ThinkLady

A deep, inner crisis of the soul

A very erudite quote from Prince Charles below posits the many crises we face are rooted in an inner crisis of the soul. I totally agree. The Transition movement makes this point eloquently by addressing the need for outer and inner Transition, with the inner transition being a different way of moving and being in the world deeply rooted in Permaculture design principles. 

"When we hear talk of an 'environmental crisis' or even of a 'financial crisis,' I would suggest that this is actually describing the outward consequences of a deep, inner crisis of the soul. It is a crisis in our relationship with – and our perception of – Nature, and it is born of Western culture being dominated for at least two hundred years by a mechanistic and reductionist approach to our scientific understanding of the world around us. So I would like you to consider very seriously today whether a big part of the solution to all of our worldwide “crises” does not lie simply in more and better technology, but in the recovery of the soul to the mainstream of our thinking. Our science and technology cannot do this. Only sacred traditions have the capacity to help this happen."

The Prince of Wales made these comments in a recent speech on Islam and the Environment at the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford University. Matt McDermott at Planet Green, wrote an excellent assessment of the Prince's speech on Planet Green today, and notes the prince "brings up some themes which continue to be overlooked by the mainstream of the green movement, tragically." Right on Matt!

McDermott writes:

"What hits exactly the right note for me is the Prince's accurate identification at what really lies behind our twinned and ongoing environmental and economic crisis-as-norm. It is constantly searching for external solutions to problems to the exclusion of considering that, at the least partly, the issue is internal to humanity. Put plainly it is always attempt[ing] and expecting the world to adapt to our desires, rather than adapting ourselves to it."

Just imagine what could happen if we all took this kind of transitioning seriously. What an extraordinary sight to behold.

McDermott's full comments on Prince Charles' speech are here.; full transcript of the Prince of Wale's speech is here.

An open thank you to Ms. Sally Kern

Dear Ms. Kern —

Thank you so much for bringing to our attention this upcoming event for our school children with President Obama!

I’ve contacted my daughter’s school and let them know how excited our family is about the wonderful example our president is setting by encouraging kids to stay in school and get an education so they can learn how to read classic works such as “To Kill A Mockingbird,” “The Color Purple,” “Black Like Me,” “A Raisin in the Sun” and of course “Invisible Man,” by our own native son, Ralph Ellison! I’m sure, because you are so well-educated, that you know Mr. Ellison’s book won the National Book Award in 1953 and have read the book many times.

Anyway, as you know, these and other insightful works help break down the barriers of racial bigotry, hatred and social injustice that continue to haunt and plague our state to this day. Reading is kind of useful that way isn’t it!?!? LOL.

With leadership such as yours, I know that one day our state and country truly will become a place of “liberty and justice for all,” regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender, religion or socio-economic status. Many thanks again for all you do to help us all work together for a better, more cooperative, more tolerant and accepting community. Your exemplary civility in the Oklahoma House of Representatives and skills as a unifier are truly amazing.

Peace, love and justice --

ThinkLady

Just dropped in to see what condition my transition was in

If you’re interested in the Transition movement but haven’t had time to read The Transition Handbook or visit the Web sites, you can thank writer Jon Mooallem and the New York Times for a terrifically reported, detailed and erudite article, “The End is Near! (Yah!)” (love the title) that provides a comprehensive portrait of this burgeoning movement.

Many, many provocative jewels here. Pros and cons fairly presented and questions raised (and we should always be asking questions!). Lots of food for thought in the whole magazine issue too, which has a green focus for Earth Day, but this story in particular reminded me of what good journalism is and can be … a reflection of society to educate, provoke thought and stir our souls.

Money quotes:

· What Reuter said he felt was wonderful about the Sandpoint Transition Initiative was how quickly it was rejuvenating people’s faith that the changes they craved were worth working for. “To say the group has only created a community garden so far really isn’t sufficient,” he told me. “It’s something really more substantive: they’re bringing people to the process.” … The movement wasn’t going to unify everybody in Sandpoint, he said: “I know that’s their dream, but I just don’t see it happening.” But it was inspiring for Reuter to watch the group emerge as one fervently turning gear in the larger mechanism of self-governance.

· … as Reuter saw it. “Government used to be the place in our community where people came together and made civic decisions,” he told me. “That’s what we should do again, and that’s what’s going to bring us back together: not having government be this force somehow outside of us, that’s bearing down on us or annoying us, but as a force that we actually embrace and want and that does what we want.”

· For a wide range of not-always-consistent reasons, people in Sandpoint decided that Transition could help them build the world they wanted. And now, only because enough people stepped forward and made that decision, Transition actually looked like a good tool for the job. They were picking it up by whatever handle they grasped. They were swinging it as earnestly as they could.

More highlights from the story:

· But those living on the land, whether out of a left- or right-wing ideology, do have a lot in common, including an astounding amount of resourcefulness.

· When I asked her later what she made of the exercise, Hellar told me: “First of all, I’m not a good-feelings, touchy-feely kind of person.” She added, “People wanted to talk about where we can put community gardens, how can we make our downtown more viable.” John T. Reuter, a Republican city councilman a few seats over, told me that when Berta told them to hold hands, he was looking around the room, counting up the people he knew Transition just alienated.

· Now, maybe because our various crises have escalated, or because it costs so much to disappear into your own parcel of wilderness, opting out no longer feels like a possibility. One of Transition’s more oblique arguments may be that we can’t escape anymore. We have to work together to remake the places where we already live.

· Karl Dye, head of the Bonner County Economic Development Corporation, told me, “All the things Transition’s doing basically line up with what we’re trying to do, which is create better-paying jobs.” He saw a lot of promise in Lanphear’s group, though he also said: “If you start a business to produce food locally and there are opportunities to make money by taking it to other areas, you’re going to do it. You may believe in Transitions and local production and local consumption, but hey, man, we’re still Americans.”

· A minister told me she was glad that Transition wasn’t “a greenie, hippie, far-out thing.” But Michael Boge, the City Council president, seemed to complain of exactly that, telling me he didn’t understand why the group had to cheapen a good idea by “inventing a new word for it and wrapping themselves in that catchphrase.” (The new word Boge objected to wasn’t “Transition”; it was “sustainability.”)

· Still, Boge, who owns five drive-in restaurants and is active in a long-distance motorcycling club called the Iron Butt Association, told me that he felt allied with Transition’s ideals. “I’ve bitched about this to my friends for years: we need to make a concerted effort to get off fossil fuels,” he said. “And I truly believe that with the country and God behind us, we can do it.” Transition was a prism, offering a slightly different view of Sandpoint depending on how each person turned it, but always shooting out lots of rainbows.

· The vibe was much more Alice Waters than Mad Max. (Jeff Burns, a local food activist who joined the food working group, was a conspicuous exception. “Some people on the food group want to feel good,” he told me, “and some people want to figure out how to feed 40,000 people in case the trucks stop rolling.”)

· Transition doesn’t claim its method is mathematically guaranteed to succeed. It simply posits that our best hope is to “unleash the collective genius of the community” and hope all the right pieces spill out. “We truly don’t know if this will work,” Rob Hopkins asserts in a mission-statement-like document called the “Cheerful Disclaimer!”

· “The genius of the Transition message, as I see it, is that it takes what we should be doing to avert these crises and turns it into something that sounds inviting and

positive and uplifting,” Richard Heinberg, a Transition U.S. board member, told me in Sebastopol … Heinberg said he worries that Transition risks losing people in the elation it inspires. He has been debating with Hopkins whether, in addition to devising a long-term descent, Transition should emphasize preparing for disasters that Heinberg says are unavoidable or already unfolding, like volatile gas prices or “being sideswiped by economic catastrophe and weather disruptions.”

· I was also surprised by the degree to which Transition members were intermixing with city authorities. Shortly after the Great Unleashing, Shelby Rognstad, a young cafe owner and an early Sandpoint Transition Initiative board member alongside Kühnel and Lanphear, was appointed to the town’s planning and zoning commission — a significant position, because Sandpoint was writing its first new comprehensive plan in 30 years.

Whole article here. Transition Town OKC project here ::: www.goinglocalokc.com.

Why you should save the dates for "We Shall Remain"

“A Native American taught me that the division between ecology and human rights was an artificial one, that the environmental and social justice movements addressed two sides of a larger dilemma. The way we harm the earth affects all people, and how we treat one another is reflected in how we treat the earth ... The movement has three basic roots: environmental activism, social justice initiatives, and indigenous culture's resistance to globalization, all of which have become intertwined."

Our fate will depend on how we understand and treat what is left of the planet's surpluses -- its lands, oceans, species diversity and people. The quiet hub of the new movement -- its heart and soul -- is indigenous culture."

-- Paul Hawken, "Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming"

Thirty-nine Native American tribes make their headquarters in Oklahoma. Oklahoma has the second largest Native American population of any state in the nation. Oklahoma's history, culture, its heart and soul, indeed it's very name is indigenous. As Paul Hawken notes, the quiet hub of this vast and vital movement growing throughout the world known by many names -- social justice, environmentalism, transition, regeneration, resilience, sustainability, localization -- it's heart and soul is indigenous culture.

On April 13, 2009, the first episode of a five-part PBS series, "We Shall Remain," premieres on OETA. The provocative multi-media project comprised of five 90-minute documentaries spanning 300 years, tells the story of pivotal moments in U.S. history from the Native American perspective. The series represents an unprecedented collaboration between Native and non-Native filmmakers that involves Native advisors and scholars at all levels, and illustrates how Native peoples valiantly resisted expulsion from their lands and fought the extinction of their culture -- from the Wampanoags of New England in the 1600s who used their alliance with the English to weaken rival tribes, to the bold new leaders of the 1970s who harnessed the momentum of the civil rights movement to forge a pan-Indian identity.

Resources include an extensive Teacher's Guide for social studies educators. Air dates are shown below.

Spread the word, watch, listen, reflect.

We Shall Remain

• All times shown CST.
• Episode #1 -- The Mayflower, April 13, 8 p.m., encore 9:30 p.m.
• Episode #2 -- Tecumseh's Vision, April 20, 8 p.m., encore 9:30 p.m.
• Episode #3 -- Trail of Tears, April 27, 8 p.m., encore 9:30 p.m.
• Episode #4 -- Geronimo, May 4, 8 p.m., encore, 9:30 p.m.
• Episode #5 -- Wounded Knee, May 11, 8 p.m., encore, 9:30 p.m.

Can we know the "truth?"

Last night before I went to bed, I checked my email and saw an email from a family member with a long list of retail store closings, many of them prominent and well-established stores found at malls throughout the country. I went to Snopes.com and found that while there was some truth to some parts of the email, the actual facts were more nuanced, so I emailed a link to the story unraveling the store closing email from Snopes.com as a response and went to bed.

I woke up this morning and found a response to my email below -- from a friend of my family member -- in my inbox [I edited for style, spelling and clarity only]:

Has anyone seen the email about Snopes being a Web site that is not particularly unbiased and neutral? The one I saw stated that it was funded by several very liberal supporters. You really can't believe everything you read.  However, this email could be true. I just can't trust Snopes anymore given the history, which could very well be false as well.  Who knows?

Since we’ve just completed an election cycle wherein it feels like the amount of lies and misrepresentations quadrupled, I thought this might be an opportunity to discuss the concept of investigating, the need for critical thinking, and how we can indeed go about “knowing” what’s true or at the very least probable, so I wrote a response (which I edited some to correct formatting or typos).

My response to the above email begins here:

So what if snopes.com receives donations from liberals? They accept donations from everyone, so one can assume they also receive donations from conservatives? Would that make their work any less valid? They accept ads from the Wall Street Journal, a conservative publication, so does this mean Snopes.com work is bunk?

What this kind of rumor mongering speaks to is an urgent and I would argue critical need for all of us, self included, to step back from our own biases and prejudices, which can be difficult but also liberating.

Here are some sources that unravel the myth that Snopes.com is “liberal:”

· Snopes Under Fire ::: http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/internet/a/snopes_exposed.htm

· The National Review – a self-professed conservative publication founded by the late William F. Buckley, Jr., widely considered to be the most influential magazine for conservatives and Republicans -- had this to say about Snopes.com:

Snopes began as a purely urban-legends site in 1995, run out of the couple's home in the Los Angeles suburbs. But especially since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it's become an invaluable resource for sifting through political and media facts and fallacies. You won't find a more exhaustive and nuanced dissection of Fahrenheit 9/11's central "big lie" — as Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate, described Moore's claims about the Bush administration's supposedly sneaking Bin Laden family members out of the U.S. before the FBI had time to question them — than on Snopes …

Anyone, but especially reporters, should check out Snopes before passing on a story that seems too good to be true. The site isn't always a wet blanket; some tall tales turn out to be accurate.

Source ::: http://www.nationalreview.com/seipp/seipp200407210830.asp

As someone who has worked as a journalist and as a child abuse and neglect investigator, open-mindedness and critical thinking are key in investigative work, and assumptions and labeling can lead to erroneous conclusions. The last thing any of us wants in investigative work is for someone to cling to only “one” version of any particular issue since that would undermine the idea of seeking the truth.

Perhaps the rumor about Snopes.com being politically aligned springs from those who didn’t like seeing references and sources debunking the lies and misrepresentations circulating this political season, and chose instead to smear the debunking source by using the word “liberal,” making that word sound like a bad thing, which in reality it is no more true than if someone had said Snopes.com was funded by “conservatives.” The practice of smearing is a standard PR and political ploy a/k/a smear or kill the messenger and is designed to confuse and make us turn off that critical thinking part of the brain based on one’s own biases toward either conservatives or liberals.

To gain a better understanding of the tactics the PR industry uses to confuse:

· Watch the movie Thank You For Smoking, or

· Read Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies, and the Public Relations Industry by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, or

· unSpun: Finding Facts in World of Disinformation by Kathleen Hall Jamieson. unSpun was written to help people spot deception and provides tips for drilling down to the facts.

Another way to arm yourself against such hoaxes or myths on any topic – political or otherwise – use good reference Web sites, including Snopes.com, for deciphering and debunking. Other useful Web sites and sources:

· www.Factcheck.org

· http://urbanlegends.about.com/

· Analyze suspect emails using the seven red flags detailed in an article from FactCheck.org, That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously. I’ve included excerpts from the article's seven red flags below but to really get an idea of the breadth problem and the absurdity of some of the email hoaxes, read the full article.

Seven Red Flags for identifying bogus emails:

• The author is anonymous. Practically all e-mails we see fall into this category, and anytime an author is unnamed, the public should be skeptical. If the story were true, why would the author not put his or her name on it?
• The author is supposedly a famous person. Of course, e-mails that are attributed to legitimate people turn out to be false as well … we found that some oft-quoted words attributed to Abraham Lincoln were not his words at all.
• There’s a reference to a legitimate source that completely contradicts the information in the e-mail. Some e-mails will implore readers to check out the claims, even providing a link to a respected source. We're not sure why some people don't click on the link, but we implore you to do so. Go ahead, take the challenge. See if the information you find actually backs up the e-mail … one boasted that Snopes.com had verified the e-mail, but Snopes actually said it was false. 
• The message is riddled with spelling errors. Ask yourself, why should you trust an author who is not only anonymous but partially illiterate?
• The author just loves using exclamation points. If the author had a truthful point to make, he or she wouldn’t need to put two, three, even five exclamation points after every other sentence.
• The message argues that it is NOT false. This tip comes from Emery, who advises skepticism for any message that says, "This is NOT a hoax!"
• There’s math involved. Check it. One message that falsely claimed more soldiers died during Bill Clinton’s term than during George W. Bush’s urged, "You do the Math!" We did. It’s wrong.

Factcheck.org is a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics and accepts no funding from corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. More about them here.

Happy truth hunting!