Move Your Money

A wonderful new website that has been created called Move Your Money that promotes the idea of supporting local economies and community banks. No more giant banks that are "too big to fail". This website provides a list of banks in your community that are worth investing your money in.

The Commercialization of Childhood

The How of Happiness

Madness, Civilization and Media

A powerful article by Antonio Lopez, Madness, Civilization and Media discussing our collective abduction from being bonded to mother earth.

Excerpt from article, "Yet western civilization is itself a removal and displacement machine. To quote Andy Warhol, 'Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.' This is the story of the past 5,000 years. We have been kidnapped from Earth, but fail to recognize the aberration. Is it fair to say that as hostages to abstract principles, we suffer from collective Stockholm Syndrome -- that we have bonded with an abusing overlord?"

Quantum Communication

A new documentary explaining the world's consciousness through quantum physics....below is the trailer

Soil Testing

This is a great idea for anyone starting an organic garden, to have their soil tested. UMass provides a really inexpensive send away soil test plus they give you info on how to boost the quality and nutrients in your soil that are deficient.

What Are Friends For...

Amazing medical benefits of friendship.

Doctors in Mexico City Cured 2009 Swine Flu with Homeopathy

It seems like individual States and the Federal government are trying to push through quarantines and vaccinations already for the swine flu even though most of the drugs don't actually help cure the flu. Instead we should be promoting homeopathy which has been used for a hundred years to cure this flu.

Small Farmers See Promise in Obama's Plans

President Obama may not have appointed a locavore to be the secretary of Agriculture, but he has ordered his administration to go after Big Agra with antitrust laws. A joint effort by the departments of Agriculture and Justice will look into business practices by seed companies, beef packers, and dairies, NPR reports. The government will begin next year “to learn about anti-competitive conduct in agricultural markets,” by hearing from farmers at workshops across the country. We bet the farmers have some whoppers.

Small Farmers See Promise In Obama’s Plans [NPR]

Vaccine Nation

In his documentary film Vaccine Nation, award-winning investigative film director Dr. Gary Null challenges the basic health claims by government health agencies and pharmaceutical firms that vaccines are perfectly safe. This is one of the most critical questions facing today's children and future generations to come. If inoculation with a large regimen of vaccines is safe, what can account for the rapid increase in autism and other mental disabilities that are now at epidemic proportions? And why isn't the sudden onset of neurological illnesses in children being treated as an urgent crisis by our government and medical industries?

A Gathering of the Tribe

A Gathering of the Tribe by Charles Eisenstein

Sustainably

Interview with Wes Jackson, co-founder of The Land Institute
-- Read the Full Interview

We live off of what comes out of the soil, not what's in the bank. If we squander the ecological capital of the soil, the capital on paper won't much matter... For the past 50 or 60 years, we have followed industrialized agricultural policies that have increased the rate of destruction of productive farmland. For those 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe the absurd notion that as long as we have money we will have food. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. Remember, if our agriculture is not sustainable then our food supply is not sustainable... Either we pay attention or we pay a huge price, not so far down the road. When we face the fact that civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying their farmland, it's clear that we don't really have a choice.

Quote of the Week

"You choose your own path or you have it chosen for you."
-Heros

Mercury in Corn Syrup

Included in the OCA's latest newsletter was this spot on Mercury...

In a new study published Monday in the scientific journal Environmental Health, mercury was found in nearly 50% of tested samples of commercial high fructose corn syrup. The news is disturbing given that this ingredient is present in a large portion of processed American foods. According to David Wallinga, M.D., co-author of the study, "Given how much high fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the FDA to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply."

A separate study by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy detected mercury in nearly one-third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where high fructose corn syrup is the first or second highest labeled ingredient-including products by Quaker, Hershey's, Kraft and Smucker's.

Mos Def Keepin it Real on Bill Maher

Terrorists, Religion, Racism, etc....

Inaugural Address

Beautiful! Just Beautiful! Brings tears to my eyes....




Inaugural Address

By President Barack Hussein Obama

My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you've bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.

I thank President Bush for his service to our nation -- (applause) -- as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because we, the people, have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears and true to our founding documents.

So it has been; so it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many -- and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met. (Applause.)

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation. But in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. (Applause.)

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those that prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops, and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip, and plowed the hard earth. For us, they fought and died in places like Concord and Gettysburg, Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions, greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week, or last month, or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America. (Applause.)

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift. And we will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We'll restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage. What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched. But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity, on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good. (Applause.)

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers -- (applause) -- our Founding Fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man -- a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience sake. (Applause.)

And so, to all the other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born, know that America is a friend of each nation, and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity. And we are ready to lead once more. (Applause.)

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we'll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet.

We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense. And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken -- you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you. (Applause.)

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. (Applause.)

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. (Applause.)

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the role that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who at this very hour patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.

We honor them not only because they are the guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service -- a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.

And yet at this moment, a moment that will define a generation, it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all. For as much as government can do, and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends -- honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

What is demanded, then, is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship. This is the source of our confidence -- the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall; and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served in a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath. (Applause.)

So let us mark this day with remembrance of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At the moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words to be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America: In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

Hope Over Fear

Quote of the Week

The Presidential Inauguration is a time when the nation reflects on poetry. This time the honor of the inaugural poem has gone to Elizabeth Alexander.

Here are a couple of the better offerings from inaugurations past. The first from the poem Robert Frost read in 1961 at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy:

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.


And then this from Maya Angelou at Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993:

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

Tens of millions of birds disappearing across North America

Sad story...

Ocean Conservation

huh...I mean as a scuba diver I'm super thrilled that more oceans are being protected than ever...But it's still not okay what Bush has done to the environment and I'm still not conceding to him.

President Bush's Last Act of Greenness
By Bryan Walsh for Time

Over the course of his two terms in office, President George W. Bush has taken a lot of mostly justified flak from environmentalists. But there's one area where Bush can legitimately claim a deep-green legacy: the often overlooked field of ocean conservation.

In 2006 Bush established the 140,000-sq.-mi. Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument off the northwestern coast of the Hawaiian Islands — at the time, the largest protected marine area in the U.S. Tuesday afternoon, however, Bush will beat his own record, announcing the creation of three separate marine national monuments in the central Pacific Ocean that together will span some 195,000 sq. mi. Though greens were hoping for an even larger area, taken together, the marine monuments will mean that President Bush — perhaps the least environmental President in U.S. history — will have protected more of the ocean than anyone else in the world.

10 Ways the World Could End

Stephen Petranek lays out the challenges that face us in the drive to preserve the human race. These aren't just your run-of-the-mill fantasy apocalyptic disasters....These are real threats. And Petranek gives succinct solutions to all of them.

(Filmed Feb 2002)

Reuniting the Self: Autoimmunity, Obesity, and the Ecology of Health

Reuniting the Self: Autoimmunity, Obesity, and the Ecology of Health
By Charles Eisenstein for Reality Sandwich

This article is Part 2 of a two-part series. Read Part 1 here.

What is a human being? A human being is a nexus of relationships: the sum total of the connections among his or her cells, organs, and inner ecosystem; connections to other human beings that define the psyche; connections to the rest of nature and this living planet that allow life to exist. Modern thought, recognizing only a small subset of these as intrinsic to our beingness, offers us a much smaller self: the separate self of the selfish gene and the economic man, the skin-encapsulated ego and the Cartesian mote of consciousness. Rendered small, we are rendered sick.

We are relationship. The connected self that is the true human being has been reduced at the hands of civilization, leaving an isolated remnant that is not whole. Innumerable configurations of this unwholeness, or lack of health, afflict the members of our culture, each in a unique way. Depending on the vagaries of nurture and genetics, we each adapt differently to the onslaught of Separation. As Part 1 of this essay describes, some of us embody our culture's self-other confusion on a literal, somatic level as an autoimmune disease, in which the immune system attacks part of the very organism it is meant to defend and on which it depends, much as we do to planet Earth.

The loss of self that lies at the heart of our civilization manifests in many less literal ways as well, physical and social. Consider cancer: cells that have forgotten their proper function, and instead devote all their resources toward an endless growth that eventually kills the host, and themselves as well. Modern humanity appears to be behaving exactly so in relationship to the earth. It is by no coincidence that the toxic byproducts of our collective iniquity are precisely what cause cancer in the individual.

As is the case with self-rejection and autoimmunity, a psychological level mediates between the collective and the somatic. In fact, in economically developed countries (i.e., those in which the conversion of nature, community, and culture into money has proceeded the furthest), the primary manifestation of the wound of separation is psychological: feelings of loneliness, alienation, anxiety, depression, anomie, and muted rage. They are the interior image of the starvation, physical desperation, torture, military violence, imprisonment, and genocide that go hand in hand with our power, waste, and empty wealth. These primary psychological conditions, in turn, engender physical and social conditions that draw the suffering outward into a tangible form.

To put it more simply, the things we do to hurt the world hurt our own souls, and hurt souls create sick bodies and a sick society. I will illustrate how this happens via the example of obesity.

It is not surprising that the lonely, diminished self of modern civilization should crave to restore something of its lost being. We have been shorn of the connections that make us whole. Your ancestors in a hunter-gatherer tribe or agrarian village lived in a matrix of connections that we can barely imagine today. At least I can barely imagine it, and not without weeping. In those times, every face you saw day-to-day was a familiar face. The relationships that sustained life were personal relationships. You knew the person who grew your food and cooked your food, you knew the person who built your house and made your clothes, you knew the person who sang your songs and performed your entertainment. Most likely, you knew them intimately, as they knew you. You knew each other's histories, who your first love was, your narrow escape from death at age four, that embarrassing incident at age 12, your pranks and your personality; you knew the stories of each other's parents and grandparents as well. You were woven together in a rich social tapestry that defined who you were. Being intimately known by others, you knew yourself as well. Furthermore, any action reverberated in a very tangible way out into the community, and back again to you. It was obvious that what you do to others, you in fact do to yourself. The Golden Rule was not originally a rule at all, but a description.

Today these relationships still exist in some sense: as before, we more or less depend on other people to grow our food, cook our food, make our clothes, build our houses, and provide our entertainment. But today, these people are strangers, and the relationships are no longer love relationships, but money relationships. Today, as some 60% of all meals are prepared outside the home, even the person who cooks our food is often a stranger. Outside a very narrow realm, our relationships become superficial: if all our needs are provided by strangers, what indeed is there to do together? Friendship becomes a matter of getting together to consume something: food, drink, a movie. Joint consumption brings out nothing of our real selves. We cannot know or be known. Yet this is an essential human need; it is essential to our very identity. If we are not intimately involved in each other's life stories, we suffer a deficit of being. We are not whole.

We are similarly bereft of intimate connection to the land, to nature and to place. Our ancestors knew their place in the web of life, knew each animal and plant species as a distinct individual, each hill and stream, and the relationships among all of them. This web of relationships defined who they were. Today we live in a machine world of deliberate uniformity, a world of standardized products and identical right angles, words and numbers and dollar signs. Inevitably we too feel like a cog in the machine, a standardized component with a standardized education, job description, degrees, credentials, and technical skills, and suffer a consequent loss of identity. Who am I and what makes me different? In a generic, uniform world, we cannot know.

Tormented by the alienation and loneliness of a diminished, isolated self, we do our best to add on to that self. There are several ways to do this. The most literal way is to enlarge the body. We become fat, literally expanding our physical selves. But of course, no amount of added corpulence can compensate for the grievous loss of being that comes from cutting ourselves off from the social and natural universe.

If you are not fat, maybe your attempt to compensate for the cutoff of your larger self takes another form. Another way to extend the small self is through money and possessions. Why are people so greedy for these things, far beyond their objective utility? Greedy for the things we call "mine"? It is yet another futile attempt to remedy our deficit of being. The separate self grows and grows, assuming bloated proportions, but this hypertrophied agglomeration of flesh or possessions still falls infinitely short of the connected self, whose being partakes in that of the whole universe.

In the last five decades, the average size of a new American home has more than doubled. Beyond the body, the home is the most immediate extension of the self. It has grown in tandem with the decline of community, civic participation, and public space. As the social dimensions of the self have atrophied, the home has grown in fake compensation, and life has moved indoors. Unfortunately, this expanded private realm is all the more lonely, driving further acquisitiveness. We gape at the super-rich, wondering, aghast, how they could have so much and still want more, wondering how much will be enough. In fact, no amount is enough. No amount of house or money or possessions or status or prestige or power or fame can ever meet the need to reestablish intimate relationships with human community and nature.

As is well-known, obesity is correlated with low social class. The usual explanation is either that poor people are ignorant ("less well-educated"), or that they can only afford crappy, fattening food. I disagree. I think a deeper explanation is that the rich person's means of expanding the separate self -- large house, money, possessions -- are unavailable, so the poor person can only expand the body.

All of this, of course, is unconscious. All the individual is aware of is a hunger, a need for something more. The fact that obese people often eat when they are not physically hungry offers a clue to what is going on. Indeed, they are hungry -- they just aren't hungry for food. They are hungry for connection. Food is the most tangible, direct confirmation of our connection to a living universe that loves us. On a primal biological level, the act of eating tells us, "I exist" and "I am loved." Indeed, food is the most basic expression of love, a token of intimacy, of bringing an outsider into the realm of self. That is why it is customary in most countries to offer food to a guest, and why it is rude to refuse it. To feed another is, in this sense, an intimate act, an opening of the sacred boundaries of self. When, as today, this intimate act has become a subject of commerce, and food a commodity, the entire food system reeks of obscenity. Ha ha, now it seems that I am likening restaurants to brothels and chefs to prostitutes! I don't want to demean either of these ancient professions, so let me just say that to offer either sex or food casually and carelessly is an affront to the divine Giver of these sacred gifts. Speaking now only of chefs, and leaving the reader to draw whatever other conclusions he or she likes, I will observe that to offer this sacred gift without love -- that is, without care, attention, and artistry -- feels sordid and emptying. That is why I steer away from, ahem, restaurants that seem motivated primarily by profit, that want to merely gain off my deep biological and emotional needs. Some things are too sacred to sell, whether for money or for some intangible emotional currency. One feels used. That is not to say a restaurant should not charge money, nor that we should not gain emotional highs or self-esteem from sex -- it is just that these should be secondary. The same is true of anything we give to the world. When it becomes "for the money" we cease being artists.

The need for connection is intertwined with the need for love, since it is love that opens the boundaries of the separate self to let in a bit more of the world. When I love someone, his or her self-interest becomes my own. That is why the environmental movement signifies such a profound shift in human consciousness. Separate too long in the world of the Machine, we are falling back in love with the world.

Consigned by modern civilization to a tiny, isolated self, we suffer from a powerful unmet need for love and connection. To meet this need is more important than life itself. People will do almost anything to meet it. It is time to release our condemnation of the people with bloated bodies, or bloated bank accounts, houses, egos, or other enlargements of the separate self. They are merely trying to meet their most beautiful needs. They are trying to connect and find love, in whatever tiny way is available at the end of the Age of the Machine. As I described in the Miracle of Self-creation essays, it is foolish and futile to try to fight the expression of these needs, whether in ourselves or others. If food is the only way someone has to show herself love, would you impose a diet on her and take away even that scrap of self-love? No, it is much better to do what you can to meet the need directly. The same is true for all those greedy people in SUVs, or whoever else happens to be the favorite target of our derogation. Meet the need -- the need for love and connection -- directly. It is easy if you see the true source of the behavior. It is easy to see people with eyes of love, if you know that they are simply trying to meet their beautiful needs.

Specifically, this might mean encouraging and validating the very behavior that appears to be the cause of the trouble. To do what you already do (and cannot stop doing) without guilt magnifies its effect as self-love, and breaks the pattern of indulgence followed by self-blame followed by more indulgence to comfort the blamed self. I describe these dynamics and how to undo them in more depth in my short book, Transformational Weight Loss (still in beta edition). Essentially, conventional restrictive approaches to dieting (which fail 98% of the time) are based on the idea that the problem is too much: too much food, too much greed, too selfish, too indulgent, too lazy, too weak. In fact, the problem is one of lack. A diet imposes more lack, and ultimately intensifies the driving unmet needs.

Obesity is usually taken as a symptom of excess, but in fact the reverse is true. Obesity, and the other enlargements I have mentioned, are actually symptoms of the most profound destitution ever to visit the human race. The bloated lifestyles of the American rich harbor an inner poverty exactly equal to the Third World poverty that enables those lifestyles. Half the world cannot get enough to eat, and the other half cannot get enough no matter how much they eat. It is a complete tapestry, perfect and horrifying.

Thankfully, this tapestry is unraveling today. The world built upon the separate self is collapsing around us, as we see in the converging crises of money, energy, health, education, politics, and environment. Each crisis contains the rest. For example, it is no accident that the cutoff of our true selves is a great business opportunity: we must buy the substitutes for the missing parts of the connected self. The same Separation that is at the root of obesity is also at the root of global economic exploitation, as it as at the root of the current wave of thinly-disguised fascism. Here is a passage from The Ascent of Humanity:

People who are firmly ensconced in a local, kinship-based community are less susceptible to consumerism and fascism alike, because both base their appeal on a need for self-identity. Therefore, to introduce consumerism to a previously isolated culture it is first necessary to destroy its sense of identity. Here's how: Disrupt its networks of reciprocity by introducing consumer items from the outside. Erode its self-esteem with glamorous images of the West. Demean its mythologies through missionary work and scientific education. Dismantle its traditional ways of transmitting local knowledge by introducing schooling with outside curricula. Destroy its language by providing that schooling in English or another national or world language. Truncate its ties to the land by importing cheap food to make local agriculture uneconomic. Then you will have created a people hungry for the right sneaker.

I hope it is clear now how obesity and its consumerist equivalents are a symptom of poverty, not wealth. In essence, we have been robbed of something so fundamental to our humanness that we are left ever hungry. We live with an ache than can never be assuaged, a hole that can never be filled. So of course we eat and we buy, spending the proceeds from the sale of our very being. We have lost our selves, and received mere money in return, if even that. And the robbery continues apace, and, driven by the relentless engine of an interest-based money system, must proceed until there is nothing left to sell. This is the point of utter destitution we are fast approaching today. As with nature's goodness and beauty, as with our cultural heritage, as with our human relationships, our health too we have pawned away. The epidemics of our time show the extent of our pauperdom.

The point of utter destitution is also the point of turning, the turning of the age. We can no longer endure the pain of separation. We are beginning to experience the softening and expansion of the separate self. Many readers I am sure have been through this process themselves, probably more than once: trying to hold everything together with increasing control, and eventually giving up, letting the world in, softening and expanding, reclaiming lost connections through the medium of love. Is it too much to say, as multiple crises reach their fulfillment and plunge masses of people through this process all at once, that we are entering an Age of Love?

Necessarily, I have written of the obesity epidemic in a very general way, but of course each person is separate in a unique way. Each of us is missing different parts of our true connected selves. Therefore, the path to healing is unique as well. The overeater is hungry for something that food can never satisfy, but what? The answer is individual, but healing will usual involve loving yourself (and therefore something outside yourself) in a way you have not before. The true self must expand for the separate self to shrink. The same is true whether your inflation is corporeal or via some other type of consumption. Forceful attempts to conquer the ego are therefore no more successful than going on a diet. I do not want my description of the plunder of the self to evoke more fear, more control, more desire to "fight evil". The horror of our circumstances is very real, but its end is nigh. Please do not misunderstand me to be advocating inaction. There is action that is not fighting. That time is nearly over. The action to take now comes from remembering and reminding; from that, powerful, courageous actions spring unstoppably. The love that comes with the crumbling of the separate self is not a mere sentiment.

A paradise on earth is available right now, easily, closer than close. It is a shift of perception away. The epidemics of our time show us that, too. A prodigious energy will be freed when we end the War against the Self encoded in autoimmunity. A magnificent abundance will become available when we stop consuming things we don't need in compensation for the things we do. And these shifts together come as a result of the pain of the diseases themselves, and of the other ills of our age. The illness is the medicine. The true nature of the connected self, love, is beckoning in every realm. It is your true nature and it is mine. Let us relax into it.

How I built my family a windmill

When he was just 14 years old, Malawian inventor William Kamkwamba built his family an electricity-generating windmill from spare parts, working from rough plans he found in a library book.

(If he can do it....We can do it!)

Superstring Theory

The makings of Superstring Theory and the supercollider...Brilliant video

Obama Isn't the Only One Being Inaugurated on Jan. 20th

Obama Isn't the Only One Being Inaugurated on Jan. 20th
By Arianna Huffington

Barack Obama is not the only one being inaugurated on January 20th. We all are.

And that's not just because Obama has promised to make a call to service "a central cause" of his presidency. It's because this moment in history demands that we stop waiting on others -- especially others living in Washington D.C. -- to solve the problems and right the wrongs of our times. Now, more than ever, we must mine the most underutilized resource available to us: ourselves.

The night before Obama is sworn in, HuffPost is co-hosting a pre-Inaugural ball at the Newseum in Washington. Just before midnight we are going to have a Countdown to a New Era. It's a new era not just because the Bush Years will officially be over, and not just because Barack Obama will be president, but because taking on the challenges America is facing will require a new era of citizen responsibility and engagement.

To illustrate this we are putting together a video that will symbolize that we are all stakeholders -- all being inaugurated on January 20th -- by having people from across America send us video of themselves taking the presidential oath of office: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The preamble of the Constitution starts with We the People. And it has never been clearer than it is now that we can't "form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" without the active participation of millions of us. It is not just the Bush Years that should be over on January 20th, but also the expectation that a knight in shining armor will ride into town and save us while we cheer from the sidelines. Even if the knight is brilliant, charismatic, and inspiring. It's up to us -- We the People.

And Obama himself has said as much many times throughout the campaign. He asked Americans "to step into the strong currents of history, and to shape your country's future. Because your own story and the American story are not separate, they are shared. And they will both be enriched if together, we answer a new call to service to meet the challenges of our new century...."

Arianna Huffington is asking us to make and send our own Oath Videos (more info in article) and then sign the service pledge

Panetta Is Chosen as C.I.A. Chief, in a Surprise Step

Seems that there were very few choices for CIA Chief that didn't have their hands involved in all the recent torture interrogations...But I'm glad Obama chose one that didn't (even if he was Clinton's choice years ago)

Panetta Is Chosen as C.I.A. Chief, in a Surprise Step
By MARK MAZZETTI and CARL HULSE for The NY Times


*Update 1/7/09
Just read Panetta's comment in the 2008 Washigton Monthly....And all I can say is Huzzah!!

"Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground. We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that."- Panetta

A Spurt of Quake Activity Raises Fears in Yellowstone

A Spurt of Quake Activity Raises Fears in Yellowstone
By Pat Dawson for Time

Scientists are carefully measuring the geological activity in the national park because it contains the caldera of an enormous, ancient and still active volcano

Quote of the Week

"A terrorist has an ideology. That ideology is savage. It's brutal. It's primitive. It is the worst ideology you can imagine because it's ancient. It's not relevant to our normal times. When you kill a terrorist you do not kill the ideology."
-Deepak Chopra

The 411 on 2012

The 411 on 2012
By Michel Anderson for Reality Sandwich

The winter solstice of 2012 marks the end date of the Mayan Long Count Calendar, and with it comes a medicine bag of fear and hope. If you are a regular reader of Reality Sandwich you are probably well-versed in the various possibilities that are speculated. Rosemary Regello’s article, “Apocalypse 2012?” is a truncated synopsis of the phenomena. It touches upon almost every hypothesized scenario out there -- from galactic alignment to sea desalination. The site is regularly updated with current information and provides a robust reading list and various links for all your 2012 needs. The information provided is succinct and intriguing, but doesn’t move far beyond the materialistic.

Some of the interesting aspects of ancient prophesy and timekeeping are touched upon, but ideas regarding consciousness transformation are a bit sparse. It’s primarily a Dooms Day list; and reading it could leave you feeling ill prepared to deal with the possible external realities looming ahead. However, perhaps it is through actively engaging our fear of the unknown that we can prepare for a meaningful 2012.