The Challenge of Engineering in the Future

Throughout human history engineering has driven the advance of civilization. From the metallurgists who ended the Stone Age to the widespread development and distribution of electricity and clean water, to radio and television, spacecraft and antibiotics, computers and the Internet, engineering has made incredible strides. For all of these advances, though, as the population grows and its needs and desires expand, the problem of sustaining civilizational advancement, while improving the quality of life of all peoples, poses major challenges.

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, a panel of 18 engineers, technologists and futurists including Google co-founder Larry Page and genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter spent more than a year pondering how best to improve life on Earth and came up with 14 Grand Engineering Challenges.

FIND OUT WHAT THEY CAME UP WITH: HERE

“Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging”. -- Joseph Campbell

State of the Planet 2008

The Earth Institute at Columbia University is currently facilitating the State of the Planet 2008 conference in New York city. The conference is free and open to the registered public, with full coverage of the conference offered in podcast:

The State of the Planet Conference, held every two years by the Earth Institute at Columbia University, assesses the state of global natural and human systems in order to identify those factors central to achieving sustainable development. The conference brings together insights from the world's most influential and innovative thinkers in a wide range of academic fields, including the earth sciences, engineering sciences, biological sciences, health sciences, and social sciences, with those from opinion leaders in the media, government and the policy community.

Participants explore and debate in depth, on a global scale, the current condition of natural and human systems from the perspectives of both the natural and social sciences. In fostering constructive relations between these scientific communities and government leaders, international organizations, individuals and others, the conference promotes policy designed to reach the goals of sustainable development.

To secure our future as a species we must first understand what impact we have on the planet we inhabit. Getting to that understanding - and framing viable solutions for our future - is what this conference is all about.

The conference closes tomorrow with a debate sponsored by the 'free market' advocacy magazine The Economist. State of the Planet 2008 is a carbon neutral event.

LEARN MORE: HERE

Religion, Biology and Natural Design

"At TED 2006, Dan Dennett spoke out for the unbiased study of religion as a natural, biological phenomenon. His hope may come true. The Economist writes of recent headway made into understanding of religious belief -- in particular a new project called Explaining Religion, the "largest-ever scientific study of the subject." EXREL's goal is to integrate research on religious faith in biology, anthropology and psychology. It is funded by the European Commission and tethered to the University of Oxford research community."

Dan Dennett at TED (2006):

What is Altitude?

The notion that humans go through multiple levels of development is not new. It dates back at least to the beginnings of philosophy thousands of years ago. Today, science and experience are starting to tell us a lot more about the process and the nature of our life cycles.

The following is taken from the Holons weblog:

"What is Altitude?" - by Corey W. deVos

The concept of Altitude is a radically new approach to development created by Ken Wilber and presented in his book Integral Spirituality. In Holons, we use Altitude as a measure of development in both culture and consciousness.

A simple way to explain it is to say that Altitude indicates the degree of developmental unfolding of items such as complexity, consciousness, and the number of perspectives one can take. For example, in consciousness development as indicated below, one goes from the capacity to take only a 1st-person perspective, to also being able to take a 2nd-person perspective, to also being able to take a 3rd-person perspective, and so on.

Thus, in this example, you can see that the capacity for love increases (from being able to love only me, to being able to love us, to being able to love all of us, to being able to love all sentient beings....).

READ MORE: HERE

We believe that 'altitude' is both relative to one's position of power, and indicative of the inherent diversity of life formation - with the advancement of human cognition following directly from our ways of being-in-the-world.

The Dreams of Children

A defining characteristic of more advanced thinking and being is compassion. Authentic compassion inevitably embraces the self, family, neighbors, people across regions and ethnic boundaries - and all sentient life on this planet. As Siddhartha Gautama said, “In separateness lies the world's great misery, in compassion lies the world's true strength.”

In the following video montage, we get glimpses of the paintings and dreams of young students at an informal school in India run by the non-governmental organization Calcutta Rescue: Calcutta Rescue provides free education to nearly 300 slum children in that city and is the impetus behind the lush series of water-color paintings on display in this video. "In my next life, I would like to be a butterfly." says one student.



Are we strong and wise enough as a species to focus our compassion and transform the planet through helping more individuals and groups develop and thrive? It is only through the (re)evolution of self and others that we will achieve sustainability.

MetaLinking – 2008/03/22

Bodymind_Dynamics

Body-Subjects and Disordered Minds – “In his Republic, Plato called 'mental disorder' a "drunken, lustful, passionate" frenzy, in which one gives in to one's "lawless wild-beast nature;" he further suggested that people with such a condition should be punished. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience, sociology and law, continue to debate the theoretical and practical bearings of this phenomenon... Despite the number of works attempting to answer these questions, it is rare to find a book that proposes a well-developed theory of mental disorder which can be implemented in both clinical and political practices.”

Monkey Language and Human Evolution - “The ability to string different words together to express complex ideas was a milestone in the development of language that researchers figure occurred relatively late in human evolution. Now for the first time, scientists reveal a primate other than humans can also express a variety of messages by combining sounds into different sequences. The finding suggests this level of language might have occurred far earlier in evolution than before thought.”

The Visible Body - “The Visible Body is the most comprehensive human anatomy visualization tool available today. This entirely Web-delivered application offers an unparalleled understanding of human anatomy. The Visible Body includes 3D models of over 1,700 anatomical structures, including all major organs and systems of the human body.”

Regulating Negative Emotions And The Impact On Brain Activity – “Emotions play an important role in the lives of humans, and influence our behavior, thoughts, decisions, and interactions. The ability to regulate emotions is essential to both mental and physical well-being. "Conversely, difficulties with emotion regulation have been postulated as a core mechanism underlying mood and anxiety disorders," according to the authors of a new study published in Biological Psychiatry on March 15th. Thus, these researchers set out to further expand our understanding of the differential effects of emotion regulation strategies on the human brain.”

Native Americans Traced to 6 'Founding Mothers' – “Nearly all of today's Native Americans in North, Central and South America can trace part of their ancestry to six women whose descendants immigrated around 20,000 years ago, a DNA study suggests.”

Are Humans Meant to be Monogamous? – “News of politicians' extramarital affairs seems to be in no short supply lately, but if humans were cut from exactly the same cloth as other mammals, a faithful spouse would be an unusual phenomenon. Only 3 percent to 5 percent of the roughly 5,000 species of mammals (including humans) are known to form lifelong, monogamous bonds, with the loyal superstars including beavers, wolves and some bats. Social monogamy is a term referring to creatures that pair up to mate and raise offspring but still have flings. Sexually monogamous pairs mate with only with one partner. So a cheating husband who detours for a romantic romp yet returns home in time to tuck in the kids at night would be considered socially monogamous.”

“Meant” to be monogamous? This article, although raising some interesting questions, is mostly speculative and does not address the more significant ‘philosophical questions’ about directionality in evolution, nor whether or not what was in the past 'ought' to be in the future. Humans are much more than their genes.

The Same Region Of The Brain Is Used For Thoughts Of Self And Similar Others - "Using fMRI scanning, researchers have found that the region of the brain associated with introspective thought is also accessed when inferring the thoughts of other people who are similar to oneself. However, this is not the case when considering those who are different politically, socially, or religiously. "Our research helps to explain how and when people draw on their own inner experiences to make inferences about the experiences of others," says Jenkins. "The findings suggest that the part of the brain that is responsible for introspection also helps us to understand what other people might be thinking or feeling. But this primarily seems to be the case for people who we perceive to be similar to ourselves."


Communication_Culture_Discourse

AUDIO: Reconciling Science and Religion – “Roman Catholic priest and cosmologist Michael Heller won this year's Templeton Prize. "Science without religion is not only meaningless, it's lame," he says.”

The Age of American Unreason – “Identifying herself as a “cultural conservationist” (but by no means a cultural conservative), Jacoby laments the decline of middlebrow American culture and presents a cogent defense of intellectualism. America, she believes, faces a “crisis of memory and knowledge,” in which anti-intellectualism is not only tolerated but celebrated by those in politics and the media to whom we are all “just folks.”

Music fans' favorite drugs don't quite match the stereotype – “Music has been associated with drug use for decades -- from the flower children smoking weed at Woodstock to jazz great Charlie Parker getting hooked on heroin, it seems that every type of music has a drug that we associate with it. Last month we discussed a study where college students were asked what type of substances they thought music fans of 14 different genres of music were likely to use. Here are the results…”

Help bring compassion back to religion – “As she accepts her 2008 TED Prize, author and scholar Karen Armstrong talks about how the Abrahamic religions -- Islam, Judaism, Christianity -- have been diverted from the moral purpose they share: to foster compassion. But Armstrong has seen a yearning to change this fact. People want to be religious, she says; we should act to help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help her build a Charter for Compassion -- to help restore the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you") as the central global religious doctrine.”


Environment_Health_Sustainability

Native North Americans Gather to Save the Planet – “North American Indians assembled in the shadow of ancient Mayan pyramids Monday discussed how their tradition wisdom could help save the planet, and were told that even indigenous cultures have struggled with environmental abuse. More than 200 leaders from 71 American Indian nations in Mexico, the United States and Canada came together in this Mexican jungle to find indigenous solutions to pollution and ecological problems threatening the planet.”

The Economist Has No Clothes – “Unscientific assumptions in economic theory are undermining efforts to solve environmental problems… Unfortunately, it is clear that neoclassical economics has also become outdated. The theory is based on unscientific assumptions that are hindering the implementation of viable economic solutions for global warming and other menacing environmental problems.”

It might seem common sensical that classical and traditional economics is far from being a scientific discipline. At best economics is a interpretive dialog on economic systems, and worse it is a repressive discourse that reduces human life and social complexity to a set of 'games' or proscriptions of white capitalist elites. The injustices done in the name of "markets" is a shadow 'economics' continues to cast over the lives of millions.

Review: Critical Perspectives in Public Health – “This collection of readings takes its name from the journal Critical Public Health in which many of the chapters were originally published as individual papers, between 1998 and 2005. The book contains sixteen chapters in four sections, with an integrative introduction to each section. This is a wide ranging collection, covering inequalities, research, colonization/globalization, and the environment. Authors are about evenly spread across both sides of the Atlantic and appear to be mainly social science or medical academics from the specialty of public health. Critical Perspectives in Public Health is a useful reader in providing an overview of methodology and theory, as well as case studies of particular issues.”

The U.S.'s First Smart Grid? – “One of the fun things about editing a project like Worldchanging in times like these is the frequency with which our predictions and speculations get run down and overtaken by commercial realities. We've written a lot about smart grids, touting their potential benefits, from neighborhood survivability to enabling pug-in hybrid-electrics to act as a system of batteries during peak use surges. Now Xcel Energy has announced that it's going to turn Boulder, Colorado, into the United States' first smart grid community”

This is an outstanding project - a must read. If you are in the Boulder area please reach out and support this leading edge work.

Water under pressure – “More than a billion people do not have access to safe drinking water and two billion have inadequate sanitation. This is despite two international decades, a millennium declaration goal, two international years and a string of global celebratory days — all dedicated to drinking-water or sanitation. Why has progress been so slow?”

Water will be THE global issue in a future of scarce resources and POTENTIAL international strife.

Top 10 Questions About Earth – “In an attempt to remedy that, a panel of geologists and planetary scientists announced this week the top 10 questions about our planet that linger today, which have strangely baffled humanity and researchers for hundreds of years and longer. "We have to look to the past and ask deeper fundamental questions about the origins of the Earth and life, the structure and dynamics of planets, and the connections between life and climate, for example," said panel chairman Donald DePaolo, a University of California at Berkeley geochemist.”


Polity_Justice_Organization

Tibetans in China: Fearing the Worst - “It's early evening in Litang, a normally bustling city of some 50,000 in the far west of China's Sichuan province. On a normal day, the streets would be crowded with cars, bicycles, throngs of shoppers, even the odd yak. But today there is an eerie silence, with only the occasional resident hurrying home, eyes to the ground. The shops are all shuttered and the only vehicles on the roads are prowling police cars whose blue and red lights flash in the gathering dusk. Litang, 90% of whose population is ethnically Tibetan, is a city under siege.” - Bill Harryman at IOC is keeping a close eye on the situation in Tibet - check out his latest postings.

AUDIO: China Cuts Off Access to Western News Sites – “Over the past week of uprisings in Tibet, the Chinese government has cut access to Western media websites to keep the Chinese people from finding out how serious the crisis has been. James Fallows of Atlantic Monthly talks to Susan Stamberg about how China's "Great Firewall" works.”

On Obama: Those Who Hear Only Empty Optimism Aren’t Listening - “I've been trying to avoid the word integral, but that is my sense of Obama -- someone who works with aperspectival thinking and understands that the only way to make sense of chaos is to generate meaning. Some may not approve of the meaning he seeks to generate, but compared to the other options, he is the most advanced mind in the game.”

Over 100 anti-war protesters arrested at NATO HQ - “Around 100 anti-war protesters were arrested trying to force their way into NATO's headquarters in Belgium on Saturday, police said. Police in riot gear and on horses clashed with over 500 activists from across Europe -- opposed to military action in Iraq and Afghanistan and the use of nuclear weapons -- outside NATO's Brussels hub. Water cannons were used to prevent most of the protesters from gaining entry to the large security compound situated on the outskirts of the Belgian capital and close to Brussels national airport.”

AUDIO: Kenyans Struggle Toward Normalcy – “Kenya is getting back to business after two months of ethnic bloodletting kicked off by a contested presidential election. While the political combatants have figured out a way to work together, Kenyans are struggling to put the internecine clashes behind them.”

Integral Philosophy of Education: Towards A New Paideia

By Agustin Basave

"Education, an action, is a process, a development of the imperfect human being intentionally directed at achieving the ideal of human plenitude in the best possible manner. This is a description of the educational process based on the human being who travels toward plenitude, a point of arrival; the human being who achieves his or her own perfection in the best possible manner; and a method: intentional guidance towards plenitude in the harmonious formation of humanity. It is not enough to say what education is or what it is like. It is necessary to clarify what education is for.

The harmonious development of essential, integral and vocational abilities makes the student more perfect and causes his or her cosmic and social circumstance to be more perfect. In this integral philosophy of education, I offer a new "Paideia." It is necessary to seek the student's point of balance between the sciences of empirical verification and humanistic duties. Otherwise, we will march toward the disintegration of the human being, to the anti-knowledge of a very powerful technocracy. Integral personal and community education is education which promotes the person in a changing society susceptible to progress. That student perfectibility which is anxious to satisfy demands can only be fulfilled with love. The contemporary world has not rehearsed on a large scale an education for love. If we do not found education on love, the world will not be inhabited by humans."

READ MORE: HERE

Ken WIlber on Apocalypse and Future Thinking

Speaking at an Integral Sustainability conference Ken offers his explanation of the eschatology of the different altitudes. No doubt different worldviews have different cosmologies and accompanying narratives of crisis.

MetaLinking – 2008-03-16

Metalinking offers readers an opportunity to follow-up on some of the most recent ‘strands’ of research that our group has encountered. In the interest of evolving more rigorous integral theories and applications we conduct original research, internet scans and literature reviews in four main strategic research domains: Bodymind Dynamics, Communication, Culture & Discourse, Environment, Health & Sustainability and Polity, Justice & Organization. All comments and feedback welcome.

Bodymind_Dynamics

Am I Normal? - "A more organic take on human nature is emerging. It sees behavior as a product of distinct personality traits that we all have to a greater or lesser degree. In this new view, we're all just a little bit crazy..."

Cooperation, Punishment And Revenge – “Research from The University of Nottingham has shed new light on the way in which people co-operate for the common good - and what happens when they don't. In a new international study of 16 countries, published in the prestigious journal Science, economists studied the extent to which some people will sacrifice personal gain to benefit the wider public, while 'freeloaders' try to take advantage of their generosity. Marked national differences arose when freeloaders were punished for putting their own interests ahead of the common good. And whether they accepted their punishment or retaliated in kind depended on what kind of society they lived in, the researchers found.”

Resisting temptation is energy intensive – “Cognitive Daily has just published a great write-up and demonstration of a study that illustrates how self-control is an energy intensive process that puts a big drain on the body's glucose levels. The article tackles a recent study led by psychologist Matthew Gailliot that found that exercising self-control in either conversations or in lab tasks reduces blood glucose levels.”

Consciousness is Nothing but a Word – “In 1991, Daniel Dennett published his tome, Consciousness Explained.1 Yet, ten years later he penned an article titled “Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet?”2 If he had to ask the question, the answer seems obvious. English-speaking philosophers and psychologists have been trying to understand consciousness at least since John Locke introduced the word into the English language in the 17th century. But despite the best efforts of those who’ve thrown their hats into the ring, we haven’t made much progress. Obviously, a different approach is needed.” Is this flatland reductionism or simply critical thinking? You decide.

How Effective and Integral are Your Current Spiritual Practices? – “How much of your current spiritual practice incorporates the 18 most validated methods for building a spiritually congruent life and an authentic and empowered spiritual lifestyle? We invite you to review the 18 central practices used by history's greatest spiritual leaders, mystics and saints and compare your current spiritual practices to theirs. You might just find out that you are doing a lot better than you ever dreamed...”

Eastern And Western Cultures Perceive Emotions Very Differently – “A team of researchers from Canada and Japan have uncovered some remarkable results on how eastern and western cultures assess situations very differently… "East Asians seem to have a more holistic pattern of attention, perceiving people in terms of the relationships to others," says Masuda. "People raised in the North American tradition often find it easy to isolate a person from its surroundings, while East Asians are accustom to read the air "kuuki wo yomu" of the situation through their cultural practices, and as a result, they think that even surrounding people's facial expressions are an informative source to understand the particular person's emotion."”

Genes and Happiness, or Free Will Revisited – “As I begin writing this post I can’t help but be reminded of the one I wrote a few weeks ago about the troubles one runs into when trying to reconcile present-day understandings of neuroscience and genetics with the traditional concept of free will. A team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh and the Queensland Institute of Medical Research recently conducted a study to investigate how much our subjective sense of happiness is dependent upon our genetic makeup (and thus personality style). Is our ability to be happy solely up to us ("us" being defined as hypothetical beings with complete free will), or is it constrained by the type of person we are, which is determined to a large extent by our genes?”


Communication_Culture_Discourse

Economists Decode Rational Behaviors of Black Women – “There are a lot of African-American single moms around and some commentators are inclined to blame this fact on 'Black Culture'—whatever that phrase might mean," writes economist Tim Harford in his new book, The Logic of Life. Harford goes on: "But 'Black culture' doesn't explain why the single moms are disproportionately in the states where lots of young black men are in prison." Not sure we can endorse or agree with this type of “science” but nonetheless…

Scientist Turns Microscope on Herself – “One of the most fascinating talks at the TED conference so far was given by Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, who gave a riveting account of a stroke she experienced in 1996. (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design.) Taylor's knowledge of the brain made her the perfect witness to her body's gradual shutdown. Over the course of four hours she watched her body deteriorate in stages, all the while processing its breakdown as if she were a curious explorer taking field notes. The first to go was her perception of herself as separate from the objects around her.”

Not by Reason Alone - "Can you argue people out of a belief in God? And can science scratch that same itch? "If this book works as intended," avows Richard Dawkins in the preface to his best-selling book The God Delusion, "religious readers who open it will be atheists by the time they put it down." Show people data, and enough of it, and in a process as inevitable as Darwinism itself, people will drop their babyish dependency on magical thinking and return to their natural state, which is atheism (or at least a sober agnosticism). This is Dawkins's basic premise, shared by many of today's vocal neo-atheists..."

VIDEO: Nietzsche on Hardship - Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness – “Nietzsche on Hardship - British philosopher Alain De Botton explores Friedrich Nietzsche's (1844-1900) dictum that any worthwhile achievements in life come from the experience of overcoming hardship. For him, any existence that is too comfortable is worthless, as are the twin refugees of drink or religion.”

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense – “Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up… Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage. To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.”


Environment_Health_Sustainability

British Columbia "the clear leader in North American climate policy" – “B.C.'s provincial government has instituted a carbon tax. It's pretty significant: Taylor said the new carbon tax will begin July 1, starting at a rate that will have drivers paying about an extra 2.4 cents per litre of gasoline at the pumps. The tax -- which will apply to virtually all fossil fuels, including gasoline, diesel, natural gas, coal, propane and home heating fuel -- will then increase each year after that until 2012, reaching a final price of about 7.2 cents per litre at the pumps. After that, Taylor said, it will rest with the government of the day to decide if the tax rate should change any further.

VIDEO: James Howard Kunstler: The tragedy of suburbia – “In James Howard Kunstler's view, public spaces should be inspired centers of civic life and the physical manifestation of the common good. Instead, he argues, what we have in America is a nation of places not worth caring about. Reengineering our cities will involve more radical change than we are prepared for, Kunstler believes, but our hand will be forced by earth crises stemming from our national lifestyle. "Life in the mid-21st century," Kunstler says, "is going to be about living locally.”

Welcome to the Post-Carbon World – “Why do some planets survive their carbon crises and others don’t? It doesn’t have to be the end of the world. Buildings, electricity production, transportation, and food & forestry contribute the bulk of the greenhouse gases. But climate-friendly options are ready. Author Guy Dauncey takes us out of this world as we begin to imagine some down-to-earth solutions.”

5 Factors Of Social Ills In Energy, Mining And Logging Communities Revealed By Study - “The troubling link between boom towns and high rates of substance abuse is usually attributed to workers having too much money and too little to do. But a recent study of one Canadian community suggests underlying pressures including loneliness, a lack of healthy social connections and a need to "keep up with the Joneses". Two University of Alberta researchers, working with the Canadian Forest Service to conduct the study, found that substance abuse in the town of Hinton runs far deeper than the current economic boom. Because many resource-based communities have similar social and economic structures, the study's findings may provide insights into the social challenges of mining, logging, and oil and gas-based communities across North America.”


Polity_Justice_Organization

Dalai Lama calls Tibetan crackdown 'cultural genocide' – “The Dalai Lama on Sunday called for an international probe of China's treatment of Tibet, which he said is causing "cultural genocide" of his people. The exiled spiritual leader of Tibet spoke at a news conference Sunday in Dharmsala, India, two days after violent clashes between pro-autonomy demonstrators and Chinese security forces in the Tibetan capital Lhasa. A spokesman for the self-declared Tibetan exile government said it has confirmed at least 80 deaths in Friday's violence and that protests were continuing outside the capital on Sunday, further undermining China's hopes of a smooth run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.”

New Pakistan Government May Mean Trouble for U.S. – “Pakistani opposition leaders agreed to form a coalition government on Sunday. According to Islamabad-based reporter Graham Usher, this could spell bad news for President Pervez Musharraf and also complicate things for the U.S.”

Colonization of the Americas - “There is a fairly new paper on the colonization of the New World. It is the latest in a series of attempts to synthesize biogeography, climate change related paleoenvironmental reconstruction, genetics, and archaeology…The authors draw these conclusions: These results support a model for the peopling of the New World in which Amerind ancestors diverged from the Asian gene pool prior to 40,000 years ago and experienced a gradual population expansion as they moved into Beringia. After a long period of little change in population size in greater Beringia, Amerinds rapidly expanded into the Americas ≈15,000 years ago either through an interior ice-free corridor or along the coast. This rapid colonization of the New World was achieved by a founder group with an effective population size of 1,000-5,400 individuals. Our model presents a detailed scenario for the timing and scale of the initial migration to the Americas, substantially refines the estimate of New World founders, and provides a unified theory for testing with future datasets and analytic methods.”

New Instruments of Surveillance and Social Control: Wireless Technologies which Target the Neuronal Functioning of the Brain – “Increasingly there are indications that the uses of wireless technologies have been developed to target an individual’s biological body, with specific focus upon the neuronal functioning of the brain. In this paper I examine how some of these uses have had detrimental effects, and what this implies for both present and upcoming developments for particular wireless/sensor technologies. I consider whether this is not shifting dangerously towards a psycho–civilised society, where greater emphasis is placed upon social control and pre–emptive strategies.”

VIDEO: Social Networks and the Development of Society - "NICHOLAS A. CHRISTAKIS, a physician and sociologist, is a Professor at Harvard University with joint appointments in the Departments of Health Care Policy, Sociology, and Medicine. For the last ten years, he has been studying social networks."

Shifting Baselines, Climate Change and War – “Last summer, one million square miles of Arctic Ocean melted. The Arctic icecap is half the size that it was 50 years ago. The Northwest Passage is now a reality, and territory and resource claims are starting to show up at the United Nations. While the UN has rejected all Arctic claims, things are heating up in the north in more ways than one. Russian icebreakers, submarines, and bombers are lingering around. Canadian icebreakers have joined them. Ironically (and uncharacteristically), the US is on the sidelines of this new, emerging arms race for Arctic resources and shipping shortcuts. Guess how many US icebreakers are included in our $440 million annual defense budget? Uno.”

Towards a Wisdom Revolution

Current academia is more devoted to acquiring expert knowledge and technological know-how, in the hope that that knowledge will be used to better the lot of humanity. However the scientific pursuit of knowledge dissociated from a more fundamental concern with problems of living remains fraught with danger.

What we urgently need to do - given the unprecedented opportunities bequeathed to us by the vast array of knowledge systems and information available - is to learn how to tackle our immense, intractable problems of living in rather more intelligent, humane, co- operatively and integral ways than we do at present.

And for that, in turn, we need to creatively design institutions of learning that facilitate more engaged, dialogical, and integrated educational approaches. Fundamentally, we need a new kind of academic inquiry that gives intellectual priority to practical human life. It is imperative that formal systems of education and research increasingly focus on exploring opportunities for actualizing human potentials, advancing the health of planetary ecologies, and understanding the challenges we face as a species - to clarifying what our problems are, and to proposing and critically assessing the possible solutions.

Nicholas Maxwell is a researcher and educator who has spent the past 35 years trying to understand what the overall aims and methods of science, and of academic inquiry more generally, ought to be if it is to help humanity achieve a more civilized and healthy world. Maxwell writes:

“The revolution we need would change every branch and aspect of academic inquiry. Social inquiry would become social methodology or philosophy, and would not be, primarily, social science. Its primary task would be to help people resolve conflicts and problems of living in more cooperatively rational ways. Social inquiry would be more intellectually fundamental than natural science. Natural science would change to include three domains of discussion: evidence, theory, and aims - the latter including discussion of metaphysics, values and politics. Academic inquiry as a whole would become a kind of people's civil service, doing openly for the public what actual civil services are supposed to do in secret for governments.”

LEARN MORE: HERE

Public Meditation Project

What would it be like to meditate in public for a social cause, or at a busy intersection or amidst teems of shoppers at a mall? A few years ago, Alex Cequea asked himself this very question, and acted on it by creating The Public Meditation Project.

Convinced that world change starts from within, this young activist from Houston, Texas has since opted to "be peace" in congested locales all over town, often in the company of like-minded others.

Take a peek at his fearless inquiry, and some of the reactions it has elicited:

Human Capacities in the Integral Age

by Don Beck, Ph. D.

“This presentation will introduce the concept of Spiral Dynamics, a new, evolutionary framework that describes whole-systems thinking, details how value systems emerge in societies, and maps out a program for raising human capacities to deal with 21st Century complexities. The session will introduce the notion of Memetics, the scientific study of "DNA-like" codes and patterns that lie at the core of companies, cultures and countries. It will describe the role of Vital Signs Monitors in profiling human groupings, and a series of design formulas in crafting natural systems that align focus, function, form, fit, flow and future. Finally, it will demonstrate how to synchronize the spiral of technological complexity, business systems sophistication, and levels of human development.”

READ MORE: HERE

Our group does not agree with all of Dr. Beck's framework, but we enthusiastically support the overall project of mapping out broad patterns in nature, self and society. SDi is an elegant and profoundly useful intellectual tool for understanding human emergence, change and social interaction. In the near future the IRG will make our criticisms and agreements with Dr. Beck's theory more explicit. But for now, as always, thank you for reading.

MetaLinking - 2008/03/08

Today we are introducing something new on Integral Praxis: 'MetaLinking'.

Recently Bill Harryman discontinued his amazing "Speedlinking" on the Integral Options Café blog. We were huge fans of Bill’s daily offering of interesting & informative articles and weblinks. With Speedlinking, Bill was able to provide his readers with links to a wide range of easily accessible and relevant information. Although Bill’s Speedlinking was not the only incarnation (similar features can be found on SEED and various science blogs) of this type of blogging.

Therefore the IRG has decided to offer our readers our version of easy access linking. We hope readers find MetaLinking informative and rigorous in the promotion of innovative research, debate and public interest stories - addressing topics that span the whole spectrum of integral thinking.

Links will reflect IRG’s 4 main strategic research domains:

1) Bodymind Dynamics – human development, consciousness, cognition, physiology and personal health.

2) Communication, Culture & Discourse - collective discourse, information, art, values, ideas, semiotics

3) Environment, Health & Sustainability - habitat, ecology, technology, community and collective health

4) Polity, Justice & Organization – governance, war, social movements, power, resistance and law.

Individual links will not necessarily provide integrally-informed content; however, when the various streams of information are considered in relationship to each other integral patterns emerge.

We sincerely hope that you enjoy and make ample use of this new feature. Feedback and comments about MetaLinking or this weblog as a whole are always welcome.

Look for more positive changes here at Integral Praxis in the near future…

Bodymind_Dynamics:

What Are We? – “Anyone who has thought about the title question "What are we?" can easily attest how the seemingly straightforward question leads to conceptual quagmires in no time. [philosopher Eric] Olson acknowledges this difficulty, and points out that regrettably many discussions in contemporary metaphysics (on personal identity over time in particular) presuppose that we already have an answer to the title question.”

Thinking With the Body: Embodied Cognition – “A newer theory that is gaining ground among neuroscientists, embodied cognition, departs from the "computer-as-mind" metaphor. Instead, the body is seen as playing an important role in cognitive processes. Cognition evolved to guide real bodies in the real world, argue the researchers in favor of this idea. Our thoughts are constrained and influenced by the details of our flesh. How you move your arm or leg actually shapes the way you perceive, think and remember. The latest research in embodied cognition demonstrates just how entangled the body and brain are…”

Can a Person Change their Brain Structure? - “…you can actually affect your brain struct5nure without drugs or any strange or life-altering treatments. Simply by doing something repetitively, or doing something differently, can affect a change — not only in your life, but in your actual brain’s structure…”

The Art of Cognitive Reframing - “We never, ever, see the world as it is. Our awareness – our beliefs, past conditionings, upbringing, the list goes on – these distort everything we see. They creep into every interpretation and misinterpretation. This is obvious; you must have seen it for yourself… One of the most painful misinterpretations lies in self-perception. How do you see yourself? Realistic self concepts are rare, but a negatively distorted perception ruins lives. Weaknesses are magnified, assets and strengths are ignored. We have a tendency to compare; this leads to low self-esteem; a strong feeling of inadequacy and constant unhappiness…”

Fragments of Consciousness - “Dissociation is a term that's used rather loosely in modern psychology and psychiatry. It is sometimes used to be synonymous with derealisation or depersonalisation, describing a feeling of being detached from reality or not being 'grounded' in your usual sense of self. However, in its original and most interesting formulation by the French psychiatrist Pierre Janet, it describes the splitting of consciousness so one part of conscious experience is compartmentalized, becomes inaccessible, is literally 'dis-associated' from the rest.”

Gender Differences Found In Forgiveness - “In seven forgiveness-related studies conducted between 1998 through 2005 with more than 1,400 college students, gender differences between men and women consistently emerged. When asked to recall offenses they had committed personally, men became less vengeful toward people who had offended them. Women reflecting on personal offenses, and beginning at a lower baseline for vengeance, exhibited no differences in levels of unforgiving. When women had to recall a similar offense in relation to the other's offense, women felt guilty and tended to magnify the other's offense.”


Communication_Culture_Discourse:

Culture matters in foreign policy – “All of last week I have been travelling through Southeast-Asia as part of an official delegation accompanying the German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier. Having blogged about him before on Culture Matters, I was really interested to find out how “culture matters” in international politics.”

The Shift And The Hundredth Monkey Effect - “The Hundredth Monkey Effect was first introduced by biologist Lyall Watson in his 1980 book, ‘Lifetide.’ He reported that Japanese primatologists, who were studying Macaques monkeys in the wild in the 1950s, had stumbled upon a surprising phenomenon.”

Desmond Tutu on Compassion - “Compassion is not just a sentimental, passive action, according to Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He also ponders apartheid, justice and forgiveness…He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 not just for his struggle against South African apartheid but for his outline of a just society for all. Archbishop Tutu spoke to PT about the limits of conventional justice.”

Tim Black on Integral Naked: Where Worlds Collide – “A published author in the areas of trauma, group counseling, and applied Integral theory in counseling ethics engages Ken Wilber on why it's so difficult to find Integrally-minded individuals in the indigenous peoples of his native British Columbia—an issue experienced globally, but...”


Environment_Health_Sustainability:

World’s First Positive Energy Building in Masdar, Abu Dhabi - Not settling for mere zero-energy, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill’s Masdar Headquarters are setting new design standards for green building, with their scheme that generates more energy than it consumes. The Masdar Headquarters building outside of Abu Dhabi is also the first building in history to generate power for its own assembly, using a solar roof pier that will be built first to power the rest of the construction.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) model simulation archive - “In the lead up to the 4th Assessment Report, all the main climate modelling groups (17 of them at last count) made a series of coordinated simulations for the 20th Century and various scenarios for the future. All of this output is publicly available in the PCMDI IPCC AR4 archive (now officially called the CMIP3 archive, in recognition of the two previous, though less comprehensive, collections). We've mentioned this archive before in passing, but we've never really discussed what it is, how it came to be, how it is being used and how it is (or should be) radically transforming the comparisons of model output and observational data.”

Maya May Have Caused Civilization-Ending Climate Change – “A satellite program designed to improve environmental policies in Central America has found evidence of ancient, self-induced climate change—offering lessons on how to combat today's warming.”

Sustainability Goes to College – “From using biodiesel in their buses to serving locally grown food in their cafeterias, universities that belong to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) are taking steps to reduce their environmental impact and build stronger, more self-sufficient communities. AASHE began in 2005 and now boasts a membership of more than 250 colleges and universities throughout the United States and Canada…”


Polity_Justice_Organization:

PODCAST: What Human Rights Activists Want from China – “China's policies have had groups like Human Rights Watch on its case for years. Now the upcoming Olympic Games is bringing attention that may force change, says HRW's Minky Worden, editor of China's Great Leap: The Beijing Games and Olympian Human Rights Challenges.”

Samantha Power on stopping genocide – “Samantha Power has a hell of a resume. She’s a celebrated journalist, a Pulitzer-winning author, a Harvard professor and an Obama advisor. She deserves the recognition she gets - she’s one of the smartest people in the world on foreign policy, and especially on the subject of mass atrocities…”

Towards Politics with Heart – “Heart Politics gatherings have been a regular fixture in the lives of a wide variety of New Zealanders involved in peace, social justice, indigenous and environmental issues. The first ‘Festival of Heart Politics’ in 1989 was held at the Tauhara Centre, a retreat and conference venue overlooking Lake Taupo, at the centre of New Zealand’s North Island…”

Seattle-Area Fires May Be Ecoterror – “Fires gutted four multimillion-dollar model homes in a Seattle suburb on Monday, and authorities found a sign purportedly left by ecoterrorists that mocks claims that the homes were environmentally friendly. "Built Green? Nope black!" said the spray-painted sign that bore the initials of the radical environmental group Earth Liberation Front...”

Evolving an Integral Ecology of Mind

In his essay "Evolving an Integral Ecology of Mind", Chris Lucas offers an extended deliberation upon the possibility of generating a comprehensive view of ‘mind as a whole’ by integrating biology, psychology and sociology, and considering ‘Mind’ as a dynamical interplay between values existing over many levels and scales of complex systems. Lucas’ view of mind as a coevolutionary whole is related to similar ecological viewpoints developed in the fields of artificial life and multi-agent systems. Lucas closes his essay by proposing a meta-model of mind which attempts to integrate the various existing models of the human mind.

READ FULL ESSAY: HERE

Healing, Growth and Transformation in Integral Psychotherapy

by Brant Cortright

"Integral psychotherapy applies the expanded perspective of integral psychology to the work of psychological healing, growth, and transformation. Integral psychotherapy seeks a rich development of our whole being, an integral harmony that is our birthright and evolutionary goal: body, heart, and mind raised to their full capacities, led by the psychic being through an increasingly psychicisised and integrated authentic self. Since consciousness is evolving along different dimensions, this must be considered in inner development..."

"The wisdom of Eastern psychology, as embodied in the three classical yogas (karma, jnana, bhakti), recognizes that each individual has natural routes for inner development. So, too, in psychotherapy—an integral psychotherapy must allow for individual differences and be able to use what natural strengths and abilities a client has to further the psychotherapeutic process. One way of thinking about these differences lies through the different instrumental parts of the being and the classical yogas that spring from them."

READ MORE: HERE