The Ethical Vegetarian

If Love was a Spiritual Bond . . .

What Would The World be Like?

If Love was a spiritual bond, what would the world be like? Got chatting with a lady on the bus home this week and she tells me her daughter Alexandra is turning 21 on the weekend and she is an Ethical Vegetarian . Alexandra first of all . . . happy birthday! You are symbolically entering adulthood right at the time when a planetary world you happen to be living on has just reached a humanoid population of seven billion and counting. Dr Quantum is forced to ask the question: if more people followed your example what would the world be like?

If you live to the projected norm for women in Australia, which is now 82.5 years – then as you go through your life your actions will cause many, many people to think; will force them to stop and consider the effects and longer term outcomes of their actions from an ethical standpoint. The ripples you create on a daily basis will become part of the reforming and re-balancing of this planet. Unlike a Hollywood movie or a Fundamentalist Extremist organization you will achieve all of this without guns and without strapping bombs to yourself. You will do it with the most powerful transformative quantum tools available – joy, truth, vision, wisdom, courage, compassion, patience and choice.

This is truly The Dawning of the Age of Humanity and you are one of the quantum butterflies of joyous transformations. Note the use of the plural – TRANSFORMATIONS. The fractal nature of your multidimensional being means there will be many transformations. We must ask ourselves if everyone on this tiny Blue Pearl, this 4th Orb in our solar system, if everyone joined you in your menu selections – what would the world be like?

There is certainly no Quantumized intention here that anyone should feel guilty about their own meat eating. It is fondly imagined that the aim of our evolutionary arc at this time is to become conscious about our choices. Admittedly this may be hard work at times. Look . . .vegetarianism is now included in the program of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. The simple fact of the matter is that a vegetarian diet is more sustainable in purely utilitarian terms. But life’s not just about utilitarianism. These are the days of miracle and wonder to quote poet and musician Paul Simon. I once saw a guy with a whole bunch of Yippies at the Colour Parade in Victoria Park (next to Sydney Uni) with a sign that said Evolve Already! Ahhhhh yes . . .a world in a grain of sand.

Practical transcendence means not getting caught up in the martyr-hood of the particular form which we choose for the expression of our idealism. Judge not lest ye be judged . . . for in a cartoon world such as the one in which we live – all have fallen short of the glory of Superman and Wonder Woman. So Alexandra, one word of free advice . . . if you ever find yourself wanting to attack someone with a pork chop or a sausage because they happen to be eating one then you’ve probably lost the plot. Attack with nothing more deadly than a wet tea-bag and the harshest penalty will probably be a suspended sentence. You must understand that this constitutes excellent advice for the forward journey. Apart from that . . .you go girl! Now if everyone would simply relax, have a nice hot cuppa and teach by example then . . . what would the world be like?

Butterflies of Revolution in the Garden of Chaos

Butterflies of Chaos

Revolutionary butterflies and Self-Organisation through Chaos

On the 17th of December 2010 Mohammed Bouazizi – a jobless university graduate in Tunisia and one of history’s outstanding revolutionary butterflies – precipitated one of the greatest political upheavals the world has seen – the Arab Spring Uprisings. In a stunning contemporary example of Self-Organisation through Chaos the great revolutionary commenced by selling vegetables on the street without a permit. Police seized his cart, he set himself on fire and the next day Saturday December 18th 2010 police were firing teargas into a crowd of a few hundred angry violent youths. Less than a year later the result has been revolution and regime change in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Meanwhile massive unrest sweeps across the Arab world from Gaza to Yemen. Sensing that something extraordinary is happening Saudi Arabia starts offering concessions and reforms to women.

But wait there’s more. We now have the Occupy Wall Street movement in the USA. This was started by a few angry nerds getting together in the New York Financial district to complain about the ugliness and greed of extreme capitalism. I don’t remember a protest in the USA that continued on for several weeks before. This one is being aided by the use of social media. Gerald Celente of the Trend Forecast Institute has been predicting revolution.

In 1976 a young college dropout in the USA by the name of Steve Jobs started a computer company from his moms garage. Along with Steve Wozniak they founded a company called Apple and they quickly bring to the world one of the first ever personal computers. Steve Jobs will go on to revolutionize the world of personal computing, communications and the music industry.

We live today in the garden of revolution and the revolutionary butterflies of chaos seem to be just about everywhere right now. If you look up Apocalypse in the dictionary it comes originally for the Greek word meaning disclosure, which is interesting. The Arab Spring uprisings were apparently fuelled by certain Wiki Leaks disclosures. Rupert Murdoch’s News of The World was closed down amid the stench of corruption and a series of breathtaking disclosures. Apocalypse is now given to mean the great battle between good and evil according to the biblical version.

In Chaos Theory the Butterfly Effect is explained as occurring by the butterfly flapping it’s wings in say Tokyo which causes a hurricane in say Texas. It’s a colourful way of describing the phenomenon. What you don’t hear about too often is the fact that there is a very opportune moment when the butterfly’s wing flapping affect can lead to an extra-ordinary effect.  The opportune moment -the start of the revolution – is the time of instability. Exactly what we are seeing in the world right now. In this case what happens is that a special window opens up in the instability. This is known as an Opportunity Window. It is precisely within this opportunity window that the butterfly’s affect can have the revolutionary effect.

It seems that we can be certain of only one thing right now – the rate of change is speeding up. There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come. The future is emerging -just try stopping it. Ask Mubarek or Gadaffi. While the world’s systems continue to go haywire the revolutionary butterflies will demonstrate ever more self-organisation through Chaos presenting as change agents, entrepreneurs, bizarre coincidence, perfect storms of one type or another and earth shattering disclosures.

Sustainabile Communities & The Fearless Vampire Killers

 

A story on Eco Online caught my eye: Making Communities Viable (July 5, 2010) by Paul Mischefski, commences: The movement towards a return to living in communities is one that is growing in momentum in Australia and world-wide.  This is something that Dr Quantum has been talking up for 30 years plus. It is heartening to see that the notion of sustainable community is gaining greater traction with more and more people. So what is it that makes communities so attractive for those with a sustainability mindset? And what lesson do we have to learn fromVampire movies? There is a lesson by the way . . .

In Chaos Theory AKA The Butterfly Effect – we are given to understand that infinite complexity in nature  is based on what are called simple rules of interaction. The implications of this for sustainable community development folk is that the greatest challenge that players within communities face is themselves and each other. That is because individuals who are moving from the social structures and fabric of society as it has been written to a new and preferred social structure will inevitably bring with them the simple rules of interaction of the old dysfunctionalism. Unless. . . . Unless . . . unless they don’t.

The old social dysfunctionalism is just like the vampire virus that we have seen in movies. Once you get bit . . . you are it. A vampire. And society is the vampire of all vampires sucking the blood and oxygen out of all living things. Our current vampire stalking goal seems to be to reduce the entire Amazon forest to matchsticks. Society is a vampire. We carry the rules around with us.

What happens when you get up close and personal with a whole bunch of people who want to make communities is something to behold. Cinematic vampires and Wild-West gunslingers – they go together like peaches and cream don’t they? You are about to visit the New Age Vampire Wild West Movie. Is this wierding you out too or is it just me? So there you are hangin with the cowboys and cowgirls of the New Age funky Western Vampire civilization.

One thing that starts to happen is that all the reasons that communities will NOT work with those folks will start to come present. There is a very good reason for this. This is what I think of as the Vampire Killers phenomenon. The 1967 film The Fearless Vampires Killers directed by Roman Polanski is a hugely entertaining and rather excellent piece of cinema in which the vampire killers (Polasnki and his assistant) venture into the realm of the vampire castle to defeat the darkness. They do succeed in driving stakes through Dracula’s heart while he is sleeping in his silk lined coffin, however the film ends on a deeply philosophical note.

Just when the fearless vampire killers are making good their escape from the Vampire castle . . .one of the vampires who has stowed away in back of the sleigh, rears up and is about to put the bite on the slayers. . .freeze frame. So there it is you see. The simple rule of interaction for vampires is that if you get fanged, you BECOME a vampire yourself. The biggest problem with that is not you personally per se . . it is that you are now a carrier, capable of infecting the rest of society. Well . . .here’s the thing. We have been living on the vampirized blood of forests of trees, oceans of fish, herds of livestock and vast colonies of the disadvantaged. Bring up the curtain on an Eco Community somewhere on the Northern Coast of NSW or South Eastern Queensland. It’s time for your favourite half hour sitcom. The New-Age Vampire Wild-West half hour. What’s a catchy title? New FANGled Reality Gunslingers? Cowboy-Vampires of the New Age? I know I’m getting close.

In his excellent book Evolution’s Edge, Graeme Taylor argues that it is not so much the technologies that need to change – though that is part of the puzzle – as much as it is the social patterns. Dr Quantum interprets this to mean the simple rules of interaction, on a personal and interpersonal level. It sounds easy but it’s not. As Australian Futurist Peter Ellyard says The soft stuff is the hard stuff. What is needed are a variety of personal. group and socially transormative skills, resources, workshops, courses and media that enable people to cure themselves of the Cowboy-Vampire Virus. This is a lifetime’s journey, and one that is going to be thoroughly worthwhile. As my friends will not tire of reminding me  . . .many have embarked on the journey already and continue the journey. But Dr Q would contend that a weekend workshop or a 10 day Buddhist meditation retreat while thoroughly noble and commendable are just not enough. The communities themselves nee to become sort of workshop incubators in themselves.

Ok so we now have Vampires and Cowboys as metaphores. Let’s mix this up even more. French Philosopher and humanist Andre Gide famously said

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

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I feel as if I am going into the Hunt for Red October Movie with Sean Connery. Is the New Age Community anywhere around here?