My World of “Ought to Be”
by Timothy Wilken, MD










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Monday, March 29, 2004
 

Synergic Guardians — Protecting the Future

20century: Timothy Wilken, MD writes: The human body is a community of 40 trillion individual cells. The individual cells are organized synergically to be interdependent upon each other. They cannot separate themselves from the body as community. The survival of the cells depends on the survival of the body. The needs and safety of the body precedes the needs and safety of the individual cells. Sometimes individual cells are injured or even sacrificed to protect and insure the survival of the body as a whole. The needs and safety of the community of cells takes precedence over the needs and safety of the cells as individuals. With the discovery that humanity is an interdependent species comes the realization that we humans can no longer separate ourselves from community. Humanity as community is larger and contains humanity as individuals. The needs and safety of humanity as community must precede the needs and safety of humanity as individuals. Our present culture based on the false premise of human independence often places individual needs and safety over community needs and safety. This will shift dramatically in a synergic culture. The first law of the of the Guardian Trust Code commits to protect Humanity as Community. The second law commits to protect Humanity as Individuals. This represents a major shift in human values from today’s focus with the individual as primary to tomorrow’s focus with community as primary. ... Within synergic community, actions that injure humanity as community and/or humanity as individuals are prohibited. ... Further, it is understood that actions that injure the EARTH and environment—the natural resources, fertile soils, waters, minerals, ores, metals, and the very air we breathe—also injures humanity. It is understood that actions that injures LIFE—the plants and animals and the biodiversity of all non-human Life—also injures humanity. It is understood that actions than injures the wealth produced by human action—whether in the form of Time-binding Trust or Property of living humans—also injures humanity. Therefore, the Synergic Guardians stand to protect humanity both as community and as individuals. (03/29/04))


  b-future:

The Empire Strikes Out

Kenny Ausubel writes: For all the chatter about the Age of Information, we really seem to be entering the Age of Biology. We didn't invent nature. Nature invented us. Nature bats last, as the saying goes and, more importantly, it's her playing field. We would do well to learn at least some of the ground rules. The great ecological play takes place in a food web that makes no waste, powered by a solar economy that neither mines the past nor mortgages the future. Some of its guiding principles are diversity, kinship, symbiosis, reciprocity and community. It's alive. It's intelligent. It's connected. It's all relatives. One of the beauties of biology is that its facts can become our metaphors. These underlying codes may also serve as inspiring parables for how as human beings we might organize a more just, humane, and authentically sustainable society. Life is intimacy interconnected. As a culture we've made a basic systems error to believe that we exist somehow separate from nature, or from one another. That illusion could prove fatal at this momentous cusp, this time at which our turbo-charged technologies and overwhelming numbers have given us, for the first time in history, the capacity to blow it on a planetary scale. Our globalized corporate empire menaces the future of the entire biosphere. Empires are castles made of sand: They always crumble, they always fade away. But by the time this empire strikes out, the biological game could be all but over. Corporate globalization is killing off its host -- and ours. Gary Larsen once did a cartoon in which a ship is sinking, and a pack of dogs crowded into a lifeboat are watching it go down. The lead dog says to the others, "OK -- all those in favor of eating all the food all at once, raise your paws." That's economic globalization in a nutshell. (03/29/04)


  b-CommUnity:

Three Generations of Organic Farmers

The New Farm -- Ken Bodera’s 3,000 acre organic farm in southeastern Saskatchewan lies down a long stretch of gravel road that goes in a straight line past expansive fields of wheat, flax, canola, and barley. Ken, who looks to be in his fifties, relates how he farms in the spare language of someone not out to impress anyone. The Bodera’s two-story farmhouse is basic and doesn’t look like the house of a big landowner. A tiny, oasis-like garden sits in the middle of the circular dirt driveway of the farm ops area. A sizeable satellite dish is the only thing around the house that makes it look modern. Satellite TV is part of survival on a prairie farm. “We get together to watch the Roughriders,” says Ken, referring to the Saskatchewan’s Canadian Football League team.Norma, Ken’s wife, works at the local hospital in the nearby town of Moosamin. Sitting in the kitchen, we talk about funding difficulties. The provincial government is putting more and more of a burden on local communities to fund things like hospitals. Norma is involved in the effort to raise funds - $3 million for a local health facility. Ken and Norma have four sons, one of whom, Marty, 26, lives nearby and works the farm with Ken. Joff, Ken’s 88-year old father, also lives nearby and still helps. Ken’s great grandfather emigrated from England and homesteaded this land in 1881. By that year the Canadian Pacific Railroad reached westward well into Manitoba, and many British migrated here at that time to settle the prairies. The pioneering Bodera walked from the end of the railway line in Brandon, Manitoba, to the Moosamin area, bringing a team of oxen with him.  (03/29/04)


  b-theInternet:

Oceanic Dead Zones?

CodBBC Environment -- Sea areas starved of oxygen will soon damage fish stocks even more than unsustainable catches, the United Nations believes. The UN Environment Programme says excessive nutrients, mainly nitrogen from human activities, are causing these "dead zones" by stimulating huge growths of algae. Since the 1960s the number of oxygen-starved areas has doubled every decade, as human nitrogen production has outstripped natural sources. ... About 75% of the world's fish stocks are already being overexploited, but Unep says the dead zones, which now number nearly 150 worldwide, will probably prove a greater menace. ... The amount of nitrogen used as fertiliser globally is 120 million tonnes a year, more than the 90 million tonnes produced naturally. Yet only 20 million tonnes of that is retained in the food we eat, with the rest washed away into rivers and out to sea. The burning of fossil fuels in vehicles and power plants, and of forests and grasslands, and the draining of wetlands all contribute more nitrogen to the cycle. This leads to the explosive blooms of algae, tiny marine plants, which sink to the seabed and decompose, using up all the oxygen, and suffocating other marine life. Unep's executive director, Dr Klaus Toepfer, said: "Humankind is engaged in a gigantic global experiment as a result of the inefficient and often excessive use of fertilisers, the discharge of untreated sewage, and the ever-rising emissions from vehicles and factories. ... Some of the dead zones are less than a square km in size, while others are up to 70,000 sq km. Examples include Chesapeake Bay in the US, the Baltic and Black Seas and parts of the Adriatic. One of the best-known is in the Gulf of Mexico, affected by nutrients washed down the Mississippi river. Other zones have appeared off South America, Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand.  (03/29/04)


  b-theInternet:

The Need for Speed

The X-43A jet, mounted on a Pegasus rocket booster, drops away from the B-52B bomberBBC Technology -- An experimental hypersonic plane has broken the world speed record by flying at seven times the speed of sound, says US space agency Nasa. The unpiloted X-43A aircraft used a scramjet engine that could one day usher in a new generation of space shuttle propulsion systems. It flew for 10 seconds on its own power over California, then glided for six minutes before falling into the ocean. "Everything went according to plan," said Nasa spokeswoman Leslie Williams. "I actually thought it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. We've been waiting a few years. For the first time we succeeded in separating two vehicles flying at Mach 7." Project boss Vincent Rausch earlier said the $230m programme "could mark the beginning of a revolution in aviation and spaceflight". Scramjets burn hydrogen but take their oxygen from the air, which is forced into the engine at very high speed. Rocket engines have to carry their own source of oxygen. The term scramjet stands for supersonic combustible ramjet. ... Saturday's mission began when a B-52 bomber carrying the 3.7m-long prototype aircraft under its wing took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California. Once the bomber reached a cruising altitude of 12,000m (40,000 ft), the wedge-shaped research vehicle was released from under the wing. Its speed was initially boosted by a Pegasus rocket, which fell away at about 30,000m (100,000 ft) leaving the X-43A to fly under its own power for 10 seconds. The aircraft then glided through the atmosphere, conducting a series of aerodynamic manoeuvres for about six minutes before finally splashing down into the Pacific Ocean. The mission marked the first time a non-rocket, air-breathing scramjet engine had successfully powered a vehicle in flight at hypersonic speeds. (03/29/04)


  b-theInternet:


6:14:06 AM    


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