Periods of decline and dissolution represent necessary phases within cyclical time perspectives. In Hinduism, for example, the present epoch is considered to be the last of four ages -- it is called the Kali Yuga, named destroyer goddess and dark mother. Kali usually depicted dancing on a corpse, brandishing weapons, and wearing a garland of skulls, strumpet, promiscuous tongue sticking out, blood dripping from her fangs. This time suggests that we a revival is merely the answer,but a total renovation of form.

The first phase returns to the Sata Yuga, Shakti ecstasy. In Taoism it is called the reversal of the movement of Tao.

Aztecs call this the age of the Fifth Sun: sacrificing 70K people a year to keep the Fifth Sun alive and happy. What decadence will do in the face of decline.

what do the Hopi say?

An alternative perspective withholds judgements.

11. We might consider the ways that the current world situation: billions of people sitting on a decreasingly rich natural world, facing an increasingly uncertain life: is both an improvement and and decline from the previous epoch (tribal societies with stabilized populations, living what some may call simpler and others more complex lives, more balanced with the natural world)

And we began to think myth as a way of thinking we have outgrown. But I can argue that the myth form is the very thought string that we are ancestrally tied to. The fact that indigenous and traditional cultures remain valid orientations of reality must account for something. Prophecy then, might be based, not haphazardly on fantasy, but on attunement to subtler levels of reality. On forms of awareness that overriding dominant train of mental thought wanted to forget, in order to develop empirical and rationalistic thought.

Armin Geertz: "Prophecy is a thread in the total fabric of meaning. In the total worldview. IN this way it can be seen as a way of life and of being."

Each person has to go through their own process, confronting their habitual patterns and conditioned mechanisms, their habits of denial and avoidance. Their moments they run away from the fear and threats that claim to haunt the psyche. The overcoming, growing into a more awake and real human being is our mission.

Who is William Irwin Thompson? are we really approaching the claim that some are saying: "a catastrophic bifurcation" ? Whatever does that mean? dividing branches.

Maybe not. We may be approaching the roots of the thing. Ah but with roots there are branches.

subhuman, posthuman; genetic engineering to artificial intelligence.

Culture is based on a mythological substrate. a basis for interpreting and understanding reality. Language is our expression. What happens when we begin to combine languages?

I am seeking to define a change in the nature of consciousness, "there is only one medium in which this change can be registered": thin consciousness itself. 3 RofQ

On one hand, I seek to build the architectural, philosophical "scaffolding" -- a structural support system for this transition. The great Turning. The awakening. On the other hand I follow my own process -- (what is your process? Dance. Breathe. Yoga, swimming. Breathing. Dance. Love. Life abounds in experience. Solitude. Meditation. Community. Celebration. Trance dance and Epiphanies. Class pondering the nature of things. Surrendering. Death and rebirth. Creation and destruction. Swimming in the flow. Poetry jam slams.

Return of Quetzalcoatl

Daniel Pinchbeck, author of Breaking Open the Head

p3 much of what we take for knowledge is actually a projection of the world in our head. It is our psychological compositions that create our reality, scientific inquiry not exempt.

5 the other side of the fence mentality; create an ignorance by avoiding the underlying aspects of a situation; this contradicts the internal hopes for a better future. For as long as we continue to see the other as an alien, a foreigner, an enemy, harmony cannot exist. Is this ironic? I think not. A species that uses competition and violence as their primary mode of relating, dominated by technology that destroys relationships is doomed at that point.

When we ask ourselves, what is the situation: from all sides; then we begin to open our hearts to the visibility of subjectivity. While also growing our listening and acknowledgment as modes of relating. These are very different.

Ed Ayres God's Last Offer: an analysis on global plight. Offers statistical support and rational argument for sounding the alarm. Enormous biological (ecological) and abiotic alterations (Ayres claims is hard to accept and comprehend for most people). This is changing. Picks apart the mechanisms of dissimulation and deception

population growth

consumption of resources

mass extinction of species, systems and interspecies relationships

carbon emission

Are you the driver who pounds on his gas accelerator when your car is running out of gas?

notes Environmental Economics week # 1-4

Beinhocker: Origin of Wealth

p.13

"Many of the "big ideas" of the fielld are now well over a century old, and too many of the field's formal theories and mathematical models are either hamstrung by unrealistic assumptions or directly contridictd by real-world data. The point is not to denigrate the contributions of the past, but rather to say "economics can do better" and it is time to move on."

Traditional Economics "economics one finds in university textbooks, discussed in the news media, and referred to in the halls of business and government-- it is the mainstream view of academic economics." p.14

what economists call Neoclassical econom:

CRITICS of Traditional theory, Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter

Adam Smith from scotland 1723-1790

Classical period of Econ; educated at Oxford, most time at U of Glasgow

Physiocrats: "a group of intellectuals who held the radical idea that governments should limit their interference in the economy and let markets do most of the work."

population grows in relationship to labor

wealth related to increased productivity (requiring specialization) that is the theory

Hielbroner, Robert. Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers. 7th Ed.

vi: The Inexorable System of Karl Marx

impossible to stop or prevent:

(of a person) impossible to persuade by request

(136) "They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social relations. (!!!!) Let the ruling classes trembel at a Communist revolution. The proletarians [workers, working clas, regarded collectively, reference to Marxism] have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." Manifesto

137) "As it was the uprisings were spontaneous, undisciplined, and aimless"

the capitalist (156) "owner-entrepreneur" racing against the others. competition

157 the commodity is labor power

Smith and Ricardo would agree: the value of a workman is the money he needs in order to exist." subsistence wage. But his value is not just what he requires to get by, how much is his time worth in creative standards? Does this worker add beauty to the world?

perhaps the net worth and value should be judged upon the beauty made in the world rather than the "profit" and exploitation made on someone else>

profit enters, according to Marx and Hielbroner by the capitalist taking advantage of the worker. they get paid for six hours, but work ten. its not hourly wage but a subsisitent wage order. Marx called this "surplus value" 157

"For there is more labor time embodied in his products than the labor time for which he was forced to pay." Is this the same principle around sweatshop, child labor camps? Now people just earn less for their work. Since the work pool is flooded by people, capitalists, i.e. the business men (and probably women) can afford to pay under wage, since if you don't take the job, someone hungry and desperate will. (Principle of Dismal science in effect) Malthus doctrine [Marx calls this "libel on the human race" (158)] and Ricardo.

libel: a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation. slander. misrepresentation.

Hielbroner 157 "capitalists monopolize on thing--- access to the means of production themselves"

Legal arrangement of private property: machines, equipment

"capitalists 'own' jobs". expand their scales of output.

Worker: poletariat

powerless. working for the man.

159) "cannot be so shortsighted as to dissipate its gains through mere unbridled (unrestrained) physical appetite."

creating unemployment through machinery. cut his costs and rescue his profits

(159) like a Greek drama/tradgedy "where men go willynilly to their fate, and in which they all unwittingly cooperate to bring about their own destruction."

Gabraith: Keynes

1930's the most innovative Gabraith says

drop in indust. and ag. prices

relief in public works and employment

old age insurance

4th year of New Deal (1936)

recession a depression within a depression (221) quote

p. 222 Ricardo: "the underconsumption--shortage of demand fallacy"

if a shortage of demand doesn't exist, public action won't have incentive to enhance the demand.

Keynes 183-1946

release antidepression policy from classical constraints (222) quote

there can be a shortage of demand

govern can and should take steps to overcome

essence of K: gov spending to sustain demand (and unemployement)

226: namely,

deliberate and concerned economic thought : Sweden 223

Knut Wicksell 1851-1926

classical and Utilitarian tradition, but "stronly independent and original mind"

pioneer advocacy of birth control

monopoly and competition were "at the extreme ends of the spectrum with many forms of market organizations in between." 234

Gustav Cassel 1866-1944 pillar of eco conservatism

deliberate use of govt budget to sustain demand and employment 225 quote

Swedes were thinking of this in the mid 30's. Really the swedish revolution, rahther than Keynesian.

middle of decade: Sweden well-developed social welfare system, consumer and farmer cooperatives, general tolerance of modification and amendment of classical rigor and the demand-sustainging budget. pictured as the middle way (quote 235)

ideas of Foster and Catchings. Who are these people?

8 readings:

Dart reading notes #3

ECORES 1

Vaughn, K.J., Porensky, L.M. Wilkerson, M.L., Balachowsk, J., Peffer,E., Riginos, C. Young, T.P. (2010) Restoration Ecology. Nature Education Knowledge 1(8):66

Goal: to initiate or speed the recovery. "Restoration activities may also be designed to reestablish natural disturbance regimes." Such as tree forests to adjust flash floods.

Concepts Underpinning Restoration (p3)

• Disturbances-- dealing with floods, fires, damages, treefalls, "even volcanic eruptions"-- alter specie composition. (Nutrient cylces, soil properties)
• Genetics - using local living elements to reestablish the target ecosystem. Duh, encouraging genetic diversity
• Succession: process by which biological "community composition- the number and proportion of different species in ecosystem- recover over time following a disturbance" Allowing nature to do her job without disturbance. Sometimes it is necessary to actively participate, in a case when the restoration needs to be "accelerated".

Time, seed collection, planting order all important to Create what they call Community Assembly Theory

• Habitat fragmentation: "when continuous areas of habitat become disconnected by natural or human causes (ex, building roads through a forest)." small isolated patches. support fewer species they say; consequently leading to a chances of imbreeding, extinction.
• Theory "assumes that the matrix is uniform and inhostibable. (the matrix is the region between habitat patches.)
• negative edge effects of one habitat next to another. Ex weeds are more abundant along forrest edges (their words)
• creating connectivity among the patches, they call them "linkages" (4) "corridors and stepping stones"
• linear strips of habitat
• stepstones are unconnected patches, that are close enough to each other that allow movement across landscape.

• Application
• assessing the site. causes are identified.
• formulating project goals. optional: visiting reference sites, consult historical
• sources for images and info about "pre-disturbed" community (4)
• remove sources of disturbance
• restore process/ disturbance cycles (sometimes by fixing the flow, the system will repair itself) (heal the blood, the body is more apt to work itself out)
• rehabilitate substrates (any activity aiming to repair "altered soil texture or chemistry) (another ex: repairing hydrological regimes, directions and functions) (5)
• restoring vegetation
• monitoring and maintenance

• Ecosystems most effected: wetlands, grasslands/rangelands, riparian areas, and tropical forests.

controversial topic: assisted migration
(I've wondered about this. Bringing species into an area that they never lived in, but where the climate (could be) suitable for the species in the future. Taking science and our power to control, to adjust the planet... adjusting it, help in healing her, if she wills us to.)
"One contentious issue is the process of mitigation, in which destruction of protected populations or habitats is allowed if there are offsetting mitigation plantings." (5) "Some fear" that these practices "provide for activities that are destructive of biodiversity."

SER1

Natural Capital and Ecological Restoration, An Occasional Paper of the SER Science and Policy Working Group (1) April 2004

ecological restoration "must be pursued with concomitant social, national, and financial dedication, and conducted with a robust ecological and biophysical underpinning."

"all human economies rely on natural goods and services that accrue from healthy, functional ecosystems" !!! (1)

the ecosystems represent "natural capital" (distinguished by health, rather than financial wealth)

Ecological economists estimated "annual worth of natural goods and services to exceed the gross world product (Costanza et al.1997)" (1)

about thes"their study demonstrates the benefits of natural capital to an economy or society are enormous" (1)

increase of natural capital is a "universal benefit" for ER

Natural Capital economies recognize the contribution of nature to the economy; some have used this term to privatize and market nature, as wells as trying to assign a monetary value on nature.

Neoclassical Economic Theory look at he products of human enterprise??

"only by augmenting natural capital can we achieve economic sustainability" (2)

(increasing!)

looking to "increase the inventory of healthy, self-sustainging ecosystems." (2)

"investment in ER of impaired ecosystems must proceed in conjunction with efforts to reduce or halt the conversion of natural areas" (3)

Government subsidies allow perverse, ill-advised developments and undermines the health of the home we live in.

notes from readings #2 Dart

LEOPOLD 2

WINTER

JORDAN

Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature

William R Jordan III

University of California Press

Berkley/ Los Angeles/ London

Ch 8 Conservation and Community: restoration, the enviro and environmentalism

something about if we saw shame as a pathway to beauty, we would better understand the concept of community, diversity and change without trivializing people. and we would actually have those values rather than trying to beautify things without a reality.

beauty being the "master value-- the "value of values" as Fred Turner puts it. who is this guy?

(195)

Knowing how to conserve classic landscapes and wilderness areas through restoration may the answer because it "provides a way around this impasse... a context for confronting and dealing productively with the shame of our encounter with nature as other-- or given-- at the level of landscape, the ecological community, or the ecosystem" ** (195)

The paradigm consensus 196

1 nature is creation. it gives birth to everything

2 this creation "is not orderly but chaotic and violent,

3 "though chaotic, creation tends generally toward an increase self-awareness"

4 --- "shame being the emotion that arises from a reflexive awareness of limits" birth and creation create differences and limits he says,

5 the human experience of shame does not suggest or represent a "discontinuity with nature"; "it is rather a natural response"

right, and according to Swimme, nature has a kind of trial and error approach to evolution, and as they believe self-realization. awareness.

6. we deal properly with this "reflexive awareness of shame" by imagination and through the technologies of symbol, myth, and ritual

7. limit of the enviro movement has been their skepticism of the above technologies

8 how to deal with SHAME effectively and holistically? we are ashamed because we have a limited grasp of reality and the modernists as well as the dominant human force in the last 500 years has been pushing a dogma of "I know everything! " and I will kill you, because I "KNOW" it is right. But energetically and psychically we are understanding that that worldview and perspective in itself is limiting and constricting. All things want to be free.

psychologically coherence. healing through visions, imaginings and actions. the Love that wants out is everywhere. It is.

He says (197) that this kind of soft revolution, if you will, "needs synthesis and integration" rather than "the rejection of old ideas" *** whoooa

This will emerge as the dominant paradigm. YEs allah yes (197)

modeling "artificial systems on classical systems" that is the only way to integrate past reality into the present and future. As this happens, large areas will be returned to natural ecosystems *** "which will be given an new economic as well as a new esthetic, spiritual, and ecological value by their working relationship with the human economy" 197

believes rituals are needed. ceremonies with the land and people. this is communion.

Quote: 198: "This will begin simply-- not with the creation of the high rituals of theatre and church, but with he self-conscious development of low-key rites, the protocols, etiquette, ritualized division of labor, and small celebrations that emerge from the practice of restoration, as from any work reflexively undertaken, and that reflect the rhythms and patterns of the work and the interests, prerogatives, values, and insights of those will carry it out."

"performative traditions such as world renewal and initiation."

leads through shame to community, meaning and beauty.

this give and take mentality. recognizing both sides of the coin, the positive and negative. the growth and burn..

Interesting take on the future of weddings: in their union, they receive special privileges that come with a responsibility to take care of some landscape. in return they get special access and use.

Death: bury their dead in "restoration parks" [ happening in South Carolina, called Memorial Ecosystems]

His dreams and visions: people give up their private ("destructive and elitist") luxuries: mountain cabin, traveling to remote wilderness preserves, and take hand in restoring their immediate environment

occasional visits to the pristine areas

(200)!!! Leave from hate, theifts and jealousy

"Such areas will never again be understood as an ontological frontier radically other or separate from humans" second paragraph down

profoundly influencing the politics with the new generation. the children who are brought up with a deep sense of love for nature and the fluxes of life.

upgrading landscapes. learning, achieving intimacy and creating community

offer access to the values that give life meaning and purpose

Intichimuma (203) "a way of linking the interests of the natural landscape with the interests and ambitions of human being who are, as the Aborigines realize and express in their myths and rituals, responsible for its beauty and well being."

confronting shame, learning, celebrating. his solution

Fred Turner poem Genesis science fiction, colonializing Mars in the 21st century

MILLS

Mills, Stephanie. In Service of the Wild: Restoring and Reinhabiting Damaged Land. Beacon Press, Boston (April 1997)

p. 204 "the fact that a person can get used to almost anything is a problem of our species"

205 there was abundant and genuine, wholesome nourishment. ME too "there was (IS) an uncommon amount of freedom for me to set my own rhythm of work and rest, with no one I had to answer to." !!!

205 the thing about a big injury -- physical or psychic or ecological -- is that a organisms are not the same after - Mills quote. Is that so? How does she know so certainly? her experience. What are her studies around ecology?

"The question is whether or not one admits the fact of things being different now , and how one wear the difference." 205

She says the land will never be the same (as complex) as it was before. IT has scars and trauma is the implication. She says the role we humans have played is TRAGIC

poetic symbol "where ecological selves can make themselves at home and reproduce psychologically, if seldom physically." 207

"The transformative power of the great romance-- be it with an admirable mate or a noble cause-- remains marvelous." 207 Romantic at heart, trusting that love does transform the world. (given the least advantage)

208 "if only we can dare to belong to one another, and to our land."

RECAPITULATE THE HISTORY in order to heal the land and self in the "light of truth"; "we can only be abettors" not inventors pushing our agenda.

209 go out from the garden and into the wild