ALEX NOBLE - WRITING JOURNAL-2015

Visionaries, Inc - Award Winning Public TV Series Since 1995

 

 

 

Full Information and Listing of Each Year's Programs Since 1995:

 

www.visionaries.org

 

Since 1995, Visionaries, Inc. has been producing Visionaries documentary series for public television. Hosted by Sam Waterston of Law & Order, the documentary series highlights the rarely told stories of nonprofit organizations all around the world that are working to make a positive difference in their community and beyond.

Visionaries' production crews have traveled across six continents and to more than 50 American cities to profile the extraordinary work of true philanthropists- people dedicating their lives and careers to the service of others. From Refugees International to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and art museums to humane societies, Visionaries tells the stories of individuals dedicated to changing the status quo in an effort to promote positive coexistence. The documentaries seek to inspire vast audiences, serve as catalysts for positive social change and promote philanthropy on a global level.

 

Visionaries: Sages & Scientists Symposium

 

 

 

 

 

Presented by the Chopra Foundation, this Third Annual International Sages and Scientists Symposium, being held from March 3 to 5, 2012 at La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California, will address some of the most urgent questions facing our future evolution, including:

 

• Are we in the midst of a major paradigm shift in science?

 

• Is there an ultimate reality?

 

• Does consciousness conceive, govern, construct and become the physical universe?

 

• Is the universe becoming self aware in the human nervous system?

 

• Is the next stage of human development conscious evolution?

 

• Do we have the ability to influence the future evolution of the cosmos?

 

• How does our understanding of consciousness as pure potentiality enhance our capacity for intuition, creativity, conscious choice making, healing, and the awakening of dormant potentials such as non-local communication and non-local sensory experience?

 

• How does our understanding of consciousness also enhance our capacity for total well being—physical, emotional, spiritual, social, community, financial and ecological?

“If you find the above questions intriguing, you are most welcome to join me and my colleagues as we go deep into dialogue about our emerging future,” said Chopra, founder of the Chopra Foundation. “Everything will be examined from the perspectives of both sages and scientists with the goal of finding common ground.

“At the end of the symposium, we will summarize the current understanding of the issues that deeply affect all of us at the core of our being. We aim to propel scientific investigation and research in the areas of consciousness.”

The Chopra Foundation is requesting a donation of $1,995—$1,000 of which is tax deductible—for general participation, after which registration will be complimentary. Contributions to the Symposium will be used to support collaborative research on the realization of consciousness, carry on the Foundation’s other charitable work, and pay expenses for the

program.

Accommodations are available at The La Costa Resort and Spa. Please register online at http://www.choprafoundation.org and use the promo code #54E883 or call (800) 854-5000.

When making a reservation, please mention “The Chopra Foundation Sages and Scientists Symposium” to receive the special discounted rate: $169.00 per night. This rate excludes resort fees and taxes, and is based on availability.

Our Vision: Rediscovering Humanity's Niche

It is time to create new stories, and rediscover our place in the global web of life!

Come visit A New Story Foundation:  www.anewstory.org

 

Envision the earth's life-sustaining processes as a beautiful and diverse web of interrelationships--a kaleidoscope of patterns, rhythms, and connections whose very complexity and multitude of possibilities remind us that cooperation, sharing, honesty, humility, and love should be the guidelines for our behavior toward one another and the earth. -- Ecosustainability student   Our Vision - Rediscovering Humanity's Niche: Following the lead of author Daniel Quinn, we believe that modern society has lost its way.  Humans have abandoned the tried and true survival mechanisms established over thousands of millennia, forgetting that they were once a fully-integrated member of the global ecosystem.  We believe that the tired old story modern society tells itself has seen its last days, and that the global self-deception is about to be exposed for what it is.  We believe it is time for new stories, stories that tell of the rediscovery of humanity's place in the global web of life.  We envision a time when these new stories depicting humans within nature, and not separate from it, will be the human story.

Want to Change the World?

 

 

Change the Story!

Duane Elgin

The next five to ten years represent an unprecedented break in the human journey. We are between stories, or the guiding narratives, that serve as beacons for our collective future. For example, the “American Dream” that pulled the U.S. forward for at least three generations is fast becoming the world’s nightmare as the excesses of consumerism produce climate disruption, the depletion of cheap oil, growing income disparities, and more. Instead of a different “dream,” people want wide-awake visions of real possibilities told in ways that are believable and compelling.

We face big challenges and it will take an equally big vision to transform conflict into cooperation and draw us into a promising future. The most difficult challenge facing humanity is not devising solutions to the energy crisis or climate crisis or population crisis; rather, it is bringing images and stories of the human journey into our collective awareness that empower us to look beyond a future of great adversity and to see a future of great opportunity. Stories of great transition offer alternative big-picture perspectives that place our time of transition in a larger context and illuminate a promising future. These narratives are of universal concern, simple and relatively easy to understand, emotionally powerful, and able to call forth our higher potentials; and all involve a time of profound initiation and deep transformation.

 

Visionary Jacques Fresco - Paradise or Oblivion: The Venus Project

Paradise or Oblivion: A New Documentary from Jacque Fresco’s Venus Project

From New Paradigm Digest:  www.newparadigmdigest.com

 

http://www.thevenusproject.com/

Paradise or Oblivion details the root causes of the systemic value disorders and detrimental symptoms caused by our current established system. This video presentation advocates a new socio-economic system, which is updated to present-day knowledge, featuring the life-long work of Social Engineer, Futurist, Inventor and Industrial Designer Jacque Fresco, which he calls a Resource-Based Economy.

The film details the need to outgrow the dated and inefficient methods of politics, law, business, or any other “establishment” notions of human affairs, and use the methods of science, combined with high technology, to provide for the needs of all the world’s people. It is not based on the opinions of the political and financial elite or on illusionary so-called democracies, but on maintaining a dynamic equilibrium with the planet that could ultimately provide abundance for all people.

Paradise or Oblivion, by The Venus Project, introduces the viewer to a more appropriate value system that would be required to enable this caring and holistic approach to benefit human civilization. This alternative surpasses the need for a monetary-based, controlled, and scarcity-oriented environment, which we find ourselves in today.

*This is NOT the “major motion picture” that The Venus Project is working towards but rather is a 52 min. documentary to introduce the aims and proposals to new people. Paradise or Oblivion will be released in March 2012 and we will post a link to the documentary as soon as it is released.

In the meantime, if you are not familiar with the work of Jacque Fresco and his Venus Project, here is a link to his highly informative newsletter and The Venus Project site. Fresco is one of the most brilliant minds of our time and his visionary proposals make total sense. He just raised funds to hire a screenwriter to develop a feature film that can inform the world that a solution exists to humanity’s challenges. This film cannot arrive too soon. Like Buckminster Fuller before him, the world is fortunate to have his brilliant mind and heart in service to life. NPD will continue to update readers on Jacque’s progress as it means our progress.

Zenpreneurism 3.0: A New Manifesto for Entrepreneurs

 

From New Paradigm Digest: www.newparadigmdigest.com

 

In his little treasure of a book. Allan Hollinder, the father of Zenpreneurism, shares his lessons on living a soulful and integrated business and personal life. There are many great business books, but few pack in as much wisdom in 45 pages.

Allan supports readers in redefining what real success means from the accumulation of more and more money to identifying and sharing our authentic soul’s calling as well as our love, compassion and gratitude, attracting and welcoming our experiences, and leaving an honorable footprint on the planet.

As Buddha said “Deeds done in harmony with one’s path of life are those which bring clarity, peace and harmony to the doer”.

Ready for Your Own PERSONAL Satellite?

 

 

Assignment:  Take notes in your journal about all the things you can think of that you would do with your very own satellite in earth orbit?  You could also create a "fleet" of satellites with friends and associates!  Write Now!  GO!

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Would you like to have your own spacecraft in space?

Video at: www.kicksat.org

I’m Zac Manchester, a graduate student in Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. Over the last several years a few collaborators and I have designed, built, and tested a very tiny and inexpensive spacecraft called Sprite that can be built and launched into low Earth orbit for just a few hundred dollars each!

 

Consciousness, Occupy Movement & Planetary Culture (Lecture)

 

 

 

 

Jeremy Johnson of EL interviews one of our greatest scultural historians, William Irwin Thompson for a fascinating discussion about the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, digital culture and planetary crisis.

What is the role of myth and mysticism in the new planetary culture?

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Biography of William Irwin Thompson:

(See Below)

 

 

The Local-Global Flip or "The Lanier Effect" (Edge)

 

 

A Conversation with Computer Visionary Jaron Lanier [8.29.11]

 

Source:  http://edge.org/conversation/the-local-global-flip

"If you aspire to use computer network power to become a global force through shaping the world instead of acting as a local player in an unfathomably large environment, when you make that global flip, you can no longer play the game of advantaging the design of the world to yourself and expect it to be sustainable. The great difficulty of becoming powerful and getting close to a computer network is: Can people learn to forego the temptations, the heroin-like rewards of being able to reform the world to your own advantage in order to instead make something sustainable?"

 

"I strongly urge you to read this truly epic interview with Jaron Lanier at Edge. ... It's an extraordinary interview, packed with insight and often grimly funny." Matt Zoller Seitz, Salon.com

"Fascinating conversation with Jaron Lanier, influential computer scientist. On economics of the Internet – implications of networked technology, destruction of middle class and dark side of new media". — Writing Worth Reading, The Browser.com

 

What is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, or Beautiful Explanation ? (Edge)

"The World's Smartest Website."

— John Naughton, The Observer 

Scientists' greatest pleasure comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way. These explanations are called "beautiful" or "elegant". Historical examples are Kepler's explanation of complex planetary motions as simple ellipses, Bohr's explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms of electron shells, and Watson and Crick's double helix. Einstein famously said that he did not need experimental confirmation of his general theory of relativity because it "was so beautiful it had to be true."

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT,
OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?

Since this question is about explanation, answers may embrace scientific thinking in the broadest sense: as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, including other fields of inquiry such as philosophy, mathematics, economics, history, political theory, literary theory, or the human spirit. The only requirement is that some simple and non-obvious idea explain some diverse and complicated set of phenomena.

[Thanks to Steven Pinker for suggesting this year's Edge Question and to Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and George Dyson for their ongoing advice and support.]

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Andrei Linde

Father of "Eternal Chaotic Inflation"; Professor of Physics, Stanford University

Excerpt: To summarize, the inflationary multiverse consists of myriads of 'universes' with all possible laws of physics and mathematics operating in each of them. We can only live in those universes where the laws of physics allow our existence, which requires making reliable predictions. In other words, mathematicians and physicists can only live in those universes which are comprehensible and where the laws of mathematics are efficient.

One can easily dismiss everything that I just said as a wild speculation. It seems very intriguing, however, that in the context of the new cosmological paradigm, which was developed during the last 30 years, we might be able, for the first time, to approach one of the most complicated and mysterious problems which bothered some of the best scientists of the 20th century.

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Why Is Our World Comprehensible?

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." This is one of the most famous quotes from Albert Einstein. "The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle." Similarly, Eugene Wigner said that the unreasonable efficiency of mathematics is "a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve." Thus we have a problem that may seem too metaphysical to be addressed in a meaningful way: Why do we live in a comprehensible universe with certain rules, which can be efficiently used for predicting our future?

One could always respond that God created the universe and made it simple enough so that we can comprehend it. This would match the words about a miracle and an undeserved gift. But shall we give up so easily? Let us consider several other questions of a similar type. Why is our universe so large? Why parallel lines do not intersect? Why different parts of the universe look so similar? For a long time such questions looked too metaphysical to be considered seriously. Now we know that inflationary cosmology provides a possible answer to all of these questions. Let us see whether it might help us again.

Retelling the Past & Reimagining the Future: A 2012 Dialogue with Daniel Pinchbeck and Graham Hancock

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:  Pinchbeck and Hancock discuss the implications of the Mayan Calendar "end-times" date 2012 which Hancock first drew to the attention of his readers in Fingerprints of the Gods published in 1995. Hancock's evidence for a great lost civilisation wiped out in a global cataclysm 12,500 years ago is explored in depth together with his suggestion that the survivors of that civilisation may have sought to pass down a message to the future and indeed specifically to us in the twenty-first century -- a warning that the next great lost civilisation may be our own.

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This unique dialogue brings together two leading counterculture thinkers, Daniel Pinchbeck author of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age, and Breaking Open the Head, and Graham Hancock author of Fingerprints of the Gods, Supernatural and most recently the fantasy adventure novel Entangled. Pinchbeck and Hancock discuss the implications of the Mayan Calendar "end-times" date 2012 which Hancock first drew to the attention of his readers in Fingerprints of the Gods published in 1995.

Mayan Prophecies & Crop Circles: An Extraordinary Connection

 

Khan Academy: A Free Education for Anyone Anywhere

 

A free world-class education for anyone anywhere.

The Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.

All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.

 

What Do You Want to Learn?

Alone Together: Why We Expect More of Technology and Less of Each Other

 

 

 

Writing Assignment:  As you watch this video, and read the overview of Alone Together below, reflect on your current relationship to the tsunami of digital technologies that threaten to overwhelm us.  How are all these tools affecting your life? Are they adding to your sense of peace and happiness, or detracting from your quality of life?  Are you wanting more connections via these many options, or are you starting to unplug?  if you are serious about being a writer, or even about being able to think clearly about your life and make intelligent decisions, you will need to create boundaries for yourself in terms of how much time you spend absorbed in the brave new  Orwellian digital world.  Write Now!  GO!

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Sherry Turkle's New Book:

Alone Together: Why We Expect More of Technology and Less of Each Other

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Facebook. Twitter. SecondLife. “Smart” phones. Robotic pets. Robotic lovers. Thirty years ago we asked what we would use computers for. Now the question is what don’t we use them for. Now, through technology, we create, navigate, and perform our emotional lives.

2012 Pole Shift - Gregg Braden

 

The Long Now Foundation - Ready for Long Term Thinking? Like 10,000 Years?

 

 

Journal Assignment:   Come over and take a look at Stewart Brand's Long Now Foundation:

www.longnow.org

 

Challenge yourself to think in terms of 10,000 years in the future.   How about just 1000 years?  If this opportunity inspires you,  do some imaginative thinking about how we and our home planet might change, what values will endure, how we will live, what kind of communities we might have, and whether or not we will be able to reverse the destructive patterns that are now in play.  Take notes on what you would LIKE to see here in 1000 years, and then stretch out to 10,000 years.  Write Now! GO!

 

The Clock and Library Projects

Below is an essay by  founding board member Stewart Brand on the need for, and the mechanism by which, The Long Now Foundation is attempting to encourage long-term thinking.

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed-some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where 'long-term' is measured at least in centuries. Long Now proposes both a mechanism and a myth. It began with an observation and idea by computer scientist Daniel Hillis :