Collapse: How Socities Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

(look for the following segments of the film from the same user at the end of each segment)

Highly recommended reading:

The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter 

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond 

Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects by Dmitry Orlov 

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change and other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by James Howard Kunstler 

Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse by Carolyn Baker 

Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil by Michael C. Ruppert 

See also:



And below is a great website that sums up our predicament and offers invaluable information on how to extricate ourselves from it, to survive the bursting of the "Human Population Bubble" or what has been referred to within the Natural Sciences as a "Die Off", what usually occurs after an explosion of any population that exceeds the carrying capacity of its environment: 

http://dieoff.org/

Mike Ruppert and Charles Eisenstein discuss Everything Transition

And I mean everything: psychology, spirituality, Permaculture, economics, addiction etc. This podcast is Highly Recommended.



Download (right click, save as) 

More 'Lifeboat Hour' Episodes

Mike Ruppert-'The Birth of Post-Petroleum Human'




BTW, I have attended a 6 week Permaculture Course with Aprovecho and would love to help with consulting and design if anyone is interested. 

Because of my extensive experience with the Army, I can also consult on and provide security for intentional communities who are interested in zombie proofing their "Lifeboat".

More on Permaculture from one of its co-founders, David Holmgren here.

I love this adage "Permaculture is a revolution disguised as organic farming".

See Also:

http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/03/911-insider-trading-and-cia.html

http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2011/10/peak-oil-debt-and-concentration-of.html

http://collapsenet.com/

http://charleseisenstein.net/

Gil Scot-Heron 'Work For Peace"

And now for some musical relief....Happy Memorial Day. 




If you like Gil Scot Heron check out what could be considered his spiritual successor, Boots Riley of "The Coup"

When the Titanic initially struck an iceberg, as with the recent Italian cruise-liner to run aground, the crew told everyone on board that the jarring noise was "engine trouble". It was only when it was glaringly obvious that the ship was sinking did the crew sound the alarm. Well something similar is happening on board 'Spaceship Earth', we're capsized and rapidly taking on water while the crew is reassuring us that an economic recovery, "Green Shoots" are visible, that the unemployment figure is really under 10% when in reality a quarter of all able bodied Americans (including this author) are out of work and being pushed off their 99 weeks into non-person hood (this author is already a non-person, is ineligible for and not collecting unemployment insurance), and Corporate America is gearing up to do battle, pulling out all the stops -- thanks to the Citizens United ruling in favor of Corporate Personhood -- pitting Wall Street's representative: Barrack "Drone Strike" Obama against Mitt "Corporate Fiefdom" Romney for title of Arch-Moron.

A friend recently notified me of the following article, and I include it here lest visitors to this blog think I am a fear-mongering, "conspiracy theorist". I have done all I can to shed light on this issue, if you think this is just hysteria then as the old saying goes "you can lead a horse to water...", I am already in the planning stages of relocating south of the border, until now I have contemplated the move for purely political reasons. As expat Morris Berman elucidates here, America has become a theme park, with its citizenry trapped in a virtual realm of Facebook, American Idol, NASCAR, NFL, Vampires, Zombies, Superheroes, Disneyland and Fox News. Truly a Brave New World, America's descent into Totalitarianism was not accomplished by way of a charismatic leader, a Mao Tse-Tung or Joseph Stalin, Inverted Totalitarianism, as defined by Sheldon Wolin here, "finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state".

I was hopeful that, by joining a growing chorus of courageous social critics, journalists and scientists of every stripe that maybe, just maybe, I could help jog our collective conscience, averting the worst effects of our pending ecological and social nightmare, but I fear that the plan of "The Elites" to chemically poison "The Masses" with Sodium Fluoride and Chemtrails and all manner of chemical warfare intentionally placed in the environment for the purpose of pacification, coupled with sophisticated distractions, is proving to be too much of a barrier to collectively responding in any meaningful way to the crises that threaten not only our autonomy but our continued survival.

No you say? "Why I have been drinking Sodium Fluoride all my life and I consider myself to be quite intelligent!"

Oh really? I don't believe the destruction of one's home in the pursuit of ego fortification, the accumulation of perceived material wealth, hedonism nor the enslavement of one's brother and oneself to that end is intelligent behavior.

With cognitive impairment, from a subjective perspective, those impaired are unaware of their diminished cognitive capacity. Our collective mythos abounds with accounts of people exhibiting super-human abilities: telepathy, remote viewing, telekinesis even, what do you think the limits of the Human mind are? Well, if you think this is just nonsense then please explain that to the scientists who conducted a multitude of empirical studies confirming the existence of extrasensory phenomena at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) and elsewhere, to say nothing of government sponsored programs like the Stargate Project.

Chew on this, ~15 Billion Earth Years Ago there was the Big Bang, where everything in the Universe, which is expanding (what is it expanding into by the way?), and I am talking an estimated 500 Billion Galaxies worth of Mass and Energy, (just try to visualize our own solar system for a moment, much less the Galaxy in which it resides, let alone 500 Billion), was confined to the area of a pin-head. And from what we know now of Quantum Entanglement, that photons exhibit instantaneous communication with each other after being split in a laboratory, irrespective of distance to each other, in violation of Einstein's Theory of Relativity (that nothing travels faster than the speed of light), and that 95% of the Universe is comprised of something we call "Dark Matter" but do not understand, is it a stretch to consider the possibility that everything is interconnected? Would it be a further stretch to conclude that the many times you have had a psychic experience but rationalized it away (again, a further testament of successful programming on part of "The Elites" who want you to remain disempowered), say for example, the thought of someone, totally random and out of the blue, a moment before your phone rings and they are on the other end of the line would be an example of this interconnection, this Entanglement?

I am not a believer in this ability through intellectual inquiry, but through direct experience, so there is no way I am moving on the subject.

I will say this, and this is a historical fact, the Nazi's did put Sodium Fluoride into the drinking water of the Jewish captives to keep then docile. I can hear it already, "this is conspiracy theory nonsense, I am wasting time with this, I must return to change the order of my pictures on Facebook!"

Meanwhile, Rome burns...

(FYI, Reverse Osmosis will remove the Sodium Fluoride, normal carbon based water filters will not, and most bottled water is from municipal sources and has it)


More on this issue here: http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/02/numbing-out-of-america-public-apathy.html


Mass Extinction or (r)Evolution of Consciousness?....Both? 


Onto the article:


Source: http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/u-s-army-general-the-whole-northern-hemisphere-is-at-risk-of-becoming-largely-uninhabitable_05252012

U.S. Army General: The Whole Northern Hemisphere is at Risk of Becoming Largely Uninhabitable

Mac Slavo May 25th, 2012 SHTFplan.com

You may have entertained the idea of an improbable civilization ending events such as a ‘global killer’ asteroid, earth crust displacement or massive solar storms, but what if there existed a situation right now that was so serious that it literally threatened our very existence?

According to a host of scientists, nuclear experts and researchers, were are facing exactly such a scenario – and current efforts may not be able to stop it.

When the Fukushima nuclear plants sustained structural damage and a catastrophic failure of their spent fuel cooling systems in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami in 2011, it left the government of Japan, Tokyo Power and nuclear regulatory agencies around the world powerless to contain the release of deadly radiation. A year on, the battle for control of Fukushima continues to no avail.

It’s estimated that tens of thousands of people in Japan and the whole of North America have been affected, with reports indicating that children in Japan and the U.S. are already being born with birth defects, as well as thousands who have already succumbed to radiation related illness. As we initially followed the breaking news during the first thirty days of the accident, we suggested the Fukushima disaster would be worse than Chernobyl. Not even we could have imagined howmuch worse it would be.

If current estimates are correct, Fukushima has already released as much radiation into the atmosphere and Pacific Ocean as Chernobyl, and the potential for a disaster at least ten times worse is highly probable in the event of another earthquake or accident that leads to a collapse of the cooling structures which are above ground and have already suffered significant damage.

According to U.S. Army General Albert N. Stubblebine (ret.) of the Natural Solutions Foundation, the situation is extremely serious and poses a significant danger to our entire civilization. Since TEPCO and the Japanese government have refused the entombment option (as the Russians did with Chernobyl) the world is at the mercy of nature. A mistake here would cause the deaths of tens of millions of people across the globe.

If there ever existed a threat that could cause the end of the world as we know it, it’s the ongoing and unresolved nuclear saga in Japan:

When the highly radioactive Spent Fuel Rods are exposed to air, there will be massive explosions releasing many times the amount or radiation released thus far. Bizarrely, they are stored three stories above ground in open concrete storage pools. Whether through evaporation of the water in the pools, or due to the inevitable further collapse of the structure, there is a severe risk. United States public health authorities agree that tens of thousands of North Americans have already died from the Fukushima calamity. When the final cataclysm occurs, sooner rather than later, the whole Northern Hemisphere is at risk of becoming largely uninhabitable.
…
Fact. On March 11, 2011, Fukushima Daichi nuclear power station with six nuclear reactors suffered cataclysmic damage that some believe was a man made event,and the resulting Tsunami. Hydrogen explosions…at least one nuclear explosion… and then subsequent deterioration of the visible plants at five of those reactors have created a threat situation unparalleled in human history.
Fact. Despite denial and cover-up, the reality has emerged, that enormous amounts of radioactive material has been spewing into the atmosphere, polluting the groundwater, and the food of Japan, and entering by the tens of millions of gallons the waters of the Pacific.
…
There’s no way to sugarcoat these facts. Denying them, blocking them out, pretending that they are not real is of no help to you and your family, and it leaves you totally unprepared for a danger that the Natural Solutions Foundation has been warning about since the first day. As of three weeks ago the levels of radiation inside of the spent fuel pools of unit no. 2 are too high to measure. Get that… too high to measure. And, the water there is evaporating, meaning that heat and radiation could easily build to very high levels.
…
Very simply put, if this much Cesium 137 is released, it will destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugulistic debate over nuclear power plants.
This is an issue of human survival.

We can play the denial game all day long and pretend that, because the mainstream media is not reporting on it, there is no threat, but the facts are quite clear.

This is, without a doubt, the most immediate threat faced by the world. It’s so serious, in fact, that the Japanese government has considered and put into place evacuation plans for the whole of Tokyo – some 40 million people. Reports are also emerging that suggest a collapse of the spent fuel pools would be so serious that the entire country of Japan may have to be evacuated. The entire country – that’s 125 million refugees that will cause an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.

Before you argue that these are the ravings of just alternative media conspiracy theorists and fearmongers, consider the assessment put forth by Robert Alvarez , a senior policy adviser to the Secretary for National Security and the Environment for the US Department of Energy:

The No. 4 pool is about 100 feet above ground, is structurally damaged and is exposed to the open elements. If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.
The infrastructure to safely remove this material was destroyed as it was at the other three reactors.  Spent reactor fuel cannot be simply lifted into the air by a crane as if it were routine cargo.  In order to prevent severe radiation exposures, fires and possible explosions, it must be transferred at all times in water and heavily shielded structures into dry casks.. As this has never been done before, the removal of the spent fuel from the pools at the damaged Fukushima-Dai-Ichi reactors will require a major and time-consuming re-construction effort and will be charting in unknown waters.
…
The total spent reactor fuel inventory at the Fukushima-Daichi site contains nearly half of  the total amount of Cs-137 estimated by the NCRP to have been released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl, and world-wide reprocessing plants (~270 million curies or ~9.9 E+18 Becquerel).
It is important for the public to understand that reactors that have been operating for decades, such as those at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site, have generated some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet.

Regulatory agencies all over the world are warning of the potentiality of a further degradation of the Fukushima nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools, and the subsequent nuclear fallout that would follow.

If these reactors go – and they could at any moment for any number of reasons – we’re looking at a situation for which you simply cannot stock enough food, or water, or supplies. Radiation would spread across the entire northern hemisphere and would be impossible to contain.

While we’ve argued in the past that there is no place we’d rather be than in the United States of America in the event of a socio-economic collapse or global conflict, if these spent fuel pools collapse, then an international exit strategy may be the only option.

Because details are sparse and research limited, it is difficult to predict what nuclear fall out from Japan may look like. The following map may be of some help, as it details the estimated fallout pattern resulting from a nuclear war between Russia and the United States. You’ll note that, while most of the world would be irradiated, the southern hemisphere would be your best bet to avoid the brunt of it:

(via Where Do I Go If Fukushima Blows?)

Beachfront property in Antarctica sounds quite appealing right about now.

The splitting of the atom changed everything, save Man's mode of thinking - Albert Einstein 

Mike Ruppert and Peter Joseph Discuss the Mutual Relationship Between Collapse and Collective Consciousness

Occasionally, when I am short on alternative media podcast material I visit the mainstream radio stations to see what kind of nonsense they are communicating to those held in captivity within the mass-reservations of the Anglo-Sphere.

While the crisis at Fukushima is shaping up to be a life threatening Mass Extinction catalyzing event, with geo-physicists furnishing probabilistic data that there is a 70% chance of a 7.0 or greater magnitude earthquake there either this year or the next, with Reactor Dai-Chi (#4) crippled-a new crack in the foundation discovered as of yesterday-and filled with enough spent fuel rods to potentially volatilize more cesium and plutonium than has been released by ALL nuclear detonations to date, by 800%, which will ascend to the Jet Stream and find its way to the dinner plates and bodies of all inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere within a few weeks time, it is a strange twist of cosmic humor that the BBC, with nary a word at all about this, chooses to highlight the dismay of some South African President at some painting of him with its genitals painted over, or NPR choosing to continue to make the revelations of U.S. Secret Service personnel caught with prostitutes the main headlines. This is what passes for 'news' from liberal branded media outlets.

Anyway, onto the nature of the crises and their relationship with consciousness. I happened to download and listen to the following discussion between Zeitgeist film series director Peter Joseph and L.A. Narcotics Police Detective turned whistleblower and author of Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil  Michael Ruppert the evening after posting the preceding blog-post and found it to be extremely relevant to the discussion of the intersection between Human behavior and the ever increasing situational dynamism of a planet in peril.

This pod-cast is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. 


 
Download (right click, 'save as')

Zeitgeist


Collapse 


more:
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

http://collapsenet.com/

See also: 
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/05/another-mumford-reading-excerpt.html

http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/02/new-bombs-and-war-crimes-in-fallujah.html

It's Wrong to Wreck the World: Climate Change and Our Moral Obligation to the Future

Alex Smith, the host of the excellent podcast Radio Eco-Shock says this is among his top three favorite pod-casts of 2012 and I have to agree. See for yourself, some of themes and issues explored, pertaining to consciousness, existentialism, social equality and ecological sustainability are uncannily resonant with those put forth here on my blog, adding further credence, I believe, to the Jungian concept of the Collective Unconscious.

I want to take the opportunity here to clarify something. In the pod-cast, Kathleen Dean Moore defines integrity as the alignment of action with one's values. If you have read my brief and wholly inadequate intro to the right you may get the feeling that I am a victim of circumstance, living the way that I do.

I separated the U.S. Army under Honorable conditions (if that means anything, no seriously) I have a college degree (if that means anything, no seriously), and am of relatively sound physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual health (no anti-depressants or sodium fluoride here, no seriously). I probably could get a job as a wage slave, but thanks to Reagan Era socio-economic reforms (Survival of the Fittest!), I would still have to continue to live as a homeless person, without health care, and as a wage slave would not have the time nor the energy to maintain any semblance of physical and intellectual health. I would rather live as an autonomous, healthy, informed and hence empowered being than a mindless wage slave, how about you?

The truth is that I refuse to participate with a system that benefits an extreme minority of Humanity, that creates massive suffering so that they may live in a virtual utopia, right up to the point that they destroy all life on Earth. This system is failing, no system of such vast inequality and flagrant suicidal tendencies endures for very long. It has been pointed out, poignantly so, that the level of inequality that currently exists in the American Empire exceeds that of the Roman Empire. A true feat indeed, when one considers the technological chasm from then to now, which, one would assume, entail a commensurate increase in overall well being and along with this, social evolution, bringing with it an alleviation of poverty and inequality. It is also a testament to the success of sophisticated cultural programming that a majority of the citizens within the American Empire continue to believe that they are truly free and have relative power to demand democratic reforms now and then, a view that, in light of such overt repression in response to the nascent global political revolution is now shown to be idealistic in the extreme.

A truly dystopian worldview resolves into focus when one, sufficiently free from said socio-cultural programming, realizes that all of the technological progress that has occurred between the fall of the last great Western Empire and now has come into existence by the same immature, underdeveloped, apathetic consciousness that-due to its peculiar propensity for violence and disregard for life-always tends to create inequitable social arrangements that it benefits from and that fulfill the same ultimate goal: the temporal and spatial expansion of power and control.

Imagine where Humanity would be today if each of us had a clearer picture of  reality, acting on the knowledge that although physical life is impermanent, consciousness is eternal. Liberated from the paralyzing fear of mortal danger, allowing, no compelling us to act in alignment with values that reflect all accumulated knowledge of the nature of existence, augmented by Enlightenment Empiricism, confirming our interconnectedness, affirming that not only our actions but even our thoughts reverberate throughout the cosmos....

So this my friends is the true root of all of our interrelated crises, this is primarily a crisis of consciousness, and for us to survive nothing short of a collective shift in consciousness is required.

We are presently bearing witness too and are a part of the evolution of consciousness, a process that is accelerating. In biological evolution, during brief periods of cataclysmic upheaval (Punctuated Equilibrium) that accompany Mass Extinction Events, the most rapid biological evolution occurs. I believe that the evolution of consciousness accelerates during these periods as well, what has been referred to as "The Quickening".

We are presently living through just such a period.

I usually posit the question " Mass Extinction or (r)Evolution of Consciousness?" at the end of many of my blog posts, and this is not a rhetorical question. Either we have a fundamental shift in the way we view and relate with the Universe or we're going to go along with not just the Romans as a failed socio-cultural paradigm but the way of the Great Lizards as a failed organism.

Einstein said once that "The significant problems that we have can't be solved with the same level of thinking that created them".

You can't solve the problem of Industrial Civilization, hyper-complexity, overpopulation, and social-inequality with more Industrial Civilization, greater complexity, more people and more social-inequality.

May we find the 100th monkey soon.

Onto the podcast:

IT'S WRONG TO WRECK THE WORLD From the University of Oregon, Kathleen Dean Moore delivers an artful talk about our attack on Nature, and hope of reviving love instead. Recorded in Vancouver. With readings from her work & original songs by Libby Roderick ("The Lifeboats Are Burning" and Tempting Eve ("We Are"). Radio Ecoshock 120502 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB. Show blog.

more: http://www.ecoshock.org/audio-on-demand/2012-radio-ecoshock-show/

See also:

Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe by Robert Lanza

The School System....

U.S. to seek G8 support for oil reserve release: Kyodo

What Peak Oil?!


WASHINGTON/PARIS, May 16, 2012 (Reuters) — U.S. President Barack Obama will seek support to tap emergency oil reserves from other Group of Eight leaders at a summit this weekend before the European Union's July embargo of Iranian crude, Kyodo news agency reported on Wednesday.

The report suggests that a slide in oil prices to their lowest in months has not halted U.S. efforts to use strategic oil stockpiles to offset diminishing exports from Iran, which is facing tough new sanctions on its oil industry....

Continued here: http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre84f1bq-us-usa-oil-reserves/

See Also: 

http://dieoff.org/
http://oilempire.us/

 Mass Extinction or (r)Evolution of Consciousness?.....Both?

"The Canadian Tar Sands Refused Us Access, So We Rented A Plane"

Too many images to reproduce here:

http://www.businessinsider.com/canadian-oil-sands-flyover-2012-5?op=1


Related: 

source: http://www.ecoshock.info/2012/04/worst-problems-in-world.html


THE SCANDAL OF THE TAR SANDS

I'm Alex Smith and I'm angry. There are lots of sick and ugly things in this world, along with tremendous beauty and love. But there are two giant projects which I know offend God, if there is one.

The first is blowing the tops of mountains, and plowing the rubble into Nature's valleys. The second is the largest and most polluting industrial project on Earth: the Canadian Tar Sands.

The big oil companies are spending millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars, to convince you they produce what they call "ethical oil". It's everywhere. News columnists blather on about the wonderful "oil sands" and why we can't live without them. Never mind the full page ads from tar sands companies in the same newspapers.

I can't even go to a movie without seeing Hollywood-quality ads with butterflies and forests all around the new clean green Tar Sands operations.

Here is the other side of the story - a quick clip of a talk by Mike Mercredi, an aboriginal man from Fort Chipewyan, downstream from the Tar Sands.

(In the audio, Mike lists out his relatives that are dead or dying of cancer, which was unknown to them in previous generations, before the Tar Sands came upstream of their drinking water and fishing grounds)

I recorded that in 2008, when we had no experts to back him up. Listen to the whole Radio Ecoshock program "Climate Terrorism: The Tar Sands" 3 speakers recorded December 5th in Vancouver, listed on our 2008 show archive page at ecoshock.org.

As you will hear in this program, they are lying about being able to reclaim land to their former natural state. The oil companies and the governments who collude with them are faking and hiding the health effects.

The whole tar sands operation is a world-scale Ponzi scheme which will bankrupt future generations with the costs of clean-up, - if any remediation is possible. Or they will do what most mining companies do: leave a massive open scar upon the earth, all for the quick quarterly profits of foreign multinationals.

Why says so? According to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and his Environment Minister, anyone who criticizes the Tar Sands is just a foreign-funded radical - unpatriotic environmentalists.

Let's meet one of those radicals. Here is the introduction to Dr. David Schindler, before his speech in Vancouver, on March 28th, 2012. The intro is by John Pierce, Dean, Faculty of Arts, Simon Fraser University.

(audio: Schindler helped discover that phosphorus from detergents and water treatment plants was killing the Great Lakes; he proved acid rain was coming from coal plant pollution; he's recently done a study of Tar Sands pollution. Schindler has an Order of Canada, is a member of the Royal Society, and has many, many honors.)

That's the wild-eyed radical the Prime Minister fears. A life-long scientist who helped clean up the Great Lakes from phosphorus, who proved the source of acid-rain, a world-recognized and heavily awarded expert, David Schindler.

David is no fly-in academic from New York. He lives in Northern Alberta. He's fished in the many streams threatened by the proposed Enbridge northern pipeline. He's measures the water and the air, finding pollution governments denied.

In the program I summarize some of the surprising revelations in this speech, bolstered by selected audio. For example, did you know the tiny amounts of supposedly reclaimed lands can never be returned to their previous state, because the mine tailings are too salty?

I also didn't realize the biggest source of pollution is actually air-borne. We'll learn all that and more in this work-shop from Canada's top Tar Sands expert, a quiet but devastating critic of the world's dirtiest source of oil.

* Tar Sands chemicals flood local rivers, probably explaining higher levels of cancer in aboriginal Canadians downstream. The government won't investigate the many deaths there.

* The former Alberta caribou herds will never return.

* The forests are being stripped in an area projected to be larger than the state of Florida.

* Countless tons of methane are burned and released just to get oil out of the sands. More global warming gases.

* The corrosive raw oil is carried in a network of pipelines, tankers, trucks, and famous spills. It's an industrial spider web reaching down into the United States, indeed all over North America.

* Wherever you live in the world, the Tar Sands are wrecking your atmosphere, as the single largest industrial source of greenhouse gases on the planet.

* The damage can be seen from space, and will last for thousands of years.

Welcome to your secure energy source, your damned "ethical" oil.
-------------------

David begins with the tailing ponds, some of which are just meters away from the Athabasca River. According to Tar Sands Watch, every square meter of oil-bearing bitumen mined creates six square meters of tailing. These are tossed into toxic lakes now covering more than 55 square kilometers, over 13,000 acres and growing rapidly. The tailing dyke of just one company, Syncrude, is the second largest dam in the world. Only the Chinese Three Gorges Dam is larger.

Here is David Schindler...
[SH1_TailingsAthabasca etc. 1:38]

David then makes several key points.

First, development in both the Tar Sands operations, and in the surrounding town and infrastructure has far outstripped any planning process or regulation. It's a wild-west anything-goes oil rush. As that building boom grew, the size of planning and regulatory bodies needed to keep pace. Instead successive governments have cut funding, to the point that hardly anything is monitored, regulated, or planned.

Second: while the many foreign corporations make obscene multi-billions in profits, the Canadian public gets less and less of the revenues. Governments, with political parties heavily funded by oil companies, kept reducing the percentage going to the Canadian public. Later, we'll find the whole cleanup bill is mounting, as reclamation is stalled for decades. Young Canadians will pay those astronomic bills.

[SH2_FastDevleopment_massiveprofits 4:43]

From the recording March 28th, in Vancouver, here is what David Schindler says about "ethical oil".

[SH3_Ethical_Oil 2:58]

OK, now we are going for a long walk through David Schindler's presentation. He talks about cancer in the Native people; how the industry-sponsored river testing found NOTHING, no contaminants from super-polluting smoke stacks. His own team of scientists found a wide range of heavy metals and toxic polycarbonates the industry and government somehow failed to detect.

David Schindler all along gives you the big picture references that nobody else is talking about. For example, there are two giant chemical complexes called "the upgraders" which process the raw bitumen. These are sending out pollution for 50 miles around. It accumulates on the snow, and on the frozen rivers, until the fast Spring melt supercharges all the waters with toxic chemicals. It's the quiet science of the horrific.

[SH4_ScienceTesting 17 min]

That was Dr. David Schindler, an internationally renowned scientist working in Canada, talking about his team research into pollution from the Tar Sands. This was recorded by Alex Smith at the Simon Fraser University Wosk Centre in downtown Vancouver on March 28, 2012.

LISTEN TO/DOWNLOAD THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK SEGMENT ON DAVID SCHINDLER (31 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

I hope you got one of the stories Schindler explained. As I understand it, Dr. Schindler and other scientists could not accept the industry-funded government approved study saying that NONE of the dirty pollutants from the tar sands operations could be measured in the Athabasca River or its tributaries. They found the alleged testing set up measuring stations either upstream of the operations, or far down river near the river mouth at Lake Athabasca, where dilution would be greatest. The testing method had a baseline, or used techniques, which eliminated low levels of contaminants.

Three scientists, David Schindler, Jeff Short of NOAA, and Peter Hodson, a toxicologist at Queens University took their own samples. These included sites near the Tar Sands operations.

This independent team used better testing methods. They found low levels of many, many toxic substances, especially near the so-called upgrader plants, where air pollution is strong and obvious. This is a scandal! The First Nations people living downstream from the tar sands complained for years their families were dying of cancer. Industry and the government told the victims there was no pollution in their water.

After the not-so-mysterious cancer deaths of the First Nations people, and after two decades of warnings from scientists, here are the results of the health impacts study done by the Canadian government: nothing!

They don't investigate. They don't care. There are billions of dollars of profits to be made every year. That is what matters.

You aren't going to hear the dirty truth about the tar sands from any authority, and certainly not from the millions spent on propaganda by the multinational oil companies digging out the tar.

We are out of time for this week, but not out of ammunition. In an upcoming Radio Ecoshock show, you'll hear more from famous scientist David Schindler. He'll tell us why the heavily advertised "restoration" of the scoured landscape is fake. Remaking nature is not possible, and it's not going to happen.

The native people like Mike Mercredi know. They live there, eating the polluted fish, breathing the polluted air.

[Mike Mercredi clip 2]

Keep your ears out for more on the Canadian Tar Sands, the world's single largest source of pollution, on Radio Ecoshock.

OUR GLOBAL WARMING COMEDY RANT - FROM LEE CAMP

We also have a short rant by New York Comedian Lee Camp. Here is a comedian who knows that global warming is not all that funny, but it's real. We run a short 2 minute clip from Lee's podcast "A Moment of Clarity" available on You tube.

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for getting real about your world.

See also: 

http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/02/fight-of-century-by-richard-heinberg.html

http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/02/decisive-ecological-warfare.html

http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2011/10/peak-oil-debt-and-concentration-of.html

NDAA's 'Indefinite Detention' Provisions Unconstitutional Says Judge

source: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/17

An Obama-appointed judge rules provisions of NDAA likely violate the 1st and 5th Amendments

- Common Dreams staff

A federal judge in New York on Wednesday ruled in favor of a group of civilian activists and journalists and struck down highly controversial 'indefinite detention' and 'material support' provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act, enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Obama last December. In their suit, the plaintiffs stated they could be detained 'indefinitely' for their constitutionally protected activities. Citing the 'vagueness' of certain language in the bill, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest -- who was appointed to the court by Obama -- agreed, and said the law could have "chilling impact on First Amendment rights" for journalists, activists, and potentially all US citizens.

President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law last December. (Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster)"An individual could run the risk of substantially supporting or directly supporting an 'associated force' without even being aware that he or she was doing so," the judge said.

The ruling came as part of a lawsuit brought by seven plaintiffs — Chris Hedges, Dan Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, Birgitta Jonsdottir, Alexa O’Brien, Kai Wargall, and Jennifer Bolen — alleging that the NDAA violates ”both their free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the First Amendment as well as due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

Salon's Glenn Greenwald, who has written critically and extensively of the NDAA, called the ruling "a sweeping victory for the plaintiffs."

"This is an extraordinary and encouraging decision," Greenwald continues, though he noted that many caveats still must be applied. "This is only a preliminary injunction (though the judge made it clear that she believes plaintiffs will ultimately prevail). It will certainly be appealed and can be reversed. There are still other authorities (including the AUMF) which the DOJ can use to assert the power of indefinite detention. Nonetheless, this is a rare and significant limit placed on the U.S. Government’s ability to seize ever-greater powers of detention-without-charges, and it is grounded in exactly the right constitutional principles: ones that federal courts and the Executive Branch have been willfully ignoring for the past decade."

more: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/17

Radio Eco-Shock: The Worst Problems in the World

Another great podcast....

THE WORST PROBLEMS IN THE WORLD Could the collapse of the fuel pool at FukushimaReactor #4 endanger the Northern Hemisphere? Nuclear industry executive Arnie Gundersen explains (interview). Then a top Canadian scientist exposes a scandalous government cover-up of poisons moving from the Tar Sands to dying aboriginal people. David Schindler speech excerpts. Plus a climate rant by comedian. Radio Ecoshock 120411 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB Show blog.

see also: 

THE BEGINNING OF THE END Economic collapse will come before peak oil or climate disruption, says investment guru Chris Martenson, author of "Crash Course". Matthew Stein, author of "When Technology Fails" - how a solar flare could cripple society & set off 400 Chernobyls, and to fix it. Alex rants against 2012 mythology. Radio Ecoshock 120425 1 hour CD Quality or Lo-Fi. Show blog.

EXIT ENVIRONMENTALISM? Alternative energy expert Robert Rapier explains the oil crisis, & why climate will hit us like a hurricane. Seth Moser-Katz and Justin Ritchie, podcasters from "The Extraenvironmentalist" - interview law Professor and Greenpeace icon Professor Michael M'Gonigle on his rethink called "exit environmentalism". Are we leaving Green, or leaving the system? Radio Ecoshock 120509 1 hr CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB. 

FREE THE SCIENTISTS! Dr. John Mashey investigates the right-wing billionaires & corporations who pay "charities", bloggers, & old weathermen to deny climate science - the Heartland Institute scandal. Canadian journalist Margaret Munro on government muzzling scientists. Union of Concerned Scientists' Francesca Grifo tells how lobbyists kill enviro & health protection in U.S. Radio Ecoshock 120229 CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB 

CLIMATE MAY FORCE HUMAN EVOLUTION We journey into the deep past, to find the future, with Dr. Andrew Glikson, former Principal Research Scientist, for the Australian Geological Survey Organization. He's an expert on past extinction events, climate, and asteroid hits. Full length interview. Then neurobiologist Dr. William Calvin from Washington University, author of "Global Fever, How to Treat Climate Change" plus remarks by Dr. Colin Campbell. Find all the links at http://ecoshock.info/ - Radio Ecoshock 120111 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi14 MB

OIL SHOCK: LIVING IN A NO-GROWTH WORLD High oil prices lead to no-growth global economy. If China grows, the West must shrink, meaning unemployment, disappointment, insolvent governments. Two speeches from ASPO 2011 in Washington: Jeff Rubin, former CIBC investment guru and Chalres Maxwell of Weeden Co. Neither Peak Oil speaker mentions climate change. Why not? We interview Italian ASPO founder, author of "Limits to Growth Revisited" and climate watcher Ugo Bardi. ASPO USA recordings by Gerri Williams. End music "Change Change*" by Thistle. Radio Ecoshock 120104 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB  

more: 
http://www.ecoshock.org/audio-on-demand/2012-radio-ecoshock-show/

Mass Extinction or (r)Evolution of Consciousness?...Both? 

Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil

Reading this now, as with Mumford and Rifkin's work expect a lengthy excerpt soon to follow.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. 


See independent reviews here. 

Amazon.com Review
This extraordinary saga moves from the Oval Office to the Amazon rain forests to show how Cold War intrigue linked a powerful American family, the U.S. government, and a missionary organization in a forty-year campaign to conquer the Amazon. At the heart of this story are two intensely ambitious men: Nelson Rockefeller, scion of the liberal and immensely wealthy Standard Oil family, and William Cameron Townsend, founder of the ultraconservative Wycliffe Bible Translators. Although leaders of opposing camps, they found common cause in the struggle against fascism and then communism, with the result that hundreds of thousands of Amazonian tribespeople died or were displaced. The systematic campaign of colonization fathered by Rockefeller and Townsend was a chilling foreshadowing of American intervention in the Third World to secure valuable natural resources in the name of democracy.

From Publishers Weekly
Nelson Rockefeller, who died in 1979, owned vast Latin American real estate and cattle ranching, mining, industrial and financial interests centered in Brazil. To protect his empire and secure Third World assets for exploitation by U.S. capitalism, Rockefeller-a top Latin American adviser to presidents from FDR to Nixon, and Ford's vice-president-played a dominant role in shaping the U.S.'s interventionist policy in Latin America, according to this blistering expose based on 18 years of research. Rockefeller, as President Eisenhower's special assistant for Cold War strategy, oversaw the CIA's covert operations abroad and was privy to assassination plots and mind-control experiments, the authors maintain. Colby (DuPont: Behind the Nylon Curtain) and his wife, Dennett, a freelance journalist, charge that Rockefeller, his banks and their allies, working with the CIA, bolstered repressive regimes in Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Paraguay. Forcible dislocation of native peoples, hunger, disease, genocide and the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rain forest are the legacy of these policies, in the authors' analysis. Another key player in this massive narrative is ultraconservative William Cameron Townsend (1896-1982), founder of the Protestant missionary organization Wycliffe Bible Translators, which worked in concert with Rockefeller and which the authors accuse of destroying indigenous peoples' cultural values to abet penetration by U.S. businesses. Illustrations not seen by PW.

"Why America Failed", from the ExtraEnvironmentalist Podcast

Having only recently discovered the ExtraEnvironmentalist Podcast I have yet to listen to more than a handful of them (if you are spurred to download a bunch be sure to listen to them in order, I started with episode #28 and am progressing through to the latest release) although all highly recommended, I really enjoyed #34, "Why America Failed" as it explores the psycho-social component of the beginnings and perpetuation of the dominant culture, an exploration of which is critical for extricating ourselves from it and creating equitable, sustainable and enjoyable relationships with each other and our broader environment. I agree with most everything Morris Berman touches on, with only one exception: the treatment of the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Berman attributes its passing to cultural "blowback" from mounting corporate colonialism and expansionism, when in reality it was engineered from within as an attempt to stave off the collapse of globalization and American geo-strategic primacy in the face of Peak Oil. Berman likely knows the truth but for professional reasons uses the officially sanctioned narrative as making public what is privately known about 9/11 spells career suicide for many authors and social commentators. That small disagreement aside, this and the podcast that preceded it, #33 are the best so far, but again they are all highly recommended.

source: http://www.extraenvironmentalist.com/

Summary

Twilight is on the horizon for American culture. After spreading an ideology of endless economic growth around the world, the definition of modernity has been defined by the United States. American values are now written into the cultural textbook for nations across the globe. Now that America is failing, what does it feel like to look back and what did we achieve? Was the collapse written in the opening chapters? What if our technological legacy comes with a terrible dark side?

In Extraenvironmentalist #34 we speak with author and historian Morris Berman about his recent look back at the history of American values as chronicled in the book Why America Failed. We ask Morris why American culture has dominated the globe despite so many dark aspects within its technology and values. Our discussion covers the ways in which people can seek meaningful lives as part of a counterculture and why our ideologies of technology and infinite growth were born on the landscape of an endless frontier. Is there a way to avoid the culture of hustling by channeling the alternative values that have arisen from those discontented by capitalism? Is it best just to become an expat?

Download (right click, save as)

For more on 9/11 see the information following this blog post.

Rupert Sheldrake takes questions from Graham Hancock's audience

Rupert Sheldrake takes questions on Graham Hancock's Message Board! If your'e unfamiliar with the work of these two absolutely brilliant, unorthodox thinkers, you have to check out Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock and Morphic Resonance: The Nature of Formative Causation by Rupert Sheldrake

source: http://www.grahamhancock.com/interviews/RupertSheldrake.php

Summary:

For those who missed it before- Rupert Sheldrake is one of the world’s most innovative biologists and writers, and is best known for his theory of morphic fields and morphic resonance, which leads to a vision of a living, developing universe with its own inherent memory.

He recently conducted a Community Interview for GrahamHancock.com, and his answers are now live in the linked article.



Q1:

I am an Archaeologist by trade and it was my research into the topic of Palaeolithic cave art that triggered the following thought regarding the theory of evolution. I don't know if you are familiar with David Lewis-Williams Neuropsychological Model, which is he puts forward as a shamanic explanation for the multitude of symbols and images we see amongst prehistoric art, however, the important thing is that it is often criticised for being a 'Blanket Theory', as the explanation is so comprehensive that no matter what image is displayed it can fall into one of the categories (Trance stages) associated with the model. Thus, the theory can explain the creation of any type of image, as having been the product of a shamanic experience. When in reality the artist may have had a multitude of other motives for painting it.

Thus.....

(Question) - Do you think that it is possible that the established mechanism of evolution (random genetic mutation coupled with natural selection) could be guilty of being a blanket theory? As there is almost no scenario I could envision where this explanation would fail to describe the appearance of 'selected' traits.

Author: Olver X

RUPERT: Neo-Darwinism is often accused of being a blanket theory that is irrefutable. Any trait can be explained by making up a ‘just so’ story about how it got there in the first place and was favoured by natural selection. The philosopher of science Karl Popper called Neo-Darwinism ‘irrefutable’ precisely because it was such a blanket theory. This doesn’t mean that the evidence for evolution is poor. I think it’s very good. Evolution has happened and is still happening. But the evidence that it all happens through random genetic mutations and natural selection is a big assumption and is hotly contested within evolutionary theory as well as outside it.

---

Q2:

What is your view on panpsychism? Are there any parallels with morphic fields?

Author: Nesha, and annj1123

RUPERT: I think panpsychism is almost the only reasonable way to account for the material systems, like brains are associated with consciousness. The usual alternatives are much less satisfactory. Dualism says that consciousness is totally different from matter, and is a very unhelpful theory from a scientific point of view. Materialism tries to explain consciousness away and has been an unhelpful model in consciousness studies. Idealism tries to explain matter away, making consciousness primary. Panpsychism seems to me a much more fruitful theory, and I discuss it in my new book THE SCIENCE DELUSION (CA, UK, US), especially in the light of the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and the panpsychist tradition in western philosophy.

---

Q3:

Do you think psychedelics or other techniques and technologies could allow us conscious access to these morphic fields? And if so, to what extent?

Author: gushtunkinflupped

RUPERT: Morphic fields underlie all habits of thought and we gain access to them everytime we learn something or even do something, because we are all creatures of habit. In relation to psychedelics, I think that there is a morphic resonance between past takers of a given psychedelic and takers in the present precisely because the substance affects their brains and brain activities in similar ways, putting them in resonance with each other. I think this maybe one reason why in Claudio Naranjo’s studies of the effects of ayahuasca on urban people, he found visions of serpents and jaguars which are features of the cultures in which this herbal mixture has been taken for centuries or even millennia. It seems more likely to me that his urban participants were tapping into a kind of collective memory associated with the taking of this drug than that the drug has a molecular effect in the brain which creates jaguar images or serpent images.

---

Q4:

In light of advances in molecular biology demonstrating a link from the forms of Enhanced Reaction Diffusion systems through CAMs on cell membranes, through messenger molecules into the cell core, do you still believe morphic fields dictate physical forms in biology?

A supplemental question would be:- If the morphic fields are not needed in developmental biology, does this have implications for the other areas they are used.

Author: Chris Jordan

RUPERT: My own research in developmental biology in the 1970s was about reaction diffusion systems, so this question was my own starting point. In plants there is a reaction diffusion system, on which I was working, whereby the plant hormone auxin sets up patterns in differentiating tissues, for example in tree trunks as they form the new bark and wood cells. The problem is that these patterns can, at best, explain gene activation in different cells, but do not explain how making the right proteins creates cell form. The same problem arises in a more obvious form in single cell organisms like the giant Acetabularia, which is about 5 cms long and has a photosynthetic cap on a long thin stem, with the single nucleus in a little root-like protrusion at the base. All this form and structure develops in a single cell so it cannot be explained in terms of differential gene activation in different cells. Moreover, if a section of stem is cut out, lacking the nucleus, it can still regenerate a new cap showing that this complex morphogenetic process does not depend on the nucleus or on gene activation. I discuss this in THE SCIENCE DELUSION (CA, UK, US). So I certainly think that morphic fields are essential for explaining physical form in biology. People have been trying to explain it in terms of reaction diffusion systems and other chemical systems for more than 50 years and all the main problems are still unsolved.

---

Q5:

ID proponents believe that the exceedingly complex inner workings of cells show evidence of "intelligent design". On the other hand, the anthropologist Jeremy Narby (who is not an ID proponent) believes that intelligence/consciouness occurs at the DNA level (as discussed in his book 'Intelligence in Nature'). Thus, do you think the "Intelligent Designer" that ID proponents think is God could actually be DNA itself? Or in other words, could DNA essentially be an intelligent super-organism?

Author: wordsmyth

RUPERT: I don’t think that intelligent design is the right metaphor for living organisms. It takes for granted a machine theory. Machines require designers because they themselves have no design or purpose within them. That’s why we have engineers and machine designers. Organisms do not require designers because they contain their formative principles within themselves. I think organisms organise themselves in accordance with morphogenetic fields, not in accordance with designs and I don’t think DNA contains designs or is an intelligent designer. Organisms themselves are capable of creativity and I think of the creativity in the evolutionary process neither as depending on God as an external designer, nor on blind chance, but on the creative capacity inherent in organisms themselves.

---

Q6:

Do you have a hypothesis about, the source/origin/cause of the Morphic fields?

Etienne Guillé, author of “La Language Vibratoire de la Vie” (The Vibrational Language of Life) is the first and perhaps still the only author to explain the origin of the Morphic fields: the superposition of the vibrational energies emanated from 14 constellation: the 12 constellations of the Zodiac, plus the circumpolar constellations of Ursa Major and Draco.

Morphic Fields change, as a function of time, with the Precession of the Equinoxes (PoE). Armed with this knowledge, one can then understand the very high relevance given by ancient civilizations to the PoE.

Many share the view that ancient civilizations placed a high relevance on the PoE, though none had been able to uncover why that was the case. Dr. Sheldrake, could you please comment about the above?

Author: caugusto[Edited for brevity. Full text]

RUPERT: New morphic fields arise through a creative process and creativity is the ultimate mystery. I myself think it’s unlikely that it’s all driven by the constellations of the zodiac or related to the precession of the equinoxes. And this would certainly not have much to do with creativity outside the solar system, and yet the entire cosmos is engaged in a creative evolutionary process. For me this is simply an experimental question. Are the correlations with astrological patterns so strong that they can account for the creativity of nature, at least on Earth or in the solar system? At the moment I don’t think the evidence is compelling and I’m sure there are other sources of creativity, even if the solar system, as an organism, has a creative influence on what happens within it.

---

Q7:

I'm sure you will already be well aware of the ancient wisdom deriving from India surrounding the 'Akashic Record(s)'. To what extent, if any, have you been able to draw any parallels and/or differences through your extensive work with morphic fields?

Apologies in advance if you have already explored this aspect in your books which I will underake to read in the near future!

Author: JPHague

RUPERT: Morphic fields are associated with a kind of collective memory, and my hypothesis is that the so-called laws of nature are like habits. I don’t think this memory is stored in a spatial record of any kind, but rather depends on the direct resonance between similar patterns of activity across time. Nevertheless the Indian and the theosophical notion of Akashic records does rightly emphasize the memory in nature, and in that sense is somewhat similar to my own hypothesis.

---

Q8:

I've read your books on psychic animals (I have lived with animals all my live and currently keep 2 dogs and know for a fact that they both are 'psychic') and the morphic resonance.

I somehow feel that morphic resonance and morphic fields could be the answer also to what I have been investigating for a while now, which is what is usually dubbed 'ghosts', 'spirits' and 'hauntings'.

My results so far made me believe that conscious energy will survive physical demise and can linger at certain locations or even travel.

Do you think that these phenomena can also be explained by morphic resonance, especially what is called residual energy, and that morhic fields could explain why there is more of this energy in certain locations than in others (aka stone-tape-theory)?

Author: Lugh

RUPERT: I don’t think that memories are stored in stones, as in stone-tape theory. I don’t even think they are stored in brains. I think they depend on resonance with similar events in the past. My own hypothesis for hauntings would be that when somebody is in a particular location, he or she may come into resonance with previous people in that location precisely because they are subject to a very similar sensory stimuli and the memory is because of a kind of previous resonance with the people in that place, rather than it being stored in the stones. This of course works for good memories as well as bad ones and might help to explain why sacred places help some people to enter a positive state of consciousness and sense of connection.

---

Q9:

Dear Rupert,

I know that, as a biologist, you are interested in the evolutionary aspect of morphic fields. I also know that this is why you stress the difference between patterns encoded in morphic fields and Plato's unchanging Ideas. Would you agree, though, that when one approaches this from a cultural/architectural/artistic point of view, however, Plato's ideas, like canons of architecture or old Dreamtime traditions and ancient mythologized landscapes, are likely to accumulate richer and richer morphic fields precisely because they don't change? I'm passionately interested in the possibility that it is because such things have such rich fields that the initiate into ancient mysteries, Plato's philosopher/initiate and the walker of the old aboriginal songline alike all experience a liberating and enlightening sense of ascending out of localized time into something more majestic and beautiful and satisfying. In that sense then, it seems to me that Plato's philosophy remains pertinent and intuitive even if not a correct scientific model of evolutionary processes. I am wondering what your take on this might be.

Author: William Glyn-Jones

RUPERT: I agree about the sense of ascending out of localised time into something more majestic, beautiful and satisfying. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that there are platonic forms. It maybe more to do with the frame of consciousness itself. That by which we see or think is not that which is seen or thought, and the capacity for seeing or thinking, the capacity for consciousness itself, is what people seem to access in meditation and altered states of consciousness . They do not necessarily access eternal forms, as in Platonic philosophy. In any case, we know very little about the history of mystical experience. Plato, after all is very recent in the history of humanity, a mere 2,500 years ago, whereas modern humans have existed for at least 100,000 years. There may well have been some evolution in altered states of consciousness through millennia of proto-shamanism of which we know almost nothing. So I don’t think that the acceptance of mystical experiences is incompatible with an evolutionary approach.

---

Q10:

Today’s science is rooted in materialistic dogma(tism). In your opinion, what needs, or better – what can be done for paradigm shift to happen?

Author: Nesha

RUPERT: I’m glad you asked that question! This is exactly what my new book THE SCIENCE DELUSION is all about.

Join the discussion of Rupert's Community Interview here

Books by Rupert Sheldrake

A New Science of Life CA - UK - US JP - DE - FR - IT

Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home CA - UK - US JP - DE - FR - IT

The Science Delusion CA - UK - US JP - DE - FR - IT

See also:

http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2011/11/fingerprints-of-gods.html

http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Papers/papers/animals/dog_video.html