living, the author extends the framework of systems and complexity theory to the social domain and uses the extended framework to discuss some of the critical issues of our time -- the management of human organizations, the challenges and dangers of economic globalization, the scientific and ethical problems of biotechnology, and the design of ecologically sustainable communities and technologies. The book has been published in 11 editions in 8 languages.

Visionaries from the Consciousness Revolution: Murray Bookchin
January 14, 1921 - July 30, 2006

wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin
Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006)[5] was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement,[6] Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist, and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics, philosophy, history, and urban affairs as well as ecology. In the late 1990s he became disenchanted with the strategy of political anarchism and founded his own libertarian socialist ideology called Communalism.[7]

Bookchin was an anti-capitalist and vocal advocate of the decentralisation of society along ecological and democratic lines. His writings on libertarian municipalism, a theory of face-to-face, assembly democracy, had an influence on the Green movement and anti-capitalist direct action groups such as Reclaim the Streets.

from
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist...chin/bio1.html

Several of his 1970s essays criticized developments in the new ecology movement and distinguished between ecology, which he considered radical and innovative, and environmentalism, or reformist or state-oriented approaches that failed to address the root cause of ecological problems. These essays were anthologized in Toward an Ecological Society (Black Rose Books, 1981).

The early 1980s saw the publication of Bookchin’s two major works. The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (1982; republished 1991 and 2005) is a magisterial discussion of ecology and social hierarchy, weaving political, anthropological, psychological, and scientific themes. Here Bookchin explores the notion of dominating nature and its historical emergence primarily from the very real social domination of human by human, particularly in gerontocracies, patriarchies, and other hierarchical strata. He considered hierarchy and domination as more fundamental forms of oppression than class and exploitation.

His second “magnum opus” was The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship (1986; republished as Urbanization Without Cities [1992] and From Urbanization to Cities [1995]). This masterpiece narrates a history of civic self-management, face-to-face democracy, and confederalism in the Western democratic tradition, beginning in ancient Greece and proceeding through medieval European towns and to the popular institutions in several revolutions, particularly the American and French. The book culminates in a chapter-long exposition of libertarian municipalism, which is the name Bookchin gave to his political project. Libertarian municipalism is a politics that seeks to recreate a vital local political or civic sphere in order to establish direct-democratic popular assemblies at the municipal, town, and neighborhood levels. Over larger regions these assemblies would confederate and, as they gained strength, challenge the centralized nation-state. He argued for a municipalization (rather than a Marxian nationalization) of the economy, as a way of opposing the present corporate capitalist system of ownership and management. Some of these ideas were also developed in the essays compiled in The Modern Crisis (1986).

David Joseph Bohm FRS (20 December 1917 – 27 October 1992) was an American theoretical physicist who contributed innovative and unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, philosophy of mind, and neuropsychology. He is widely considered to be one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century.

Interview:

Part 5 http://youtu.be/H-CUck_37F0 (here Bohm is speaking as one of the visionaries of the consciousness revolution)

See also the post under Philosophy, Religion, Science and Turnings. http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/s...156#post464156

Alex Grey (born November 29, 1953) is an American artist specializing in spiritual and psychedelic art (or visionary art) that is sometimes associated with the New Age movement. Grey is a Vajrayana practitioner. His body of work spans a variety of forms including performance art, process art, installation art, sculpture, visionary art, and painting. Grey is a member of the Integral Institute. He is also on the board of advisors for the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, and is the Chair of Wisdom University's Sacred Art Department. He and his wife Allyson Grey are the co-founders of CoSM, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, a non-profit church supporting Visionary Culture in Wappinger, New York.

The sacred mirror was painted over a ten year period from 1979 through 1988.
http://www.cosm.org/art

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Grey

Grey was born Alex Velzy in Columbus, Ohio on November 29, 1953, the middle child of a middle-class couple. His father was a graphic designer and encouraged his son's drawing ability. Young Alex would collect insects and dead animals from the suburban neighborhood and bury them in the back yard. The themes of death and transcendence weave throughout his artworks, from the earliest drawings to later performances, paintings and sculpture. He went to the Columbus College of Art and Design for two years (1971–73), then dropped out and painted billboards in Ohio for a year (1973–74). Grey then attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for one year, to study with the conceptual artist, Jay Jaroslav.

At the Boston Museum School he met his wife, the artist Allyson Rymland Grey.[1] During this period he had a series of entheogenically induced mystical experiences that transformed his agnostic existentialism to a radical transcendentalism. The Grey couple would trip together on LSD. Alex then spent five years at Harvard Medical School working in the Anatomy department studying the body and preparing cadavers for dissection. He also worked at Harvard's department of Mind/Body Medicine with Dr. Herbert Benson and Dr. Joan Borysenko, conducting scientific experiments to investigate subtle healing energies. Alex's anatomical training prepared him for painting the Sacred Mirrors (explained below) and for doing medical illustration. When doctors saw his Sacred Mirrors, they asked him to do illustration work. Grey was an instructor in Artistic Anatomy and Figure Sculpture for ten years at New York University, and now teaches courses in Visionary Art with Allyson at The Open Center in New York City;[2] Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado; the California Institute of Integral Studies and the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York.

In 1972 Grey began a series of art actions that bear resemblance to rites of passage, in that they present stages of a developing psyche. The approximately fifty performance rites, conducted over the last thirty years, move through transformations from an egocentric to more sociocentric and increasingly worldcentric and theocentric identity. The most recent performance was WorldSpirit, a spoken word and musical collaboration with Kenji Williams which was released in 2004 as a DVD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9P-rrVZDKA

http://youtu.be/GaLT6AUFT-A



Transfigurations, the follow-up to Grey’s Sacred Mirrors (1991)–one of the most successful art books of the 1990s–includes all of Grey’s major works completed in the following decade, including the masterful seven-paneled altarpiece Nature of Mind, called “the grand climax of Grey’s art” by Donald Kuspit. His portrayals of human beings blend anatomical exactitude with visionary depictions of universal life energy. Alex Grey’s striking artwork leads us on the soul’s journey from material world encasement to recovery of the divinely illuminated core.





https://projectrestoration.com/alexgrey

(the real "restorationism")

Visionaries of the Consciousness Revolution: Noam Chomsky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. In addition to his work in linguistics, he has written on war, politics, and mass media, and is the author of over 100 books. According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall. He has been described as a prominent cultural figure, and he was voted the "world's top public intellectual" in a 2005 poll.

Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic philosophy.[8] His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.

After the publication of his first books on linguistics, Chomsky became a prominent critic of the Vietnam War, and since then has continued to publish books of political criticism. He has become well known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy, state capitalism and the mainstream news media. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media. He describes his views as "fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism", and often identifies with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.

Some of his books on politics from the 2T:

(1967) "The Responsibility of Intellectuals"
(1969) Perspectives on Vietnam [microform]
(1971) At War with Asia. New York: Pantheon. ISBN 978-0-00-632654-0
(1972) The Pentagon Papers. Senator Gravel ed. vol. V. Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press; includes index to vol. I-IV of the Papers. With Howard Zinn.
(1973) For Reasons of State. New York: Pantheon. ISBN 978-0-00-211242-0
(1976) Intellectuals and the State. ISBN 978-90-293-9671-4
(1978) Human Rights and American Foreign Policy. ISBN 978-0-85124-201-9
(1979) The Political Economy of Human Rights, Volume I: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (with Edward S. Herman) ISBN 0-85124-248-0 ISBN 0-89608-090-0
(1979) The Political Economy of Human Rights, Volume II: After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology (with Edward Herman) ISBN 0-85124-272-3 ISBN 978-0896081000
(1982) Towards a New Cold War: Essays on the Current Crisis and How We Got There. New York: Pantheon. ISBN 978-0-394-51873-2
(1983, 1999) The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians. Boston: South End Press. ISBN 978-0-89608-601-2, ISBN 978-0-89608-187-1

Some of his books from the 2T on linguistics:

Chomsky, Noam (1965). Cartesian Linguistics. New York: Harper and Row. (Reprint: Chomsky, Noam (1986). Cartesian Linguistics. A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.)
(1966). Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar.
(1968) with Morris Halle. The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.
(1968). Language and Mind.
(1975). The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory.
Chomsky, Noam (1975). Reflections on Language. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-394-49956-5.
(1977). Essays on Form and Interpretation.
(1982). Language and the Study of Mind.
(1982). Noam Chomsky on The Generative Enterprise, A discussion with Riny Hyybregts and Henk van Riemsdijk.

On politics:

Chomsky objects to the criticism that anarchism is inconsistent with support for government welfare, stating in part:

One can, of course, take the position that we don't care about the problems people face today, and want to think about a possible tomorrow. OK, but then don't pretend to have any interest in human beings and their fate, and stay in the seminar room and intellectual coffee house with other privileged people. Or one can take a much more humane position: I want to work, today, to build a better society for tomorrow – the classical anarchist position, quite different from the slogans in the question. That's exactly right, and it leads directly to support for the people facing problems today: for enforcement of health and safety regulation, provision of national health insurance, support systems for people who need them, etc. That is not a sufficient condition for organizing for a different and better future, but it is a necessary condition. Anything else will receive the well-merited contempt of people who do not have the luxury to disregard the circumstances in which they live, and try to survive.

Chomsky holds views that can be summarized as anti-war but not strictly pacifist. He prominently opposed the Vietnam War and most other wars in his lifetime. He expressed these views with tax resistance and peace walks. In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. He published a number of articles about the war in Vietnam, including "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". He maintains that U.S. involvement in World War II to defeat the Axis powers was probably justified, with the caveat that a preferable outcome would have been to end or prevent the war through earlier diplomacy. He believes that the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "among the most unspeakable crimes in history".

Chomsky has made many criticisms of the Israeli government, its supporters, the United States' support of the government, and its treatment of the Palestinian people, arguing that " 'supporters of Israel' are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction" and that "Israel's very clear choice of expansion over security may well lead to that consequence."[104] Chomsky disagreed with the founding of Israel as a Jewish state, saying, "I don't think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state."

In March 2012, Chomsky endorsed Jill Stein for Green party Presidential nominee in 2012, saying,
I hope you'll take the opportunity of the March 6th Green-Rainbow primary to cast a vote for resurgent democracy. A democracy that thrives outside of the Democratic and Republican Parties that are sponsored by and subservient to corporate America. ... As you know, popular anger at the political and economic institutions, and the subordination of the former to the latter, has reached historic heights. And for sound reasons. There could hardly be a better time to open up political debate to the just anger and frustrations of citizens who are watching the country move towards what might be irreversible decline while a tiny sector of concentrated wealth and power implements policies of benefit to them and opposed by the general population, whom they are casting adrift.

On science:

Chomsky sees science as a straightforward search for explanation, and rejects the views of it as a catalog of facts or mechanical explanations. In this light, the majority of his contributions to science have been frameworks and hypotheses, rather than "discoveries".

As such, he considers certain so-called post-structuralist or postmodern critiques of logic and reason to be nonsensical:

I have spent a lot of my life working on questions such as these, using the only methods I know of; those condemned here as "science", "rationality," "logic," and so on. I therefore read the papers with some hope that they would help me "transcend" these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different course. I'm afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own limitation. Quite regularly, "my eyes glaze over" when I read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count. True, there are lots of other things I don't understand: the articles in the current issues of math and physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In the latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done so, in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that people in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so that I can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the most part) other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do not know how to proceed.

Although Chomsky believes that a scientific background is important to teach proper reasoning, he holds that science in general is "inadequate" to understand complicated problems like human affairs:

Science talks about very simple things, and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become too complex, science can't deal with them... But it's a complicated matter: Science studies what's at the edge of understanding, and what's at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated [...] So the actual sciences tell us virtually nothing about human affairs.

In this line of thought, Chomsky has recognized the limits of human reason and has shown a clear rejection to scientism, in the acknowledgment that scientists can not explain everything:

On the ordinary problems of human life, science tells us very little, and scientists as people are surely no guide. In fact they are often the worst guide, because they often tend to focus, laser-like, on their professional interests and know very little about the world.
—Chomsky, on The Reality Club: Beyond Belief

Quotes:
http://noam-chomsky.tumblr.com/

"When people wanted enough freedom that they couldn’t be enslaved or killed or repressed, new modes of control naturally developed to try to impose forms of mental slavery so they would accept a framework of indoctrination and wouldn’t raise any questions. If you can trap people into not noticing, let alone questioning, crucial doctrines, they’re enslaved. They’ll essentially follow orders as if there was a gun pointed at them."

What is the point of arguing for any change at all?

“The most libertarian positions accept the same view,” he answers. “That there are instincts, basic conditions of human nature that lead to a preferred social order. In fact, if you’re in favour of any policy – reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever – if you’re at least minimally moral, it’s because you think it’s somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature. So whoever you are, whatever your position is, you’re making some tacit assumptions about fundamental human nature … The question is: what do we strive for in developing a social order that is conducive to fundamental human needs? Are human beings born to be servants to masters, or are they born to be free, creative individuals who work with others to inquire, create, develop their own lives? I mean, if humans were totally unstructured creatures, they would be … a tool which can properly be shaped by outside forces. That’s why if you look at the history of what’s called radical behaviourism, [where] you can be completely shaped by outside forces – when [the advocates of this] spell out what they think society ought to be, it’s totalitarian.”
Noam Chomsky

Visionaries from the Consciousness Revolution: Timothy Leary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Leary

Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs such as LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison Experiment and the Marsh Chapel Experiment. Both studies produced useful data, but Leary and his associate Richard Alpert were fired from the university nonetheless because of the public controversy surrounding their research.

Leary believed LSD showed therapeutic potential for use in psychiatry. He popularized catchphrases that promoted his philosophy such as "turn on, tune in, drop out"; "set and setting"; and "think for yourself and question authority". He also wrote and spoke frequently about transhumanist concepts involving space migration, intelligence increase and life extension (SMI²LE), and developed the eight-circuit model of consciousness in his book Exo-Psychology (1977).
During the 1960s and 1970s, he was arrested often enough to see the inside of 29 different prisons worldwide. President Richard Nixon once described Leary as "the most dangerous man in America".

Many consider Leary one of the most prominent figures during the counterculture of the 1960s, and since those times has remained influential on pop culture, literature, television, film and, especially, music.

Leary coined the influential term Reality Tunnel, by which he means a kind of representative realism. The theory states that, with a subconscious set of mental filters formed from their beliefs and experiences, every individual interprets the same world differently, hence "Truth is in the eye of the beholder".

In 1964, Leary coauthored a book with Alpert and Ralph Metzner called The Psychedelic Experience based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In it, they wrote:

"A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness. The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of spacetime dimensions, and of the ego or identity. Such experiences of enlarged consciousness can occur in a variety of ways: sensory deprivation, yoga exercises, disciplined meditation, religious or aesthetic ecstasies, or spontaneously. Most recently they have become available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc. Of course, the drug does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key — it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures."

On September 19, 1966, Leary founded the League for Spiritual Discovery, a religion declaring LSD as its holy sacrament, in part as an unsuccessful attempt to maintain legal status for the use of LSD and other psychedelics for the religion's adherents based on a "freedom of religion" argument.

In 1966, Folkways Records recorded Leary reading from his book The Psychedelic Experience, and released the album The Psychedelic Experience: Readings from the Book "The Psychedelic Experience. A Manual Based on the Tibetan...".[26]

During late 1966 and early 1967, Leary toured college campuses presenting a multimedia performance "The Death of the Mind" attempting an artistic replication of the LSD experience. He said the League for Spiritual Discovery was limited to 360 members and was already at its membership limit, but encouraged others to form their own psychedelic religions. He published a pamphlet in 1967 called Start Your Own Religion to encourage just that(see below under "writings").

Leary was invited to attend the January 14, 1967 Human Be-In by Michael Bowen, the primary organizer of the event,[27] a gathering of 30,000 hippies in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. In speaking to the group, he coined the famous phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out".

The Psychedelic Experience was the inspiration for John Lennon's song "Tomorrow Never Knows" in The Beatles' album Revolver.[25] Leary once recruited Lennon to write a theme-song for his California gubernatorial campaign against Ronald Reagan (which was interrupted by his prison sentence due to cannabis possession), inspiring Lennon to come up with "Come Together", based on Leary's theme and catchphrase for the campaign.[55][56] Leary was also present when Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, recorded "Give Peace a Chance" during one of their bed-ins in Montreal, and is mentioned in the lyrics of the song.[57] The Moody Blues also recorded a track about Leary, "Legend of a Mind", on their 1968 album In Search of the Lost Chord in which the refrain is "Timothy Leary's dead. No, no, no, no, he's outside looking in".[56]

He is also referred to in the song "Let The Sunshine In" from the musical Hair. Also the single released by The Who, "The Seeker".

While in exile in Switzerland, Leary and British writer Brian Barrett collaborated with the German band Ash Ra Tempel, and recorded the album Seven Up. He is credited as a songwriter, and his lyrics and vocals can be heard throughout the album

The eight-circuit model of consciousness is a transhuman theory proposed by Timothy Leary and expanded on by Robert Anton Wilson and Antero Alli. The model describes eight circuits of information (eight "brains") that operate within the human nervous system. Each circuit is concerned with a different sphere of activity.

The lower four, the larval circuits, deal with normal psychology, while the upper four, the stellar circuits, deal with psychic, mystical, enlightened and psychedelic states of mind. These higher circuits are thought to have only recently evolved, with just a fraction of human beings using them. The higher the circuit, the fewer people have activated it. Leary describes the four larval circuits as necessary for surviving and functioning in a terrestrial human society. Leary proposed that the higher four exist primarily for future use by humans who might someday migrate to outer space and live extraterrestrially.

Leary, Alli and Wilson have written about the model in depth and how each circuit operates, both in the lives of individual people and in societies.

The term "circuits" came from the first wave of cybernetics research and development in the United States in the 1970s. (Others[weasel words] have proposed that the term "systems" should be substituted for "circuits" to reflect both a systems theory approach and also the changing anatomy of an entity as it goes through a neurological change).
Each successive circuit represents a more complex phase of evolution. In line with recapitulation theory, the model applies equally to the evolution of an individual organism and the evolution of the whole tree of life. Each neurological circuit provides a new cognitive function (whether or not the organism is aware of the circumstances that led to its activation).

(summary)

1. The oral biosurvival circuit
This circuit is concerned with nourishment, physical safety, comfort and survival, suckling, cuddling etc.
2. The emotional–territorial circuit
The emotional-territorial circuit is imprinted in the toddler stage. It is concerned with domination and submission, territoriality etc.
3. The symbolic or neurosemantic–dexterity circuit
This circuit is imprinted by human symbol systems. It is concerned with language, handling the environment, invention, calculation, prediction, building a mental "map" of the universe, physical dexterity, etc.
4. The domestic or socio-sexual circuit
This fourth circuit is imprinted by the first orgasm-mating experiences and tribal "morals". It is concerned with sexual pleasure (instead of sexual reproduction), local definitions of "moral" and "immoral", reproduction, nurture of the young, etc. It is basically concerned with cultural values and operating within social networks. This circuit is said to have first appeared with the development of tribes.
5. The neurosomatic circuit
This is concerned with neurological-somatic feedbacks, feeling high and blissful, somatic reprogramming, etc. It may be called the rapture circuit.[5]
When this circuit is activated, a non-conceptual feeling of well-being arises. This has a beneficial effect on the health of the physical body.[6] Triggering this effect is the aim of mind-body healing systems such as Christian Science and faith healing.
6. The neuroelectric or metaprogramming circuit
This circuit is concerned with re-imprinting and re-programming all earlier circuits and the relativity of “realities” perceived. The sixth circuit consists of the nervous system becoming aware of itself. Leary says this circuit enables telepathic communication and is activated by low-to-moderate doses of LSD (50-150 µg), moderate doses of peyote, and psilocybin mushrooms. This circuit is traced by Leary back to 500 BC, and he associates it with the Silk Road.
7. The neurogenetic or morphogenetic circuit
This circuit is the connection of the individual's mind to the whole sweep of evolution and life as a whole. It is the part of consciousness that echoes the experiences of the previous generations that have brought the individual's brain-mind to its present level.
8. The psychoatomic or quantum non-local circuit (Overmind)
The eighth circuit is concerned with quantum consciousness, non-local awareness (information from beyond ordinary space-time awareness which is limited by the speed of light), illumination. Some of the ways this circuit can get activated are: the awakening of kundalini, shock, a near-death experience, etc. This circuit has even been compared to the Buddhist concept of Indra's net from the Avatamsaka Sutra. This circuit is activated by DMT, ketamine, and high doses of LSD (1,000+ µg).

Although Leary propounded the basic premise of eight "brains" or brain circuits, he was inspired by sources such as the Hindu chakra system. His most direct inspiration was received in the form of a document from a student of yoga, a pamphlet containing 24 different pages, with three-page subdivisions each corresponding to a particular yogic "energy". Leary then translated this and expanded it into a 24-stage model of evolution, and eventually streamlined it into the eight-circuit model of consciousness. With this, Leary created his umbrella model which others have expanded on.

While he continued his frequent drug use privately rather than evangelizing and proselytizing the use of psychedelics as he had in the 1960s, the latter-day Leary emphasized the importance of space colonization and an ensuing extension of the human lifespan while also providing a detailed explanation of the eight-circuit model of consciousness in books such as Info-Psychology, among several others. He adopted the acronym "SMI²LE" as a succinct summary of his pre-transhumanist agenda: SM (Space Migration) + I² (intelligence increase) + LE (Life extension), and credited L5 co-founder Keith Henson with helping develop his interest in space migration.

Leary's colonization plan varied greatly through the years. According to his initial plan to leave the planet, 5,000 of Earth's most virile and intelligent individuals would be launched on a vessel (Starseed 1) equipped with luxurious amenities. This idea was inspired by the plotline of Paul Kantner's concept album Blows Against The Empire, which in turn was derived from Robert A. Heinlein's Lazarus Long series. In the 1980s, he came to embrace NASA scientist Gerard O'Neill's more realistic and egalitarian plans to construct giant Eden-like High Orbital Mini-Earths (documented in the Robert Anton Wilson lecture H.O.M.E.s on LaGrange) using existing technology and raw materials from the Moon, orbital rock and obsolete satellites.

In the 1980s, Leary became fascinated by computers, the Internet, and virtual reality. Leary proclaimed that "the PC is the LSD of the 1990s" and admonished bohemians to "turn on, boot up, jack in".[41][42] He became a promoter of virtual reality systems,[43] and sometimes demonstrated a prototype of the Mattel Power Glove as part of his lectures (as in From Psychedelics to Cybernetics). Around this time he befriended a number of notable people in the field including Brenda Laurel, a pioneering researcher in virtual environments and human–computer interaction. With the rise of cyberdelic counter-culture, he served as consultant to Billy Idol in the production of the latter's 1993 album Cyberpunk.

excerpts from
Info-Psychology: A Manual for the Use of the Human Nervous System
http://ia600309.us.archive.org/1/ite...00learrich.pdf

The ultimate question is: what is the end point of biological evolution?
The exo-psychological answer: contelligence mutates by fusing with, being
absorbed by metaphysiological structures found in nuclear-quantum-gravitational
force fields.

Neurologically it could be said that the emergence of each new neural circuit
involves a "death-rebirth." The Neonate infant molts and becomes the mobile child.
Although the "reality" of the infant is surely different from that of the "same" individual
at age 18, the first brain remains linked to, part of the evolving neural network.
Thus, in the evolution of the individual, the emergence of new neural circuits defines
a series of incorporative re-incarnations.....

The egocentricity and geo-centricity of larval philosophy has over-estimated
human intelligence in relationship to other energy forms in particular the DNA
code and the atomic nucleus. Larval science would have us believe that the universe
is made up of chemical elements and atomic particles which operate in blind passivity
to physical laws; that at a certain point in the history of planet earth certain molecules
were accidentally induced by means of lightning bolts to form the protein-nucleotides
which, through chance, began to replicate; and that through a process of random
selection and mutation the biological forms evolved. The summit of this blind evolutionary
process, we are told, is homo-sapiens. "Man" is believed to be the only selfconscious,
intelligent form on the planet and probably in the universe!

Exo-psychology suggests that this flattering self-appraisal is false an error which
leads both the arrogance and the frightened pessimism which characterize human
philosophy.

The genetic code is surely not an accidental adhesion of molecules. It is an instrumental
message, an energy directive created by a meta-biological intelligence.
This intelligence is astrophysical and galactic in scope, pervasive, ubiquitous,
but miniaturized in quanta structure. Just as the multi-billion year blue-print of biological
evolution is packaged within the nucleus of every cell, so may the quantummechanical
blueprint of astronomical evolution be found in the nucleus of the atom.
We have defined consciousness as energy received by structure. And we have
defined intelligence as energy transmitted by structure. The contelligence of lifeforms
is shaped and limited by anatomy and organic form. Sub-atomic-gravitational
force fields are obviously capable of faster, more complex and more extensive levels
of consciousness and intelligence.

Exo-psychology hypothesizes that the evolution of astro-physical structures
involves a contelligence as superior to DNA as DNA is to neuron-brains.
The direction of organic evolution now can be stated. Starting with unicell
organisms, life produces a series of neural circuits and increasingly more complex-andefficient
bodies to transport and facilitate higher contelligence. The culmination of
this biological process is the seven-circuit brain which is able to communicate with
DNA, i.e. receive, integrate and transmit information at the level of RNA.
Among the byproducts of the seven-circuit brain contelligence are telepathy and
inter-species symbiosis (including symbiosis with the more advanced species which
probably exist on half of the millions of inhabited planets in our local galaxy).

The eighth phase of evolution is transformation of contelligence to metaphysiological,
neuro-atomic structures. This quantum-mechanical process does not
necessarily involve the destruction of organic memories or biological contelligence
but probably an incorporation of the neurogenetic into the nuclear-gravitationalquantum.
Metaphysiological contelligence transceives at the speed and frequency of nuclear
particles and can create matter, i.e. arrange atoms in architected patterns. Such a
level of contelligence could construct pre-programmed DNA codes as simply as humans
now build computer-directed manufacturing processes.

It is, of course, almost impossible for the primitive L.M. symbolic mind to conceive
of the capacities of quantum intelligence. Does not logic, however, force us
to accept the probability of this Higher Form of contelligence?

To summarize this summary of the 8th Eschatological Circuit: organic life evolves
to become part of a metaphysiological contelligence which is nuclear-gravitational
in structure, and which creates unified force-fields, galactic in scope, quantum in nature.
Who are they? They are we-in-the-future.

Who was the leader of the consciousness revolution?

I always assumed it was Martin Luther King Jr. He was my favorite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.

This Bill Moyers segment brought that home to me again this weekend.

http://billmoyers.com/segment/james-...omic-equality/

excerpts:

...King drew an awful lot of sustenance and biting challenge from the basic notion of -- I think that his favorite parable was the parable of Lazarus and Dives in Luke about--

BILL MOYERS: Which was?

TAYLOR BRANCH: It was about the rich man who passed Lazarus begging at his door and didn't notice him and went to hell and saw Lazarus up in heaven.

And King interpreted this thing as saying the rich man did not go to hell because he was rich. He went there because he didn't notice the humanity of the man he was passing at his gate. And it was about humanity.

Remember how the sanitation strike started, it started because two members of the sanitation force were crushed in the back of a garbage truck that was a cylinder, one of those compacting cylinders, in a torrential rainstorm and they were not allowed by the city to seek shelter in storms.

Because the white residents didn't like it if black garbage men stopped. All the garbage workers were black. And, so, they weren't allowed -- the only place they could get shelter in -- they wouldn't all fit in the cabin. So, the ones that could fit in the cabin and two of them had to climb in the back with the garbage and a broom fell on the lever and it compacted them with the garbage. And that is the origin of the slogan, "I am a man. I am a man, not a piece of garbage." And that connects to King's philosophy.

BILL MOYERS: And the sanitation workers carried those signs, remember? "I am a man."

TAYLOR BRANCH: "I am a man." And to them, that was about Echol Cole and Robert Walker, their two friends who had been literally crushed with the garbage and nobody noticed. And King is saying, "You're going to go to hell as a nation if you don't notice the humanity of Echol Cole and Robert Walker.

JAMES CONE: And that's why justice is so central for King and why poverty became the focus of his ministry after that civil rights and voting rights. Because the civil rights and voting rights is not going to get rid of poverty. And, so, King saw that as central.

BILL MOYERS: Let’s listen again to Dr. King, from the speech he made to those striking sanitation workers in Memphis just weeks before he was shot to death. What he said about poverty still rings true.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR: Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working every day? They are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation. These are facts which must be seen. And it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income.

BILL MOYERS: Could anything be more current right now?

TAYLOR BRANCH: No. It's hard to imagine, and of course, it's chilling to think what the distribution of wealth was when he made that indictment compared to what it is now. It is much more skewed now than it was then and it was bad then.

So, you really get a sense of King's power. I would only caution that we not assume that he undertook these issues of poverty only late in his career. It was part of his message all along. Certainly, if you look at Nobel Prize lecture in 1964, he says, we are -- the world is seeing the widest liberation in human history, not just in the United States but around the world.

And we cannot lose this opportunity to apply its nonviolent power to the triple scourge of race, war, and poverty, what he called violence of the flesh and violence of the spirit. This was a very, very broad vision early on. It's only at the end of his career that he's making witness on that because he sees his time limited and he wants to leave that witness....

BILL MOYERS: I want to play you an excerpt of the speech he delivered, one year to the day before he was killed, at Riverside Church here in New York City.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR: I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

BILL MOYERS: A radical revolution of values.

TAYLOR BRANCH: The revolution in values is to see people first, to see Lazarus at the gate and not pass them by. So, I think the revolution in values is Christian and it's democratic, but it starts with people. They have equal souls and equal votes and we are very stubborn, human nature, about denying that and wanting to see anything but.

BILL MOYERS: Was it theological?

JAMES CONE: Oh, yes. Because people are created in the image of God. If you're created in the image of God, you can't treat people like things. If we are interconnected with each other, we can't treat each other like things. If America is concerned with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, you can't have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness if you're treating others as things.

BILL MOYERS: So, what was the turning point that moved him from an understanding of what you're talking about to an actual agenda of trying to achieve it?

TAYLOR BRANCH: Well, I think part of it is a natural progression. If you are totally invisible, you're not even up to the level of a thing yet. The bus boycott, the sit-ins, the freedom rides, getting the right to vote, if you're not a citizen, you're not even up to the table where you can start dealing with these issues.

To me, Martin Luther King saw race as the gateway. If you can deal with race and the fundamental denial of common humanity through race, then it opens up possibilities which I think happened in history.

And finally, toward the end of his career, he said, we have an opportunity. Now that we are learning, at least the beginnings of treating each other as equal citizens to really tackle what he called the eternal scourge of racism, poverty, and war.

JAMES CONE: His fight against poverty was multiracial. He wasn't just focused with black people. Well, you can't get that multiracial fight against poverty unless first black people are regarded as persons. So, civil rights, that earlier part, is, as Taylor was saying, black people coming to the table. So, after they get to the table, if you’re going to deal with poverty, it spreads across races. So, King was concerned about a multiracial movement against poverty because that's what the Poor People's Campaign was about.

BILL MOYERS: So, that would help us understand the colorblindness of that Economic and Social Bill of Rights that he and the Poor People's Campaign developed in the first, early part of 1968.

“The right of every employable citizen to a decent job, the right of every citizen to a minimum income, the right of a decent house and the free choice of neighborhood, the right to an adequate education, the right to participate in a decision-making process, the right to the full benefits of modern science in health care.” Quite a statement.

TAYLOR BRANCH: And he had a workshop, one of the more remarkable events that never made any news and is not preserved in history, in which he had representatives of Indian tribes, Appalachian white coal miners--... --Latinos of every different stripe.... he had this incredible conclave there of people who didn't know each other.... and he said, “If we can't agree together that there's a poverty and a common approach that's bigger than race, then we should stop now."

But by the end of this thing, he had them all together and the rival Indian tribes were settling differences, and the Chicanos said, "Okay, well, we're going to let the Indians go first because they were here first"...

(end of excerpt)

The statements about "I am a man" and "the revolution of values" reminds me of Patrick McGoohan in 1966, "I am not a number, I am a person."
http://youtu.be/VuCCgQsyq8s?t=35m54s

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/au...ZvA2wLzC2LT.99

Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)

Cornel West, a Princeton University professor and author of books such as Race Matters, has remarked:
"Martin Luther King, Jr., was one of the greatest organic intellectuals in American history. His unique ability to connect the life of the mind to the struggle for freedom is legendary, and in this book-his last grand expression of his vision-he put forward his most prophetic challenge to powers that be and his most progressive program for the wretched of the earth."

Chapter VI: The World House
http://blogs.umass.edu/afroam391g-sh...er-King-Jr.pdf

excerpts:

All over the world like a fever, freedom is spreading in the widest liberation movement in history. The great masses of people are determined to end the exploitation of their races and lands. They are awake and moving toward their goal like a tidal wave. You can hear them rumbling in every village street, on the docks, in the houses, among the students, in the churches and at political meetings... today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. The large house in which we live demands that we transform this world-wide neighborhood into a world-wide brotherhood. Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools. We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually..... Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live..... Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul.... From time immemorial men have lived by the principle that "self-preservation is the first law of life."... I would say that other-preservation is the first law of life... precisely because we cannot preserve self without being concerned about preserving other selves. The universe is so structured that things go awry if men are not diligent in their cultivation of the other-regarding dimension.... Self-concern without other-concern is like a tributary that has no outflow to the ocean... But the real reason that we must use our resources to outlaw poverty goes beyond material concerns to the quality of our mind and spirit.... In a real sense, all life is interrelated. The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich; the betterment of the poor enriches the rich.... One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means... If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war.

Visionaries from the Consciousness Revolution: Ravi Ravindra

http://www.ravindra.ca/questravindra.pdf

http://www.ravindra.ca/index.html

Ravi Ravindra obtained degrees of B.Sc. and M. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, before going to Canada on a Commonwealth Scholarship to do an M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Toronto. Later, he did an M.A. in Philosophy also, and at different times held Post-doctoral fellowships in Physics (University of Toronto), History and Philosophy of Science (Princeton University) and in Religion (Columbia University). He is now Professor Emeritus at Dalhousie University in Halifax (Canada) where he served for many years as a Professor in the departments of Comparative Religion, Philosophy, and of Physics.

He was a Member of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla, and the Founding Director of the Threshold Award for Integrative Knowledge. He was a member of the Board of Judges for the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. He is an Honorary Member of the Scientific and Medical Network and a Fellow of the Temenos Academy, England.

Ravi's spiritual search has led him to the teachings of J. Krishnamurti, G. I. Gurdjieff, Zen, Yoga, and a deep immersion in the mystical teachings of the Indian and Christian classical traditions. He is the author of several books on religion, science, mysticism, and spirituality.

Ravi Ravindra, Ph.D.
http://store.innertraditions.com/Con...yDetail&id=490

Ravi Ravindra, a native of India, emigrated to Canada following his early education, and, in 1977, was made Member of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton. He served from 1978 through 1980 as the Founding Director of the Threshold Award for Integrative Knowledge and, in 1989, was the pilot Professor of Science and Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Dr. Ravindra at present holds the position of Professor Emeritus at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where he has served as Chair of Comparative Religion, Professor of International Development Studies, and Adjunct Professor of Physics. In addition to his study of the world's great traditions, Ravi Ravindra's spiritual search has involved him in the teachings of J. Krishnamurti, G. Gurdjieff, and Zen. The author of numerous books on religion, mysticism, and spirituality, Dr. Ravindra lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.



Ravi Ravindra quotes (showing 1-16 of 16)
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quot....Ravi_Ravindra

“As spiritual searchers we need to become freer and freer of the attachment to our own smallness in which we get occupied with me-me-me. Pondering on large ideas or standing in front of things which remind us of a vast scale can free us from acquisitiveness and competitiveness and from our likes and dislikes. If we sit with an increasing stillness of the body, and attune our mind to the sky or to the ocean or to the myriad stars at night, or any other indicators of vastness, the mind gradually stills and the heart is filled with quiet joy. Also recalling our own experiences in which we acted generously or with compassion for the simple delight of it without expectation of any gain can give us more confidence in the existence of a deeper goodness from which we may deviate. (39)”
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
“Yoga practice can make us more and more sensitive to subtler and subtler sensations in the body. Paying attention to and staying with finer and finer sensations within the body is one of the surest ways to steady the wandering mind. (39)”
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
“What we most love is not what we know, but what knows us and draws us. . . . (78)”
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
“Each place is the right place--the place where I now am can be a sacred space. (3)”
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
“A need for approval lies behind all efforts of evangelism. If someone else can be convinced, that will show us that we are on the right path. The attempt to convince someone of anything is a mark of insecurity. (173)”
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
“It is useful to study different traditions in order to be free of attachment to any one way of expressing what is beyond expression. (x)”
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
“The Self says ‘I AM’–as in the very grand sayings of Christ, especially in the Gospel of John, in which he says in the state of onenenss with Yahweh (which in Hebrew means ‘I AM’), I AM is the way and the truth and the life–but the ego says ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that,’ thus attaching itself only to a small portion of the Vastness. (62)”
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
“Whoever is full of wisdom is naturally compassionate; in fact we recognize that someone has gained spiritual wisdom by seeing their compassionate behavior. . . . Individuals and countries with power need to develop wisdom and compassion, for without these attributes, there is a danger that the power will be used to oppress and exploit others. (31)”
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
“[I]t is important not to abandon the practice [of yoga] because we believe it is driven by the wrong motivation. The practice of yoga itself transforms. Yoga has a magical quality. . . . (20)”
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
“Most of us assume that human beings have free will. However, . . . [we] are very much conditioned by our species, culture, family, and by the past in general. . . . It is rare for a human being to have free will. . . . (140)”
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
“Different states of consciousness project different images of God–loving or vengeful or jealous, energetic or terrifying, and different images of God affect the nature and quality of our response to God. . . . The image or idea of God as wrathful and jealous will have a different effect than the image or the idea of God as loving. Similarly, whether God is regarded as male or female will have a significant impact on the culture. (29)”
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
“Each one of us needs to discover the proper balance between the masculine and feminine energies, between the active and the receptive. (104)”
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
“Depending on their psychic make up, for some people, closing the eyes or being quiet produces anxiety and increases mental agitation. In such situations it is better to undertake the practice of yoga–whether physical yoga or meditation–with other people with whom one is comfortable and at ease. Gradually, as we see more and more clearly their roots, the fears and the imaginings will diminish. Mental distractions are harder to overcome when practicing alone. (109)”
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra

Visionaries from the Consciousness Revolution: Mark Satin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Satin

Mark Ivor Satin (born November 16, 1946) is an American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher. Although often referred to as a "draft dodger"[1][2] or "draft resister",[3] he is better known for contributing to the development and dissemination of three political perspectives – neopacifism in the 1960s, New Age politics in the 1970s and 1980s, and radical centrism in the 1990s and 2000s. Satin's work is sometimes seen as building toward a new political ideology, and then it is often labeled "transformational",[4] "post-liberal",[5] or "post-Marxist".[6] One historian calls Satin's writing "post-hip".[7]

After emigrating to Canada at the age of 20, Satin co-founded the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme, which helped bring American Vietnam War resisters to Canada. He also wrote the Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada (1968), which sold nearly 100,000 copies.[8] After a period that author Marilyn Ferguson describes as Satin's "anti-ambition experiment",[9] Satin wrote New Age Politics (1978), which identifies an emergent "third force" in North America pursuing such goals as simple living, decentralism, and global responsibility. Satin spread his ideas by co-founding an American political organization, the New World Alliance, and by publishing an award-winning[10] international political newsletter, New Options. He also co-drafted the foundational statement of the U.S. Green Party, "Ten Key Values".

After a period of political disillusion, spent mainly in law school and practicing business law,[11] Satin launched a new political newsletter and wrote an award-winning[12] book, Radical Middle (2004). Both projects criticized political partisanship and sought to promote mutual learning and innovative policy syntheses across social and cultural divides. In an interview, Satin contrasts the old radical slogan "Dare to struggle, dare to win"[nb 1] with his radical-middle version, "Dare to synthesize, dare to take it all in".[14]

Satin has been described as "colorful"[15] and "intense",[16] and all his initiatives have been controversial. Bringing war resisters to Canada was opposed by many in the anti-Vietnam War movement. New Age Politics was not welcomed by many on the traditional left or right, and Radical Middle dismayed an even broader segment of the American political community. Even Satin's personal life has generated controversy.

From Chapter 1 of New Age Politics (1976):

This book is based on a simple premise. It’s that we don’t have a usable politics any more -- and that the politics we need, in America today, will not and cannot come from our old political “ism’s.” Not from capitalism, not from socialism, and certainly not from just “muddling through.” Muddling along, we won’t get through.

The situation we’re in is so new, so unprecedented, that we need a whole new way of looking at the world. A whole new way of seeing things and thinking about things -- especially political things. One that comes out of our own experience for a change, as distinct from the experience of Europe in the 19th century (which is where “modern” capitalism comes from, and Marxism and anarchism).

The point of this book is that a new way of seeing and a new politics is arising already in bits and pieces, here and there, across the country; but that we (and especially our intellectuals) have been so desperately set on pretending that nothing is fundamentally wrong -- or that socialism is fundamentally the answer -- that we’ve missed the coming together of these pieces, right before our eyes.

The new politics is arising out of the work and ideas of the people in many of the social movements of our time: the feminist, environmental, spiritual, and human potential movements; the appropriate technology, simple living, decentralist, and “world order” movements; the business-for-learning-and-pleasure movement and the humanistic-education movement.

The new politics is also arising out of the work and ideas of a couple of hundred sympathetic economists and spiritual philosophers, businesspeople and workers’ self-management people, systems analysts and psychoanalysts, physicians and poets. . . .

Each of these movements and each of these writers has something to add to the new politics. Their contributions come together like the pieces of an intricate jigsaw puzzle.

The connection

More and more of us have, over the last 10 years or so, become deeply involved in one or more of the movements mentioned above. At the same time, though, the radical political movements of the 1960s seem to have collapsed.

Could there be a connection?

I believe that the radical political movements declined as soon as they began to promote a doctrine of us-against-them, of “we have all the answers,” of separation rather than healing; as soon as they began to promote a Marxism that overstressed our need for things and tried to make us feel guilty about our deeper needs, which are emotional, psychological, and spiritual (and which are what got us into the radical political movements in the first place).

And I believe that the spiritual, feminist, environmental, etc., movements rose partly, at least, because they did contain a politics that did speak to our deeper needs. To all our needs.

But it was only an implicit politics, hard to see at first. And it was doubly hard to see just because it was so new and different from the politics that had gone before.

The purpose of this book is to make this politics explicit. To draw out, in some detail, its analysis of society (Parts One-Three), its worldview (Four), its social, institutional, and economic goals (Five-Six), and its strategy (Seven).

The third force

The basic approach to politics that this book takes has always been with us here in America, in bits and pieces at any rate. The beauty of the social movements of our time is that each of them represents one of those pieces -- and if you put them together, you are able to see clearly and coherently, maybe for the first time, what I like to call the perpetual “third force” in American politics.

Third force politics is a radical politics, not so much in the sense of radical versus liberal as in the sense of going to the roots of things. Specifically, third force politics goes to the psychocultural roots of our problems. It does not concentrate exclusively on the institutional and economic symptoms of our problems.

It is a radicalism that is neither of the left nor right -- a radicalism that is modest enough to borrow what it needs from each of the old political “ism’s” but bold enough to transcend them. (It is not a wimpy “mean” between the so-called “extremes” of American power politics.)

It is a radicalism that is more interested in healing society than in championing the exclusive claims to rightness of any one faction or segment of society; a radicalism that is more interested in reconciling people to each other’s needs and priorities than in winning people over to its side (and so producing a losing side, poised for revenge).

It is a radicalism that is less interested in blaming groups and governments for our problems than in attempting to work out new and viable solutions to our problems.

It is a radicalism that is less interested in standing up for alternative ways of doing things than in standing up for appropriate ways of doing things.

It is a radicalism that traces our problems not to economic poverty (as was done between 1960-1966) or even to political powerlessness (1966-1972), so much as to a more general kind of purposelessness -- to our lack of sustaining and believable ethics and values; to our lack of community; to our lack of inner strength.

It is a radicalism that acknowledges and accepts complexity, irony, paradox, and ambiguity -- a radicalism that acknowledges the richness of life even when aspects of that richness are not particularly politically “correct.”

It is a radicalism that opposes large concentrations of property and wealth, not because it believes that money is “bad” but because of a desire to protect everyone’s right to a sufficient amount of property.

It is a radicalism that recognizes the existence of a force in all things that is God or Truth or Love, and that derives its guiding ethics and values from that recognition or worldview or sensibility; or from a passionate commitment to life in all its forms, which amounts to the same thing in the end.

Above all, perhaps, it is a radicalism that understands that the real problem is not how to get people, groups, and governments to agree on the “one best way” to do things, but how to get them all to agree to live and work synergically together ("synergically" is when you get more by cooperating than you can by competing. "Synergic power" is a key to New Age governance).

http://www.radicalmiddle.com/newagepolitics.htm

Visionaries of the Consciousness Revolution: Grace Lee Boggs

GRACE LEE BOGGS

She was interviewed tonight by Tavis Smiley, and it seemed that she is appropriate for this thread. Rags and I have been discussing Detroit, and despite the continuing financial and crime problems, she is optimistic, because she sees a new post-industrial way of life emerging there. I had known about this other side of Detroit, and wonder why it hasn't turned the city around, but am interested in what is happening there. Grace Lee Boggs has been an activist since the 1940s, in the labor and black movements, and since 1967 has focused on community activism and a new vision of a more humanized society.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/...ace-lee-boggs/

From the Bill Moyers interview:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06.../profile2.html

June 15, 2007

"The struggle we're dealing with these days, which, I think, is part of what the 60s represented, is how do we define our humanity?"

At 91, Grace Lee Boggs has been a part of almost every major movement in the United States in the last 75 years, including: Labor, Civil Rights, Black Power, Women's Rights and Environmental Justice.

Born in 1915 to Chinese immigrant parents, Boggs received her BA from Barnard College in 1935 and her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College in 1940. In the 1950's she worked with West Indian Marxist C.L.R. James, before marrying African American activist, James Boggs, and moving to Detroit in 1953, where she's lived for 54 years.

One of her earliest inspirations was A. Philip Randolph, an African-American labor leader who in 1941 fought successfully for equal hiring practices in defense plants as the United States geared up for WWII. "When I saw what a movement could do I said, 'Boy that's what I wanna do with my life,'" explains Boggs in her interview with Bill Moyers.

In the 1960's, Boggs and her husband became very involved in the Black Power movement, notably offering Malcolm X a place to stay whenever he visited Detroit. At this time, she identified much more closely with Malcolm X than Martin Luther King Jr. "Like most black power activists, I tended to view King's concepts of non-violence and Beloved Community as somewhat naïve and sentimental," as she describes in her recent speech entitled, Catching up with Martin."

But in 1967, when race violence gripped the city of Detroit and elsewhere in the nation, Boggs began to see what was missing in the Black Power movement and look toward the example of King as a more effective template for cultural revolution. "We could no longer separate ethics from politics or view revolutionary struggle simply in terms of us vs. them...The absence of this philosophical/spiritual dimension in the Black Power struggles of the 1960s helps to explain why these struggles ended up in the opportunism, drug abuse, and interpersonal violence..."

What the papers called race riots, she called "rebellions," yet it was this pivotal event that helped her to learn that rebellion is not enough. "It was amazing - a turning point in my life, because until that time, I had not made the distinction between a rebellion and a revolution." She extrapolates on this idea in REVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION IN THE 20TH CENTURY, which she wrote with her husband in 1974:

"Rebellions tend to be negative, to denounce and expose the enemy without providing a positive vision of a new future...A revolution is not just for the purpose of correcting past injustices, a revolution involves a projection of man/woman into the future...It begins with projecting the notion of a more human human being, i.e. a human being who is more advanced in the specific qualities which only human beings have - creativity, consciousness and self-consciousness, a sense of political and social responsibility."

Grace Lee Boggs has since dedicated her life to helping to realize King's vision of Beloved Community in her hometown of Detroit and elsewhere around the country, one grassroots project at a time. In 1992, with James Boggs, who passed away in 1993, Shea Howell and others, she founded DETROIT SUMMER, "a multicultural, intergenerational youth program to rebuild, redefine and respirit Detroit from the ground up." The organization is coming upon its 15th season this summer.

Her autobiography, LIVING FOR CHANGE, published by the University of Minnesota Press in March l998, is widely used in university classes on social movements. In 2004, she helped organize the Beloved Communities Project, "an initiative begun to identify, explore and form a network of communities committed to and practicing the profound pursuit of justice, radical inclusivity, democratic governance, health and wholeness, and social / individual transformation."

"I think we're not looking sufficiently at what is happening at the grassroots in the country. We have not emphasized sufficiently the cultural revolution that we have to make among ourselves in order to force the government to do differently. Things do not start with governments."

Visionaries of the Consciousness Revolution: Larry Harvey

I saw him on Charlie Rose tonight. Larry said that he was inspired by the "bohemian" scene in his town of San Francisco in the sixties (IOW, the hippies, 2T). His vision is based on theirs, and further develops it.

from wikipedia:

Larry Harvey (born 1948) is the main co-founder of the Burning Man festival, along with his friend Jerry James. What started in 1986 as a summer solstice evening ritual burning of their artistic creation of an effigy of a man with a group of just a dozen people at San Francisco's Baker Beach soon became an annual event that over 4 years grew to more than 800 people. In 1990, in collaboration with the SF Cacophony Society, the event moved to Labor Day weekend in the Black Rock Desert, where it has grown precipitously from a 3 day, 80 persons "zone trip," to an 8 day festival with over 50,000 participants.

As the population grew by the mid '90's to top several thousands, the encampment started to be referred to as Black Rock City, it now has a year-round staff headquartered in San Francisco, managing an over 12 million dollar annual budget.

In 1997, six of the main organizers formed Black Rock City LLC to manage the event with Larry Harvey as the executive director, which position he still holds. He is also the president of the Black Rock Arts Foundation, a non-profit art grant foundation for promoting interactive collaborative public art installations in communities outside of Black Rock City.
He scripts and co-chair/curates the arts departments annual event theme and is the main spokesperson and political strategist for the organization. He has been featured in such engagements as San Francisco's Grace Cathedral "Radical Ritual" with the Very Reverend Alan Jones, the Oxford Student Union, Cooper Union in NYC, Harvard's International Conference on Internet and Society as a panelist, the Walker Art Center in Minnesota and the San Francisco Commonwealth Club as well as many others.

From Viva Las Xmas, by Larry Harvey:
http://www.burningman.com/whatisburn...ures/viva.html



... theme camps are essentially collective gifts, collaborative acts of self-espression that are given to a civic world, and this, in turn, begins to generate gift-giving networks. I'll tell you how this works. We've found that when people join together for the purpose of producing a gift whose scope extends beyond the limits of their little bonded world it produces a kind of social convection current. It's as if the larger the gift, the more transcendent the chimney at the center, the greater the convection current. The hotter the flame, the more oxygen it will suck in. And these networks suck in a whole lot of resources. This begins in simple ways — and no one plans this — let me make that clear. This just happens because we are culture-bearing animals and we are adapted to do these kinds of things. Someone in a camp, for instance, always seems to know someone else — a friend outside the group who possesses some needed resource — and soon this person is drawn into the circle. You may not know him. You may know him. You may know him through two intermediaries. But if he's willing to give to the gift you don't exclude him, you say come on in. That's the principle of radical inclusivity we discovered many years ago.

And as the greater gift imagined by the group begins to grow, this process starts to ramify and spread outward through networks of acquaintance. When everyone is giving to a greater gift and not merely to one another, this process will accelerate, connections will multiply, and a new kind of superabundant wealth begins to assemble itself. A metal grate left disregarded in a basement would be the perfect divide to create a dragon's jaw, and some ancient string of Christmas lights forgotten in the attic forms the perfect accent for ts tail. Manifold resources stream in, only to be reassembled for new and productive purposes. It's a super-conductive social process, and it's precisely the opposite of what happens in a capitalistic society in which a struggle for scare resources produces relentless competition. And what's interesting is that this process can actually rival the capabilities of mass production. Such social networks tend to grow on an organic principle. They can expand exponentially....



This is the good news. All over this country, people are starting to organize. They're starting to form networks, and we're organizing to help them. We didn't tell the people in New York to do this. We don't dictate the content of radical self expression. That can only come out of you, from deep within you. But we are organizing to help people create the social circumstances that will sustain an ethos of gift giving. And I can tell you what's going to happen next because I have watched Burning Man grow from 2,000 to 4,000 to 8,000 participants in the span of three years. In fact, it only stopped growing at this rate because we slowed it down. We didn't want it to grown too fast. When you reach a certain scale you get overwhelmed by numbers in a city, so we took measures to slow down its growth so that we could culturally assimilate people, so they wouldn't just come looking for a party, they'd realize what our ethos was and that it really was about giving, it wasn't about consuming. We knew that they'd destroy us if we didn't slow it down. But what this growth represents is a rate of natural increase; it's how things grow in nature. And the next big story is that networks and little nucleus's all over this country are about to rapidly expand in scope. There have now been burns in several states, we have regional contacts in every place except Mississippi. [laughter] There's even been a burn on a boat in the Baltic Sea and one in Antarctica.

But I don't expect people to go out and form cities of their own — they will define the activity and it will spread by a rate of natural increase. And this returns me to Richard Jefferies who I started with and his essay on the prodigality of nature and the niggardliness of man. He said there is no enough in nature. It is all one vast prodigality. And he contrasted this with a capitalist economy in which each individual is compelled, in order to exist, to labor and save and to compete with other people to acquire scarce resources. But I believe that human culture — as distinct from social institutions that surround it — is a pure phenomenon of nature. Social institutions have the power to protect it and sustain it, much as any vessel — a petrie dish or ceramic pot — might help or hinder the growth of any living thing. But the innate vitality of culture belongs to the world of nature; it occurs spontaneously, it is without a plan, and when it is allowed to grow it has a power to effect our world in ways that dwarf our normal estimate of our resources.

I declare Carole King a bonifide member of the Visionaries of the Consciousness Revolution thread!
b. Feb.9, 1942
http://www.caroleking.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carole_King

This song certainly qualifies her as a first-rate visionary. That is shown in both the lyrics AND the music, which not only match so well, but are so inspired and uplifting, and so evocative of the "dream." Though one of her lesser-known pieces, from her 1972 Rhymes and Reasons album, it is truly one of the classics of pop music, and easily her best. It ranks high on my Top 400 list, but even so may be under-rated there.



I don't know if there is a direct connection to the 1968 Rascals' song People Got To Be Free, which includes the lyric "peace in the valley" and has a similar uplifting vibe and melody.

She has continued to prove her visionary credentials with her social and political activism, including her support of Democratic Party progressive candidates from the 1970s up to today. She understands how essential it is to have qualified candidates in public office to advance the vision we shared during the Awakening. She also proudly admits to being "a hippie" and living its ideals. She said that in the well-known American Masters PBS special "Troubadors" broadcast a few years ago, in which her primary role in the rise of singer-songwriters is explained.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmast...the-film/1772/