Re: Why ignore the 'unknown or non-obvious?

[Steve Johnson <***>]

Speaking of widespread ignorance. This is the scariest
thing I've read in a long time. I hope the paradigm
change you're talking about will come in time.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=9005765

What no one disagrees with is the riches that would
come from the thaw creating a north-west passage. The
centuries-old bane of Arctic explorers could become a
reality thanks to global warming, cutting thousands of
miles off the shipping routes between the Atlantic and
Pacific oceans, and delivering a windfall to any
country able to tax its users. 


An eight-nation report in November revealed that the
Arctic was warming twice as fast as the rest of the
planet and that the North Pole could be ice-free in
summertime by the end of the century. Around the
Arctic, salmon are moving up into more northerly
waters, hornets are beginning to buzz and barn owls
are appearing in regions where indigenous people have
never seen a barn. The Arctic report said polar bears
were "unlikely to survive as a species" if the ice
disappeared and they were left to compete with their
better-adapted brown and grizzly cousins.

What is for some an environmental catastrophe might be
a great commercial opportunity. Diamond finds in
Canada's Nunavut have fired a mining rush and
propelled the country into the ranks of a top-three
producer. Ottawa is counting on tapping what the
Government suspects are major natural gas reserves in
the Beaufort Sea, the frigid zone bordering the Yukon
and Alaska, where diplomatic swords were crossed with
the US when it tried unsuccessfully to auction the
area to oil companies last year.


--- James N Rose <***>
wrote:

> Judith,
> 
> There's lots that goes into the "perpetual
> amazement"
> syndrome you mention.  Part of it has to do with the
> intention of certain leadership sectors to keep
> populaces
> naive and 'ignorant' .. in the literal and the
> pejorative
> senses.  Peoples aren't encouraged to challenge the
> status
> quo, otherwise they might challenge more than
> individual
> items here and there.  They might question voting
> improprieties
> as if they had a right to question them. ;-)
> 
> Keep'em amazed and overwhelm their senses and when
> you need
> them to roll over and do tricks, they'll be there
> for you.
> 
> My concern though is the grander scope that has to
> do with
> RR's initiatives and mine and others.  The scale of
> paradigm
> we discuss here rises so far above the conventional
> standards 
> that we have to set better, newer, higher, standards
> for
> conceiving things and the nature of the universe.
> 
> To start with the expectation that (living) systems
> have abilities and capacities other than 'our own';
> to believe and expect that we ourselves even are
> 'undiscovered
> universes' and have agencies more than we think we
> have
> as well .. is a mind set incumbent for new cultures
> to
> develop/exhibit/practive .. new cultures that human
> beings
> have the capacity to become ; which are founded in
> the scope
> of a naturally complex universe of the type your
> father 
> identified and began to talk about in generalities.
> 
> I have been writing for many years about the nuts
> and bolts
> and organic integrations of this new-think.  But I
> kept
> focus on the fundamentals, only with temerity
> mentioning
> applications and impacts.  But as the years move
> forward I
> realize that transformation of the species isn't
> going 
> to happen based on intellectualizations of the
> insights
> we have here, but on visceral life-grabbing
> attachments,
> understood in the gut and experiences of people.
> 
> Which means that the language and expression of RR
> style concepts
> has to be embellished into moments and phenomena and
> events
> people can identify with on a daily basis.
> 
> Our ideas here have to be so superiorly encompassing
> and
> _inclusive_, that no concepts can stand against
> them.
> 
> We talk about notions here that rise to the import
> levels of 
> 'irresistable force', against which there -is no-
> 'immovable
> object'.   Because the immovable and resistive
> stances are
> embracable -within- the family of notions we speak
> of.
> 
> No notion or percept is alien to us.  Not even
> reductionism 
> and rigid narrow-set dichotomies.  OR machiavellian
> myopia.  :-)
> 
> Jamie
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >Hi Jamie,
> > 
> >I don't think it's "science" that's at fault here
> but human nature,
> >habit, and hubris. Qualities we are prone to as a
> species and need
> >to guard against when we see it getting
> counter-productive in 
> >ourselves. The trouble, in my view, is that not
> very many people 
> >are even aware of it, much less looking to avoid
> the pitfalls of it.
> >The fact that the press is universally remarking on
> "how amazing 
> >it is" that all the animals in the path of the
> tsunami managed to 
> >figure it out and save themselves, without any
> text-messaging or
> >satellite imaging or what-have-you... that's what
> blows my mind.
> >The vast scale of human surprise over such a thing
> is just amazing to me.
> > 
> >Judith
> 



                
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