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Monday, October 06, 2003
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 Timothy Wilken writes: If you want to help make a world that works for all humanity, you must know this secret. It is the secret of making wholes — the secret of oneness. You must live from the point of view of the whole. You must identify with the whole. If you take care of the whole, the whole will take care of you. The following analogy may help you understand. Think a moment of how our brain functions — the neurons of our human brain focus entirely on the needs of the whole body, and in turn discover the whole body takes care of them. They have no concerns and give no attention to maintaining their own temperature, to acquiring their own nutrition, to oxygenating themselves, or even in protecting themselves from bacteria or virus. The neurons place their trust in survival of the whole. By making decisions which keep the body healthy and safe, they insure the body is capable of meeting all the needs of the neurons. By serving the whole the neurons find themselves served. I have taught that humanity is evolving. We evolved from the animals. Animals are space-binders. Their lives are dominated by adversity. Early humans lives were dominated by adversity. Humans who commit to adversity could be called Adversans. I explained to escape the Adversary world, humans invented Captitalism and the Great Market. This is a Neutral mechanism. Humans who commit to Capitalism and the Market could be called Neutrans. I have explained that if humanity is to have a future that we must give up the hurting of Adversity — give up the ignoring of Neutrality, and embrace the helping of Synergy. Humans who commit to Synergy could be called Synergans. Now imagine that the Earth including all of life is a single organism — GAIA. Further imagine the entire humans species — all of humanity — organized in a single organizational tensegrity. This evolved form of humanity could be called Synerganity. Synerganity then could be the brain of GAIA. Each human being functioning as a neuron within GAIA's brain. (10/06/03)
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 Common Dreams -- While personal morality is key in the conservative world-view, public morality is the overarching concern of liberals. Some are so passionate about this morality that they're led to acts of civil disobedience. Perhaps best summarized in Jesus' description in Matthew 25 of who will (and who won't) get into heaven, liberal morality asks: "Are the hungry fed? Does everybody have the housing, clothing, and health-care they need? Are those in prison treated humanely? Are we caring for the "strangers" - the less fortunate or less competent among us - in the same way we'd want to be cared for if we fell on hard times?" Many liberals would say that what people do in the private lives is their own business, and that if we hold to the ancient standard that only those among us without sin may cast stones at those with personal failings, we'll have a more humane and decent society. Just as liberals hold public morality as a high positive virtue, public immorality equally disgusts them: Movie stars using their power and position to force themselves sexually in a non-consensual way on others. Politicians using their positions to award their buddies taxpayer money in grants, contracts, and tax breaks. Bureaucrats, expecting a job with industry when they leave regulatory agencies, allowing those industries to make our air, water, or food more toxic. Most liberals don't care how stoned Rush wants to get in the privacy of his own home (private morality), so long as he doesn't try to drive while high (public morality). Similarly, they don't have a problem with Bill Clinton's consensual extramarital sex (private morality), but are horrified that he'd sign GATT and NAFTA without human rights, environmental, or labor standards (public morality). Bill Bennett is welcome to gamble as much as he wants (private morality), but when he supports right wing causes that harm the environment or oppress women in America or people in the Third World (public morality) he has become toxic. There's an interesting consistency to these differing definitions of morality. Conservatives like Falwell probably are free of personal sins like philandering or pot smoking, and so feel righteous in condemning others who do. And because Falwell's definition of morality is limited to private behavior, he's comfortable hobnobbing with millionaires who made their money harming the lives of others or making the world more toxic. (Just so long as they don't sleep with somebody of the same sex!) On the other hand, because liberals like Martin Sheen define morality by how well we all are taking care of us, and he's most likely never worked to increase the amount of toxic waste in the air, he's willing to both overlook the personal foibles of others and to put his life and freedom on the line for the public morality he so passionately cares about. (10/06/03)
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 The New Scientist -- A chance discovery could lead to the development of a drug that blocks prion diseases such as variant CJD. However, it would only be useful when combined with mass screening to identify infected people who have not yet developed any symptoms. Adriano Aguzzi's team at the Institute of Neuropathology in Zurich, Switzerland, discovered the effect by accident. The researchers engineered mice to produce a protein that would stick to the scrapie prion, so the team could retrieve the prion protein for testing. The engineered mice turned out to take twice as long as normal to develop the disease. Because the protein is soluble, it is ideal for use as a drug. Aguzzi now hopes to mass-produce the protein so he can test it on macaque monkeys that have been exposed to BSE. If it works, Aguzzi told the European Life Science Organisation conference in Dresden last week, his team will test it on people infected with vCJD. (10/06/03)
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 BBC World -- The World Climate Change Conference in Moscow has ended inconclusively - and with bad-tempered recriminations directed at its organisers, the Russian Government. ... Mr Putin himself set the scene during his opening speech on Monday, in which he said his government was still studying the pros and cons of Kyoto and that a decision on whether to ratify would only be taken once that was complete. This caused considerable frustration for those keen to see Kyoto come into force quickly and that frustration was compounded by repeated interventions from one of his key advisers, raising a raft of objections to the treaty. Andrei Illarionov, who advises Mr Putin on economic policy, signalled his doubts about Kyoto in comments to BBC News Online on Tuesday, and followed them up with several contributions in the conference hall questioning the science of climate change. In his final comments, Mr Illarionov told journalists at the conference that the agreement would "doom Russia to poverty, weakness and backwardness". His argument is that Russia's ambition to double the size of its economy in a decade would be jeopardised if it observed the target under Kyoto to keep greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2012 - even though current emissions are 32% down due to the collapse of traditional industry. (10/06/03)
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 The Independent UK -- World oil and gas supplies are heading for a "production crunch" sometime between 2010 and 2020 when they cannot meet supply, because global reserves are 80 per cent smaller than had been thought, new forecasts suggest. Research presented this week at the University of Uppsala in Sweden claims that oil supplies will peak soon after 2010, and gas supplies not long afterwards, making the price of petrol and other fuels rocket, with potentially disastrous economic consequences unless people have moved to alternatives to fossil fuels. While forecasters have always known that such a date lies ahead, they have previously put it around 2050, and estimated that there would be time to shift energy use over to renewables and other non- fossil sources. But Kjell Aleklett, one of a team of geologists that prepared the report, said earlier estimates that the world's entire reserve amounts to 18,000 billion barrels of oil and gas - of which about 1,000 billion has been used up so far - were "completely unrealistic". He, Anders Sivertsson and Colin Campbell told New Scientist magazine that less than 3,500 billion barrels of oil and gas remained in total. Dr James McKenzie, senior assistant on the climate change programme at the World Resources Institute in Washington, said: "We won't run out of oil - but what will happen is that production will decline, and that's when all hell will break loose." Present annual oil consumption is about 25 billion barrels, and shows no signs of slowing. That would suggest a "production crunch" - where consumption grows to meet the maximum output - within the next couple of decades. Dr McKenzie said that on this topic the argument split between economists and geologists. "The economists think it will just force the price of oil up, which will mean it will become economic to extract it from all sorts of unusual places, such as tarry sands or deposits which are 90 per cent rock and 10 per cent oil. But the geologists say - you tell us where the deposits are and we'll find them. We've looked and we can't." (10/06/03)
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7:09:46 AM 
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© TrustMark
2003
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
11/3/2003; 6:43:12 AM.
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