Monday, March 23, 2020
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Genius on a Fool's Errand: Elon Musk's Mission to Mars
Dune read this to me the other night and I thought....wow, someone needed to say this. Someone needed to point out that we are looking outward at a time when we need to be examining ourselves. Without saying any more, here is Dune's take on Elon Musk's mission to Mars.
Genius on a Fool's Errand: Elon Musk's Mission to Mars
By Dune Thomas
Imagine, life on Mars. What would this look like? If you really peer into it, it's about as depressing as you can fathom. To escape the extreme temperatures and reduce the constant exposure to dangerous levels of radiation, you'd spend your entire life there locked indoors.
The desire to make life happen outside of earth is fine-- but it is not much different than trying to get a human heart to keep living outside the body... to what end? A lung or kidney or heart suspended in some plastic box of fluid and electrodes... as if the rest of the body were just extra parts. It's a testament to the disconnect between us and reality that we so easily think of ourselves as so separate from the Earth.
So much genius and talent directed towards a goal that, frankly, appears as an abject denial of what is most human. By all means, play with your billion dollar toys. But don't do it when your house is burning down. The world needs us to repair the damage we have done to the environment. Instead, we look to some other rock in space, as if the Earth were no more than a lifeless object we can discard in exchange for another lifeless object. This mentality is the poison. Every world we inhabit will become lifeless and dead so long as we continue this narcissistic fascination with our own cleverness.
Getting someone to Mars isn't going to solve shit. The destruction of our planet is not the result of too little technology. The problem is a psychological, social one. Taking humanity to Mars isn't going to solve anything-- you're not escaping your problems or the challenges of humanity, you're exporting them to Mars!
Please: STOP. Turn around. Your fixation to escape this world and discover another is a result of your refusal to travel to the one place that matters: inward. It is the last place most people ever look or want to go. But until we go there, we will meet this life with dissatisfaction. We will treat the Earth like a dead, disconnected, empty resource we can take from in order to distract ourselves from the dead, disconnected, empty sense of self we identify with. Please, stop. Look closer.
You're not the dead, lifeless matter that's leftover when your body sputters away its final breath. You're the animating force that made it get up and dance in the first place. And it doesn't end at your skin. It permeates everything, knows no boundaries, and sets every spinning planet and exploding star into motion. When you spend all your time looking outward, and none of it looking inward, you cannot recognize that they are the same thing. So hold still and discover yourself. Discover what is more fundamental than the endless stream of input rushing in through your 5 senses. Behind it all is the vast deep of consciousness, taking in every experience in unwavering silence. Make contact with the heart and soul of your existence.
Before you seek to colonize new worlds, inhabit the one you're already on.
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Was this the turning point when presidential politics took a weird turn, leading us to Donald Trump?
There were several driving forces that got Chazen to write the book. The first was disappointment and anger after reading the November, 2018 issue of The Atlantic where James Fallows wrote an article titled “Was Gary Hart Set Up?” He would rediscover the painful fact that he had discovered back in 1988 -- that a career of study, good ideas and service can be nullified by one scandalous story. Making it worse was the idea that it was a setup.
The second thing was that there was another side to this story that was not being told -- that there is a lot of activity beneath the surface that no one knows about -- ideas, policies, thinkers, idealists -- people who make great sacrifices on behalf of someone they believe in and that there are solutions that never see the light of day because of dirty and disgusting political practices.
Lastly, there was a second part to Gary Hart’s campaign after his six month break from the campaign trail that is rarely if ever documented - not mentioned in Matt Bai’s book All the Truth is Out and not portrayed in the movie The Front Runner, starring Hugh Jackman.
One of the last of the true intellectuals to run for President, a scholar who understood and often quoted the Founding Fathers, Hart toured the country, rolled up his sleeves and gave lectures across the country. Chazen wanted to write a story that recaptured the spirit and imagination of this campaign - something that would also push ideas and strategies into the present.
Lee Chazen is an educator and content developer who does consulting work under the name GliderCell. A former high school social studies teacher, Lee’s primary focus is in applying his research in self-organizing systems to education, politics and society. He is also a musician and Young Artist competition winner (on French Horn), founder of Global Challenge (a game-based social studies project) and HikeStorming - a method for getting people to think and brainstorm better through hiking.
Outside Chance is available on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/2RyIbKi and the Google Play Store: http://bit.ly/37DN5va
If you would like more information about Outside Chance, or to schedule an interview or presentation, please contact Lee at lee@glidercell.com.
Background Information and Links
Website https://www.glidercell.com/
*Amazon reviewer
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