rabid renaissance

I have to say that it was a mixed bag, but overall a positive experience. A few days into the conversation, I posted a thread about GMS on the message-board that I regularly frequent. Interestingly, the gut reactions of my fellow message-boarders to the GMS homepage and apparent mission/intent were a mix of the same conflicting interpretations that I experienced during my participation with them.

My overall conclusion is that the site and organization is a good thing. They are trying to get people networked while getting ideas and information flowing towards solving some of the big problems that we face. As one participant put it, like a jam session of ideas to help solve problems and hopefully get more people to join in the jam.

There is momentum towards distinguishing between “boots on the ground” efforts vs more philosophical efforts to learn how to change the way we think as individuals and as populations. Among some participants was a consensus that “boots on the ground” efforts have their place, and that they do facilitate people becoming aware of global, systemic issues by being involved in such efforts, but they are slow and organic in the changes that they bring about in people or the environment.

If we are indeed racing a countdown clock of some kind, we need to explore ways of bringing more awareness to the masses that doesn’t require spending weekends picking up litter out of wetland habitat or protesting the by-catch deaths of dolphins in D.C.

A problem I had with the experience, was that it was difficult to compartmentalize the views and perspectives of certain other participants in the discussion and keep my interpretation of those individuals distinctly seperate from the site/organization itself. I admit that I initially suspected that some of the participants were seeded.

I was quite concerned at first, because one particular participant was very prolific in her contributions, recommendations for books/authors/media/sites that she has found useful and helpful to her. The volunteer ‘facilitator’ of our discussion was also familiar with some of the same books/authors/media/sites, and also recommended them. Some of their mutually shared perspectives did not sit well with me based on their paraphrasing of the concepts. Multiple participants were also published authors or otherwise seasoned veterans of trying to save the world.

There were moments when I caught myself wondering if the site was cult-oriented, or too elitist for my tastes. But I tried to keep my mind open and acknowledged the possibility that my point of view might just run somewhat askew compared to some of the other participants, and that each of the small finite conversations facilitated by this site would be a completely different batch of individuals.

At about the same time, other participants began to contribute more, and the elitist, culty vibes were diluted by discussion that I was more interested in participating in. I also began to consider the possibility that the site/org had a limited ability to prevent “self-appointed seeders” who could be participating in the introductory conversation over and over again, ending up with a different facilitator and group each time. Fixtures of the community vs sanctioned leadership of it.

I will not be quoting any of the discussions that took place, but I do want to provide the list of stuff that was recommended over the course of the week. For the participants who are published/credited (either in print or online), I will also include reference materials.

Cited authors/”thinkers”:

Daniel Quinn (author, cited by me)
Ervin Laszlo (author)
Buckminster Fuller (author)
Lynne McTaggart (author)
Brian Swimme (author, and of which whom the footage is that comprises the two short videos that are the focus of our “Conversation”)
Sharif Abdullah (author)

Sites/orgs:

http://www.common-society.org/csm/
http://www.earthcharter.org/
http://evolve.org
http://www.barbaramarxhubbard.com
http://mattole.org (recommended by me)

Films:

“What the bleep do we know?”
“What the bleep do we know, down the rabit hole.”

Published participants:

Phil Lawson
http://www.phillawson.com/
Author of “Being Spherical – Reshaping Our Lives and Our World for the 21st Century”

And as a point of interest, one of the participants was an alternative energy engineer from Germany, but the only stuff I found under his name when searching was a filed patent for a “circuit arrangement for a photovoltaic system”. He seemed like a very cool fellow.

I will endeavor to write up something for at least some of these recommended items. Why I like some, and why I dislike others.