ALEX NOBLE - WRITING JOURNAL-2015

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 :

 

MINDSURFING: Visionary Activism - The Coyote News Network

 

"If we're not having fun, we're just not serious enough!"

If you are ready to take a daring leap into the wonderful world of Caroline Casey, check out her website:

http://www.visionaryactivism.com

 

and listen to a few of her recent radio programs, which may stir your thinking into some new spaces and places.  She is brilliant, theatrical, funny and great fun, but hidden in her words are treasures of cosmic wisdom and tips for sanity and survival in these unpredictable and generally puzzling times.

Caroline W. Casey

is willing to cahoot with all contributing to the emergent culture of reverent ingenuity and reciprocal blessing!

Co-Operators are Standing By!

proffering personal and collective guidance whereby to effectively engage with forces currently active in the memosphere, that we may be ever more effective players on the team of creation at this time of Dire Beauty.

Our primary dedication: moving our emotional default setting to "Woof-Woof Wanna Play?!" (Because as ally B'er Grimes quips: "If we're not having fun, we're just not serious enough!")

MINDSURFING - Utne Reader's Top Blogs for 2011

http://bit.ly/t0qF9g

(Hat Tip to New Paradigm Digest for this item)

We at Utne Reader sift through 1,500 periodicals, skim hundreds of websites and blogs, and clamber over a mountain of new books to present the best the alternative press has to offer. Unfortunately, the magazine we deliver is only about 100 pages long, so we can’t reprint all of the fresh ideas, deeply-reported journalism, and vivid portraits that we read. Thus, we blog. The following five blogs were your favorites from 2011.

5) “A New Peace Symbol” by David Schimke 

 

Sometimes, short blog posts are the best. That was the case with Editor-in-Chief David Schimke’s hat-tip to the new international symbol for human rights. An excerpt:

“Free as a Man,” created by Serbian artist Predrag Stakic, is the winner of an online competition conducted by the Human Rights Logo Initiative, which is on a mission to make the design an internationally recognized symbol for human rights.