[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'I')nteresting topic. I have a couple of thoughts.

1. Peak Oil is only part of the problem, the root cause is over population.

2. I belong to a small religious society (well sorta), very progressive and very left leaning. Our "Leader" recently did a Sunday platform on the perils of over population and how it is the real culprit behind the UN Millennium Goals. It went over very well. Good presenter with a lot of creed to a friendly, intellectual (not techie) crowd. Did they "get" it? Some did, others not. Maybe 50/50.

3. Being the (lame duck) president of said group I get to do a monthly newsletter piece. I have brushed by this once or twice before. People generally want to hear something "heart warming" and "up lifting." Not a lot of congrats about these pieces. This month I hit them pretty hard with my message, it has not gone out yet. We will see if I get lynched.

4. Once I shared a rail ride with a self proclaimed environmental activist who controlled the web site of BIG environmental group. You know them, trust me. I pressed her on over-population as the core issue. After arguing with me about how it can be fixed she let her guard down and, in a low and angry voice said "Look, that is just too negative a message. We need to get people to listen and if we tell them that they will just turn off."

My experience is that about a third to two-thirds of the people I deal with, mostly engineers and similar professionals with a left leaning bent, get it to some degree. Most feel there is still time to keep really bad things from happening. In this group maybe something like 10% really, really get it.

[JPL]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'T')he purpose of the spirit is to engage REALITY in a deeper more meaningful way, not to move away from it and into fantasy. That is not what Shamanism is about, and indeed, that is not what any spiritual pursuit should be about, if it is to have maximum effect.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JPL', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'T')he purpose of the spirit is to engage REALITY in a deeper more meaningful way, not to move away from it and into fantasy. That is not what Shamanism is about, and indeed, that is not what any spiritual pursuit should be about, if it is to have maximum effect.

[JPL]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'S')orry to throw the thread like that.

When you attempt to break through to people, try to appeal to the goodness in them, if they are good people, not the fear, necessarily. A good question for them would be, "How can we most effectively help others when tshtf?" It enhances a feeling of control, diffuses fear and anger, and allows you to communicate hope without encouraging bliss ninny blinkered idiocy.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JPL', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'S')orry to throw the thread like that.

When you attempt to break through to people, try to appeal to the goodness in them, if they are good people, not the fear, necessarily. A good question for them would be, "How can we most effectively help others when tshtf?" It enhances a feeling of control, diffuses fear and anger, and allows you to communicate hope without encouraging bliss ninny blinkered idiocy.

[JPL]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JPL', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'S')orry to throw the thread like that.

When you attempt to break through to people, try to appeal to the goodness in them, if they are good people, not the fear, necessarily. A good question for them would be, "How can we most effectively help others when tshtf?" It enhances a feeling of control, diffuses fear and anger, and allows you to communicate hope without encouraging bliss ninny blinkered idiocy.

[threadbear]

Hey JPL, No hard feelings, at all! I'm not in the least really bothered or put off. I could be dead wrong on some issues, and you could be right. You're just stating your opinion, for gawd's sakes!

[threadbear]

We're moving into an entirely New World. Most here see the changes in economic and environmental terms. What about the greater culture? What shifts in the spiritual landscape, the habits of mind, and understanding of ourselves will take place? Surely there will be interesting, dangerous, entertaining, helpful changes that will take place in a resource strained society. I'm personally interested in what's going on right now in the New Age community and it's potential to help/harm.

I'd love other views on this topic, cultural/spiritual change, if anyone wants to contribute! Thanks.

[JPL]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'H')ey JPL, No hard feelings, at all! I'm not in the least really bothered or put off. I could be dead wrong on some issues, and you could be right. You're just stating your opinion, for gawd's sakes!

[culicomorpha]

Great topic TB...

I think you hit on a key aspect of the changes coming down the pike. It's not just about economics and the environment. What I see is a whole new set of false myths propagated for various reasons and with various motives.

Regarding the new age folks, one of the more dangerous themes I see is the extreme focus on the individual. If you look at almost any alternative publication - I live in Cascadia, and they are everywhere, you will see a real disconnect between the world around us and ourselves as individuals. That's not always true, as there are some notable exceptions, but it's a very common theme.

There seems to be a fairly widespread belief among these folks that they are literally on a different plane of existence, which has no connection with this world at all. I can't tell you how many articles I've read promoting the idea of personal happiness as a matter of individual choice, as if we were completely separable from this world. It strikes me as fantasy thinking. And more significantly, it conveniently absolves these people from actually getting involved in wider movements that are about changing the political/social/economic framework that is so often taken for granted as being more or less unchangeable. That is to say, it is a palliative position that breeds apathy in the wider world.

And this is not limited to new agers either. Even Buddhism, which I find has many excellent points and is a generally good philosophy, can easily lead people to an isolated, passive existence that focuses on personal change, but almost entirely ignores the fact that there are really significant problems in this world that absolutely require changes not limited to individuals.

Several years ago I read a book by Morris Berman called Dark Ages America, and he argued pretty persuasively that we are moving into an anti-rationalistic theocracy, akin to the last Dark Ages. It might be worth a read as he discussed this topic in some detail...

[threadbear]

Ahhhh....Culi--YOU are a breath of fresh air. You've said so much that I wanted to say, and much better than I could have.

The New Age shrinks the vast expanse of cosmic consciousness down to the small black hole of self. Gravity pulls much of society along for the ride. It's one thing to navel gaze, but quite another to be trapped inside your own navel, unable to see anything outside of it's confines.

Where Madison avenue leaves off, with it's strident appeals to self, a misunderstanding of solipsism and other esoteric ideas take off.

Rudolph Steiner, the creator of the Waldorf schools and an amazing early 20th century mystic , warned North Americans against some of the practices of the East, understanding that they are, to a point, specific to Eastern culture. They don't translate seamlessly.

Most North Americans have a weird form of anhedonia (we try to make up for it through consumption) accompanying a lack of real companionship. How many people have a well developed circle of true friends, other than a computer and a television set? We don't know joy and are predisposed to reject it.

We need to be as engaged and engaging as we can be, not for our own sake, but for the sake of the whole.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('culicomorpha', '
')What I see is a whole new set of false myths propagated for various reasons and with various motives.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('culicomorpha', '
')What I see is a whole new set of false myths propagated for various reasons and with various motives.

[DrBang]

In spiritual terms, society is becoming very polarised. Those who are waking up compared to those who stick to th company line and watch "The price is right".

There is a colossal amount of new age fluff being written with very little substance. The good stuff is also now more accessible but you have to know what you are looking at.

We are heading towards a world where survival is attached to the ability to think for ourselves and take responsibility for our lives an how we live them.

Also time appears to be perceived faster. this could be due to the advanced level of stress and information we daily absorb. Things are definitely moving in a direction. Soft rot and manic growth.

also, on my office wall:

A paradigm shift in a field of simplistic complexity

What change does this bring about in the people around us?

[TheTurtle]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JPL', 'N')o worries, I think we will all have to draw upon 'inner resources' once the decline sets in & we will each do it in our own, personal way.

[satjeet]

well - perhaps if i recall correctly what i've read - male shamans in the "american native" tradition were - what's the term? - berdash's ? - and were from our perspective - male homosexuals - who somehow would once and now take male heterosexuals into their arms and let them - change? -

were there also female shamans who would lie with other females?

just a thought ...

[threadbear]

Hi Good Doctor, Time DOES seem to be speeding up. I don't know if this is a function of events, some spiritual harbinger of "end times" or the "end of a time", like the age of Pisces, or just a huge change.

The fact that there are so many baby boomers alive right now, could partly account for the persistent idea that time is speeding up, as perception of time changes with age.

I'd be interested in hearing from those in their late twenties, early thirties, to get a handle on this. Is there an objective element here, or is it purely subjective, or is the time compression perception not easily categorized as one or the other.

Here is a good article on this subject that touches on the apocalyptic nature of our times and the effect on popular culture, time compression, etc...

Geoff Olson-- The Future Isn't What it Used to Be

"A big factor in these glum tidings is the collective sense that the times are moving faster and getting stranger as they do. Most of us have the feeling that events are speeding up out of control.
In the 1970s, the French sociologist Georges Anderla tried to measure the rate at which information changed. Using the binary notation to convert all human symbol systems into the language computers use, he calculated the rate at which the bits the units of information had doubled since the time of Christ.


The doubling, he determined, has occurred in ever-smaller time increments over the past 2,000 years. The first doubling lasted from 0 AD to 1500 AD. It then took from 1500 to 1750 for information to double once again. By the late twentieth century, it took only from 1967 to 1973 for information to double.


By the late eighties, information theorists were claiming that information was doubling every 18 months. Bear in mind that this binary calculation doesn’t necessarily mean knowledge per se; it includes all cultural information, from academic journals to ham radio broadcasts to gross-out film comedies.


By the late nineties, the idea of cultural acceleration had moved from the obscure argot of futurologists to the millennial musings of US talk radio host Art Bell, who pegged it “The Quickening.” Bell’s notion was pretty much undefined, beyond the sense of things picking up pace.

But he struck a definite chord in listeners, who called in to offer news oddities and their paranormal anecdotes as evidence that things were going at a breakneck pace to who knows where, and getting more bizarre as they went.

Bell’s all-purpose catchphrase became a best-selling book and a middlebrow seine net for anything new and unusual."

http://commonground.ca/iss/0707192/cg192_future.shtml

[mark]

Don't know anything about shamanism, don't really care to. But, i do know something about what's going on. Over population is also a symptom.

The problem is the world's definition of problems. Problems arise to let us know we're on the wrong track. Without problems, we'd no longer be human.

First, determine the real question; you'll find the right answer only when you've found the right question.

[TWilliam]

Good thread TB.

I don't know if you're familiar with Ken Wilber and his work, and it would be pretty much impossible for me to summarize it here, but I will say that I think it relates a lot to these ideas.

Ken's 'life work' so to speak, has been to formulate a comprehensive 'map' of the human experience that attempts to synthesize information from as many different disciplines and world views as possible, with a great deal of emphasis on the evolution of consciousness. His stuff is definitely not light reading, but if one can manage to wrap their mind around it, his work gives one a much broader understanding about humanity than any other author I've come across.

Anyway, regarding the issue of New Age, and particularly the point culicomorpha makes regarding the extreme emphasis on the individual. This isn't a phenomenon exclusive to New Agers; it's actually endemic in our culture as a whole, particularly among the Boomers (the so-called "Me Generation" recall), and it's not difficult to understand why if one considers that such hyper-individualism is precisely what the lords of capitalism require, and precisely what they've deliberately instilled over the last half-century or so through media and schooling. There's a great documentary titled The Century of the Self that explores this particular topic in depth; I highly recommend it (it's in four parts, and for some odd reason part two never seems to show up in the "Related Videos" frame on Google video, but if you search the title plus the string "2 of 4" you'll find it).

Returning to Ken Wilber: there is a phenomenon related to the growth of consciousness that he refers to as the "Pre-Trans Fallacy"; consider that as humans mature from birth to adolescence to adulthood, they pass through a series of developmental stages, not only on a physical level but on psychological and emotional levels as well. Broadly speaking, the psychological stages can be divided into three general levels, labeled pre-rational, rational and post- (or trans-) rational. The third is also sometimes referred to as trans-personal (as in Trans-personal Psychology). An alternate labeling is pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional.

The pre-rational stage occurs during childhood, and is very much ego-centric. Children of course see themselves pretty much as the center of the universe; their early thinking is based largely on a belief that they can manipulate the world simply through the force of their will. This is the level of so-called magical thinking. Watch some Saturday morning cartoons and you will see that they are rife with this level of functioning - super heroes/villains that point and zap people, make things move with their minds, are basically immune to harm, etc. So-called 'power magic' is also drawn from this level, voodoo being one prominent example.

Eventually a child comes to realize that such power magic doesn't work, and so magical thinking gives way to mythic thinking, wherein now it's not me who controls the world, it's God(s)/Goddess(es) (initially Mom & Dad) who control it, and if I just find the right way to pray to/placate the Deity then it will move the world for me. This level is also referred to as conventional or ethno-centric, because it is from our 'tribal group' that we learn the one right way to live, the social conventions, that earn the Deity's favor. This is also, incidentally, the general level of development that a large percentage of humanity is currently at, and it is still pre-rational.

A smaller percentage have matured to the rational level, where there is recognition that we are directly responsible for our actions and their consequences, where we begin to question the dictates of our 'tribal' conventionality and develop our own moral compass, thus developing a post-conventional, world-centric perspective. This is the level of the "All men are created equal" of the U.S. Constitution.

Fewer still (estimates are around 1 - 3% of the population if I recall) have grown even further in psychological terms to a level where they not only identify themselves as individuals amongst equal individuals, but they recognize, as an ongoing, living experience, the Oneness of humanity; their's is a truly trans-personal identity, and there are understandings and modes of functioning that are unique to this level of Awareness.

This is where we get to the Pre-Trans Fallacy, and particularly as it manifests among the New Age community. Both pre-rational and trans-rational levels are non-rational, and as a result they are frequently confused. "I make/control the world" (ala 'The Secret') is a pre-rational, ego-centric perspective that has been mis-taken to be a logical extension of the trans-rational Awareness that "I and the world are One". Variations on this fundamental misunderstanding are rampant, and it is this misunderstanding that is the root of the 'abdication of responsibility' that culicomorpha mentions. A genuinely trans-rational, world-centric Awareness of Oneness recognizes that because I am One with All, it is unthinkable that I would not care equally for the Totality of Myself.

[BlisteredWhippet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TheTurtle', ' ')My fear is that the decline will cause many more of us to re-immerse ourselves in cults of control, effectively relinquishing our "inner resources" to the priestly classes once again.