– Anne Michaels

Every molecule, atom, in our body... is self-interested... is self-aware, and determined as such.

All healthy systems self-organize, and maintain themselves by the same principals.

Thus, when everything is self-interested, as in Nature, negotiations come into play... which results in collaboration, co-creation, and a positive participation in the human experience.

all parts enjoying each other immensely
Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris, Evolut Biologist, Greece/USA. She speaks beautifully on these subjects of sustainability/biomimicry/collaboration/gaia.

I highly recommend viewing these clips :








some notes to self :

+ The idea of Holarchy (or, Whole-archy)

Autopoesis
"An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network." – Humberto Maturana

+ Self-interest is a good thing... as along as it is contained within the self-interest of a community

see Holarchy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holarchy

see Arthure Koestler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Koestler

For about twenty years an emergent & organic experiment in social, creative & civic society has taken place in the deep void of the Nevada desert. A environ so vastly different from one's regular earthly reality, it could very well be on some distant planet. That place is Black Rock City. And the event is Burning Man.

I've experienced BM for 5 years now... and this summer will be by 6th. And I cannot wait to 'come home'

The visionary founder & executive director is Larry Harvey. He is 59 y/o, my father's age, and a child of the 60's. He is a sincere, imaginative, wise, and eloquent soul. And has been extremely successful in forging a bridge between some of the ethos of the 60's, with that of the contemporary emerging new consciousness.

Larry Harvey on Black Rock City & Burning Man.

"It's sort of a metaphysical space.. it's a perfect blank."

"It's more nothing than you'll ever see.. in the context of absolutely nothing... whatever 'is', IS more intensely so..."

"You can author your own reality.. there is nothing all around you as there is in your normal life to contradict that... so then it tends to make everyone an artist in some sense."

"We take people to the threshold of religion. Our aim is to induce immediate experience that is beyond the odd, beyond the strange, and beyond the weird. It verges on the wholly other. "

"We ask people to commune with their inner reality, and project that onto the world in an immediate way."

"This is where civic altruism and wearing a cow costume, come together."

"Both Burning Man and the Internet make it possible to regather the tribe of mankind, to talk to millions of dispersed individuals in the great diaspora of our mass society. Living as we do, without sustaining traditions in time and ungrounded in a shared experience of place, it is yet possible to transcend these deficiencies. We must use technology to create space stations here on planet Earth, islands of intense and living contact. It is time to come home."

"All real communities grow out of a shared confrontation with survival. Communities are not produced by sentiment or mere goodwill. They grow out of a shared struggle. Our situation in the desert is an incubator for community."

"It avoids a self-conscious relationship to the act. We live in the most self-conscious society in the history of mankind. There are good things in that, but there are also terrible things. The worst of it is, that we find it hard to give ourselves to the cultural process."


excerpts taken from these vid's :

Larry Harvey Condensed - Burning Man

What Happened to the 60's" - Larry Harvey's Perspective

Paul Stamets, American mycologist & author, is a passionate believer that mushrooms/funghi, can indeed save the world. One such brilliant way he has demonstrated this is through Mycoremediation, which is a form of bioremediation that can turn soil which has been contaminated by oil, into an "oasis... teeming with life", in a matter of weeks.

This is yet another example that Nature already contains the most elegant processes & techniques for us to learn from. Aiding in our more complete & natural integration with Gaia. It's all there for us... and thankfully people like Paul are looking with insatiable curiousity.

Watch as Paul demonstrates Mycoremediation:



Interview with Paul on Salon.com

Paul's site

Andy Goldsworthy is the zen master of environmental art. His process & work possess a deep & sentient understanding on the subtlties of nature – or rather, 'the nature of Nature'. The environment is his master medium, which he handles with an intimate, sensitive, hands-on approach. His principals of slowness, keen observation & listening to nature's murmurs, all lend his work a particular elegance & beauty which, while 'unnatural', are anything but.

/ mc


More of Andy's works on Google Images



Clip from the pensive & wonderful doc, 'River's & Tides'

The exquisite paintings of Gordon Terry tap into a strange, yet deep seated familiarity.... one which reaches far back in our cortex & being, and brings forth the Archaic Revival which is so deeply needed in these riddled times of a culture & society poisened by dominance, power over, and inslaved by the ego.

Once in awhile, works arise – visual, musical, aesthetic, textual, experiential – which resonate an ebullient primitivism and are imbued with divinity. These paintings are indicative of such works.

/ mc


Exhibition at the ATM gallery in NYC

Just announced this week is the launch of the Encyclopedia of Life website initiative. It is anticipated that it will take about a year to get an initial release of the site open to the public, and about 10 years to document all 1.8 million species.

Ultimately, the Encyclopedia will serve as an online reference source and database for every one of the 1.8 million species that are named and known on this planet, as well as all those later discovered and described. Encyclopedia of Life will be used as both a teaching and a learning tool, helping scientists, educators, students, and the community at large gain a better understanding of this planet and all who inhabit it.

Some beautiful example pages here

View a teaser video of the initiative below

Your individual world view, your philosophy of life, can be seen as your personal operating system. And if we look to the core principals of any robust OS system or program/application, the ones which are most evolved, and possess the most potential for further evolutionary elegance, are those which are open source & dynamic in nature. How can these same principals be applied when looking to ourselves, nature and the cosmos?



I propose this new Holy Trinity.

Developer (creator, that which creates)
Code (nature, that which is)
User (consciousness, that which experiences)

All 3 are aspects of the same source & being, expressing a 1:3 divine ratio

We are the playwright, the play & the player

The designer, experience & experiencer

and finally...

god, cosmos, & being

.
As we deepen our understanding of the code, mechanics & underlying principals of nature – through genomics, micro-biology, physics, etc... It is revealed to us how nature operates at a certain level. These learnings could benefit our role as the "New Holy Trinity", so we might evolve the divine code of nature.

Nature is the ultimate creative medium.


There is also our collective operating system. Which we are co-creating at this very moment. It's a cosmic open source movement like know other!

And at a personal operating system level, we are experiencing at greater depths, our understanding of the 'Mind at Large', consciousness & Being. The workings, light & landscape within and without. And with this, we can create, evolve, and weave a new consciousness unto the cosmos, and within ourselves.

/ mc

For an elegent, insightful talk on the subject of decoding nature, view 'Juan Enriquez: Decoding the future with genomics'

From Teilhard de Chardin