Archives: November 2008
Sat Nov 08, 2008
A week in the life...
We started the week with student led learning. We talked about inner sustainability and how we sustain ourselves emotionally, socially, spiritually as important factors to our overall sustainability. It brought up a lot of interesting ideas of how sustainability is usually, in my experience at least, seen through the environmental eye and there are these other aspects that are just as important and that we've been talking about all this semester. How do we start to think about taking that home? I talked about my support networks outside of Findhorn and that our FCS group can still be one of those networks after we leave here. It was a lively and thoughtful conversation and we were all engaged and fully present.
In WorldCon this week we looked at Quantum Physics through the eye of What the Bleep do we Know? and Holistic and Reductionist Science with a guest speaker. The movie was fascinating and raised a lot of questions for me about my perception of the world and truth. I want to watch it again as there was a lot I didn't understand. The next day our class was a bit difficult for me because I felt we were being thrown so much information and no time to even think about it. It was partly the teacher and partly the morning and partly ourselves. I took notes and as I feel somewhat saturated overall at this point in the semester, I hope to take a few weeks after I get back and just process and go through and write down my thoughts and feelings and questions and try to delve deeper into what right now feels like too much to process. The "Human Challenge of Sustainability" is a lot to tackle in one semester. The program does a great job but it's also SO MUCH. So I write it down know in the hopes of gaining new insights later.
After a short reflection session with Deborah on Wednesday where we were able to voice some of our concerns and loves of the program in general and our classes, we had the rest of the day to ourselves. I had my first interview for my Group Dynamics project, and then worked on getting as much done as I could in the free time.
Thursday was a day full of Applied Sustainability. We talked about eco-villages and the issues that surround them and then did a short design exercise in dealing with 4 specific issues. I worked with social and economic inclusion. My experience of ecovillages has been within the industrial world and mostly contains upper-middle class white people. These are the people who can afford the programs and thus are the people to cluster to these organizations. We looked at how to involve more diversity of age, ability and social and economic status. The group was fairly scattered and we came up with a lot of good ideas but didn't synthesize them all together. I am still thinking about this issue and want to try to address it and look at it in this context.
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Fri Nov 07, 2008
A Definition of Sustainability
What is sustainability? This question has followed me since it was asked at the beginning of class. I thought of it at the time in broad sweeping terms: balance, change, adaptability, curving, circular as opposed to linear paths, etc. My group had a very hard time defining it and I held a strong awareness of human and non-human centered thinking. I think a lot about the separation of humans and nature and how we see ourselves outside of that lens. It is true what Janine Benyus said: everything humans make is natural, because we are part of the natural world. The question is how well these things are adapted. When we make our homes out of toxic materials, are we supporting life or depleting it? And even in holding the awareness of humans as part of the natural world, it is near impossible not to look through the lens of human experience to look at how the overall environment and habitats of the world are being affected. We are affecting the world around us, and there is no way to stop that. We are intrinsically connected to nature. It’s not an issue of stopping or even reversing our effect, it’s about changing it in a way that supports life, our own and the lives of other life forms on the Earth. I still struggle with the definition of sustainability. I just looked it up in the dictionary to jumpstart my own concepts. The dictionary told me: “capable of being continued with minimal long-term effect on the environment.” Here “the environment” can again be seen as an entity disconnected from human life. But the idea is still there. So maybe….the ability to sustain life? That’s really using the word to define the word, and I can use synonyms to rewrite it, but at its simplest form, I think that is a large part of it. The Earth, as a living being, wants to support its own life. The beings that live on the Earth are some of the manifestations of that life. The rotation of the earth and its various paths through the universe (i.e. around the sun, in the galaxy), create motion, which creates weather and so on that allows life to flourish on this planet. And the climate does change, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing for the Earth. In fact, it could be a really good thing. But with the evidence that is being presented, it is bad for us. So what does sustainability mean to the human race? Is it to find the best way to keep us alive? It is an egocentric place to start, but a valid one. Keeping yourself, or your species alive seems to be at the center of all life’s focus. Other species don’t think about this, they just do it. They make decisions that support their own survival, like trees growing towards light, animals choosing where and when to look for their food, etc. But as far as we know, humans are the only animal that can reflect on this process, and potentially the only animal that can look beyond the survival of itself. We blame the decline of the environment entirely on ourselves, or we deny that we have any involvement. Both scenarios are not full. We are involved. It’s our home. And although we have had a huge effect on the progression of the Earth’s conditions, there are larger forces at work as well. The Earth does have its own cycle where it does get hotter than it is now, and much cooler as well. 90% of the planet has gone extinct before, and from the 10% remaining, new life has generated and evolved and flourished.
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Tue Nov 04, 2008
A week of Creative Expression
this past week was full of classes as normal, lots of schoolwork and a couple more performances in the hall. We looked at Spiral Dynamics on Tuesday, which is a model of looking at the world, just like everything else we've studied. This model, which is only a model, says that we tend to go between two places. The "I" focused place and the "we" focused place.
Every time we swing from one to another we are including our knowledge from the earlier experiences. Thus we include and transcend. Each of our sessions here feels like such a brief time to explore each subject. They are all years of study within themselves! At this point I feel like I"m hearing what the speakers have to say and look for resources to look further if I'm interested, or to make sense of it for myself.
Most of the rest of the week was devoted to Creativity. We had two studio art sessions with a woman named Diane Main. We each created a project around something of ourselves that we want to let go of. My piece was a look at allowing myself to make mistakes and finding the demons that hold me back from exploring further. I hold a lot of judgment of myself, that I'm not talented enough or have enough knowledge, but i do. I assume that other people know better and sometimes they do but sometimes I do.
I also made a second piece that was playful, coming out of the little brown and purple hanging creatures on the piece above. It was larger and just fun. Those beings were squiggles on my page that I brought to life and 3Dness by cutting them out and hanging them up.
Our other session was clowning with Leslie Quilty. It was nothing like any other clowning I've done. My experiences were all through Circus Camp as a kid and there was a very specific idea of what a clown was. Leslie did not give us any definition and we didn't dress up in overlarge shoes and red noses. We talked about our "bigness," moved around the space and created characters around a time that we have felt big. We did get to dress up but found our own costumes. It was exciting and I think brought out the play and lightness in me that I've been lacking a bit. I relaxed and just had fun. No worry about perceptions or how well I perform, but just fun and games. It's a great tool to be able to bring in joy and lightness into serious situations.
We did have Applied Sustainability this week and we watched a movie called 'Power of Community: How Cuba survived Peak Oil.' I recommend this to anyone who is curious about how Peak Oil will affect us. Cuba was forced into Peak Oil by the collapse of the Soviet Union. They got more than half of their oil, heavily subsidized by the Soviet Union. When it fell, they were told they had 6 months of oil left and then would be cut off. The result of this now is local organic gardening and a coming together of community to create the quality of life that they strive for.
We also worked on our Permaculture project on the land next to the guest bungalow Westwood. There are now 5 garden beds ready for planting. It's looking completely transformed.
I went to two performances this week in the Hall. Wednesday night was Kathakali from South West India and Friday night was Shooglenifty, a Scottish band that I would describe as Celtic Rock/Scottish Bluegrass.
Kathakali is a highly stylized form of theatre involving mudras(a type of Indian sign language--this is highly spiritual in that tradition), miming and elaborate costumes and drumming. The told an easternized version of Snow White. The story was told to us beforehand, as the narration was not in English. As a response to it for class I am making a Kathakali puppet.
Shooglenifty was wonderful. Energetic, fun, exciting. I had a blast. I danced for most of it and the dance floor was crowded. I wished for so many people during the show that would have loved listening to and dancing to it. Check them out. Seriously.
Friday was also Samhain/Halloween. We did a haunted house in the Youth Project(YP) building for the kids and then there was a special dinner and part in the CC. I dressed up as Ezma from The Emperor's New Groove although most people thought I was just dressed up, as it looked like something someone from Findhorn would wear.
This coming Wednesday is Guy Fawkes Day and we'll be celebrating with a bonfire at the park, but Saturday was the big celebration in Forres. The Fire was huge and there was music and fireworks and carnival rides.
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A week in the life...
We started the week with student led learning. We talked about inner sustainability and how we sustain ourselves emotionally, socially, spiritually as important factors to our overall sustainability. It brought up a lot of interesting ideas of how sustainability is usually, in my experience at least, seen through the environmental eye and there are these other aspects that are just as important and that we've been talking about all this semester. How do we start to think about taking that home? I talked about my support networks outside of Findhorn and that our FCS group can still be one of those networks after we leave here. It was a lively and thoughtful conversation and we were all engaged and fully present.
In WorldCon this week we looked at Quantum Physics through the eye of What the Bleep do we Know? and Holistic and Reductionist Science with a guest speaker. The movie was fascinating and raised a lot of questions for me about my perception of the world and truth. I want to watch it again as there was a lot I didn't understand. The next day our class was a bit difficult for me because I felt we were being thrown so much information and no time to even think about it. It was partly the teacher and partly the morning and partly ourselves. I took notes and as I feel somewhat saturated overall at this point in the semester, I hope to take a few weeks after I get back and just process and go through and write down my thoughts and feelings and questions and try to delve deeper into what right now feels like too much to process. The "Human Challenge of Sustainability" is a lot to tackle in one semester. The program does a great job but it's also SO MUCH. So I write it down know in the hopes of gaining new insights later.
After a short reflection session with Deborah on Wednesday where we were able to voice some of our concerns and loves of the program in general and our classes, we had the rest of the day to ourselves. I had my first interview for my Group Dynamics project, and then worked on getting as much done as I could in the free time.
Thursday was a day full of Applied Sustainability. We talked about eco-villages and the issues that surround them and then did a short design exercise in dealing with 4 specific issues. I worked with social and economic inclusion. My experience of ecovillages has been within the industrial world and mostly contains upper-middle class white people. These are the people who can afford the programs and thus are the people to cluster to these organizations. We looked at how to involve more diversity of age, ability and social and economic status. The group was fairly scattered and we came up with a lot of good ideas but didn't synthesize them all together. I am still thinking about this issue and want to try to address it and look at it in this context.
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A Definition of Sustainability
What is sustainability? This question has followed me since it was asked at the beginning of class. I thought of it at the time in broad sweeping terms: balance, change, adaptability, curving, circular as opposed to linear paths, etc. My group had a very hard time defining it and I held a strong awareness of human and non-human centered thinking. I think a lot about the separation of humans and nature and how we see ourselves outside of that lens. It is true what Janine Benyus said: everything humans make is natural, because we are part of the natural world. The question is how well these things are adapted. When we make our homes out of toxic materials, are we supporting life or depleting it? And even in holding the awareness of humans as part of the natural world, it is near impossible not to look through the lens of human experience to look at how the overall environment and habitats of the world are being affected. We are affecting the world around us, and there is no way to stop that. We are intrinsically connected to nature. It’s not an issue of stopping or even reversing our effect, it’s about changing it in a way that supports life, our own and the lives of other life forms on the Earth. I still struggle with the definition of sustainability. I just looked it up in the dictionary to jumpstart my own concepts. The dictionary told me: “capable of being continued with minimal long-term effect on the environment.” Here “the environment” can again be seen as an entity disconnected from human life. But the idea is still there. So maybe….the ability to sustain life? That’s really using the word to define the word, and I can use synonyms to rewrite it, but at its simplest form, I think that is a large part of it. The Earth, as a living being, wants to support its own life. The beings that live on the Earth are some of the manifestations of that life. The rotation of the earth and its various paths through the universe (i.e. around the sun, in the galaxy), create motion, which creates weather and so on that allows life to flourish on this planet. And the climate does change, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing for the Earth. In fact, it could be a really good thing. But with the evidence that is being presented, it is bad for us. So what does sustainability mean to the human race? Is it to find the best way to keep us alive? It is an egocentric place to start, but a valid one. Keeping yourself, or your species alive seems to be at the center of all life’s focus. Other species don’t think about this, they just do it. They make decisions that support their own survival, like trees growing towards light, animals choosing where and when to look for their food, etc. But as far as we know, humans are the only animal that can reflect on this process, and potentially the only animal that can look beyond the survival of itself. We blame the decline of the environment entirely on ourselves, or we deny that we have any involvement. Both scenarios are not full. We are involved. It’s our home. And although we have had a huge effect on the progression of the Earth’s conditions, there are larger forces at work as well. The Earth does have its own cycle where it does get hotter than it is now, and much cooler as well. 90% of the planet has gone extinct before, and from the 10% remaining, new life has generated and evolved and flourished.
[0] comments (487 views) | [0] Trackbacks [0] Pingbacks
A week of Creative Expression
this past week was full of classes as normal, lots of schoolwork and a couple more performances in the hall. We looked at Spiral Dynamics on Tuesday, which is a model of looking at the world, just like everything else we've studied. This model, which is only a model, says that we tend to go between two places. The "I" focused place and the "we" focused place.
Every time we swing from one to another we are including our knowledge from the earlier experiences. Thus we include and transcend. Each of our sessions here feels like such a brief time to explore each subject. They are all years of study within themselves! At this point I feel like I"m hearing what the speakers have to say and look for resources to look further if I'm interested, or to make sense of it for myself.
Most of the rest of the week was devoted to Creativity. We had two studio art sessions with a woman named Diane Main. We each created a project around something of ourselves that we want to let go of. My piece was a look at allowing myself to make mistakes and finding the demons that hold me back from exploring further. I hold a lot of judgment of myself, that I'm not talented enough or have enough knowledge, but i do. I assume that other people know better and sometimes they do but sometimes I do.
I also made a second piece that was playful, coming out of the little brown and purple hanging creatures on the piece above. It was larger and just fun. Those beings were squiggles on my page that I brought to life and 3Dness by cutting them out and hanging them up.
Our other session was clowning with Leslie Quilty. It was nothing like any other clowning I've done. My experiences were all through Circus Camp as a kid and there was a very specific idea of what a clown was. Leslie did not give us any definition and we didn't dress up in overlarge shoes and red noses. We talked about our "bigness," moved around the space and created characters around a time that we have felt big. We did get to dress up but found our own costumes. It was exciting and I think brought out the play and lightness in me that I've been lacking a bit. I relaxed and just had fun. No worry about perceptions or how well I perform, but just fun and games. It's a great tool to be able to bring in joy and lightness into serious situations.
We did have Applied Sustainability this week and we watched a movie called 'Power of Community: How Cuba survived Peak Oil.' I recommend this to anyone who is curious about how Peak Oil will affect us. Cuba was forced into Peak Oil by the collapse of the Soviet Union. They got more than half of their oil, heavily subsidized by the Soviet Union. When it fell, they were told they had 6 months of oil left and then would be cut off. The result of this now is local organic gardening and a coming together of community to create the quality of life that they strive for.
We also worked on our Permaculture project on the land next to the guest bungalow Westwood. There are now 5 garden beds ready for planting. It's looking completely transformed.
I went to two performances this week in the Hall. Wednesday night was Kathakali from South West India and Friday night was Shooglenifty, a Scottish band that I would describe as Celtic Rock/Scottish Bluegrass.
Kathakali is a highly stylized form of theatre involving mudras(a type of Indian sign language--this is highly spiritual in that tradition), miming and elaborate costumes and drumming. The told an easternized version of Snow White. The story was told to us beforehand, as the narration was not in English. As a response to it for class I am making a Kathakali puppet.
Shooglenifty was wonderful. Energetic, fun, exciting. I had a blast. I danced for most of it and the dance floor was crowded. I wished for so many people during the show that would have loved listening to and dancing to it. Check them out. Seriously.
Friday was also Samhain/Halloween. We did a haunted house in the Youth Project(YP) building for the kids and then there was a special dinner and part in the CC. I dressed up as Ezma from The Emperor's New Groove although most people thought I was just dressed up, as it looked like something someone from Findhorn would wear.
This coming Wednesday is Guy Fawkes Day and we'll be celebrating with a bonfire at the park, but Saturday was the big celebration in Forres. The Fire was huge and there was music and fireworks and carnival rides.
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