2
February
2012
Fated for failure “from the get-go,” “a nation of hustlers” blinded from birth by mercenary ambition; from its title to its last words Morris Berman’s new book, Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline, depicts a country finished.
The whole social order was structured on false premises, he argues; premises that say happiness and virtue can be had through industry, business and money, hustling for advancement. It was about making a financial killing and the pervasive denial of consequences. The America celebrated every 4th of July was about its own tenuous and soul-destroying identity, akin to Moby Dick’s captain Ahab, hell-bent on hunting to the death.
It was about cut-throat competing to be first to market with novel tech-devices sold to a public slavering for them with every new ping and ding, like Pavlovian dogs, conditioned by a media machine brought to you by primo hustlers.
Drawing on the words and careers of Lewis Mumford, Thoreau, John Ruskin, Jimmy Carter, Neil Postman and many others who have opposed the amoral life of hustle, Berman documents the ever-presence of these powerful voices of wisdom published time and again; and lays bare the fact that the American masses never could muster any interest in wisdom or reality, the heart of America was not concerned, as it were.
While most of those who Berman cites would (perhaps with modest expectancy of actually selling books to Americans) tend to end their books on notes of hope and faith in their fellow Americans (though their brethren did not read them or, if they did, merely yawned and hit psychological snooze buttons again), Berman, an expatriate living in Mexico, proclaims that there is no such hope and there never was; that “we’ll carry on hustling until we literally collapse from it (2008 being only a mild preview).”
And “progress,” he makes clear, has actually been a colossal tragedy fraught with irony; the American model of empire gave us an information glut and an ignorant populace, convenience culture with less free time than ever, and all the while, technocratic toys claim your earnings and let you multitask the deep sea of life into a puddle, rewiring your brain so that you “can’t think deeply or creatively” and therefore will no longer be equipped to even sense what you’re missing. “The world of creativity, of imagination, of depth of the self, is closing down,” Berman writes, giving us “a nation of buffoons” with dull sensibilities, who “want slogans not nuance and sophistication.” Most Americans are psychologically equipped now only for a pseudo-bliss of denial and ignorance about themselves and everything else, especially their own history and its meaning.
A full chapter is devoted to making clear that the Civil War was actually far less about slavery than we’ve been led to believe, that it was, instead, an epic clash of social ideologies concerning what constitutes “the good life;” two irreconcilable economic models and modes of existence, industrial/modern/dynamic versus agricultural/traditional/steady-state, “two expansionist systems,” capitalist and neofeudal.
These two modes could not coexist in a Union of states. And the South simply had to be plowed under, incompatible as it was with Yankee industrial hustle and the march of “progress.” Slavery was used as a catch-all justification for eliminating the Southern way of life, because, in essence, it was antithetical to centralized control, mechanization, unmitigated greed, and growth unto death à la globalization.
He explains that the South’s formidable attempt to secede from the Union to preserve its way of life, rather than to “succeed” via the encroaching inroads of the North, was in honor of a gentile worldview in which slavery was but one factor (albeit, admittedly, a morally abhorrent one).
Berman cites the work of Raimondo Luraghi, remarking that the conflict of North and South was the “American version of the globalization process through industrial colonialism.” The North was characterized as “wired,” “competitive,” “impersonal,” “bureaucratic,” “commercial,” “rootless,” and all about “capital accumulation,” and the South was “leisurely,” “local,” “organic,” “rural,” “folk,” “hierarchical,” “traditional” and reliant upon a strong honor code.
Here Berman seems to suggest that the agrarian way of the South was more civilized because it offered a pastoral and rural life of leisure and honor. But the argument loses power and validity as one reflects upon the many concessions we must make about the South’s dark side, it’s anti-intellectualism and white supremacy, its punitive nature: tarring and feathering, lynching, duels, and the use of physical force on slaves.
If this gentile leisure was afforded by enforced slave labor, it was an immoral leisure; it belonged only to “gentlemen” slave owners and their heirs (and what is gentle about men with slaves?) — playing lords of the manor just like European aristocrats.
While Berman certainly presents and acknowledges this dark side of the South, he does so while maintaining that the South has been the only counterculture holding forth with any muscle against the hustling life since the nation’s birth. Other movements and alternative communities had no real countervailing power, zealous as their proponents may have been.
While all these considerations are fruitful in seeking the roots of wrong, Berman does not go far enough to reach those roots. What has transpired in America has its roots sunk much deeper than the Revolutionary War, which was not so long ago, and which did only its small part in withering the psychological dendrites of empire. What was absent from Berman’s account of “why” America is a failed enterprise is that North and South both represent dominator models; in a word (shhhh . . . ): patriarchy.
Stating that the South was “bent to the social good” and tradition, as if a tradition of patriarchy of any kind could be a good thing, is to miss the opportunity to make a vital point about where we stand now, crucial to the understanding of all imperial pasts and would-be futures, North, South, East and West.
Berman quotes The Unabomber’s manifesto and points to fundamentalist Islam as examples of those vehemently and violently opposed to the American way of life. Yet all of these also fall under the rubric of the dominator model of existence.
At the meta-level we can see the whole planet steeping in the toxic build-up of domination, the residues of patriarchy and its 5000+-year legacy, systemically perpetuated by both males and females. Monocultures, monarchies, monotheists, dynasties, lords, captains, chieftains—none of these can serve the human family or the human psyche. What is failing? the ideals of industrial hustle or the underlying ignorance and approaches to life? Is it America or a mind-set that migrated to America to flower into prime exemplar status here for a time?
Berman’s examples of opposition to industrialization cannot rightly focus our minds at the requisite level of reexamination and reckoning. To establish holistic, nurturing and fulfilling societies that truly meet the needs of the living will require a complete transcendence of patriarchal values and modes of operation.
In looking back on the limited record, we see only Neolithic goddess cultures, hunter-gatherer societies and some native cultures as ones presenting viable alternative models, countercultures that lead us to closely examine the roots of where societies go wrong.
But even more so, we have the ever-fertile imagination, the cultivation of free minds, healthy bodies and joyful hearts as means to understanding that human beings have not always been crippled by oppression and repression and need not be in the future. The arc of time is eons long and the old and dying roots of empire and patriarchy have been exhaling rotten breath for centuries already, long before the white man set foot on American soil.
So Berman comes close to the heart of the matter when he points out that the Europeans decimated the native peoples of the Americas. The tribal peoples of this land and their ways of life were surely those that have always held up the greatest contrast to European imperialism, exceptionalism, militarism, materialism and narcissism; and yet even they were, in many aspects, patriarchal.
Why America Failed is a well-curated weave of compelling quotations and references, culled to present Berman’s views, which, as a long-time fan of Berman I attest do extend to the hunter-gatherers and do radiate to a greater scope.
Yet, I could not help noticing that his sources for Why America Failed are predominantly privileged white males and their privileged white male predecessors, contemporaries, and heirs. Thus, the entirety here, both the social problems and the social criticism springs from masculine logic and method, which has, in its imbalanced state, hurt boys and girls, men and women.
It is not traditions and manners, but making obsolete accepted views of realty that counterculture is all about. And it is our nascent understandings of a potential holistic meta-view that have time on their side. We are in a dying age; the masculine age is nearly exhausted in terms of history’s long arc; exhausted everywhere on Earth. And yet, for the present, it is not nearly extinguished and likely will not go gentle.
Why America Failed concludes with a discussion of post-collapse scenarios and coping strategies. These deserve your consideration, as your understanding and participation could save your life in the coming decades. “Character is destiny,” Berman states, and “there is such a thing as karma.” Reality comes with comeuppance.
©2012 Jari Chevalier
Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline
Morris Berman
ISBN: 978-1-1180-6181-7
Hardcover
256 pages
November 2011
jari 
future, feminine values, culture, wisdom, books, self-destructive, global forces, values, vision, power, reality, Native American, America, societal health, civilization, patriarchy, dysfunction, capitalism, counterculture 
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21
November
2010
Host of Living Hero, Jari Chevalier, speaks about her work as a multidisciplinary artist, on the What Now show with Ken Rose, KOWS Radio, November 1, 2010.
Link to the interview.
The recurring theme of this relaxed, off-the-cuff discussion was uncertainty and the unknown. Acknowledging our true position in our collective uncertainty can bring empathy, clarity, and equality like nothing else. We also talked about personal change and disengaging from the culture of machines.
Image: American Legacy, inlaid paper collage and acrylic on canvas. Part of the Mathematics of Ecstasy show. See the full set of images at jariart.com.
Enjoy Ken Rose's full list of interviews at pantedmonkey.org.
jari creative arts, interviews, meditation, future, feminine values, culture, philosophy, meaning, environment, values, empathy, human nature, sustainability, introspection, societal health, civilization Comments (0) » |
18
August
2010
"My sister and I will be with the Sisters of Earth, the radical nuns, in New York in July," Vandana Shiva told me, before she and I hung up the phone, just after recording our Living Hero interview this past winter.
Radical nuns, hmm, I was intrigued and also excited about the prospect of meeting Vandana in person and spending a few days with her and Mira Shiva.
A short time later, I was a newly minted member of the Sisters of Earth and was signed up to attend the 9th biennial Sisters of Earth conference on a press pass.
The conference was held at The Passionist Retreat Center in Riverdale, New York, along the East bank of the Hudson River. Listen, if you've never been in a room with 160 powerful, educated, purposeful, spiritually mature, and actively engaged women, you have missed the effect of an incomparable force-field. Not your average crowd!
This special report on the Sisters of Earth conference will give a hint at the depth and breadth of conversation and ceremony, and hopefully, too, a taste of the uplifting energy and heartfelt concern we experienced as a group. This vital network of women religious and lay women is working to foster widespread adoption of eco-spiritual values in the United States and around the world.
Click on The Power of Wisdom under Recent Posts on the sidebar to get to a Comments box and Submit button. Let us know your thoughts!
Thanks for listening!
--Jari Chevalier
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jari interviews, future, feminine values, wisdom, holistic, mind-body, environment, global forces, values, solidarity, vision, freedom, power, health, Native American, policy, ecology, sustainability, radical, patriarchy Comments (0) » |
3
May
2010
"We used to have wisdom without science; now . . . we have science without wisdom."
—Dr. Gabor Maté
Physician, activist, author, educator and public speaker, Gabor Maté, MD, is widely recognized for his contributions to the field of mind-body medicine. He has eloquently and persuasively called for a reevaluation of our most pervasive and debilitating ills in light of whole-systems stressors so often borne in utero, infancy and early childhood and the attendant, recurrent patterns of suppressing emotions of hurt and anger into adulthood. Gabor Maté is a compassionate doctor whose 20-year career as a family physician and his current work with HIV-positive addicts in Vancouver, BC, equips him with direct knowledge and empathic experience. He is the author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction, When the Body Says No: Understanding The Stress-Disease Connection and Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates And What You Can Do About It.
We talked about:
Whole person nourishment and attunement ● Why early life quality is so critical to society ● Stressed parents, emotional repression and disease ● What is the role of addiction? ● The mind-body supersystem and why modern medicine won’t recognize it ● Maté’s definition of addiction ● Free will and free won’t ● Denial and our addicted society ● Consciousness-raising and the miracle of a healing path ● The divine feminine and gut feelings ● Sensitivity and resilience or hardening and rigidity ● The Bully Syndrome and the truth about bullies ● Stuck where our needs were not met ● Ayahuasca and the swift road to healing and liberation ●
Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or you may listen to it right here by clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 46 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)
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Click through to buy Gabor Maté's books right from this site in the Amazon sidebar widget to the left.
Visit:
Dr. Maté's website.
jari psychology, holistic health, consciousness, interviews, insight, maturity, human potential, human development, feminine values, wisdom, holistic, parenting, mind-body, addiction, self-destructive, environment, empathy, self-esteem, power, health, childhood development, early childhood, neurobiology, science, societal health, civilization, abuse, recovery 2 Comments » |
1
March
2010
Around the world civilian rights to food and water are being eroded by the patenting of life forms and by privatization of water systems. Some farmers have been hit with law suits for patent infringement, while they were planting heritage seeds. The outspoken, multi-talented Vandana Shiva, joins us to talk about these and other issues of capitalist globalization. She is a celebrated ecofeminist, grassroots activist, research physicist, author, and international advocate for alternatives to global corporate hegemony.
". . . there is a higher moral order that requires that we save seeds, because we are caretakers of the biodiversity of this planet.” says Shiva.
We talked about:
The roots of Shiva's global activism ● The violence of "The Green Revolution" ● Suicide seeds, farmers, bombers ● False pretenses of industrial farming ● What's at stake in water privatization?● World Bank legacy in India ● Capitalist patriarchy ● The false liberation of convenience foods ● Civil disobedience and seed satyagraha ● Seed saving ● Lies money can buy ● Democracy as an imperative of survival ● Seeing and acting on interconnections ● The good work of the International Forum on Globalization ● Power and the lessons of history ● A singular solution to a triple crisis ● Caring, sharing, and The Commons
Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or you may listen to it right here by clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 45 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)
Click through to buy some of Vandana Shiva's books on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.
Visit:
Navdanya
and
The International Forum on Globalization
jari holistic health, future, feminine values, wisdom, politics, environment, global forces, values, solidarity, vision, freedom, power, peace, policy, ecology, sustainability, societal health, patriarchy, agribusiness 1 Comment » |
1
February
2010
Know anyone who keeps doing things everybody knows aren’t good for them, others, or the environment? Our guest for February, Anne Wilson Schaef, is an expert facilitator in overcoming multiple addictions. Anne takes an unconventional, whole systems approach to awakening and healing people in light of their familial heritage and societal context.
“I think that a part of our work as human beings in this life is to bring as much as we can of our unconscious into consciousness so that we know what we're dealing with and we have the opportunity to heal it . . . ” says Anne Wilson Schaef in this interview.
We talked about:
Leaving psychotherapy behind ● Process addictions and substance addictions ● Surprise! Our society is an addict ● Addiction and schizophrenia ● A progressive and fatal disease ● Can we recover? ● The elements of a successful intervention ● Wisdom and native humility ● The way of science and technology ● The pseudopodic ego ● Escape from Intimacy ● Political dimensions of dysfunction ● The crucial question on the planet ● The trouble with dualism ● The twelve steps and power ● Can billions of people heal?
Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or you may listen to it right here by clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about an hour and 7 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)
Click through to buy some of Anne Wilson Schaef's books on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.
Visit:
Anne's Boulder Hot Springs Inn & Spa at Boulder, MT
And her website: LivingInProcess.com
jari psychology, interviews, insight, feminine values, culture, wisdom, addiction, self-destructive, mental health, values, power, Native American, America, childhood development, science, societal health, radical, technology, patriarchy, abuse, control, dysfunction, recovery 3 Comments » |
1
August
2009
Sex and pleasure expert, Stella Resnick, PhD joins us to encourage, inform and delight you! Dr. Resnick is author of The Pleasure Zone: How We Resist Good Feelings and How to Let Go and Be Happy.
She is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Beverly Hills, CA and currently serves on the faculty of the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. Formerly President of the Western Region of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Dr. Resnick is a Diplomate of the American Board of Sexology and an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, CE Provider, and Clinical Supervisor, Stella has appeared many times on TV including the Oprah, Leeza, and Montel Williams shows, CNN Live, The O’Reilly Factor, KCBS’ Morning News, and UPN’s Evening News. Her seminar on The Pleasure Zone is featured in the PBS television series Body & Soul in the segment "Ode to Joy".
Stella is frequently quoted in popular magazines; such as, Reader’s Digest, Women’s World, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Playboy, Self, Redbook, McCall’s, Men’s Fitness, Men’s Health, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Family Circle, Parenting, and the Utne Reader. She has written numerous professional papers, and authored cover stories for Self, New Age, and Psychology Today magazines.
We talked about:
Demonizing pleasure in a history of domination ● Fear of peace, fulfillment and pleasure programmed in our nervous systems ● The 8 Core Pleasures and how we resist them ● Pleasure and the stages of human and societal development ● Infant needs and our tenacious early experiences ● Societal health and childhood sexuality ● How we learn to be human ● Two kinds of discipline and your pleasure ● Relearning how to be sexual ● Of what is sexuality an expression? ● Bridging the gap between heart and libido in adult partnerships ● A role for conscious breathing in your life
Visit: drstellaresnick.com
Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 52 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)
Click through to buy Stella's book on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.
jari psychology, holistic health, interviews, human potential, human development, feminine values, stress, parenting, love, fear, relaxation, feeling, freedom, health, sex, fitness, childhood development, early childhood, libido, pleasure, societal health, childhood sexuality, conscious breathing 1 Comment » |
24
May
2009
Our society suffers from an urgent need for greater empathy, for citizens with the emotional capacity to “feel with” others and sense what life is like for people in circumstances different from their own. Thought leaders, authors, and futurists Howard Gardner, Riane Eisler, Daniel Pink, and many others, have all placed empathy and ethics on their short lists of requisite qualities for a healthy future.
Personal contact with other human beings in need has proven to quickly and reliably foster such emotional brotherhood. Contact volunteering is a win-win-win proposition. It serves the needy, the volunteer, and the organizations that exist to provide care to the needy.
About half of adult Americans volunteer in some form, but only 8% regularly volunteer for personal contact with the needy. To derive the many benefits we describe below, volunteers must have this personal contact and must do so for four or more hours per month.
Benefits to Individual Health:
Loneliness and isolation pose significant human health risks rivaling those of cigarette smoking, obesity, lack of exercise and high blood pressure. One-on-one human contact volunteers overcome these risk factors, and live longer and healthier lives. They enjoy greater self-worth, self-esteem, and pleasure. They suffer less stress, chronic pain, fatigue, drug and alcohol abuse, overeating, anxiety and depression.
Benefits to Societal Health:
“Strangers” of different religions, races, ethnicities, educational and financial come in contact with each other on a regular basis, and bridge their differences, forming bonds of care, understanding, and trust. Volunteers bring increased job performance, social skills, and productivity back to their workplaces. When unemployed people volunteer, they suffer less depression and feelings of helplessness, and they find new jobs sooner.
How does volunteering work to bring these benefits?
Human beings are biologically hardwired for caring, cooperation, and goodness. When people engage in helping behaviors, they experience well-being, the feeling that things are as they should be. Opening one’s heart and giving to others in need activates the helper’s brain to release pleasure-and-joy hormones: dopamine and endorphins, and these initiate a cascade of physical and emotional changes for the better.
How can we encourage more people to engage in contact volunteering?
Leadership, leadership, leadership! Studies have proved that most people need to be asked repeatedly, and convinced by others, to volunteer. Business and governmental leaders can help in this enormously. Here’s how:
• Reduce health insurance premiums for those who do contact volunteering
• Allow employees to volunteer during work hours
• Promote the benefits of contact volunteering through all media outlets
• Model the excellent habit of volunteering and talk about it! Public figures, leaders, heros and “stars” step up and lead this win-win-win movement!
©Jari Chevalier, 2009
jari Uncategorized, psychology, future, human potential, human development, feminine values, wisdom, mind-body, values, empathy, self-esteem, solidarity, health, reality, human nature, policy, volunteering, civic engagement Comments (0) » |
1
May
2009
Radical Simplicity! The Living Hero program presents an interview with author, educator, and activist Jim Merkel.
Jim began as a military engineer. Just after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, Jim quit his job and took immediate personal responsibility for his own part in global problems. This meant taking radical actions to scale back consumption and deeply reconsider life in all its dimensions. He subsequently authored Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth. Merkel received an Earthwatch Gaia Fellowship to research sustainable living in Kerala, India and in regions of the Himalayas.
He founded the Global Living Project and was hired by Dartmouth College to serve as its first Sustainability Director.
Jim lives the life of radical simplicity—cycling hundreds of miles to give lectures and workshops at colleges , universities, and community centers. He is a homesteader, growing and preserving his own food, and living on about $5,000 a year. Jim has given hundreds of hours of his time as a volunteer to share his wealth of knowledge on the new good life of sustainable living.
We talked about:
• the present pulse of the sustainability movement
• the real root of simplicity
• engaging the heart
• Jim's childhood and influences
• the real challenge of society: the common good
• how radical simplicity crosses party lines
• Jim's revolutionary shift after Exxon-Valdez
• what it means to exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth
• what is an ecological footprint
• Jim's view of the economic crisis
• living on $5000 a year in America
• the roots of violence and fear
• population control, women, and wisdom
• falling in love with the Earth
Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only--sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The program is around 50 minutes)
Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)Download this episode (right click and save)
jari Uncategorized, interviews, education, human potential, feminine values, culture, wisdom, meaning, love, feeling, economy, values, money, freedom, reality, Native American, America, ecology, sustainability Comments (0) » |
1
December
2008
The Living Hero show is honored to present an interview with author, speaker and thought leader, Riane Eisler. She is recognized as one of the most original minds of our time, and has been included among the world's 20 great thinkers and peacemakers. She is president of the Center for Partnership Studies and is best known for her international bestseller The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. Riane holds degrees in sociology and law from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and has done pioneering and transformative work in the fields of human rights and relations, history, sociology, economics, psychology, and education. She is the author of over 200 essays and articles and five books.
We talked about:
• The redistribution and redefinition of power
• What is the real wealth of nations?
• Political ironies and transformation
• Playing economics with a full deck
• The psychological underpinnings of domination and control
• Gender relations and notions of male and female power
• Is human nature fundamentally flawed?
• Riane's own path of transformation
• The neurochemistry of pain and pleasure
• Creativity as a force for leadership and change
Visit Riane Eisler's websites at www.rianeeisler.com and The Center for Partnership Studies (partnershipway.org)
Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only--sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is 50 minutes)
Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)
Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.
Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.
jari psychology, language, interviews, education, future, human potential, feminine values, culture, philosophy, politics, books, creativity, parenting, love, economy, global forces, values, power, sex, reality, early childhood, neuroscience, human nature 1 Comment » |
1
September
2008
The Living Hero show is very proud to present an interview with Marcy Axness, Ph.D.
Dr. Axness is an early development specialist who writes and speaks internationally on parenting, society, and the needs of children. She is an authority in such wide-ranging fields as neurobiology (brain development), prenatal and developmental psychology, attachment theory, and consciousness research. Marcy’s particular specialization is in very early development--beginning even before conception--and she is one of the world’s few experts in prenatal / neonatal issues in adoption. She is a professor at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute and has a private practice in Los Angeles, counseling parents and prospective parents.
We talked about:
• Raising generation PAX
• Quantum parenting
• The fundamental question every human is always asking
• The peace-creativity connection
• P-A-R-E-N-T-S, Marcy's parenting To-Dos
• The surprising single strongest predictor of a child's healthy attachment
• The dominant reality engine of our time
• How to behaviorally reduce ADD and ADHD
• What drives the viscious human cycle
• Tapping into the unseen dimensions of experience
Visit Marcy's website at http://www.quantumparenting.com
Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only--sorry no transcripts at this time!
You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about an hour.)
Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)
Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.
Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.
jari psychology, consciousness, interviews, education, future, maturity, human potential, human development, feminine values, wisdom, parenting, love, mind-body, mental health, values, empathy, vision, health, America, childhood development, early childhood, peace, neurobiology Comments (0) » |
28
December
2007
We applaud magic shows; we consider actors our stars; we're spellbound by the illusions of master painters.
This past year, I stopped coloring my hair, which I've been dying since I was 34 years old, but my mother, who has always been 30 years older than me, has never let her grays show. We exist in a culture of make-up and make-believe, hair dye and botox and all manner of plastic surgery.
I actually like the look of my natural hair and I also like not putting toxins on my scalp. But over the months I've had the truth of my hair out there for all to see, it seems to me that I've lost much of my sex appeal and I'm not happy about this observation.
By the way, I've also noticed that many of us are prone to loving the ideals of romantic love and then being heartbroken when the illusions crumble. There are wisdom teachings urging us to see things as they are, to allow ourselves to reach disillusionment and to develop our capacity to align ourselves more and more with bare-faced reality.
Are bling and botox, movies and mannerisms, amour and alcohol simply our defensive answer to an underlying philosophy of life that says, basically, "life is hard and then you die"?
Where’d we buy that philosophy anyway? That, to me, is a philosophy engendering suffering. Is this really what we want to live by?
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. But, it seems that we volunteer to be fooled, we sign up for being "happily" hoodwinked again and again and again. We seem to insist on it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKgPY1adc0A
jari psychology, feminine values, wisdom, philosophy 1 Comment » |
15
November
2007
E.O. Wilson, one of our most brilliant living heroes, preciently wrote in his 1999 bestseller, Consilience, "Thanks to science and technology, access to factual knowledge of all kinds is rising exponentially while dropping in unit cost. It is destined to become global and democratic. Soon it will be available everywhere on television and computer screens. What then? The answer is clear: synthesis. We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely."
Many other luminaries have echoed this call for synthesis. One of Howard Gardner's Five Minds for the Future is "Synthesizing Mind," and Daniel Pink devotes a chapter of his recently released A Whole New Mind to "Symphony," the ability to draw together details from many different disciplines while holding in mind the big picture and what it takes to achieve harmony, balance, and beauty.
This whole-brain capacity has been the gifted and treasured realm of artists, writers, philosophers, and spiritual leaders all along, but these are realms of activity that our culture has not rewarded financially. Is this going to change now? How will we see this change?
This blog is devoted to providing a forum for the exploration and discussion of these and related topics. I invite your thoughts and wish to know specifically whom you would most like to hear from in an interview or panel discussion and what your most burning questions on these topics are.
jari Uncategorized, integrate, interviews, future, human development, feminine values, culture, synthesis, a whole new mind, wisdom, financial reward Comments (0) » |
12
November
2007
I have recently read Howard Gardner's Five Minds for the Future. His role in this book, I think, is as a futurist, steering educators, administrators, parents--all of us--towards evaluating curricula in terms of the Five Minds, so as to meet the pressing global human challenges ahead successfully. Einstin's adage: "Imagination is more important than knowledge" strikes me as being along the same lines. Similarly, it's not what you say but how you say it, as in one's tone of voice and the look on one's face. Imagination, and the tone & feel & spirit of things are aspects of the right brain and are typically associated with "feminine values." If you look closely at the Five Minds and what it would actually mean to develop and apply them universally, as paramount in education and society, you are looking at a profound shift in cultural and commercial values. Disciplined, Respectful, and Ethical minds are all more mature and spiritually engaged than what we find in the current competitive paradigm of big business and the "military-industrial complex." Synthesizing and creative minds are more right brain in nature and are, therefore, considered "feminine" in their values. If you actually get to the heart of what he is saying and listen closely, you hear the voice of an enlightened thinker calling for wisdom. If you are also able to synthesize and extract the essence here, you meet him where he lives, in his deep commitment to human development and the hope of realizing greater human potential through education. I'll leave you with a quotation from the book (sorry, no page number handy): "As far as I can see, short of peace pills or widespread extirpation of those brain nuclei or genes that support aggressive behaviors, the only possible avenue to progress lies in education, broadly conceived."
jari psychology, consciousness, insight, education, future, maturity, human potential, human development, feminine values Comments (0) » |
