My Writings. My Thoughts.
Language of Living Systems
// April 12th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized
Language and currency are two major catalysts of social interaction. Imagine a week or even a day without using either one! Both allow us to experience a shared reality and communicate mutual values, thereby shaping social behavior. In the following interview, Alan Rosenblith, creator of the documentary The Money Fix , makes the thought-provoking suggestion that “currencies can be defined as a linguistic phenomenon.” Indeed, currencies and language foster interconnectivity and coordinate human activity—as Thomas Berry said, “Nothing can be itself without being in communication with everything else.”
I recently watched Cracking the Mayan Code, a documentary which highlights language as a key component of culture and describes how Spanish conquistadors forbade the use of the Mayan language and destroyed their written texts. Conquerors throughout the ages have systematically repressed native languages and imposed their own. Language has great power because it expresses and creates a shared story. Linguistic colonialism demands that natives speak the language of the conqueror. A command-and-control hierarchical currency model similarly demands the exclusive use of the political power’s system of trading. If currency is a linguistic phenomenon, then how can we, the people, claim more power in how we communicate value?
Symbionomics: Designing Living Symbols
// February 18th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
How are currencies evolving as key symbols in our living social organisms? Join filmmaker Alan Rosenblith, maker of the Money Fix for an interactive conversation. Hear about the about the opportunities created by the emerging Metacurrency Project. Currencies are symbols used to shape, enable, and interact with flows. We actually use many currencies every day in our lives, like driver’s licenses, diplomas, votes, and dollars. How we choose to make flows visible has a profound effect on human behavior and the entire biosphere. Currencies are like DNA for social organisms, which are clearly in profound distress today. As our social organisms evolve through the problems of the 21st century, radically new types of currency will be required. Come explore the frontier of currency design with a brilliant visionary in this field.
Listen to this FREE conference call by clicking on the link to your left.
A Banking R-Evolution
// February 2nd, 2010 // Comments Off // Uncategorized
We have some things to learn from North Dakota. Today states are struggling with staggering deficits and no relief in sight, while private banks are making record profits. Yet things are different in North Dakota, where they have had a state owned bank since 1919. The stock of the Bank of North Dakota (BND) is 100% owned by the state, and thus required to be accountable to the public. This is in contrast to the Federal Reserve, with stock interests owned by private banks. According to Ellen Hodgson Brown in her recent article “Escape from Pottersville: The North Dakota Model for Capitalizing Community Banks”
“Since 2000, North Dakota’s GNP has grown 56 percent, personal income has grown 43 percent and wages have grown 34 percent. The state not only has no funding problems, but in 2009 it had a budget surplus of $1.3 billion, the largest it ever had.”
There are several emerging models of interest in the banking sector, the Unified Field Bank and the Common Good Bank. Transparency and accountability are essential to a sustainable financial industry with integrity. So let’s use common sense to evolve this industry to serve the people and encourage systemic prosperity, as the Bank of North Dakota has done.
Harnessing Group Attention
// December 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
Each time I experience the power of a group of people focused in common intention I am humbled. For when we choose to harness our attention with others incredible healing and change can happen. For over two years, I have been participating in the Heart Circle practice. Creator Tej Steiner says, that Heart Circles invite participants to “be present, real, connected, and creative.” Who doesn’t want more of this in their lives? The beauty of a resonant group field is that it amplifies the intentions of the individual.
Our attention is a precious resource. We are bombarded with advertising images and messages, and sensationalized fear-mongering on the news. No wonder so many are feeling anxious, overwhelmed, and scattered these days. It is time to reclaim our inherent powers. Look at Lynne McTaggart’s Intention Experiment and how we are coming together in unprecedented ways through the Internet to focus our collective intention for healing and transformation. As Margaret Meade said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Wealth: Sharing the Field of Plenty
// November 13th, 2009 // Comments Off // Uncategorized
Do you consider yourself wealthy? Do any judgments arise as you ponder that question? A holistic sense of wealth includes the quality of loving relationships, health, an ability to tap into passion, and the skills and gifts we embody…Yet wealth in the modern sense is based on the discrete and separate self that accumulates goods, driven by an underlying obsession with “the future” and a deep fear of separateness. In other words, people believe their wealth creates security. Their measured amount of “assets” is protection, a barrier from the outside world. Continue Reading
Evolution of Exchange Upcoming Call
// November 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
Money creation is a key tool for creating greater stability and resilience in local economies, and next week there will be a ground-breaking dialog with people around the world who are engaging a more intimate economy using these systems. Curious? Register for the call and read more in my article “Creating Currency for a Resilient Local Economy.” Special guests on the call will include filmmaker Alan Rosenblith, creator of the Money Fix and others involved in local exchange projects. Rosenblith observes that we are seeing a pattern with centralized information systems becoming obsolete because of the internet. Industries such as music, newspapers and now banking, are all undergoing radical transformation. Read the book “The Wealth of Networks” by Yochai Benkler to learn more about the impact of a radically different business paradigm. And the creation of currency is the next frontier in this evolution, we can choose as Alan says “an integrative participatory approach to collectively design the measure of flows. With open currency we can determine our own measure of value.” Watch this Wall Street Journal video clip for a preview of the The Coming Currency Revolution.
Economics of Peace
// November 1st, 2009 // Comments Off // Uncategorized
At the recent Economics of Peace Conference, organized by the RSF Social Fund (inspired by Rudolf Steiner) and Praxis Peace Institute, 300 people gathered for one week in Sonoma, California. People from diverse backgrounds, social justice, community organizing, complementary currency, microlending, social media and the tech world converged. Speakers shared about salmon economics, the predator state, Slow Money, Sacred Economics, worker-owned cooperatives and time banking. Innovative ideas are arising at the edges of the mainstream, from the mythological to the practical, from the conceptual to the actual, new ways of engaging together are sprouting.
Fear
// October 9th, 2009 // Comments Off // Uncategorized
Understanding how to manage and transform fear is one of the most important skills we can master. Listening to the news, one has a plethora of things to fear: nuclear war, climate change, swine flu, economic recession. Then there are also the unique life experiences that create fear within each of us, such as abandonment, betrayal, dying, lack of intimacy, or scarcity. Clearly, we cannot afford to ignore or avoid this primal human emotion. This summer, I was significantly affected by a workshop I attended about working with fear (both personally and collectively) and interviewed the facilitators, Robert and Diane Masters to bring forth their timely wisdom.
Read the full interview here.
I Am the Gift
// September 25th, 2009 // Comments Off // Uncategorized
A generous surprise
the Great Mystery
is unwrapped and exchanged
thru a sacred vessel:
the human on an Earthwalk
gives and receives with
every breath: the Beloved.
In awe of the miracle
of interbeingness —
joy is flowing, owned by noOne
but shared by all.
Beyond understanding
grace undresses -
in allways, always the glorious
revelation of Truth.
This precious Gift of Life,
the present of presence
the miracle: I am.
For in the dance of duality
it appears that
I give and receive,
yet all the while
I am
The Gift.
Maestro Conference
// August 28th, 2009 // Comments Off // Uncategorized
People around the globe are finding creative ways to offer their gifts to contribute to positive transformation on our planet. The culminating multi-faceted crisis of separation is fueling a transformation of the way we care for the earth and each other in a sacred way.
A key tool for me, and many others, is MaestroConference — now officially out of beta. Using this technology I am creating groups calls that are intimate, because of the small break-out groups feature of Maestro, that enables people to share their personal stories, and feel heard and “seen”, even virtually.
