Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label EcoTheology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EcoTheology. Show all posts

Saturday, March 12, 2022

Processual Consciousness and Integrated, Complex Astrobiological Intelligence


Seeing the Universe as a Cosmic-Connectedness

Processual Consciousness and Integrated,
Complex Astrobiological Intelligence

The Disequilibrium of Entropic Spaces
Speaks to Cosmic Self-Awareness

by R.E. Slater


The What and The Why

The first question I suppose I should answer is how does science continually end up here on a bible blog? Firstly, because it interests me. Secondly, because theology should never rest alone in a vacuum from any stream of life. Which means religion and theology should always be integrated with all material, ethical, moral, aesthetic, and spiritual aspects of our cosmic world.

Further, a major part of Process Philosophy and Theology, if not its entirety, is it's panrelational, panexistential, and panpsychic qualities bourne along inside it's Whiteheadian bones (as in, Alfred North Whitehead, the British mathematician and philosopher).

When Whitehead proposed his organic theory of matter and the universe (The Philosophy of Organism, later to be known as Process Philosophy) he didn't intend for it to continue the Enlightenment/Scientific Era's reductionary outlook upon the nature of scientific cosmology. He intended to end its unnatural formulations and return to Hegel's shortened life's work to extend and uplift it beyond where it ended.

Whitehead did this by acknowledging Einstein's Relativity Theory of the Large and the resultant Quantum Physics Theory of the Small by escalating their separate revelations together into an integrum of cosmological significance beyond their mere disconnected parts.

Scientifically, relativistic quantum gravity is the cosmic glue physicists are trying to use to bring both the Relativity and Quantum theoretical views together. But in Whitehead, his intention was philosophical. As in the areas of metaphysics and ontology and what those would mean for societal ethics.

Whitehead was looking to bring holism into non-holistic thinking. And for today's Whiteheadian Process Theologian - whether Christian, Buddhists, Jewish, or Islamic - such an endeavor is looking for the cosmic significance - and Cosmic Signifier - to the matter and energy lying behind the cosmic whole.

The Significance of the Processual Whole

Hence, Whiteheadian Process Philosophy and its *compending religious auxiliary known as Process Theology (*compendium - a concise but comprehensive summary of a larger work) each require the view of a universe which is in communication with itself. A deeply integrated and relational communication by however its quantum energies and forces are measured. There is within and about the substance of this cosmic whole we call the universe a kind of panpsychic communication (some may describe this as an aural communication) between itself in particular, and outwardly with the entirety of cosmological matter and forces.

In the human species we call this kind of self-awareness as "consciousness". In the material world of science it may describe this communal interaction as vibrational signaling utilizing frequencies of light, sound and plasmic radiation. In the spiritual world of religion one may call it God or a spirituality of some kind. But however we call this transactional activity found throughout the universe, it is structurally connected in communicating within itself, across itself, and outside of its cosmic "environmental" biomes.

Examples?

  • Colonies of ants and bees communicate to their fellow members across their nests and hives.
  • Living masses of trees seem to know "who" their competing neighbors are - whether beneficial or invasive.
  • Competing entropy systems, whether biological coral reefs - or the mantle of the earth itself - work together to fed off lost energy in the seas and deep within the earth, converting destructive forms of energy into beneficial landscapes inviting more complex entropic systems to become participatory symbiotic hosts and guests.

A processual world, like a processual entropic universe, bears within itself a kind of restorative equilibrium energy by which everything comprehends everything else throughout its "inorganic and organic" spaces. Informing, or communicating, to the other spaces via reactionary entropic cycles of life and death in whatever way we, as humans, might describe these cosmic terms signifying relationship to the experiencing other which are highly aware of their cosmic environments whether as an energy, or as a force, or by some other means of complex communication science might describe as the natural laws of thermodynamics. The point? The universe is not found in its parts and pieces but also in its whole. Its mass. Its entirety as a complex cosmic organism (using the broadest of terms).

Cycles of Processual, Processing, Cosmic Awareness

Human consciousness is not unique nor singular to itself. The universe breathes a kind of "consciousness" within its spaces even as biological spaces do the same as mentioned above.

Human consciousness is but another non-unique expression of a universal "consciousness" or "awareness" of itself. When we look at an ant's intelligence in comparison to a monkey's, a dolphin's, an elephant's, pig, cat, or dog, their consciousness are different in kind to each other even as they are different in kind to our own - or to the cosmic universe we live within.

For science to investigate whether the earth has its own planetary "intelligence" isn't quite the same as asking whether a planetary intelligence is like to our own. As unique and special as the human conscience is it could well be speculated that the earth's planetary intelligence is every bit as connected, integrated, and unique to itself as we are in our own mental, physical, and spiritual capacities.

Moreover, even as dietary regimen, exercise, and spiritual pursuits keep a body's soul in healthy communication with it's complexly integrated environments, so too does the earth's planetary wellbeing have health factors of its own measured in:

  • the volcanic activity of released poisonous gases;
  • the increasing deoxygenation of earth's densely populated forested jungles due to human ingress and destruction across the Canadian, Siberian, African, and Amazonian biotic masses; and,
  • the deadly pollutionary deaths the earth is absorbing into itself measured across its acceding and accretional environmental habitats.

To the degree we, or the earth, remain healthy, indicates the degree to which we better understand how our human-technological imprint on the earth remains healthy or not by how we enable the earth to self-regulate it's own planetary IQ.

Processual Entropy as a Quixotic Amorphous Life-Giver

Remember, entropy is always present within a system turning chaos into occasional results of random wellbeing for entropic states wired to work in this way. In this case, a hot Earth required for its planetary health unique ways to dissipate it's primal heat. Given what it had on hand to use, organic life was able to arise to participate in cooling down the earth lest it boil away into a hot Mercury-like rock.

Though astrophysicists may deny any IQ (Intelligence Quotient) to the Earth's planetary comprehension of itself, Process Thought states the opposite to the science's mechanistic assertion of "matter v mind" reductionism. If the Earth is considered within it's larger cosmological context, the earth's planetary intelligence is everywhere about us. Presently in its disruptive stages to itself due to our disruptive interference to its equilibrium-establishing rhythms and flows.

But Earth's planetary IQ is here and is something we need to attune ourselves to in order to live with the Earth in a more beneficial give-and-take entropic balance of wholeness and completeness. Our species is yet too young and immature to participate with our planet's complexly integrated cosmological IQ. Hopefully we will learn to grow into it and become better participating ecological partners.

Processually Integrated Religions Recognize Evolving Processual Creations

In a Christian context, processual living may be described as learning to live within the flows and rhythms of the Spirit of God. Not only to one another as a human species but to the earth surrounding us.

The Native Americans spoke of these matters in their primal religions even as the Eastern religions of the East do as well. Christianity is but one religion among many which shares a common core to the earth, waters, and sky above.

Christianity's own distinctive lies in its story of God's Incarnation as Jesus, who is acclaimed to be fully God and fully human (not half-and-half like skim milk). And the Christian story speaks particularly to the atonement the Creator God of the universe brought to mankind through Jesus's life, ministry, death, and resurrection.

In this theological matter the other religions lie mute. But when looking around us, these same religions tell the story of life and death, of atonement and redemption. Perhaps not in the same way as the Hebrew-Christian bible overtly declares but in their similarities of theme and construct, wisdom and retribution, purpose and goal.

All acknowledged religions peer into the universe to see life itself built deep down inside its unfolding, driving forces overcoming, and overcomed, by other forces of life and death and life renewed again. The Christian story is not unique or alone in  this cosmic story. In the story of God lies the story of Jesus in His own story of life and death and life renewed again.

In its processual form this same redemptive story of atonement is retold everywhere about us. We only need to look beyond the cycles of tragedy and death, or our own caustic material Westernization, to see it.

R.E. Slater
March 12, 2022

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The Iberian Peninsula at night from orbit. (NASA)SPACE


Astrophysicists Say 'Planetary Intelligence' Exists…
But Earth Doesn't Have Any

February 21, 2022


We tend to think of intelligence as something that describes just one individual. But it's possible to describe all kinds of collectives as intelligent, too – whether we're talking about social groups of humans, enclaves of insects, or even the mysterious behavior of slime mold and viruses.

By extension, could intelligence be observed on a much grander scale – perhaps that of an entire planet? In a newly published paper, a team of space scientists explores this tantalizing question, reaching some surprising conclusions about our very own Earth.

"An open question is whether or not intelligence can operate at the planetary scale, and if so, how a transition to planetary-scale intelligence might occur and whether or not it has already occurred or is on our near-term horizon," the team writes.

They note that understanding this question could help us to steer the future of our planet; however, according to their own criteria, it looks like we're not there yet.

"We don't yet have the ability to communally respond in the best interests of the planet," says astrophysicist Adam Frank from the University of Rochester.

"There is intelligence on Earth, but there isn't planetary intelligence."

According to the researchers, the emergence of technological intelligence on a planet – a common reference point in astrobiology research – should perhaps be viewed not as something that happens on a planet but to a planet.

In such an interpretation, the evolution of planetary intelligence would represent the acquisition and application of a collective body of knowledge operating across a complex system of different species at the same time, and in a harmonious way that benefits or sustains the whole biosphere.

Unfortunately – and obviously – humans and Earth are not at that point yet.

In fact, Frank and his co-authors say we've only made it to the third stage of their hypothetical timeline for the development of planetary intelligence.

  • In the first stage, characteristic of a very early Earth, a planet with an 'immature biosphere' develops life, but there are insufficient feedback loops between life and geophysical processes for co-evolution of different kinds of life.
  • In the second stage, the 'mature biosphere' has developed.
  • Next, a planet could become the third stage: an 'immature technosphere', where Earth currently is. In this stage, technological activity has developed on the planet, but it's not yet sustainably integrated with other systems, such as the physical environment.
  • If those tensions can be resolved, however, an immature technosphere stands a chance to develop to the final stage: a 'maturing technosphere', where feedback loops between technological activity and other biogeochemical and biogeophysical states act in sync to ensure maximum stability and productivity of the full system.
  • This idealized state is where Earth should be trying to get to, the researchers argue. "Planets evolve through immature and mature stages, and planetary intelligence is indicative of when you get to a mature planet," says Frank.
"The million-dollar question is figuring out what planetary intelligence looks like and means for us in practice because we don't know how to move to a mature technosphere yet."

According to the researchers, we currently sit on a precipice, where our collective actions clearly have global consequences, but we are not yet in control of those consequences.

If, in tandem with other forces on the planet, we can develop a balance where those consequences become controlled, we might finally evolve – as a planet – to the next level.

"A transition to planetary intelligence, as we described here, would have the hallmark property of intelligence operating at a planetary scale," the researchers write in their paper. "Such planetary intelligence would be capable of steering the future evolution of Earth, acting in concert with planetary systems and guided by a deep understanding of such systems."

The paper was published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.



Wednesday, August 12, 2020

R.E. Slater - A Long Journey Ended


sculptures by Sequin


Last night I was reading past articles on quantum physics I had written nine years ago and sharing several insights with my wife on how quantum physics tied into process philosophy which all then connected neatly with "open and relational (process) theology" as a three legged triangle. But after posting an article on eco-cosmopolitics that same day, I just then realized I had to add a fourth leg to the triangle and expand it dimensionally when adding the cosmopolitical element of a pluri-universe dispensed in multi-natural, multi-perspectival, and multi-human terms of thrival. Throughout this rhombian structure you then get an open future with infinite possibilities allowing for agency, creativity, imagination, value, and joy. - re slater


The taste of water – Inalienable Write


Today is a Day of Days

Yesterday, quite unknowingly, I completed what was a milestone in my writings but didn't feel anything like it. I hadn't realized I had crossed a rubicon of sorts until reading through a few past articles on quantum physics later that evening (see one of the articles here) when it came to me that the physics of the small from nine years ago was matching up with the theology of the future written since.

I started out a decade ago (quite unwillingly) to update the theology I grew up with and knew well. It was very mainline, very evangelical, very reformed (and conservatively so) in doctrine. What I wanted back then was a contemporary theology which could better express my Christianity to myself, my kids, and several others struggling with issues of freewill, the kind of creation we live in, its future, and the church's place in the world.

Destroyer of Worlds

At that time the cracks were beginning to appear in my locked-down, very "biblical" system of God, the bible, and the dispensational/covenant reformed doctrine I had rigorously been taught. But what all this learning needed was a complete smashing and rebuild. If my present house is any kind of example of my mindset then this is what I did to the theology I had learned from so many good people, mentors, and trusted confidantes. With our present house, I completed demolished it; lifted up its skeleton 20 ft into the air; bulldozed out its old, rotted, wooden foundation; placed a completely new cement foundation with additions underneath it; set it back down on the ground garage-and-all; and then rebuilt what was left of the old house from the ground up.

Apparently, over these many years, I have been doing this same thing with my mainline theology. With the Lord's help, and by the Spirit's guidance, I began in a very dark place. A deep personal wilderness of spiritual blackness where the Lord hid me to help open my eyes to see anew. Not "by throwing out the baby with the bath water" as they say, but by keeping the necessary structures required but not its rotting foundations. To then raise all up, demolish it, set it down, reframe it, skin it out, and create a renewing habitation built for the 21st century's postmodern era.

An era of constructive postmodernism measured by doctrine and topic, critique and reflection, upon all the anathema subjects my faith couldn't speak to as long as I lived within its older theological house (or is it it's older theological temple? I don't know. You decide).


A Long Wandering Ended

Anyway, as of last night, I realized an important watershed moment had been achieved. Yesterday I had just completed describing a very important visionary article on what a Post-Capitalistic, Whiteheadian-based, Cosmopolitic Ecological Civilization and Society would look like if implemented. Exhausted after writing all day, and after a week of putting together related articles to this topic, I began reading through quantum mechanics as a refresher to a final piece on our evolutionary cosmology I wanted to write before heading into the topic of  Black Theology.

At that moment it came to me that when I put the themes of quantum physics together with an open and relational faith I had both the big and the small of an open, undecided future. One that is unpredictable except that it is built upon God's Self, in His Image, as it were. Like my house, I built it from my head and my heart. Upon my character as it were. There were no plans. No blueprints. No outside architect. That all came later to match my vision. It was an open build from the ground up.


So too with God and His creation. It is being built in real-time utilizing creational (freewill) agency, a chaotic and random process, and a no-design future except that it would be loving, generative, and novel against all the obstacles which would attempt to defeat its path.

Now for the good stuff.... It was then I realized that I could add process philosophy to the mix of quantum physics and open and relation theology (which, by the way, is a natural outcome of process philosophy). Here, chaotic, random processes ranged wild and free. There are no certain outcomes but every possible outcome. There are no singlar lines of endeavor but every possible endeavor. It's state of being was, and is, ever-and-always in the process of becoming. Of prehending the past and increasing its concrescing being by one in a continually bubbling pluri-verse of becoming. Aaaah, this felt like the hand of God to me from the small to the large....

sculptures by Sequin
A sculpted mobius strip
Lastly...

I then noticed there was this nice, neat, cosmic, triangular state between quantum physics, open and relational theology, and process theology, which we may now describe as an open and relational process theology. All laid out in a contemporary version of constructive postmodernism.

To this triangular arrangement of 3, very sublime, very foundational themes, I could now add a distorted rhombian figure of 4 points laid out like a mobius strip in a never-ending 1-dimensional form connecting that aspect of creation which bends and wraps in-and-upon itself in infinite arrangement. An intricate structure limited only by time and imagination. It was what I had been working on all these many years of writing and editing. Of an ecological economy moving into a post-capitalist phase utilizing process-based Whiteheadian thinking on which to build an ecological civilization through localized effort. To be successful it would have to focus on the world of the small as well as the world of the large. The micro- with the macro-. The many with the one, and the one with the many.

Again, very quantum-like, very process-like, very open-future-like, where no blueprint or plan could adequately imagine final outcomes. It all would be built chaotically, randomly, without any pre-planning, by many hands and many communities and many nations. Each contributing as they could. The main points though would be constructed along the lines of humanitarian social justice (Christian Humanism) and ecological justice where nature has no human voice but our own human voices and actions. It's construction would be generative, novel, bringing wellbeing, and hopefully peace to an angry world learned only in speeches, and actions, of death and not life.

Conclusion

So I can effectively say this website has achieved its primary purpose of giving voice to those of us held silent for too long in past private temples of darkness and doom. Where God was said to love man but promised judgment and hell for many. Where the church's mission was to save the living as it could before this old world was cast into everlasting fires of torment. Where sinful act spoke louder than loving good works. Where the human spirit was so sinful it could never shine in the glimmer of God's image built into it. Where Christ came only to save mankind but not the earth we are destroying.

Aye, let us begin again with a more holistic contemporary theology. One built for the 21st Century. One which builds upon the atoning work of Christ whose redemptive fellowship restores God's image more fully without the chaining binds of sin's power subtending over it. By seeing a humanity utilizing God's gifts which it was birthed with for the freedom and liberation of others and for the restoration of this earth. That everlasting love and hope are part of our human constitution and not simply corrective theologic formulas uttered so strictly as you can't breath, or hope, and do anything without feeling guilty for everything you do.

Nay, God is bigger than us, our bible, or our doctrines and creeds. And it is my hope here at Relevancy22 we have begun a discussion which will join the voices of many others whom I have discovered along my wayward "liberal" journey through the wilderness of unknowing and uncertainty. That with proper Spirit-placed doubt - and the internal struggle God has placed within each our breasts - we discover His leading unto higher heights against the lower depths we see crashing around us. With God there is real hope. Real salvation. Real vision. Let us dream in our beings by becoming dream-makers in our world's of becoming.

Chapter 1 of discovery and renewal has ended for me. The foundations are laid. The house is built. Chapter 2 now begins stitching together all previous journeys into future endeavors of building together a new world of endless generative possibility. Amen and Amen.

R.E. Slater
August 12, 2020


Lord of the Harvest


Related Topics to Today's Discussion



Indexes











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QUANTUM PHYSICS, INDETERMINACY and MULTIVERSES




Sunday, May 10, 2020

Anticipating a New Post-Virus Civilization: Ecological Civilizations for Earth & Humanity





It's Not Just a Speed Bump

by Jay McDaniel


President of Claremont Institute for Process Studies, ​Philip Clayton,
asks four questions as we anticipate a post-pandemic world


The pandemic is not just a speed bump, momentarily disrupting our habitual ways of living in the world and organizing life. It's a crisis and an opportunity - so we learn from Philip Clayton's PPT shared below and the work of the Institute for Ecological Civilization, of which he is president.

Indeed, the pandemic and its emerging aftermath are a twofold revelation of sorts:

(1) a revelation of the failures of our prevailing economic, social, and cultural systems to meet the needs of people, other animals, and the earth; and, conversely,
(2) a revelation of the best and only hope, which is that we build local communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, diverse, humane to animals, and good for the earth, with no one left behind.

Philip Clayton and others speak of these communities as the building blocks of ecological civilizations. In such civilizations inhabitants live with respect and care for one another, other animals, and the earth, mindful that they are small but included in a larger web of life. The ‘economy’ is understood as a subset of the web of life, not the other way around. 

Where to begin? If you, like me, want to play a role in helping bring about this kind of civilization, Philip Clayton invites us to ask ourselves four questions as individuals and local communities as we anticipate the aftermath of the pandemic:

  • How will you think differently?
  • How can you organize smaller-scale communities?
  • How can you retain different lifestyles among friends and family?
  • How can you expand these innovations to the community level?

Exploring these discussions is indeed something we can do, now.

- Jay McDaniel


* * * * * * * * * * * * * 


Claremont Institute for Process Studies

This is the second of a three-part conversation between John Cobb, Philip Clayton, and friends of the Cobb Institute discuss the impact of the coronavirus, and what it might mean for the future. Dr. Cobb is the main speaker during the first part. Dr. Clayton is the main speaker during the second part. The final part is an open conversation.

Coronavirus: Rogue wave or speed bump? And what’s next?
- Cobb & Clayton Conversation - Part 2




MEET ECOCIV - An Introduction to our work


Find out why we started our non-profit, why we are
working on the transition to an ecological civilization,
and what this means. Learn more about EcoCiv at


Thursday, September 19, 2019

R.E. Slater - Ancient Rhythms


Ancient Traditional Japanese Music - Mountain Pass

Image result for ancient japanese
Additional Images




Ancient Rhythms
by R.E. Slater

Hot yellow clouds cry
But cannot see looking down
Earth awaits her death.

Scattered blossoms flow
Along dying streams choked
Living waters unsung.

Seeing, we see not
Not earth, not others, blinded souls
Once ancient, forgot.

Mouldering petals
Like forgotten joys, rotting
Fled creation's memory.

Joyless hearts beating
Sing of lands of summer blooms
Echoing of lament.

Remembering home
Nourishing Edens, now barren
Timeless paths flowing.

Embracing oneness
Fellowships bound land to soul
Divine grace gifts all.


R.E. Slater
September 18, 2019


Note: A traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem
with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count.
Often focusing on images from nature, haiku emphasizes
simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression with
no rhyming.

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved


Notes to Haiku

Having come across a foreign concert segment on the Internet I became curious as to why it was so moving to the well dressed audience gasping and swooning during its emotional performance. It seems that the song being sung by the young lady in white was lamenting the losses of childhood and of that of the ancient Japanese culture having forgotten its meaning and identity when absorbing Western practices, capitalism, and consequentially separation from the cradling arms of the earth (sic, earth spirits of nature) in its mimicry. The song, like the film it originated from, layers its hopes upon a succeeding generations which might remember the old ways in finding a way back to what once was treasured in its ancient traditions - cultural vitality, fellowship, earth care, and the social identity which came from these traditions. Themes universal to the ancient human breast itself.

Modern Western critics like Wendell Berry, Aldo Leopold, and a host of others ranging from poets to theologs have echoed these same sentiments in observing how industrialized Western progress has created great loss to humanity's inherent cardinal values imaged upon our souls by the divine granting the life-giving qualities of identity and meaning when in fellowship with the earth and one another. Specifically, both concert, song, and film, recall the primal longing of creation as an ancient longing we have too easily dismissed as an insignificant thing when pompously disrupting or destroying both our own past as well as the pasts of other native American cultures, aboriginal cultures, and non-European civilizations by Westernizing standards having become deaf-and-blind to the accumulated wisdoms of the ancients over the centuries in succeeding echoes of enforced religious and doctrinnaire superiority.

Consequently, in this present day we must now repair the renewing cycles of divine life by listening to, and learning from, one another as from the earth and Spirit themselves, each once heard in the sublime symphonies of our distant souls now lost within the graves we have wantonly dug as memorials to our sins, greed, and follies. This loss of divine rhythm must somehow be recovered from what was carelessly destroyed and now deemed worthless in our pride and short-sightedness. Soul qualities we are only now realising granting life, hope, purpose, and fellowship with the earth and with one another. And it is in this  divine revelatory light we must hear again those ancient lyrics to restore, renew, steward, and cultivate earth's primal Edens which had once nurtured both creation and the human spirit in practices of wisdom, selflessness, silence, love, and community.

R.E. Slater
September 16, 2019


Related image
Westward Expansion into California
(Early California Exploration, Colonization, and Immigration Gallery)


Joe Hisaishi 2011.jpg

Joe Hisaishi in Budokan was a concert commemorating
both the Japanese theatrical premiere of Ponyo and the 25 years
of musical collaboration between composer Joe Hisaishi and film
maker Hayao Miyazaki.



Lyrics: The Name of Life

The whiteness of the clouds left behind by a plane
Draw a line across the blue sky
Always, no matter to where, always continuing
As if it knew tomorrow.

In my chest I breathed in a shallow breath
I remember the breeze that blew on my hot cheek.

The hands and feet which are bound before the future
Are freed by a quiet voice
So nostalgic that I want to scream out, is
One life, the midsummer light
At your shoulder, swaying, the sunbeams streaming through the leaves.

The white ball at rest
The petals which have been scattered by the wind
The invisible river which carries both
Singing while flowing on.

Secrets and lies and joy
Are the children of the gods who created this universe.

The heart which is bound before the future
Someday, will remember its name
So loved that I want to scream out, is
One life, the place to return to
At my fingertips, the summer day which doesn't disappear.



Inochi no Namae (The Name of Life)
Joe Hisaishi in Budokan - Studio Ghibli 25 Years Concert



Futatabi [Reprise] (Spirited Away)
Joe Hisaishi in Budokan - Studio Ghibli 25 Years Concert




Spirited Away


Spirited Away (Japanese: 千と千尋の神隠し Hepburn: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, "Sen and Chihiro's Spiriting Away") is a 2001 Japanese animated coming-of-age fantasy film. It was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Tohokushinsha Film and Mitsubishi and distributed by Toho. The film stars Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki, Takeshi Naito, Yasuko Sawaguchi, Tsunehiko Kamijō, Takehiko Ono, and Bunta Sugawara. Spirited Away tells the story of Chihiro Ogino (Hiiragi), a moody 10-year-old girl who, while moving to a new neighbourhood, enters the world of Kami (spirits) of Japanese Shinto folklore. After her parents are mutated into pigs by the witch Yubaba (Natsuki), Chihiro takes a job working in Yubaba's bathhouse to find a way to free herself and her parents and return to the human world.

Miyazaki wrote the script after he decided the film would be based on the 10-year-old daughter of his friend, associate producer Seiji Okuda, who came to visit his house each summer. At the time, Miyazaki was developing two personal projects, but they were rejected. With a budget of 19 million US dollars, production of Spirited Away began in 2000. Pixar director John Lasseter, who is a fan and friend of Miyazaki, convinced Walt Disney Pictures to buy the film's North American distribution rights, and served as the executive producer of its English-dubbed version Lasseter hired Kirk Wise as director and Donald W. Ernst as producer of the adaptation. Screenwriters Cindy Davis Hewitt and Donald H. Hewitt wrote the English-language dialogue to match the characters' original Japanese-language lip movements.

The film was originally released in Japan on 20 July 2001 by distributor Toho. It became the most successful film in Japanese history, grossing over $361 million worldwide.[a] The film overtook Titanic (the top-grossing film worldwide at the time) in the Japanese box office to become the highest-grossing film in Japanese history with a total of ¥30.8 billion. Spirited Away received universal acclaim and is frequently ranked among the greatest animated films ever made. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards, making it the first (and so far only) hand-drawn and non-English-language animated film to win that award. It was the co-recipient of the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival (shared with Bloody Sunday) and is in the top 10 on the British Film Institute's list of "Top 50 films for children up to the age of 14".

In 2016, it was voted the fourth-best film of the 21st century as picked by 177 film critics from around the world, making it the highest-ranking animated film on the list. It was also named the second "Best Film of the 21st Century So Far" in 2017 by the New York Times.


Spirited Away Trailer



Plot

Ten-year-old Chihiro Ogino and her parents are traveling to their new home when her father takes a shortcut, leading them to what appears to be an abandoned amusement park that Chihiro's father insists on exploring. They find a seemingly empty restaurant stall stocked with food, which Chihiro's parents immediately begin to eat. While exploring further, Chihiro finds an exquisite bathhouse and meets a boy named Haku, who warns her to return across the riverbed before sunset. However, Chihiro discovers too late that her parents have metamorphosed into pigs, and she is unable to cross the now-flooded river.

Haku finds Chihiro and has her ask for a job from the bathhouse's boiler-man, Kamaji, a yōkai commanding the susuwatari. Kamaji refuses to hire her and asks worker Lin to send Chihiro to Yubaba, the witch who runs the bathhouse. Yubaba tries to frighten Chihiro away, but she persists, so Yubaba gives Chihiro a contract to work for her. Yubaba takes away her name and renames her Sen (千). While visiting her parents' pigpen, Haku gives Sen a goodbye card she had with her, and Sen realizes that she had already forgotten her real name. Haku warns her that Yubaba controls people by taking their names, and that if she forgets hers like he has forgotten his, she will not be able to leave the spirit world.

Sen faces discrimination from the other workers because she is still a human and not a spirit; only Haku and Lin show sympathy for her. While working, she invites a silent creature named No-Face inside, believing him to be a customer. A "stink spirit" arrives as Sen's first customer, and she discovers he is the spirit of a polluted river. In gratitude for cleaning him, he gives Sen a magic emetic dumpling. Meanwhile, No-Face imitates the gold left behind by the stink spirit and tempts a worker with gold, then swallows him. He demands food and begins tipping extensively. He swallows two more workers when they interfere with his conversation with Sen.

Sen sees paper Shikigami attacking a Japanese dragon and recognizes the dragon as Haku metamorphosed. When a grievously injured Haku crashes into Yubaba's penthouse, Sen follows him upstairs. A shikigami that stowed away on her back shapeshifts into Zeniba, Yubaba's twin sister. She mutates Yubaba's son, Boh, into a mouse, creates a decoy Boh, and mutates Yubaba's harpy into a tiny, flylike bird. Zeniba tells Sen that Haku has stolen a magic golden seal from her, and warns Sen that it carries a deadly curse. Haku attacks the shikigami, which eliminates Zeniba's hologram. He falls into the boiler room with Sen, Boh, and the harpy on his back, where Sen feeds him part of the dumpling she had intended to give her parents, causing him to vomit both the seal and a black slug, which Sen crushes with her foot.

With Haku unconscious, Sen resolves to return the seal and apologize to Zeniba. Sen confronts No-Face, who is now massive, and feeds him the rest of the dumpling. No-Face follows Sen out of the bathhouse, steadily regurgitating everything he has eaten. Sen, No-Face, Boh, and the harpy travel to see Zeniba with train tickets given to her by Kamaji. Yubaba orders that Sen's parents be slaughtered, but Haku reveals that Boh is missing and offers to retrieve him if Yubaba releases Sen and her parents. Yubaba agrees, but only if Sen can pass a final test.

Sen, No-Face, Boh, and the harpy meet with Zeniba, who reveals that Sen's love for Haku broke her curse and that Yubaba used the black slug to control Haku. Haku appears at Zeniba's home in his dragon form and flies Sen, Boh, and the harpy to the bathhouse. No-Face decides to stay behind and become Zeniba's spinner. In mid-flight, Sen recalls falling years ago into the Kohaku River and being washed safely ashore, correctly guessing Haku's real identity as the spirit of the Kohaku River. When they arrive at the bathhouse, Yubaba forces Sen to identify her parents from among a group of pigs in order to break their curse. After Sen answers correctly that none of the pigs are her parents, her contract combusts and she is given back her real name. Haku takes her to the now-dry riverbed and vows to meet her again. Chihiro crosses the riverbed to her restored parents, who do not remember anything after eating at the restaurant stall. They walk back to their car, which is now covered in dust and leaves. Before getting in, Chihiro is shown to still be wearing the hairband No-Face spun for her at Zeniba's home.


Hidden Meaning in Spirited Away (Miyazaki)
– Earthling Cinema



Themes

The themes of the film are heavily influenced by Japanese Shinto-Buddhist folklore. The central location of the film is a Japanese bathhouse where a great variety of Japanese folklore creatures, including kami, come to bathe. Miyazaki cites the solstice rituals when villagers call forth their local kami and invite them into their baths.

Chihiro also encounters kami of animals and plants. Miyazaki says of this:

"In my grandparents' time, it was believed that kami existed everywhere – in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything. My generation does not believe this, but I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything."

The film has been compared to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as the stories have some elements in common such as being set in a fantasy world, the plots including a disturbance in logic and stability, and there being motifs such as food having metamorphic qualities; though developments and themes are not shared. Among other stories compared to Spirited Away, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is seen to be more closely linked thematically.

The major themes of Spirited Away center on the protagonist Chihiro and her liminal journey through the realm of spirits. The archetypal entrance into another world demarcates Chihiro's status as one somewhere between child and adult. Chihiro also stands outside societal boundaries in the supernatural setting. The use of the word kamikakushi (literally "hidden by gods") within the Japanese title, and its associated folklore, reinforces this liminal passage:

"Kamikakushi is a verdict of 'social death' in this world, and coming back to this world from Kamikakushi meant 'social resurrection.'"

Yubaba has many similarities to The Coachman from Pinocchio, in the sense that she mutates humans into pigs in a similar way that the boys of Pleasure Island were mutated into donkeys. Upon gaining employment at the bathhouse, Yubaba's seizure of Chihiro's true name symbolically kills the child, who must then assume adulthood. She then undergoes a rite of passage according to the monomyth format; to recover continuity with her past, Chihiro must create a new identity.

Along with its function within the ostensible coming of age theme, Yubaba's act of taking Chihiro's name and replacing it with Sen (an alternate reading of "chi", the first character in Chihiro's name – lit. "one thousand"), is symbolic of capitalism's single-minded concern with value, reflecting the film's exploration of capitalism and its effect on traditional Japanese culture.

Yubaba is stylistically unique within the bathhouse, wearing a Western dress and living among European décor and furnishings, in contrast with the minimalist Japanese style of her employee's quarters, representing the Western capitalist influence over Japan in its Meiji period and beyond. The Meiji design of the abandoned theme park is the setting for Chihiro's parents' metamorphosis - the family arrives in an imported Audi car and the father wears a European-styled polo shirt, reassuring Chihiro that he has "credit cards and cash", before their morphing into literal consumerist pigs.

Spirited Away contains critical commentary on modern Japanese society concerning generational conflicts and environmental issues. Chihiro has been seen as a representation of the shōjo, whose roles and ideology had changed dramatically since post-war Japan.

Miyazaki has stated:

Chihiro’s parents turning into pigs symbolizes how some humans become greedy. At the very moment Chihiro says there is something odd about this town, her parents turn into pigs. There were people that "turned into pigs" during Japan’s bubble economy (consumer society) of the 1980s, and these people still haven’t realized they’ve become pigs. Once someone becomes a pig, they don’t return to being human but instead gradually start to have the "body and soul of a pig". These people are the ones saying, "We are in a recession and don’t have enough to eat." This doesn’t just apply to the fantasy world. Perhaps this isn’t a coincidence and the food is actually (an analogy for) "a trap to catch lost humans."

Just as Chihiro seeks her past identity, Japan, in its anxiety over the economic downturn occurring during the release of the film in 2001, sought to reconnect to past values. In an interview, Miyazaki has commented on this nostalgic element for an old Japan.

However, the bathhouse of the spirits cannot be seen as a place free of ambiguity and darkness. Many of the employees are rude to Chihiro because she is human, and corruption is ever-present; it is a place of excess and greed, as depicted in the initial appearance of the No-Face. In stark contrast to the simplicity of Chihiro's journey and transformation is the constantly chaotic carnival in the background.

There are two major instances of allusions to environmental issues within the movie. The first is seen when Chihiro is dealing with the "stink spirit." The stink spirit was actually a river spirit, but it was so corrupted with filth that one couldn't tell what it was at first glance. It only became clean again when Chihiro pulled out a huge amount of trash, including car tires, garbage, and a bicycle. This alludes to human pollution of the environment, and how people can carelessly toss away things without thinking of the consequences and of where the trash will go. The second allusion is seen in Haku himself. Haku does not remember his name and lost his past, which is why he is stuck at the bathhouse. Eventually, Chihiro remembers that he used to be the spirit of the Kohaku River, which was destroyed and replaced with apartments. Because of humans' need for development, they destroyed a part of nature, causing Haku to lose his home and identity. This can be compared to deforestation and desertification; humans tear down nature, cause imbalance in the ecosystem, and demolish animals' homes to satisfy their want for more space (housing, malls, stores, etc.) but don't think about how it can affect other living things.

Additional themes are expressed through the No-Face, who reflects the characters which surround him, learning by example and taking the traits of whomever he consumes. This nature results in No-Face's monstrous rampage through the bathhouse. After Chihiro saves No-Face with the emetic dumpling, he becomes timid once more. At the end of the film, Zeniba decides to take care of No-Face so he can develop without the negative influence of the bathhouse.


The Films of Studio Ghibli Trailer



Joe Hisaishi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Joe Hisaishi
Joe Hisaishi 2011.jpg
Hisaishi in Paris in 2011
Background information
Native name
久石 譲
Birth nameMamoru Fujisawa
BornDecember 6, 1950 (age 68)
Nakano, Nagano, Japan
Genres
Occupation(s)
  • Composer
  • conductor
  • arranger
Instruments
Years active1974–present


Mamoru Fujisawa (藤澤 守 Fujisawa Mamoru, born December 6, 1950), known professionally as Joe Hisaishi (久石 譲 Hisaishi Jō), is a Japanese composer and musical director known for over 100 film scores and solo albums dating back to 1981. Hisaishi is also known for his piano scores.

While possessing a stylistically distinct sound, Hisaishi's music has been known to explore and incorporate different genres, including minimalist, experimental electronic, European classical, and Japanese classical. Lesser known are the other musical roles he plays; he is also a typesetter, author, arranger, and conductor.

He has been associated with animator Hayao Miyazaki since 1984, having composed scores for all but one of his films. He is also recognized for the soundtracks he has provided for filmmaker 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano, including A Scene at the Sea (1991), Sonatine (1993), Kids Return (1996), Hana-bi (1997), Kikujiro (1999), and Dolls (2002), as well for the video game series Ni no Kuni. He was a student of legendary anime composer Takeo Watanabe.