Want to foreward this from Elza Maalouf for all who might be interested in this conference or know some people  for whom its relevant.. APA (American Psychology Association has offered already to establish the SDi Approach in Academia and initiating a complete new global branch of psychology.)

Announcement:


Don and I will be presenting at the Engaging the Other Conference in San Francisco

http://www.cbiworld.org/Pages/Conferences_ETO_ProgSessions08.htm .
 
Sept 4-7, 2008.

For the first time, Don will reveal certain aspects of Large Scale Psychology (the new branch of psychology that he is introducing to APA in 2009) in particular the recognition of the master codes that shape whole societies and how to impact large scale systems with integral design engineering principles, processes and strategies.  As you all know, Don is virtually the "pathfinder" of master codes in large scale systems with applications in 1st, 2nd and 3rd world societies. Further, he will roll out the Assimilation-Contrast Effect (ACE) that describes how the Us vs. Them polarization forms, thus producing the "face of the enemy" in the other. This is the critical process that creates serious conflicts between tribes, empires, ideologies (such as Shia and Sunni) and even between the "Red" and "Blue" states in this country. The entire package is part of the Large Scale Psychology templates, illustrates how to defuse the conflict, build over arching superordinate goals, and find ways to integrate common interests beyond the rigid and dangerous borders and boundaries. The concept has been field-tested within many societies where a dangerous civil war was the only apparent option. Beck worked with Professor Muzafer Sherif while at the University of Oklahoma and was a graduate assistant at the Institute for Group Relations that produced the autokinetic physical judgment study and the world famous Robber's Cave experiment.

I will present the major application of Large Scale Psychology we have designed and continue to apply in Palestine: including how we are uncovering the master code that shapes the Palestinian society, and will give concrete details about the processes and strategies we are following to impact change/emergence. This will be a case study in the Natural Design framework and the application of the ACE technology both within Israel and within Palestine and between Israel and Palestine (Intra-Conflict and Inter-Conflict), while creating a compelling future vision - of Israel/Palestine as the Hong Kong of the Middle East or the Dubai of the Levant- that will benefit all and anticipate the next moves in the dangerous dance between the Middle East and the West.

We would appreciate you posting this announcement on your blogs, and/or forwarding it to people who might want to attend. Topic and date are listed below.

My Best,

Elza S. Maalouf
Co-Founder, CEO
Center For Human Emergence-Middle East
http://www.che-mideast.org/
Founding Partner
Integral Insights Consulting Group
http://www.integralinsights.net/


"Psychology at the Large Scale: the Design and Transformation of Whole societies" Sept 5,   2:00 - 3:30 pm
This presentation will feature Spiral Dynamics, a biopsychosocial and value system driven framework and illustrate its role in diagnosing and defusing "us -vs- them" polarity. It will identify eight different types or variations of worldviews, and will uncover the "DNA-like" Master Code that shapes cultural emergence, conflict, transitions, and transformation. It will describe the conditions for large scale societal change which will guide decision-makers to know what to do, when, in what manner, with which resources. Finally, It will address the critical issues with regard to nation-states, large cultural and global movements with a focus on a major Nation Building design and application in Palestine.
Don Edward Beck, PhD., Elza Maalouf, JD. (Lecture, Experiential, Discussion)

EVENING PLENARY ROUNDTABLE: 
Sept 5, 7:00 - 8:45 pm
"The Development of Identity: Our Personal and Historical Relationship with The Other"
- What is the role of The Other in the process of establishing our personal and communal identities, and belief systems related to these?
- How can this role take on negative characteristics, and how can it be transformed from negative to positive?
Maureen O'Hara, PhD, Don Edward Beck, PhD, Sal Nunez, JD, Michael Nagler, PhD
Moderaters: Aftab Omer, PhD, and Steve Olweean, MA

A lightminded excursion  for International Hherald Tribune of

Josef Joffe,

editor and publisher of German weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT. Fareed Zakaria calls Josef Joffe even one of Europes biggest Intellectuals. Well, this statement alone shows me that LOTS of transatlantic communication-in-depth is still to be done! And it cannot be left to Journalists, Polticians and Consultants alone...

My take on the theme:

its a simple snapshot of feelings and atmospheric observations. Europe as much as US need to awaken to the world of 21st century where the Asia Pacific World is emerging rapidly and with great power. The felt basis temperature of Joffes measuring of Europe as much as America is the  simple stagnant status quo of two social-cultural holons which need new dynamics, perspectives and bold appproaches to act with intelligence, strategic imagination and geopolitical wizardry on a planet with 6-7 billion earthlings of whom 70 percent -more than 4 billion! -are far away from enlightenment standards a declining intellectual elite! as much in Europe as in USA are meditating on.

Viva la Difference can only mean a strong understanding of stratified democracy and very different shifts on the globe. The parts of the world which belong to the second or third worlds will feel intuitively if the elites in Europe and USA are awakening to these realities.

At the heart of human emergence are Ccaucasus- and Palestine/Israel conflict too. Mr Jofffe, discover the differences in new light. And with new lenses!

America and Europe: Viva La Difference!


It's decline time again in America, like every 20 years or so.

Last time round, in 1988, the doomsayers got everything right - except the name of the country. For it was the Soviet Union which collapsed while the United States went on to savor its "unipolar moment." This time it is a consumptive greenback, shrinking credit, soaring gas and two wars with no V-Day in sight in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Now let's look across the Atlantic where Europe used to strike Americans as one huge Disneyland with real castles and wondrous shopping arcades, like H&M (for the kids) and Hermès (for the Kerrys).

Today, the Manolo is on the other foot, or, more apropos, in the other shopping bag. Over the last eight years, the euro has almost doubled in value against the dollar. It used to be the Japanese who bought Fifth Avenue dry; now it is those Euro hordes and even Russians! They even come to buy their own stuff - Prada, Zara, whateva - which usually costs a lot more in Milan than in Manhattan.

So what do the Europeans have the Americans don't? Above all, more time. At home, Barack Obama could never pull in 200,000 as he did in Berlin in July.

Harry Kreisler in conversation with Josef Joffe.

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Die Zeit Publisher/Editor Josef Joffe for a discussion of America's role in the 21st century. Starting with an analysis of the differences between a bi-polar and a uni-polar world, Joffe analyzes the roots of anti Americanism, seeks to define a global strategy for U.S. foreign policy, and offers a unique perspective on the different worlds the U.S. confronts,the Berlin/Berkeley axis-a post modern world of information technology and no possibility of war-- and the Beijing/Baghdad axis-a world of nationalism where war is still possible.

Who has heard about Fannie and Freddie? Heres to the introduction:

Fannie Mae

and

Freddie Mac

have entered public consciousness in WSJ, IHT, Financial Times and Top European newspapers and magazines. AND the US Election publicity. As much in the Obama camp as McCain troops. While I usually do not comment about financial markets and economic change this case seems to be a good opportunity to make something clear about profound change.

its about pre-blue loopholes in the international and global financial markets. Orange WSJ folks comment about these issues extensively. And right they are. These deep systemic wildfire-like spreading of unresponsible and not checked by the governments - phenomena and breakaway scenarios - are a serious topic for change.

And it needs inspection. Money, economy, finances need inspection. There is no magic anywhere which evolves these areas. of private AND public interest.

Indeed blue supervision (in spiral terms) as much in Clinton Time as in G.W Bush Time was seriously missing. Again, the same in Germany to be seen.

Here is an IHT article about the case. I am not AS easy as Krugmann about it.  Just want to remind how complex and long the way will be for ANY giovernment in the world to really implement integral sustainable strategies and solutions in these areas.

Only a transpartisan approach of global reach and depth can do it. See also this paper of Peter Merry which I posted last year for an even bigger context:

Strategies for Bridging Global Gaps



Krugman: Fannie and Freddie

By Paul Krugman PRINCETON, New Jersey:  Fannie and  Freddie

And now we've reached the next stage of the seemingly never-ending financial crisis. This time Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in the headlines, with dire warnings of imminent collapse. How worried should we be?

Well, I'm going to take a contrarian position: The storm over these particular lenders is overblown. Fannie and Freddie probably will need a government rescue. But since it's already clear that that rescue will take place, their problems won't take down the U.S. economy.

Furthermore, while Fannie and Freddie are problematic institutions, they aren't responsible for the mess we're in.

Here's the background: Fannie Mae - the Federal National Mortgage Association - was created in the 1930s to facilitate homeownership in the United States by buying mortgages from banks, freeing up cash that could be used to make new loans. Fannie and Freddie Mac, which does pretty much the same thing, now finance most of the home loans being made in America.

Read more

In the last months- catalyzed through different personal, global and public tensions, dramatic ones and more playful ones - I sensed an increased collective nervosity , energetic insecurity, emotional frictions and mental vibrations in the center of attention of nearly all people involved and engaged in change and shifts of all kind.

And yes, it should be so. As, once again, there is no mythological and one shift which changes it all. There can be no consensus-driven discussions and decisions. The more large-scale oriented transformations are adressed the more most complex constellations must be understood.

Last week we had a vivid and absolutely strong discussion at Sdi Yahoo Group. And I sensed the special power and elgance of this approach within the engaged persons. In mutual respect, trust and yet in an untamed play of impulses from participants of many cultures.

In the blogging world I stumbled- once again, no coincidence:):)- about the fabulous blog of strategist Thomas PM Barnett.  He wrote something about Blogging in general. And I wholeheartedly agree with Tom. I do it the more as he risks fully emotional statements.
And successfully disrupts any attempt to build harmony addiction.

Shift happens and the only way that counts is absolut honesty with oneself, integrity and full expression of ones truth. However relative at the moment. We all are moving in cacles and hundreds and thousands of shifts....

it was already in the sixties -if I remember correctly - when this mantra came up:

Love it, leave it or change it.

And it seems true today. How refreshing to read this entry of Tom and what a positive contrast to so many journalists who want only to be loved by their readers. Some statements I like especially are marked in B. The transition from bi-partisan thinking in many areas to transpartisan and systemic , global perspectives is a hard one and needs non-stop exercise. 90 degree learning curves and a very skillful communication.

Thumbs up, Tom!

Heres to Toms blog entry:

Don`t let the door hit you on your way out

"...

I don't know about you, but I don't know whether to laugh or cry at something like that. It's just so crude: vote like me or you're a traitor to your country! I'm not saying our Founding Fathers would blanch at such language. Hell, they used it plenty themselves in early elections. I just find it goofy from a strategic perspective-immature.

First off, when you really write a blog-as in, it's a diary of your thinking, then you don't give a f-k about what your readers think. You write what you think and let people engage it or not, but you don't write a diary of your thinking to meet somebody else's expectations. That would just be pathetic, as well as intellectually dishonest. Then you're just pushing product.

And if you think that's a new concept or attitude from me, I bet Sean can find you about 20 posts, going back to the spring of 2004, that stated the same. I write this blog for me and me alone. That's my philosophy of having a blog-perhaps growing increasingly old-fashioned as blogs evolve into more consciously corporate/public persona tools.

That's why I don't belong to some larger blogging group or entity, something I get offered all the time. It's also why I keep my blog separate from Enterra. I don't ask for money and I don't want any, nor do I want an affiliation where I will inevitably find myself self-censoring to accommodate the whomever upstairs. I just find this sort of expression fun and relaxing. If it works for you, great. If not, move along.

So that pathetic sort of threat: "Write what I want or I won't read it!" is downright goofy. I couldn't give a rat's ass about what other people want to read. This is a self-selecting universe-the ultimate freedom afforded by the web.

Is my blog the same as my column? No. There I work within the confines of small and medium-metro newspapers. They need a certain product, and I deliver.

Ditto for Esquire.

The books are different by a wide margin. There you write for time-stuff you want to feel proud reading years later. And when the subject is grand strategy, which is pretty much what I've always written about, then you have to write above the needs of any party, because the only successful grand strategy is one that can span administrations and parties.

I realize that there is a class of people who just read the blog. Fine by me. I don't charge and I don't track and I don't care. Others read the blog plus the articles-same difference, because there others charge and track and care and if I don't perform in a way they like, they take away the venue. Some readers go all the way through the books, with a big distinction between those who see only the first book as being right and the second book less so.

....

The second book, Blueprint, I wrote just after the War College fired me. I was a bit pissed at them at the time over that, but not that much. I knew it was a good and necessary move for me, and it's amazed me how I've never really looked back with any regret (except I wished we hadn't left Rhode Island, but that was more a family choice).


Now, when I publish PNM, I naturally become the darling of certain Republicans/conservatives who support Bush, even to the extent that I am lumped in with the neocons by many admirers and critics. But as Doug Feith made clear to me in our one F2F (Esquire interview), I should most definitely not consider myself a member of their ranks. On receiving such "news," I was "crushed" in the same way as when the CIA crapped me out by way of my psych responses to testing ("You mean my personality doesn't fit with your organization?"). I mean, you are who you are, and just getting confirmation of that is hardly an ego bruiser. It's more just a signpost telling you where you need to go next.

So with PNM, a lot of assumptions were made about me and what I believed in. I could point out certain passages as counter-indicators, but some people (way too many, actually) read in a lot that isn't there. That doesn't bother me per se. I see it as part and parcel of the material-even its attractiveness.

Nonetheless, I clarified all that as much as possible in sequel, Blueprint. Since I wrote that while out of government and since my views on the Bush administration had become more critical in response to policies (or the lack of change in policies), I lost a bunch of readers who assumed I was one of their own and thus couldn't stomach my perceived "change of heart." But to me, good grand strategy consists of constant adjustment and adaptation to changing circumstances. It's not some fixed thing, nor is it reflective of some fixed position on the ideological scale of GOP-v-Dems. I tend to be center-left on domestic policies and center-right on foreign policies, but I'm also a big sequentialist, meaning I see a time and place for all manner of appropriate shifts. To me, timing is everything if you want you get your way the majority of the time. To some, that makes me a flip-flopper. I consider that charge infantile, but most ideologues are infantile, and that's not my problem-just an environmental factor.

...

But I definitely realize that as we may well see a shift from GOP to Dems in the White House (having seen the GOP win the vast majority of top-line races in my lifetime, I generally assume we're going to lose until proven otherwise), there will be plenty of readers who-if they haven't noticed I support Obama-would have assumed I'd go into some sort of opposition stance or exile myself (as politicos are wont to do). But since I never did that before when the GOP held the White House, such expectations (based on false assumptions of my political preferences) are misguided.

On the other hand, I'd hardly be crushed by McCain's winning, any more than I was by Bush. To me, that's simply the yin and yang of American politics (especially when it splits power between Congress and the White House, something I generally approve of), and since I don't really work with appointees all that much (I tend to interact more with the persistent SESers [senior exec service] and career military), it's not even worth worrying about one way or the other.

But I do expect that I will lose some readers for the sheer reason that Obama will win and these readers will feel I somehow "betray" my past thinking for enjoying that outcome. Conversely, the same happens on the opposite side if McCain wins and I'm so negative on the "league of democracies" idea (which I believe, quite frankly, will die stillborn in any McCain administration because democracies are damned difficult to boss around).

Either way, we're headed for a new course. Again, such shifts don't spook me or sadden me. I've done this since it was Bush the father, through both Clintons, and now almost through both Bushes (administration terms, that is). I expect to go through maybe a dozen more individual terms before I hang up my cleats for good, so getting too jacked up about one shift or another just seems pointless and immature, in part because I lack that zero-sum fear-threat reaction. Either way, for example, the Dems will control both houses of Congress, so we're not talking a big shift from Bush II, which has been itself a self-correcting term WRT Bush I. The major difference will be how either McCain or Obama handles the emerging multipolar reality that I have long-labeled as "the New Core sets the new rules." We can fight it or accommodate it, but what we won't do is make that reality go away, because it's based overwhelmingly in economics.

Sticking to such long-haul thinking (to include the reality of the Long War against radical extremism) means you will lose and gain adherents to your thinking all the time as events shift. And yes, there is a surfeit of immature/overly ideological people out there. For me, they come and go, providing some laughs and some serious irritation along the way (more sadness, really), but no agony.

Steve DeAngelis and Mark Warren are my best friends. Steve is a lot more GOP than I could ever be (we watched "Recount" on the flight back from Dubai and I could barely stomach how much Steve was digging it-my only consolation being Baker, whom I deeply admire, at the end of the movie stating the reality that he was a Dem until 40 and really only switched because his good bud, George H.W., mounted a senate campaign and asked for his help as a way of getting him off the gloom he was in over a recently deceased spouse), and Mark tends to be more Dem than I'm typically comfortable being. And yet all three of us can be quite conservative on some issues and pretty damn liberal on others, and while all three of us will slice any current issue a bit differently, what always amazes me is how much we can agree on, especially since both Steve and Mark were political operatives of great skill in previous lives. And that's because we're all three essentially problem-solvers, forced to go binary every time there's an election but awfully flexible in between, meaning we like to make bad things go away and good things happen and we spend a lot of our careers working very diligently to those reasonably agreed-upon ends.

To me, at least, those instincts to improve the world around you have got nothing to do with this nonsense about putting country first, which I don't believe in and never will. God will always come first, and then family, and then country. I would never trust a government that tried to upend that priority ranking, and I don't believe America has ever been about putting country first, even when we've engaged in all-out-and all-in-world wars (like when both FDR and Ike go out of their way to keep our casualties low, contrasting with motherland-first Stalin and fatherland-first Hitler), and I love that aspect of America more than anything else. This place was created to enshrine individual liberty, asking of us all only that we come together as necessary to defend that liberty but never to pretend that this country outranks us as individuals, believers, or members of whatever tribe we choose to belong to. As a political scientist, I've seen plenty of examples in history where nation comes first, and what I see is a litany of disasters resulting-ideologues at the lead. That's why I think we have the greatest political system in the world, despite its many irritating flaws. It is built around the individual pursuit of happiness-the most liberating and radical concept in human history.

So no, I won't be reining in the blog, or censoring myself, or crying over spilt milk, much less lost readers. My motto here has always been, "F-k 'em if they can't take a post!"

I expect, as always, to make as many mistakes here as are required to work my way toward what I consider to be essential truths. I don't pretend any monopoly exists on these, just that my systematic approach to thinking about global futures is a useful tool-among many-to figure out where we as a nation and planet need to go. "

Another public voice expressing as much urgency of change as insecurity about its coming into the world is the one of author and NYT columnist David Brooks. This is his current take on the US 08 campaign.

The call for weirdness is surprising me. What should that mean? Besides tactical.strategical stunts ; PR intiatives and public debates. rhetoric manouvres as usual?

As in earlier comments a certain double bind (read Ronald Laing  for excellent case studies about this phenomenon)is manifesting itself in Brooks statements.

He wants to see a landslide AND a settled bio in candidates.

He wants to see surprises AND classic philosophical and value lineage.

He wants weirdness AND conventional criteria.

He is one of the Bobos he described in his first book "Bobos in Paradise" and he does not know how to proceed to a new worldcentric level. And of course, like most boomers do, they neglect the underlying deeper codes of the spiral in blue and pre-blue fundaments of human culture.

Thus lots of painful and confusing tensions and frictions are reflecting their comments during this election.

It is not Barack Obama , nor John McCain , nor Joe Biden or Srah Palin who should be adressed first.

Looking into the mirror- long, intense and repeatedly -one should ask oneself how ready for change, how fit and deeply feeling it one is . This the most relvant exercise for me in this campaign. And its a tough one. Beeing as effective and revealing as any retreat....

Surprise me Most


By DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 8, 2008

None of us have ever lived through an election at a time when 80 percent of voters think the country is headed in the wrong direction. But now that we're in the thick of it, a few things are clear. From voters, the demand is: Surprise Me Most. For candidates, the lesson is: Weirdness Wins.

Last winter, Barack Obama succeeded by running a weird campaign. He wasn't just a normal politician aiming for office, he was going to cleanse the country of the baby-boom culture war mentality. In his soaring speeches, he denounced the mores of both the Clinton and Bush eras and made an argument for unity and hope over endless partisan warfare.
But over the course of the spring, Obama's campaign got less weird. The crucial pivot came when he failed to seize on McCain's offer to do a series of joint town-hall meetings across the country. Those meetings would have elevated the race and shown that Obama is willing to take risks in order to truly change the way things are done.
Instead, Obama's speeches became more conventional, more policy-specific and more orthodox. His Denver acceptance speech was different from his Iowa speeches. It was more traditionally anti-Republican and pro-Democratic. In the speech's crucial contrast Obama declared: "It's time for them to own their failure. It's time for us to change America. You see, we Democrats have a very different measure of what constitutes progress in this country."
As David Broder noted, ( Small Change From Obama) Obama's speech "subordinated any talk of fundamental systemic change to a checklist of traditional Democratic programs."

Read more...

How many of you consider  yourselves as leftists, integralists, evolutionaries liberals?

How many as independents?

And how many as conservatives and Republicans?

I saw the first apprecation of healthy Rep elements 2 days ago at Gaia. This is remarkable. I am clearly in the Obama camp since two years now. However I am astonished again and again how in Demomcratic camps certain values are under-appreciated.

Russ Volckmann suggested an article from Jonathan Haidt written for edge.org. And I find it very , very insightful. Maybe others too...

What Makes People Vote Republican?


This defintion can easily be identified as healthy blue code of moral foundation. And it should give to re-think a lots...

..".the second rule of moral psychology is that morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. When Republicans say that Democrats "just don't get it," this is the "it" to which they refer."



WHAT MAKES PEOPLE VOTE REPUBLICAN?
By Jonathan Haidt

JONATHAN HAIDT is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, where he does research on morality and emotion and how they vary across cultures. He is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom.

Jonathan Haidt's Edge Bio Page

Further reading on Edge: Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion By Jonathan Haidt [9.22.07]


Here to the article:



"What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"-a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.

Diagnosis is a pleasure. It is a thrill to solve a mystery from scattered clues, and it is empowering to know what makes others tick. In the psychological community, where almost all of us are politically liberal, our diagnosis of conservatism gives us the additional pleasure of shared righteous anger. We can explain how Republicans exploit frames, phrases, and fears to trick Americans into supporting policies (such as the "war on terror" and repeal of the "death tax") that damage the national interest for partisan advantage.

But with pleasure comes seduction, and with righteous pleasure comes seduction wearing a halo. Our diagnosis explains away Republican successes while convincing us and our fellow liberals that we hold the moral high ground. Our diagnosis tells us that we have nothing to learn from other ideologies, and it blinds us to what I think is one of the main reasons that so many Americans voted Republican over the last 30 years: they honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to the one offered by Democrats. To see what Democrats have been missing, it helps to take off the halo, step back for a moment, and think about what morality really is..."

Read more...

There is a good pragmatic and multi-layered article of Brian Van der Horst in New issue of Integral Leadership Review. Its about demythologizing and debunking some clichees about leadership and consciousness. He gives a reminder how it was in Renaissance already and about every progress in history not beeing a lilly-white one.

I appreciate this view very much. And its obvious that no avoidance strategy is recommended. Simply: No size fits all.. its all. And its not enough to be good is as right as its not enough to be bad. The article is cutting through the bulshit of spiritual, politcal and sexual correctness syndrome too. Its exemplifying the rich human humus every form of consciousness has.

 Practical Paradoes to Live By



Brian Van der Horst has been an executive coach since 1977, and an NLP trainer since 1984 when he began to live and work in Europe, based in Paris where he founded Repère, an international NLP training institute, with two French consultants, designing and teaching practitioner and master practitioner certification programs to more than 10,000 people world-wide. In 1994, he founded a coaching school, and has certified around 300 coaches.

For the past few years, he has been an Program Development Director for Renaissance 2; and a founding member and Chief Facilitator, Europe, for Ken Wilber's Integral Institute. Previously he was director of the Neuro-Linguistic Programming Center for Advanced Studies in San Francisco, and a consultant with Stanford Research Institute in the Values and Lifestyles Program of the Strategic Environments Group.

Van der Horst has taught at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, California; The University of California in Sonoma; the University of Paris XIV, and XIII; and Apple University, France; and has given seminars in NLP and intercultural communication for MBA students at the Sorbonne, the International Management Institute , in Paris, and at the Institut d'Administration des Enterprises in Aix-en-Provence. He has also given leadership, team-building, and long-term management training seminars in Moscow, Sao Paulo, Hong Kong, and Indonesia; along with 10 countries in the European Community.

He has worked in journalism as an editor for New Realities, Practical Psychology, Playboy, and The Village Voice. The author of the books, Folk Music in America, Rock Music, and The Outcome Strategy; and over 1,000 magazine and newspaper articles, he has also been an acquisitions editor for J.P. Tarcher Books, Houghton-Mifflin, and hosted a television program in San Francisco. He currently writes for Intelligence, a newsletter on neuro-computing.

Before this time, Van der Horst was originally trained in marine biology, but shortly after attending Duke University, worked in the entertainment industry for 10 years, serving as Vice-President of the Cannon Group, and as Director of Advertising and Publicity for Atlantic Records. Van der Horst has been listed in Who's Who in the World since 1994, and Who's Who in America since 2007.

The article:


Van der Horst's Integral Law of Requisite Contrariety: Practical Paradoxes to Live By and Other Notes on the Illusion of Failure

Brian Van der Horst

Thinking of going integral? Sure, there's all this theory, but are you actually, concretely evolving? Are you walking your talk?

You may be entertaining limiting beliefs that form self-imposed, but invisible, unexamined barriers to becoming an integral human being. If you are one of those who still think you are flawed, incomplete, and unsatisfied by your lack of integration, I've got news for you. Much of what we consider to be our worst habits, faults, and failings are actually gold mines for personal evolution.

Consider this: Einstein flunked algebra. Marilyn Monroe never thought she was beautiful. Freud was uncomfortable looking people in the eye. So he had them lay on a couch. The "therapist of the century," Carl Rogers could not stand being told what to do. Rogers originated "Person-Centered Therapy" which practically forbade giving advice to clients. Did family therapist Virgina Satir ever marry and have children? Fritz Perls, the father of Gestalt Psychotherapy advocated integrity and coherence and was often inconsistent and frazzled. Will Schutz got bored in seminars and invented the California Encounter Group. Consider the contradictions so often pointed out about the founders of the integral movement.

When the gods have important messages to deliver, it seems they often chose rather flawed messengers. Maybe it's their way of trying to insure that we humans won't confuse the message with the messenger. But what is more vexing than someone who does not practice what they preach? What is more fascinating than discovering a great person has feet of clay? What can make us less happy than confronting our own shortcomings?

Read more..

Induced by recent posts of Basho about a New book about Fourth Reich, Jeffs blog index of last 2 years and Helens entry about how to make things happen, by the inspiration of reading edge debates from time to time, and the significance of the old Hollywood mantra /Nobody knows what anything is" I summarized -via random generator in Gaia Search -some points I expressed here since 2007.

And if I go back even more I must say German writer and philosopher Peter Slotersdijk was the first to outline the felt connection between the visible , the secrets, the invisible and the ratio between reason/insight and the mystery.  its a felt atmosphere like Wilber says too. While Wilber and integral authors focus more on the Appolinic light a huge field of historic action at the edge is invisible and indescribable.

Edge of Everything and Crack Cocaine not only of Mind


Deeksha, The Secret and Holy Grail

Posted on Jul 18th, 2007 by  Albert
Reading about recent Oneness Conference , Los Angeles, June 14 -17, in Los Angeles, I am re-thinking my understanding of the relation of energy and consciousness. Tony Robbins seems to connect somehow to this movement.... More » 



Deepak Chopra, Integral Spirituality, Zones, Cultural Creatives

Posted on Sep 5th, 2007 by  Albert
As diverse Debates about Science, Spirituality, Cultural Creatives,  Postmetaphysic Spirituality, methodologies of knowledge, integration of body, mind, soul and spirit, and DIVERSE integral approaches continue to confuse even intelligent discussion spaces in Europe, North America...

 The Secret Life of the Brain

Posted on Oct 30th, 2007 by  Albert
Inspired by Ryan and Brians practical explorations of 1981 Nobel Prize Winner  Roger Sperry   Split Brain Research- see The Split Brain Experiments   I found this ressourceful space for brain development. It shows more... More »

From time to time I read something from Tikkun Magazine

"Tikkun Magazine is a bimonthly critique of politics, culture and society. We are published six times annually. For the past 22 years, we have been the pre-eminent North American publisher of analytical articles on Israel/Palestine, Jewish  culture, and the intersection of religion and politics in the United States. "

Rabbi Michael Lerner has good points from view of spiritual, leftist camps. Heres to Tikkuns:

Core Vision

And its known that Lerner had impact on Hillary Clinton andBbill Clinton in thinking.

In the current issue there are diverse letters to the candidates of US elections 2008. Maybe interesting for some of you from various points of view.

Letters to the Candidates by:

• Rabbi Michael Lerner 
• 
  
• "The Contrarian" GEORGE VRADENBURG 
• 
  
• Evangelical Education Expert Rev. TONY CAMPOLO 
• 
  
• Tikkun Associate Editor PETER GABEL 
• 
  
• Christian Theologian OBERY M. HENDRICKS 
• 
  
• Public Policy Institute Director TIMOTHY A. KELLY 
• 
  
• Evangelical College Professor GLEN STASSEN 
• 
  
• American Muslim Author EBOO PATEL 
• 
  

I was intereasted in the July/August Issue of Tikkun Magazine too:

Integral Poltics and Transformational Change

While I did not read it up to now (too much work to do) I followed the table of content, provided by reachandteach.com

And the spectrum ot themes has indeed integral flavor. Especialy the contribution from Steve McIntosh. However it must be made clear-once again AND again and again - that there is no simple umbrella for a thing called "Integral Poltics".

Besides the different takes at integralworl.net , the official AQAL versions and of course Spiral Dynamics Integral there are differences to be understood clearly. I welcome any view. However I appreciate as much distinctions as necessary and possible.

Regarding Tikkkun Magazine its most astonishing for me that a North American Magazine which covers the Mideast Conflict in such an elaborated way I cannot find one single reference this year 2008 to the profound work of the Center for Human Emergence Middle East. If anyone does find a hint, please inform me.

Integral Work owns to give credit to each others contributions. As it is god usus in scientific communities too. And the integral field work of Center for Human Emergence Mideast deserves it in a very clear, appreciative and supportive way.



Table of Contents

LETTERS


THE CONTRARIAN: Celebrating Capitalism's Global Success


CURRENT THINKING: Congress EnablesMore Years ofWar; Iran



Editorial


Obama the Nominee by MICHAEL LERNER
They said it couldn't happen in America.


Not Wars But Conversations by GRAYLAN SCOTT HAGLER
If business rivals can talk, why can't governments?

On the very real possibility of Transformational Change
by MARJORIE KELLY
A hopeful letter to the next generation.


Integral Politics and the Evolution of Consciousness andCulture
by STEVE MCINTOSH
Us Against Themis the problem. Integral is the solution.


Transforming the U.S.Media: Commercial Free at Last by ALLEN D. KANNER
Counter attack on the invasion of ourminds.


Obama and the Flag Pin by PETER GABEL
Standing up to Societal Phoniness. Don't fall for a false "We."


The Contest and the Spectacle by ELI ZARETSKY
The deepermeaning of theDemocratic Primaries two-ring circus.


Obama as Reparations by CHARLES P. HENRY
The quest for a post-racial America-will this be adequate recompense for slavery?


Faith in Action: Ending Slavery, Together by AUSTIN CHOI-FITZPATRICK
Modern solutions to a resurgent scourge.


Can aGroup LikeMomsRising.org Lead theU.S. to a New Bottom Line?
by NANETTE FONDAS
Rocking the cradle-and American politics.


TheMoral Dimension of Sports

1. Patriotism at theBallpark by PETER GABEL
2. The Case of the Giants by JACK UCCIFERRI

Can the nation hold all the players in its National Pastime to a moral
standard-even the teamowners?

Rethinking Religion


JUDAISM



The Jews WhoWrote in Arabic by ZALMAN SCHACHTER-SHALOMI

Human Rights and Ecology by DAVID SEIDENBERG
INTERFAITH



The Death Penalty is Losing by GLEN STASSEN

Ending theDeath Penalty in New Jersey by JOHN GOODWIN

Separating Faith from Belief by DAVID TACEY
BUDDHISM



Consciousness Commodified: The Attention Deficit Society by DAVID LOY
EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY



Who Should TakeCare of the Poor? by TONY CAMPOLO

Culture


BOOKS



ChangeWe Can Believe In
Deep Economy by BillMcKibben, and Break Through by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
Review by ROGER S. GOTTLIEB

Response to Gottlieb
By TED NORDHAUS AND MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER

Caroline Fourest's Brother Tariq
Review by ANDREW STALLYBRASS

Soulful at the Start
Revolutionary Spirits by Gary Kowalski
Review by MARCIA BEAUCHAMP

Mark Lilla's Political Theology
The Stillborn God byMark Lilla
Review by EUGENE B. BOROWITZ

Earlier in 2006 I blogged something about Alternate Reality Games and perspectives in the nexus of gaming and creating new realties in virtual reality. Basically the 60 p Whitepaper (as Wiki) from International Game Developers Association summarizes it. And books of Dave Szulborski too.

Chasing Wishes and Urban Hunt

Here is new article of

Moses Silbiger

which puts some integrally inspired and informed context to it all. The connectivity of Fiction, Reality changing practices and concepts,  Film, music, the work of classics like Huizinga, Carse, Callois, of artists like Josef Beuys to Otto Scharmer, , authors like Jean Houston, and any thinkable approach of co-creating new realities in a psycho-physical plastic world, shamanic work as much as technology as one of new techno-economic modes...is growing more and more.

And , indeed, the Gaming Industry is the fastest growing segements in entertainment industry. And faster than evolution of Internet itself. So the markets themselves are open to what Moses calls a Trojan Horse Approach for mainstream.

Heres to the article of Moses Silbiger:

A Novel and Proactive 'Trojan Horse' Approach to Video Game Design

As virtual reality technologies continue to evolve and integrate with leading edge developmental practices, I envision video games being increasingly designed to facilitate human development.

In 2007, I had the opportunity to start integrating my passions for visual arts, technology, and psychology by exploring the developmental potentials of video games, while in my Masters degree in Integral Psychology at John F. Kennedy University (California).

During my graduation process and beyond, I have been continuously engaged in a mixed-methods research exploration based on six different methodologies, based on the emergent concept of Integral Methodological Pluralism (Wilber, 2007, Esbjörn-Hargens, 2006). In gradual but quite significant ways, this research has brought me a great deal of unexpected surprises, insights, and realizations in relation to the immense  potentials of designing video games to catalyze human development. 


Video games have been currently considered by many critics as the storytelling media of the 21st century, and one of the "ultimate art forms" due to its unprecedented cross-disciplinary and integrative nature. The influence of video games in our culture and society is much bigger than I had imagined. Today, the design of high quality video games have to be orchestrated by a myriad of different professionals such as artists, painters, actors, dancers, choreographers, architects, directors, designers, painters, writers, technicians, cognitive scientists, behavioral psychologists, marketers, engineers, and AI (artificial intelligence) programmers, among many others. 


In my research, I discovered that the influence of video games in our culture and society is much bigger than I had imagined. Indeed, this industry is "the fastest growing and one of the most popular, pervasive and profitable segments in the ... entertainment industry" (Bryant & Vorderer, 2006); having already surpassed the movies and music industries altogether (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2007). In the year of 2007, 33% of homes had a video game console in the US (ESA, 2007), with 38% of players being female, and 62% male. Adult gamers had been already playing computer or video games for an average of 13 years, with almost a half of gamer parents playing for 10 years or more, in average of 21 hours a month (!)
 
Read more..

The excellent Seed Magazine documents how

Video Games are reshaping how we perform and promote science

So very serious implications of gaming are unfolding more and more. As I studied human medicine earlier I am constantly thrilled by developments to connect the carbon based spheres and digital ones. Not in a sense of final utopia.

But in facilitating human development, healing, education and maybe even breakthrougs in very fundamental interface-technology. 

And taking the famous singularity. postulated by Ray Kurzweil et al, to levels which merge and tetramesh with human and cultural growth.

 Standing on the Shoulders of Giants



by Abbie Morgan

• Posted September 7, 2008 10:16 AM
  
  
  The digital revolution now engulfing our world emerged from the events during and immediately after the Second World War, when intellectual titans such as Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, and Claude Shannon roamed the Earth. Many of the predictions they made for the future in those early days are now reality, or something close to it. Turing foresaw computers as artificial intelligences. Neumann imagined machines that could reproduce themselves. Wiener guessed at a merging of biology and technology, and Shannon predicted the primacy of pure information over physical matter. But were these "founding fathers" to somehow see the state of modern computer science, they might be surprised that some of their wildest dreams are being fulfilled not under the explicit auspice of research, but of recreation. Here, Seed documents five projects that are expanding the boundaries of science through an increasingly vital medium: video games. -Abbie Morgan and Lee

Emergence & Complexity

SporeThe same techniques scientists use to study the phenomena of emergence and complexity are also being used to create content in a video game. Spore, designed by Will Wright and developed by Maxis, lets players construct a creature and guide its growth from a microbe to a fully developed being. The creature then becomes part of a tribe that advances all the way to a space-faring civilization. Much of the game's content is procedurally generated, meaning it is created "on-the-fly" while the game is in progress instead of being retrieved from storage, which results in drastic savings in memory usage. While scientists at prestigious research organizations like the Santa Fe Institute study the link between the structure and emergent functions of complex systems, Spore uses similar ideas to procedurally generate creature animation. The game decides how a newly created creature should move based on its body design instead of working from saved specifications. Many video games have used procedural techniques before, but none to the extent that Spore does. The music is even generated this way, by creating and merging musical fragments based on samples. In the future, the knowledge that simple rules can create complex phenomena will be used both in further research on emergent systems and in developing rich, realistic content for virtual worlds. http://www.spore.com/



Brain-Computer Interaction

Emotiv Systems' EPOC headsetWhen Nintendo's Wii console was first released two years ago, gamers went crazy for the full-body physicality of its unique controls. Now, a company called Emotiv Systems hopes to turn that success on its head by letting players control games without even lifting a finger. Their new headset, called the Emotiv EPOC, uses electroencephalography (EEG) technology to measure the voltage produced by the combined activity of thousands of neurons in one area of the brain. Its 16 electrodes can detect brain activity to recognize emotions, commands, and facial expressions, and link them to operations or keystrokes in a wide variety of existing PC games and applications. For instance, the brain activity detected when a user thinks "jump" can be linked to the keystroke that makes a character jump in a game. In specially designed games, emotion recognition can be used to continuously adjust the game's environment. If the player is bored, the game can get harder; if the player gets excited, the background music can adjust accordingly. Emotiv's product includes one such program?-?a martial arts game where the player must master certain tasks, like lifting a rock with the mind, while traveling through a world that reacts to emotions and facial expressions. The headset will be available in late 2008, and Emotiv Systems expects users will soon develop their own ways to exploit this technology. http://www.emotiv.com/




Crowdsourcing

FolditBiologists have known for decades how cells assemble proteins, the strings of amino acids that are vital to all living things. They also know that a protein's molecular shape controls its biological function. But a complete understanding of how a protein's constituent amino acids attract and repel each other to "fold" it into a characteristic shape remains elusive. Scientists can experimentally determine the shapes of proteins, and computers can predict how a protein might fold, but these processes are long, laborious, and not very much fun. Now, a team of biologists and computer scientists led by the University of Washington biochemist David Baker is hoping to change all that and transform the field of molecular biology. In May, they released Foldit, a free online game where protein folding is an addictive puzzle, and players compete for high scores with their most stable solutions. Thanks to clever game design, no prior knowledge of protein folding is necessary; anyone can play. Though most of the current Foldit puzzles are proteins whose shapes are already certain, future versions will allow players to tinker with proteins for which there are no known solutions, and even to design new proteins. By studying how humans solve the puzzles, Baker hopes to refine the techniques computers use to predict protein folding, which may ultimately aid the treatment and prevention of diseases like cancer or Alzheimer's. http://www.fold.it/



Science Education

Immune AttackImmunology, the study of the immune systems of living things, is a famously intricate subject that can prove vexing to visualize and teach even at intermediate levels. Consequently, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has spent the last four years developing a video game, Immune Attack, meant to aid biology students in their final year of high school or first year of college. The game teaches important immunology concepts by having players pilot a "nanobot" through the blood vessels and tissue of a person with a malfunctioning immune system, training the various cells to do their jobs again along the way. The completion of each level requires an understanding of a specific aspect of immunology, such as how specialized immune cells flock to infected tissues or recognize harmful bacteria. For students who have been playing video games throughout their lives, Immune Attack could be an effective way to interest them in biology. The game has been tested in classrooms, and students who play the game become more knowledgeable and interested in the subject when compared with other students. The FAS hopes that games like Immune Attack will prove to be potent educational tools and change common perceptions about the value of video games. www.fas.org/immuneattack




Evolution

3D Virtual Creature EvolutionSimulating the development of a multivariate, dynamic system by specifying initial conditions and applying simple rules is not a new concept; scientists have been performing these experiments, either on computers or in their heads, for generations. But Lee Graham, a PhD student in computer science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, is taking this notion further to study how virtual creatures evolve. His application first generates random initial conditions that specify simple creatures made of connected blocks. The user selects a quality to be valued above others (jumping, walking, moving quickly, etc.), and creatures with this attribute are favored as "parents" as the population reproduces. The user can also set the size of the population, the likelihood of mutation, and various restrictions on the creatures' bodies. Following algorithms that employ rules of natural selection and obey the laws of physics, the creatures gradually evolve, allowing the virtual process of evolution to be closely observed and studied with each generation. The results are often surprising. Besides obvious educational uses, like virtual class "pets" that evolve over a school year, the power of evolutionary computing can also be used to create machinery or procedures with greater efficiency than conventional designs. www.stellaralchemy.com/lee/virtual_creatures.html

 
International Herald Tribune, a newspaper I deeply admire for ts global appeal, is thinking about 2009 elections in Germany and its implications for transatlantic relations.

As convinced European and German transatlanticist I find these considerations challenging,. The author diagnoses deep German contradictions. Sure these exist. However they are rooted NOT in party poltics. The gaps only manifest some deeper vmemetic tensions.

Its not appeasement of Russia or taking a firm transatlantic stand against them. Embedded in European context of the EU and NATO.

Its a abbout new and more complex European identity, beyond the "Us" vs "them" game.
I do not know f.e. how the Brits will define this theme next year. Gordon Brown for Labor and his conservative challenger David Cameron. In Germany -. even true to a certain geopolitical location and a long common history -a new way to deal with Russia as much as Caucasus Region HAS to be found.

No simple recepts can be prescribed. The deep differences in the levels of European memetic landscapes and emerging Russian ones -in global nexus- must be defined.
Neither Russia Bashing nor unqualified love for Russia is needed.

The transatlantic relations themselves have to be re-defined and seen in a new light. As Germany is standing in a very special position in the crossover of Europe, Russia and US a great historic opportunity to write history in new ways is offered next years.

Imagining a Germany in the Middle of the Road

By John Vinocur

Monday, September 15, 2008
BERLIN: Could you get elected German chancellor Sept. 27 next year if your opponents say your goals are "emancipating" Germany and Europe from the United States, and setting a policy course for a Europe "equidistant" between Russia and the Americans?

Could be.

The prospect is sufficiently real that Christian Democrats leaders are thinking over just how black (or red) they want to paint Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Social Democratic foreign minister in the coalition government of Angela Merkel, who will run against the Christian Democratic chancellor in 2009.

A Germany described as ready to steer a middle-of-the-road route between Moscow and Washington would terrify much of Europe. If it became a fact, it would almost surely lead to a split in the European Union more profound than its pro- and anti-American divisions over Iraq in 2003.

So calling attention to the risk, and finding the right volume for it, requires fine measurements by Germany's Atlanticists. Because, in the words of three first-team conservative players here, big segments of German business and the population at large are perfectly comfortable with appeasing the Russians.

Some details and the dilemma:

read more..

This is a mirrored blog entry from Dr. Dennis Roberts. He has a most global and fascinating report of his professional and personal odysse  on this blogspace:

http://pursuingleadership.blogspot.com/

Since Nov 2007 Dr. Roberts lives and works in Qatar, working for the project Education City. I wrote earlier about it last year. Learned about this work when informed about it by Russ Volckmann, editor-in-chief of Integral leadership Review.

Since I was involved in a  big Mideast Media Project -right now on hold due to heavy administrative preparations -in Abu Dhabi and Dubai -and 

http://www.ecmas.net/

will be first Media University in Mideast which started from zero in funding I have been following this blog with great attention for nearly a year now. I can only agree with Dennis Roberts about the importance of synchronicity and the deep connecting patterns in space and time . Following ones own vocation and calling creates new pathways of interaction, creativity and collaboration. 

And even wide beyond geographical borders and continental distances. As Dennis translates:

 Deus aderit - translated from its original Latin, "Invoked or not invoked, God is present."




 Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit...


As summer comes to an end in the Gulf, so concludes what has become a fairly predictable pattern of my existence. Summers in the academic world provide opportunities to escape mandatory work-related reading in order to explore more personally-related topics. Each summer I try to dig into something new in my reading that broadens my view of life, work, or just the journey of being. This summer was no different (except that summers for me are now a bit longer and hotter) and I've had a phenomenal awakening that has been stimulated by four books - Gates of the Sun (Khoury), Einstein's Violin (Eger), Integral Spirituality (Wilber), and Synchronicity (Jaworski). I had no clue how these four books would relate when I picked them up thinking there was no relationship - what a fool! They turned out to be deeply related, creating what Jaworski refers to as a predictable miracle in my life experience.

Earlier posts commented on Gates of the Sun and Einstein's Violin. I never commented on Integral Spirituality because I couldn't figure out what to say without becoming so complex and unfocused that it would be distracting. Having finished rereading Synchronicity today (I read it several years ago and put it away afterward.), I now see the relationship and it has to do with the title of this post - Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit.

Khoury is Palestinian and wrote cogently of the wrongs perpetrated on Palestinians from 1951 forward. Eger is a Jewish American who was awakened to a new perspective of the world when he visited Israel, Jordan and Palestine in the 1970s. I'm not sure how to describe Wilber other than a person who is having an enormous influence on many around the world through his integral theory ideas. Ultimately, Integral Spirituality is about his views that the world's religions are holding humanity back from a transformation of the human condition. An "integral spirituality" could make a place for all faith perspectives, could allow each of us to find meaning in our own cultural contexts, and could transform the warring and devastation we presently experience.

Integral Spirituality is complex and difficult reading. There are many times that my understanding simply could not grasp all the details and the evidence that Wilber quoted. But, the meaning that I drew from Wilber's perspective is what Jaworski described in Synchronicity. In life's journey we can either stumble through oblivious to our surroundings or we can allow ourselves to awaken to what's going on around us, thus unleashing that part of everyone one of us that wants to make a difference. Once awakened, we act in ways that are initially timid but then become more and more present and courageous. When that deep sense of presence is embraced, the great synchronicity of our conviction begins to interact with others and creates possibilities we never dreamed achievable.

The point of discovering purpose is profoundly practical and, if you want proof, talk to someone who has discovered their deep calling. This kind of calling is unavoidable, concrete, and transformational. When this depth of knowing emerges, it then connects to what Jaworksi and Senge describe as the implicate order which is the interconnected world that unfolds to us when we are ready.

I am deeply indebted to Jaworski for many of his ideas. I have to admit that I'm more than a little embarrassed that many of the ideas I propose in Deeper Learning in Leadership are very related to those Jaworski introduces in Synchronicity. I don't know what happened but somehow the consciousness of the connections just wasn't there. I referenced Jaworski but not in the ways I wish I had. As I finished rereading Synchronicity this afternoon, I was brought to tears as I realized the power we have within us and as we connect with others who are similarly awakened to more integral, inclusive, and transformational ideas. I also realized that at certain times in my career I "woke up behind enemy lines" (a very powerful Jaworski analogy) when I lost sight of the goals that I held dear. I guess it doesn't really matter when we awaken to our deeper potential . In fact, if we're truly alive, the potential is constantly being awakened within us. In this place in Qatar and with the opportunity I've been given here, truly Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit - translated from its original Latin, "Invoked or not invoked, God is present."

Tiscali.co.uk reports a new German contribution for the Oscar . This is remarkable as two years ago another German fim The Lives of Others won the foreign language Oscar. Once again a story of post WW 2 captures Hollywoods attention.

See also article from German songwriter and author Wolf Biermann about the them of "The Lives of others" here:

The Ghosts are leaving the Shadows

So the mix of violence in German fascism, communism and years of red-army terrorism seems to be good recept for US Film public spheres.):)And indeed, something at the core of Germanys contemporary consciousness and unconscious is seen. Its about very eruptive powers- including strong emotions -which has not found its way right now to creative, innovative and emergent, evolutionary expressions in the public sphere. In the emerging collective new subject of history in the 21st century.

Bascially in music, film , sports and great public events it could be observed last years. Recently MTV brought a feaature "TAlking about Germany". Where artists and journalists  from Europe and USA expressed their feelings about current German music. They perceived hard power music like Rammstein and some romanticism like Tokio Hotel.

Once again journalist Roger Boyes attested Germans readiness for beeing brutal, direct and rude. For beeing direct and in attacking mood. Well, to be fair, Roger wrote a quite balanced article in 2006 too.

Hardcore areas like poltics, science, business are only slowly opening. Its a delta surge , if described in Spiral terms. A cyle of new awakening when less than 51 percent of the new emerging waves are stil struggling with the old ones.

Excerpt from Beck and Cowan (SD):

Phase 4: The Delta Surge - When the Gamma Trap is finally unsprung and the restrictive walls are breached, the constraints released, and the Delta Surge is ignited. This is a yeasty time, a period of excitement and rapid change where the barriers are overcome and previous restraints drop away. People prepare to take charge of their own destinies. The past no longer controls the present. The Delta energy rush is often raw, enthusiastic and indelicate. ‘Eureka!', ‘Ah ha!' and ‘At last!' are heard everywhere as the thrill of liberation mobilizes people in search of the new Utopia, the glorious New Alpha ahead.

The Delta Surge is full of dangers however. The grass may look greener on the other side, but after crossing the divide, one often discovers it was made so by spray paint. Only when the cheering stops does the reality creep back in, and that sometimes leads to a shift back towards Gamma. Breaking free of the Gamma barriers is not the same thing as reaching the New Alpha. Getting rid of what you do not like does not mean you have captured what you want. Sometimes celebrations are premature. Often people break free from one tyrant only to become the captive of a bigger one.

so: Why not?

The film mirrors a good new take on what happened. And how ithis feels for Gemans as much as Global Audiences.

COLOGNE, Germany (Hollywood Reporter) - The terrorist drama "Der Baader Meinhof Komplex" is Germany's official entry for the 2009 foreign-language Oscar race.

"Baader Meinhof" traces the bloody rise and fall of left-wing terrorist group the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader Meinhof gang, which carried out bombings, kidnappings and assassinations in the 1970s and '80s in an attempt to topple the German state.

Directed by Uli Edel ("Body of Evidence), the film stars a who's who of German cinema including Martina Gedeck ("The Lives of Others"), Moritz Bleibtreu ("Adam Resurrected"), Johanna Wokalek ("Barefoot") and Bruno Ganz ("Downfall").

The movie hits German theatres September 25.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce the five nominees for best foreign-language film January 22. The 2009 Oscars are set to take place February 22.

Germany won the foreign-language Oscar two years ago with "The Lives of Others," which revolved around the East German secret police."

Geektyrant.com presents the trailer, right now only in German:

TRailer for German Film "The Baader Meinhof Complex"

A 7parted Clip of BBC about German Baader Meinhof Gang:



Part 2

This is excellent news for European Public spheres and Media Networks. A new Pan-European Audience is thus built. As European Council on Foreign Relations is doing with European poltics in the World. I am convinced that the Euro Sphere in global Media Orbits needs even more power networks like this one.

Congratulations!



A NETWORK FOR EUROPE



SPIEGEL ONLINE Launches Partnership with NRC.NL

As part of an effort to establish a network of English Web sites from Europe's leading high-quality journalism brands, SPIEGEL ONLINE has launched a partnership with NRC Handelsblad in The Netherlands.




SPIEGEL ONLINE International this week launched an editorial partnership with NRC.nl/international, the English-language Web site of the respected Netherlands daily NRC Handelsblad. The partnership, SPIEGEL ONLINE International's first with a major European publisher, is a crucial first step in an effort by the two Web sites to launch a Europe-wide network of publishers of high-quality journalism on national, European and international affairs in the English language.

"By working together, we hope to create a network where readers can come for opinion-shaping journalism on issues affecting the European community and participate in the debate," said Rüdiger Ditz, editor in chief of SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Airlines have networks like the Star Alliance, and we would like to introduce this concept to European journalism."
 


Like SPIEGEL ONLINE, which aims to deliver news and analysis from Germany on major European issues to a broader international audience in English, NRC.nl/international will provide Dutch perspectives from one of the country's most respected journalism brands to people who do not speak Dutch. NRC.nl/international will publish a daily selection of news reports, background pieces, features and editorials about the Netherlands and its role in Europe and the world. The site will also feature a discussion panel featuring some of the Netherland's most influential thinkers, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Geert Wilders and Dutch Deputy Foreign Minister for European Affairs Frans Timmermans.

"With the launch of this site, we want to participate in the international discourse and to claim a space in the European public debate," said Birgit Donker, editor in chief of NRC Handelsblad. "We are convinced that we can appeal to a broader audience by publishing a selection of our daily content in English. Topics like Dutch participation in military operations in Afghanistan, immigration and integration, or the debate about the future of the European Union will be covered."

NRC.nl and SPIEGEL ONLINE plan to exchange content on a regular basis and develop joint journalism specials in order to add a deeper European dimension to their coverage.

By working together with NRC.nl/international and future partners, SPIEGEL ONLINE International hopes to provide broader reporting on European issues and to contribute to a greater debate about the future of the European Union and Europe's role in the international community. The network also represents an important step towards building a larger Pan-European audience for both Web sites.

Since its launch in October 2004, SPIEGEL ONLINE International has become one of the most influential and respected English-language Web sites in continental Europe. In July, the site reached an historic peak of over 9.3 million page views and more than 1.2 million unique visitors. SPIEGEL ONLINE is Germany's leading news site and the Web home of DER SPIEGEL, Europe's largest newsmagazine.

In July, the Atlantic Monthly Web site called SPIEGEL ONLINE International "everybody's favorite newspaper these days," and the Economist.com recently described the site as "increasingly impressive -- in German and English."

Best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh recently said: "SPIEGEL, by providing an English Internet version, provides you with a whole different way of looking at a lot of events. I always tell people that we have this invention called the Internet: You've got Haaretz, which is more critical of Israeli policy than any American newspaper. You've got the obvious ones like the Guardian and the Telegraph. And you have SPIEGEL ONLINE in English now to give you a European look that is open-minded and detached."

Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad -- with its recently launched morning edition nrc.next and its Web site NRC.nl -- is one of the most authoritative news brands in the Netherlands. In the past year, the Web site almost doubled its unique visitors per month, now reaching 1.4 million. The focus of both the paper and the online edition is on World and European news, as well as opinion about national and international issues.

To learn even more about the partnership, please click on the video above produced by our partners at NRC.nl.

I found a remarkable article in Issue 31 from WIE. Want to drop my 2cts. As in next issue they will relable the magazine into EnlighteneNext. What makes really sense for me...

As I have two black belts of third and second degree and exercised in most diverse ways fighting for 3 decades - on the mat, on the street and in the woods - and the archetype of the warrior is very strongly shaping my life. I feel authorized to say something .

Ross is absolutely right in his intiating statment about the gospel of self acceptance. True mastery- in what field ever (See George Leonards little book about mastey) needs the discipline described here. The programme reflects lots of what Ken Wilber pictures as the myth of the given. See his take on Mike Murphy (whom I respect very much for his great insights into integral mind body aproaches)in the chapter "A few books at random" of "Integral Spirituality"...

it has lots of American self mastery specifics. From Traning mantras of the Marines to sales traning.....Tony Robbins Mastery university and self improvement everywhere. It says zero about cultural codes, context and all-quadrantic vortex of reality transforamtion. It has lots pf pathfinder virtues:) -not bad - and it has too much lilly-white good guy quality.

I am saying this as devoted European secular man. Rooted strongly however in authentic spirituality and deeply connected to what Ken Wilber describes in IINTEGRAL SPITRITUALITY. And learning more and more about large scale systems change as masterfully applied by Spiral Wizard Don Beck and his colleagues in the core teams around the world.

Regarding simple bodily fighting I see no ultimate training. There are guys in the streets and armys of the world who may have fullfilled only 10 percent of the training modules. They can put one down in minutes. Skilled streetfigthers with razor-sharp instincts have pulverized experienced black belt men before my eyes.

Martial arts and any sportive efforts over a longer time are always useful and have a deep impact. As has meditation when applied long and clearly enough. However innovation in last decades came as much from completely untrained nerds and digital enthusiasts. From people who cannot even spell meditation.

Science has developed in completely unpredictable ways. From areas which are only loosely connected to it.

Medicine made progress in last 200 years as much with outsiders as with professionals.

Etc.etc..

Going beyond limits...has one part which is connected to mystery, enigma and grace. its an opening in spirit , soul and atention structure which cannot be programmed through aproaches however advanced they are.

Tom Callos is on spot however when he advocates and demands his training modules as strong antidote to the wide-spread gospel of self acceptance.



The Ultimate Black Belt Test


by Ross Robertson



At a time when the gospel of self-acceptance is leading to ever-lowering expectations, an audacious martial arts training program strives to replace mediocrity with mastery. All too often in our postmodern world, traditional character virtues like humility, integrity, and self-discipline have given way to self-acceptance, self-importance, and self-indulgence. In some quarters, where judgment is a sin and personal affirmation is a human right, many find even the idea of seeking victory over mediocrity (our own) to be not merely antiquated but emotionally hurtful and maybe even psychologically dangerous.

Not Tom Callos, sixth-degree black belt and creator of the Ultimate Black Belt Test. Not the ninety-odd men and women, from fourteen-year-old Joel Snyder to sixty-five-year-old Dave McNeill, who have signed up for this grueling two-year teacher- training program designed to revitalize and revolutionize the martial arts world. For Callos and his students, all of whom are already black belts and most of whom own their own schools across the country, complacency is the enemy of excellence, and life is a relentless call to go beyond limits. "Learning from masters and striving to master ourselves . . ." muses Gary Khoury, of Khoury's Karate Academy in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. "This is not a test. This is my opportunity to be fully integrated, fully alive."

The UBBT is not for the faint of heart. Minimum requirements include 52,000 push-ups, 52,000 crunches, 1,000 rounds of sparring, 1,000 repetitions of a chosen form (kata), 1,000 miles of walking or running, 150 hours of jiu-jitsu mat time, a weeklong eco-adventure course, and proficiency in multiple arts, including boxing, Filipino "stick-fighting," and reality-based self-defense. But the test doesn't stop with physical skills. Students are also expected to mend three relationships gone bad; right three wrongs; practice meditation daily; seek out a master in or outside the martial arts; name and profile ten living heroes; perform 1,000 acts of kindness and respect and catalyze 50,000 acts through their students and community; keep a weekly journal chronicling gains and losses, frustrations and victories; spend an entire day blind, one day mute, and one day living in a wheelchair; read twelve books on management, philosophy, motivation, or enlightenment; complete an Anthony Robbins motivational course and Bill Phillips' Body for Life program (or equivalent); and participate in or spearhead an environmental cleanup project.

"With the Ultimate Black Belt Test," says Callos, forty-six, of Placerville, California, "I thought we could mobilize a small army"-an integral army of modern-day warriors equipped with a modern-day warrior code for transforming not only themselves but also their schools, students, and communities. "What if we collectively did a billion acts of kindness over the next ten years?" Callos asks. "What if a million martial arts students and instructors became their own Desmond Tutus, Nelson Mandelas, or Martin Luther Kings?" For the UBBT's growing cadre of leaders, that is a vision that inspires personal confrontation with the demons of weakness, inertia, and normality, because it's a vision that demands living examples in order to make it real.

Read more..

From Integral Life. Its a free audio dialogue between Kevin Kelly and Ken Wilber. Two mavericks outside the mainstream who gain increasing impact towards the mainstream..

See also:

www.kk.org



Exploring the Technium: Technology, Evolution, and God

Contributors: Kevin Kelly and Ken Wilber


Wired magazine's own "Senior Maverick" talks with Ken Wilber about some of the ideas behind Kevin's blog The Technium, which explores the various ways humanity defines and redefines itself through the interface of science, technology, culture, and consciousness.  Kevin also shares some of his own thoughts about the role of spirituality in the 21st century, going into considerable depth around his own spiritual awakening several decades ago.

(This interview is available to everyone, absolutely free.  Email this dialogue to a friend!)

To download this dialogue, right click here.




Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets 1 million visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control.




Ken Wilber

Ken Wilber is the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages, and is the first philosopher-psychologist to have his Collected Works published while still alive. Wilber is an internationally acknowledged leader and the preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development, which continues to gather momentum around the world. His many books, all of which are still in print, can be found at Amazon.com. Some of his more popular books include Integral Spirituality; No Boundary; Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; and the "everything" books: A Brief History of Everything (one of his largest selling books) and A Theory of Everything (probably the shortest introduction to his work).  Ken Wilber is the founder of Integral Institute, Inc. and the co-founder of Integral Life, Inc.

Read more

Regarding the post Palin speech status Quo of US elections I found the voice of Camille Paglia very meaningful. David Brooks, Sam Harris, Arianna Huffington, Chopra...and lots of others commented in a more rational way.

I appreciate in Camilles Writing  the language at blood temperature. the feeling and breathing qualties of a woman who did vivid and provocing work with great scope on female issues for decades. Never escaping the basic instincts of collective consciousness and unconsciousness. And graciously overcoming the cul-de-sacs of spiritual, poltical and sexual correctness .

Embedded in a clear rationale and biggest perspectives.

This article in salon.com summarizes her feelings and insights.

A beady-eyed McCain gets a boost from the charismatic Sarah Palin, a powerful new feminist -- yes, feminist! -- force. Plus: Obama must embrace his dull side.

Fresh Blood for the Vampire

...

Pow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy -- one of the most stunning surprises that I have ever witnessed in my adult life. By lunchtime, Obama's triumph of the night before had been wiped right off the national radar screen. In a bold move I would never have thought him capable of, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his pick for vice president. I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football -- or one of the great light-saber duels in "Star Wars." (Here are the two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, going at it with Darth Maul in "The Phantom Menace.") This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.


 Palin: Feminism's greatest leap forward since Madonna

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

In the U.S., the ultimate glass ceiling has been fiendishly complicated for women by the unique peculiarity that our president must also serve as commander in chief of the armed forces. Women have risen to the top in other countries by securing the leadership of their parties and then being routinely promoted to prime minister when that party won at the polls. But a woman candidate for president of the U.S. must show a potential capacity for military affairs and decision-making. Our president also symbolically represents the entire history of the nation -- a half-mystical role often filled elsewhere by a revered if politically powerless monarch.



As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women's studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances. I have repeatedly said that the politician who came closest in my view to the persona of the first woman president was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose steady nerves in crisis were demonstrated when she came to national attention after the mayor and a gay supervisor were murdered in their City Hall offices in San Francisco. Hillary Clinton, with her schizophrenic alteration of personae, has never seemed presidential to me -- and certainly not in her bland and overpraised farewell speech at the Democratic convention (which skittered from slow, pompous condescension to trademark stridency to unseemly haste).

Feinstein, with her deep knowledge of military matters, has true gravitas and knows how to shrewdly thrust and parry with pesky TV interviewers. But her style is reserved, discreet, mandarin. The gun-toting Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America's pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War -- long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did -- which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard, which fought granting women the vote right to the bitter end.

Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics -- which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama's campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don't see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.

One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil). Like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Manhattan and Washington occupy their own mental zones -- nice to visit but not a place to stay if you value independent thought these days. Ambitious professionals in those cities, if they want to preserve their social networks, are very vulnerable to received opinion. At receptions and parties (which I hate), they're sitting ducks. They have to go along to get along -- poor dears!

It is certainly premature to predict how the Palin saga will go. I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin's boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn't worth a warm bucket of spit.
..."

I found this checklist -given by Dr. Don Beck- again when I thought about my new focus on change and the centre of the vortex of change in myself. As it developed last 18 -24 months.

And while others offer more intellectual complexity , historic backgrounds, scientific verve and mental sophistication I have discovered for myself that Dons take is the most practical, dynamic, global and powerful aproach when it comes to all of these complexities.

It became clear to me when I blogged about Neuro Plasticity in August 2007.

The brain that changes  itself

 And followed the dialogue between Kevin Kelly and Ken Wilber last days about technology, Evolution nd God. The 10 points of Don have the most complex and global action potential for me as soon as global transformation is in demand. I smell, feel and taste almost the heat and real time intensity of integral action in the real world....

“Any new paradigm will need to be an open system rather than a closed state since conditions constantly change.
 Any new paradigm must be consistent with current research into the deepest functions within the human brain.
 Any new paradigm must subsume all previous paradigms as being legitimate for different times and circumstances.
 Any new paradigm must be able to penetrate all areas of human life - biology, psychology, spirituality etc.
 Any new paradigm must accommodate the full texture of human cultural differences as they evolve over time.
 Any new paradigm must contain an effective mix of political and economic models calibrated to stages of emergence.
Any new paradigm should be able to anticipate different realities, future visions and contain its own sunset clause.
 Any new paradigm must address multiple bottom-lines on issues regarding standards of living and the quality of life.
 Any new paradigm should contain the DNA-like codes to reveal its assumptions in a clear, understandable manner.
Any new paradigm should be equally relevant to individuals, organizational groupings,
and to society-at-large. ”

Some additional recent notes from Don here. As i am personally re-focusing my life and professional habitat I found nowhere more integral existential  relvance than in these words from Don Beck:


".... I must admit that I have little interest in history right now but only in creating enough focused energy and insight to deal with serious problems in our current society, so we can have "a history" worth recording. So, I am only interested in mobilizing enough of a critical mass to get to the core of these problems, so when efforts are compromised, or they dissipate into a series of "mini" efforts, then we have lost any leverage.  Orange does that to us...-

I have found the work of Graves to be extremely powerful and a pure, clear tone, especially the major piece on how systems change that I do not find anywhere else. We had had a unique set of experiences over the last 35 years that have taught us a great deal about complex transformations. I am a student of the human spiral, and there are many different wrappings -- and I like them all -- but I cannot carry them all into the real world because the audience would be so confused."

Zachary Karabell, a newswek writer, has summarized some useful reflections upon the current meltdown of Wall Street. And its possible impact towards Mainstreet. This is useful and necessary. As exercise in viewing the process with global lenses and to remember that the share of World Capital represented at Wall Street  and global stock exchanges makes roughly 15 percent. The sum of Private Equity Capital the other 85 Percent.

He gives a rough picture about global mainstreet. And nails down additionally that even economy in toto is neither following poltics in toto nor can it be separated from the dynamics of society and culture in general.

Newsweek did once again a good job in bringing nearer this global in depth picture.

"There has never been a week like this!" "There is no playbook!" "The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression!" These phrases and others of equal hyperbole were repeated any number of times on Wall Street these past weeks. No doubt the drama has been spectacular. In the space of ten days, the U.S. government took over two mortgage-bond behemoths, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and assumed de facto control of one of the world's largest insurance companies, AIG. Two of the oldest and most renowned investment banks, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, came to an end; Merrill was acquired by Bank of America for about $50 billion; and Lehman was forced into bankruptcy, with some of its more-valuable assets and employees picked up for pennies by Britain's Barclays Bank. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs saw their stocks plummet and then boomerang back up. Global stock indices lost and then gained trillions in value, and central banks injected hundreds of billions to prevent the global economic system from freezing. To cap it off, the U.S. government announced a far-reaching plan to assume responsibility for the bad mortgages that triggered all this in the first place.

When someone shouts "Fire" in a crowded theater, the person who stands up and asks for calm usually get knocked down. That doesn't make him wrong. The suggestion that the current crisis may not be quite so critical isn't finding much traction these days, but that doesn't make it false.

.Read more...

 

In another insightful article for Huffpost  - Wall Street isnt Main Street -he makes clear:

"To say that things are not catastrophic says nothing about perceptions, fears, insecurities and real-world challenges of paying the bills, dealing with health care and education costs, and all the other problems besetting a substantial percentage of the population. But the idea that as goes Wall Street so goes the nation is a mistake that reinforces the self-importance of Wall Street and does nothing to address the challenges of Main Street."

There is a new blog entry from Andrew Cohen which I agree with nearly completely. I have commented last months extensively about the complexity of transitions, transformations, shifts and change as much in context of US Elections as in more global dimensions.

Steve McIntosh summarizes it too in this answer to a questionaire for the Chopra Center:



"Question: How could this collective coming together of leaders be most instrumental in bringing public awareness to the great shift that is occurring?

Answer: First, we could demythologize the idea of "the great shift", recognizing that there is not just one shift, there are actually many shifts in consciousness going on simultaneously in the world-a shift from pre-traditional to traditional in Africa, a shift from traditional to modern in Asia, and in America, and ongoing shift from modern to postmodern, as well as the beginning of a shift from postmodern to integral.

We could also be more discerning about the nature and behavior of cultural evolution, and recognize the fallaciousness of the wishful thinking that expects that the world is going to "wake up" and suddenly become "cultural creative" in a miraculous transformation. "

The take of Andrew is one more to re-connect to real and responsible consciousness.

No More Fairy Tales

Two Western spiritual teachers came for a visit last week. One was American; one was English. They both claimed to be enlightened. They actually told me they were. And I think, to some degree, it was true. They both had undergone many powerful transformative spiritual episodes and were considered by some to be masters or gurus in their own right. They both had a light in their eyes, the unmistakable shine of consciousness that has been awakened beyond the veil of the separate self-sense. They both radiated and transmitted a personal kindness and inspired enthusiasm about life that is unique to individuals who are spiritually awakened. They also both spoke nonstop about their own lives, their own work, their own beliefs, and their excitement about their own futures. We didn't really have two-way conversations . . . but I'm a good listener!

I did genuinely enjoy their company, but I remember what struck me after the second meeting had ended was that they both shared a view that is common among spiritual adepts that I believe is out of date. (Even enlightened people have to keep up with the times, have to continue to evolve, have to keep moving forward.) They both kept referring to the common popular refrain among nontraditional "mystical" believers that "something's happening in consciousness." And because something mysterious and powerful is happening at the mystic level for an individual, a group of individuals, or many groups of individuals at the deepest unseen internal level, that a big external "shift" is imminent.

There's nothing new about this particular idea but I find it remarkable that even today, when we're well on our way into the twenty-first century, that many spiritually minded individuals seem to be the last ones to get what's really happening right now. The "big shift" that's about to occur is occurring on the national stage in our Presidential election. This election will make an immeasurable difference on just about every level for literally billions of real living souls all over our precious planet Earth. There's nothing mystical about this shift and how important and meaningful it is for all of us who put consciousness first and foremost.

Let's give up the need to believe in fairy tales. Consciousness doesn't exist or work in mysterious ways outside of or away from the innermost depths of our individual and collective selves. Awakening to consciousness and its movements, its evolutionary leaps forward and its infinite failed attempts to do so, can be clearly and obviously discerned by looking closely at human history-from the most heinous crimes of the most notorious dictators to the highest spiritual attainments of our most revered saints and mystical luminaries.

Consciousness is not a mysterious dimension where forces disconnected from human volition are at work making all things possible or not. Consciousness is who we all are at the deepest level of our interiors-and how profound our recognition of that is can be seen through the choices we make and the actions we take. The more we not only awaken to that fact but take responsibility for it, the more quickly this world will become the paradise that we all long for in our most inspired moments.

Newsweek reflects about the essence of choice for Nov 4. And adds some historic perspectives from last decades to it. its good in my view that they reference to the three tests of recent weeks. As the real and tough work which begins at Jan 1, 2009, for next president of USA needs simply every virtue and a blance of vices.

Regarding Barack Obama, whom I clearly prefer since 2006, its not easy to embody determination and sharp intelligence simultaneously. Public perceptions are often following stereotypical mechanisms and reflexes.

A new transpartisan approach to national and global issues is -from week to week, from month to month -a most demanding exercise. Beyond rhetorics, tactics, strategy , lobbyism etc etc. Basically it demands  a new view on realty itself. Seeing change with new lenses.

I expect a most exciting month of October regarding the US Eelctions. May Mr. Cool win  enough hearts and minds from all those who can already look behind these stereotypes. Shaping realty and poltical evolution demands a magma mastery which is beyond cool and hot..

The Vices of their Virtues

John McCain's impetuosity is either thrilling or disturbing. Barack Obama's cool is either sober or detached. It's clear now how each would govern.


By Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas | NEWSWEEK



  October came early this year. In presidential politics, the penultimate month almost always brings surprises, or at least big news. In 1980, the Carter-Reagan debate that put the Gipper in the White House was not held until seven days before the Nov. 4 election. In 1992, Iran-contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh chose the last weekend of the race to indict Reagan-era Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, wounding George H.W. Bush, who was seeking re-election. In 2000, a Fox station in Maine broke the story of an old DUI of George W. Bush's, news that Bush's advisers believe hurt him in the popular vote against Al Gore. Four years ago, in 2004, a videotape of a very-much-alive Osama bin Laden stymied John Kerry's bid by sending worried voters back to the seemingly tougher Republican ticket (despite the fact that the very same Republican ticket had been unsuccessfully searching for the very same bin Laden for more than three years).

With the troubled markets and the ensuing debate over the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of the financial sector, October started in September. By suspending his campaign and threatening to postpone the foreign-policy debate in Oxford, Miss.—after a campaign in which he's taken hawkish stands on Russia, Iraq and just about everything else—John McCain quickly emerged as Mr. Hot, a candidate who makes no apologies for his often merry mischief-making. (See Palin, Sarah H., selection of for further evidence.) With his measured responses to the news of the season and his steady insistence on projecting a cerebral image, Barack Obama came off as Mr. Cool, at once impressively intellectual and yet aloof.

The three tests of recent weeks—the vice presidential nominations, the conflict in Georgia and now the financial crisis—have raised, in a serious way not always evident in presidential politics, the key question: how would each man lead? Our view is that if you are among the 18 percent or so of undecided voters (the current figure in most national polls), we think you now have more than enough on which to decide. McCain and Obama see the world differently, and you can see how; they behave in their own skins differently, and you can see how. The drama of the autumn has served perhaps the noblest end we could hope for, shedding light on how each man would govern. McCain is passionate, sometimes impulsive and unpredictable; Obama is precise, occasionally withdrawn and methodical.

Read more..

SPIEGEL ONLINE once again gives an insightful analysis from a European and German view. Its about the sinking role of America in world economy and poltics. I have bloged about this phenomenon the last 20 months.  Competent global Voices like Fareed Zakaria, Parag Khanna, Mark Leonard, Gabor Steingart, Roger Cohen and lots of others are drawing for years the new picture of global realties. Putting the big Asia Pacific Area in alignement with transatlantic isssues.

So its time for world leaders from all continents to create global solutions and perspectives in really integrative manner. The current meltdown of Wall Street isnt Mainstreet. It makes clear however that US isnt the navle of  the world any longer.



THE END OF ARROGANCE


America looses its Dominant Economic Role

By SPIEGEL Staff

The banking crisis is upending American dominance of the financial markets and world politics. The industrialized countries are sliding into recession, the era of turbo-capitalism is coming to an end and US military might is ebbing. Still, this is no time to gloat.


There are days when all it takes is a single speech to illustrate the decline of a world power. A face can speak volumes, as can the speaker's tone of voice, the speech itself or the audience's reaction. Kings and queens have clung to the past before and humiliated themselves in public, but this time it was merely a United States president.

Or what is left of him.


George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly.

He talked about terrorism and terrorist regimes, and about governments that allegedly support terror. He failed to notice that the delegates sitting in front of and below him were shaking their heads, smiling and whispering, or if he did notice, he was no longer capable of reacting. The US president gave a speech similar to the ones he gave in 2004 and 2007, mentioning the word "terror" 32 times in 22 minutes. At the 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations, George W. Bush was the only one still talking about terror and not about the topic that currently has the rest of the world's attention.

"Absurd, absurd, absurd," said one German diplomat. A French woman called him "yesterday's man" over coffee on the East River. There is another way to put it, too: Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN.


The American president has always had enemies in these hallways and offices at the UN building on First Avenue in Manhattan. The Iranians and Syrians despise the eternal American-Israeli coalition, while many others are tired of Bush's Americans telling the world about the blessings of deregulated markets and establishing rules "that only apply to others," says the diplomat from Berlin.

But the ridicule was a new thing. It marked the end of respect.

Read more..