Here is a brilliant wild card emerging out of the current chaos of industrial civilization. I suspect many more are on their way. We are in so much trouble on so many levels that human intelligence and creativity are being activated as survival strategies and evolutionary drivers. Watch for more.

by Dianne Collins
Creator-Author of QuantumThink®

If the Internet is the perfect outer reflection of humanity’s Collective Mind (which it is), then movies are the perfect outer reflection of humanity’s Daily Life. Where else do we get to see, up front and personal, magnified and in vivid living color – macro photographic facial expressions, special effects generated from imagination gone wild, and an intensity of human emotions running the gamut from utter despair to sheer ecstasy? In every season there are productions and performances so compelling, so stirring and masterfully executed that they garner the crowning achievement of life portrayed on the silver screen: Academy Award winner – the performance of a lifetime. Continue Reading »

As one of the great visionary thinkers of our time, Lester Brown offers the world a blueprint for survival in his new book, Plan B 3.0. As soon as you finish reading this timely book, available as a free download here, please consider acting on its suggestions in your life and writing letters to our new President and your congressman and senator asking them to act swiftly to immediately implement its survival tactics for civilization. Think of these actions as our legacy to the future.

From the Forward

The challenge for our generation is to build a new economy, one that is powered largely by renewable sources of energy, that has a highly diversified transport system, and that reuses and recycles everything. And to do it with unprecedented speed.

We have the technologies to restructure the world energy economy and stabilize climate. The challenge now is to build the political will to do so. Saving civilization is not a spectator sport. Each of us has a leading role to play.”

And the following quote from Wendell Berry from 1981 shows how long we have been thinking about what needs to be done. Now is surely the time to act.

“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never clearly understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of the creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.”

– Wendell Berry, Recollected Essays

A universal characteristic of genius is humility; after all, those in whom we recognize genius commonly disclaim it, as they’ve always attributed their insights to some higher influence.  [...]

Recognized geniuses may be rare, but genius resides within all of us. There is no such thing as “luck” or “accident” in this cosmos; and not only is everything connected to everything else, no one is excluded from the universe — we’re all members.  [...]

The process of creativity and genius are inherent in human consciousness. Just as every human has within himself the same essence of consciousness, so is genius a potential that resides within everyone — it simply waits for the right circumstance to express itself. Each of us has had moments of genius in our lifetimes, perhaps only known to ourselves or to those close to us. We suddenly make a brilliant move or decision, or say exactly the right thing at the right moment, without quite knowing why. Sometimes we might even like to congratulate ourselves for these fortuitous events, but in truth we don’t really know where they came from.

Genius is often expressed through a change of perception — a modifying of context of paradigm. The mind struggles with an unsolvable problem, poses a question, and is open to receive an answer. The source that this answer comes from has been given many names, varying from culture to culture and time to time; in the arts of Western civilization, it’s traditionally been identified with the Greek goddesses of inspiration called the Muses. Those who are humble and grateful for illumination received tend to have the capacity to access genius; those who credit the inspiration to their own ego soon lose this capacity, or are destroyed by their success. High power, like high voltage, must be handled with respect.

Genius and creativity then, are subjectively experienced as a witnessing; it’s the phenomenon that bypasses the individual self or ego. The capacity to finesse genius can be learned — though often only through painful surrender — when the phoenix of genius arises out of the ashes of despair after a fruitless struggle with the unsolvable. Out of the defeat comes victory; out of failure, success; and out of humbling, true self-esteem.

–David R. Hawkins, From “Power vs. Force”