ANNIMAC's TRENDSLETTER ...because it's mine.
January 27 2003
Next issue, hopefully: Feb 17, 2003. Focus: Peace.
Annimac's Trendsletter looks at positive changes that are shaping our world
into the healthy sustainable place it must become. A quick look at positive
shifts occurring in the political, economic, social, and cultural arena, globally,
which will greatly impact our creation of that better world. The values expressed
are unashamedly mine. Your dialogue is most welcome. Please add your good news
observations, stories, events, people, etc. Contact me at
.
Today a new sun rises for me; everything lives, everything is animated, everything
seems to speak to me of my passion, everything invites me to cherish it. Anne
de Lenclos 1616-1706
GOOD NEWS TREND STUFF :
CLUETRAIN MANIFESTO 1999. Direct, immediate, straight
talking pointers from a group of wise young high achievers in the post boomer
business world. Ignore at your peril. The first line reads: "Markets are conversations."
Another line says: "People in networked markets have figured out that they
get far better information and support from one another than from vendors.
So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products."
Final line, referring to using the site says: Rip it, steal it, web it, mail
it, post it. This message wants to MOVE! http://www.cluetrain.com
GUIDE for GE FREE FOOD from that gutsy organisation
out there doing it, Greenpeace, who say the companies swear their food is
GE free along entire food chain : www.greenpeace.org.au/truefood or 1800 815
151
GOOD NEWS SITES :
Sustainable living : ROSNEATH FARM, a private
village with land available for housing, in SW Western Australia using permaculture
philosophy to live work and play happy: http://www.rosneath.com.au
Sustainable business : paper
- ACHIEVING THE TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE - REALLY. By Allan Savory from symposium
5 Nov 99, and other goodies Recommended by Paul Meleng. http://www.holisticmanagement.org/art_triple.cfm
Greener biz : Info on who's doing what greenily,
incl international conferences, meetings, publications. Eg: DOE green buildings
database; how 4 major corporations - Kinko's, IBM, GM, J&J - are into green
power markets; 2 surveys - Eur on SRI and global on CSR. http://click.topica.com/maaapoeaaSwhRa4kaCKb
Leadership and Excellence in
biz : 2 sites from Forsyth Consulting Group - Leadership and Excellence "to
share and integrate insights into excellence" http://www.fcg.com.au
plus : Reflections in Excellence, discussions by William Varey of FCG, http://www.fcg.com.au./reflections.
Very spiritual : The Alaya Weekly Message,
from Ishvara and the Alaya community. Planet wide shifts occurring as we evolve
toward a better civilisation creating a better world. http://www.AlayaNet.org
Mind body soul connections: From Soleira, at S.O.U.L.
Ltd, in UK, "sourcing the creation of a magnificent new world. We work with
global creatives, a collective of wonderful people who stand for the co-creation
of an unprecedented future. Our tag line for the past year has been : Together
we are creating what alone we can only dream." http://www.SOULutions.co.uk
FAV LISTS for TRENDS INFO
FUTUREWORK list, hosted by Environmental Studies
at the Uni of Waterloo, Canada. An "international e-mail forum for discussion
of how to deal with the new realities created by economic globalization and
technological change." Great informed debates, disagreements, and huge range
of topics. Best I've found for wide ranging reliable info and exploration
of the issues. Archives available via FW homepage, at http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/Research/FW
SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS NETWORK :
W Australia originated list of Aussie and international people working across
many fields using healthy sustainable world values. http://www.barkingowl.com/sustainable
LEVERAGE POINTS for a New Workplace, New World.
From Boston, "free e-newsletter spotlighting systemic thinking and innovations
in leadership, management, and organizational development." Read the current
issue on the web in full color at http://www.pegasuscom.com/levpoints/lp.html.
H M M M M M s
DIVIDED SOCIETY ?
From a March/April 02 report from Pew Internet & American Life Project re
serious divide in society: PIP_Getting_Serious_Online3ng.pdf
- Internet use seems stabilised at about 54% western of the population
- in England, 60% of video recorders used for hired video films; 40% to record
programs from channel TV for later viewing
- voting turnout at national elections now about 50% in England and America
- only those who expect to benefit from one politician or another
- in America, 40% of adults believe in creationism
- in England only about 15% of senior schoolchildren take advanced science
and maths qualifications (primary innovators and wealth producers?).
and another perspective entirely, worth quoting the 20 points :
WISDOM of the ELDERS
From Brian McAndrews
,
through list
Wednesday, 3 April 2002 My extraction of his extraction from : Wisdom of the
Elders, Chapter 1: Native and Scientific Ways of Knowing about Nature. By
David Suzuki and Peter Knudtson :
"If shamans and scientists for centuries have asked very different kinds
of questions of the cosmos, how different are the 'answers' each has elicited?
One way to distil the differences between Native and scientific knowledge
about nature is simply to list some of the fundamental qualities of Native
ecological perspectives and contrast them with conventional scientific ones:
Nature and earth is inherently holy rather than profane, savage, wild,
or wasteland.
Landscape holds sacred meaning of origins and unity of all life, rather
than as mere property to be partitioned legally into commercial real estate
holdings.
Native Mind reveres nature without need to dominate it.
Native wisdom sees spirit as dispersed throughout the cosmos, not concentrated
in a single, monotheistic Supreme Being.
Native wisdom assigns human beings enormous responsibility for sustaining
harmonious relations within the whole natural world, not granting them
unbridled license to follow personal or economic whim
Human obligation to maintain the balance and health of the natural world
is a solemn daily spiritual duty, not simply an admirable, abstract ethical
imperative for when convenient.
The Native Mind emphasises the need for reciprocity-for humans to express
gratitude and make sacrifices routinely - to the natural world in return
for the benefits they derive from it-rather than to extract whatever they
desire unilaterally. Nature's bounty is considered to be precious gifts
that remain intimately and inextricably embedded in its living web rather
than as "natural resources" passively awaiting human exploitation.
Human beings are to honor nature routinely (through daily spiritual
practice, for example, or personal prayer) rather than only intermittently
when it happens to be convenient (on Earth Day, for example, or following
a particularly moving speech or television documentary, or in the throes
of personal despair over a pressing local environmental crisis).
Human violations of the natural world have serious immediate (as well
as long-term) consequences rather than comfortingly vague, ever "scientifically
uncertain," long-term ones.
The Native Mind tends to view wisdom and environmental ethics as discernible
in the very structure and organisation of the natural world rather than
as the lofty product of human reason far removed from nature.
The Native Mind tends to view the universe as the dynamic interplay
of elusive and ever-changing natural forces, not as a vast array of static
physical objects.
It tends to see the entire natural world as somehow alive and animated
by a single, unifying life force, whatever its local Native name. It does
not reduce the universe to progressively smaller conceptual bits and pieces.
It tends to view time as circular (or as a coil-like fusion of circle
and line), as characterised by natural cycles that sustain all life, and
as facing humankind with recurrent moral crises.- rather than as an unwavering
linear escalator of "human progress."
It tends to accept without undue anxiety the probability that nature
will always possess unfathomable mysteries. It does not presume that the
cosmos is completely decipherable to the rational human mind.
It tends to view human thought, feelings, and communication as inextricably
intertwined with events and processes in the universe rather than as apart
from them. Indeed, words themselves are considered spiritually potent,
generative, and somehow engaged in the continuum of the cosmos, not neutral
and disengaged from it.
The vocabulary of Native knowledge is inherently gentle and accommodating
toward nature rather than aggressive and manipulative.
The Native Mind tends to emphasise celebration of and participation
in the orderly designs instead of rationally "dissecting" the world.
It tends to honor as its most esteemed elders those individuals who
have experienced a profound and compassionate reconciliation of outer-
and inner-directed knowledge, rather than virtually anyone who has made
material achievement or simply survived to chronological old age.
It tends to reveal a profound sense of empathy and kinship with other
forms of life, rather than a sense of separateness from them or superiority
over them. Each species is seen as richly endowed with its own singular
array of gifts and powers, rather than as somehow pathetically limited
compared with human beings.
Finally, it tends to view the proper human relationship with nature
as a continuous dialogue (that is, a two-way, horizontal, communication
between Homo sapiens and other elements of the cosmos) rather than as
a monologue (a one-way, vertical imperative).
This unfinished litany of Native ecological themes suggests that there is a
fundamental division between Native and Western ecological perspectives. Within
Native worldviews, the parts and processes of the universe are, to varying degrees,
holy; to science, they can only be secular.
