The Integral Vision

kenwilber.com - blog

Ken Wilber is "back" (in book form that is, this guy seems to be getting more prolific with age) with his latest intro to the integral vision.

The main link (above) is to Ken's Blog, which has the full Publisher's Weekly review of the new book, but also valuable to the uninitiated for the link to kenwilber.com. Also, check out integral institute's website.

It seems from the review that the new book is pithy with the framework, but spares no intellectual horsepower. This should be an excellent compliment to Theory of Everything (Shambhala, 2000) which was a bit light on the theory, but a nice intro to the potentials of seeing reality through this framework and the applications thereof.

While I am deep into the theory of KW and the I-I crew, I am looking forward to the August 14th publish date. I always find intro and review material helpful: 1) personally, to inform omissions and support my overall understanding and, 2) for others, both in my ability to teach the material and as yet another reference to offer people when they ask "what is this Integral Theory you keep referencing?"

The book is here at Amazon, but don't forget your locally owned bookstore! (Here's mine.)

Budget for Restoring Earth; Lester Brown

Sustainable Business Insider Article:

"We can roughly estimate how much it will cost to reforest the earth, protect the earth's topsoil, restore rangelands and fisheries, stabilize water tables, and protect biological diversity. Where data and information are lacking, we fill in with assumptions. The goal is not to have a set of precise numbers, but a set of reasonable estimates for an earth restoration budget."

The big suprise here is this:

Annual Earth Restoration Budget

Funding Goal
$6 billion Reforesting the earth
$14 billion Protecting topsoil on cropland
$9 billion Restoring rangelands
$13 billion Restoring fisheries
$31 billion Protecting biological diversity
$10 billion Stabilizing water tables
$93 billion TOTAL

93 Billion is peanuts compared to the overall volume of the global economy, or the cost of the Iraq war. This is an issue of political will, not available science or resources.

The Yes Men have done it again: Daily Kos: State of the Nation

"The Yes Men have done it again. Posing as representatives of Exxon-Mobil and the National Petroleum Council, they today presented to 300 oil industry representatives in Calgary, Alberta, a new product - Vivoleum: an oil made from..." the remains of humans who perish as a result of climate change.

Sure, a gruesome joke, but a telling sarcasm pointed at the captains of industry, whereby the consequences of the present destruction actually becomes the feedstock for future profits. Not so far from the truth, huh?

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

Democracy Now! | Ex-Marine Josh Rushing on his Journey from Military Mouthpiece to Al Jazeera Correspondent

I really appreciated this interview, and I think it is one of the best exchanges I have seen from Amy Goodman and a guest in some time.

Josh Rushing was featured in the film Control Room (about Al Jazeera) and was subsequently pressured by the military he served loyally for candidly expressing his insights regarding building bridges between the U.S. Military and Al Jazeera, and therefore their viewers. He is now reporting for Al Jazeera's English channel after having resigned his commission.

In addition to the behind the scenes viewpoint of the "highly-produced" briefing "set" that the US used in Iraq, Mr. Rushing also tells about his years as a liaison between the Marines and Hollywood, and some of the censorship that goes on as a result.

Really, a great interview; highly recommended.

Democracy Now! | Ex-Marine Josh Rushing on his Journey from Military Mouthpiece to Al Jazeera Correspondent

Green Maven continues to recieve acolade from industry leaders.

talk about leveraging web 2.0 for sustainability.

green maven continues to get props for its use of google co-op to search the green web. this time it's from the mighty google themself. see google's list here

the brain child of network and technology mastermind (and my dear friend) k.joey shepp, fellow greenMBAers (of which i am an alumnus) and others share a hive-mind for the green web. as greenMaven editor/contributors, we add sites to the search query by tagging them as we surf the web.

early this year, the site was named #9 in TIME's top 25 web sites of 2006, although it had only launched weeks before the endo of the year. that is here:

get a widget (here) for your page and help spread the green web.

"Green Maven makes searching for all things green as easy as using
Google. If you search for socks, you get organic socks. If you search
for cars, you get hybrid cars. Our mission is to make it easy for
mainstream to go green."-Joey Shepp, founder of Green Maven

Web Worker Daily � Blog Archive Zen and the Art of Attention �

Web Worker Daily: Blog Archive Zen and the Art of Attention

"To control your cow, put it in a large pasture."

A great take--counter to conventional wisdom of limiting your intake--on navigating the information overload society. So important to those of us that have our fingers on so many pulses and are trying to influence and contribute to so many different spheres.

An American Self-Portrait

Running the Numbers-An American Self-Portrait by Chris Jordan

As I put it to my new friend Meri after she passed this along, "Good art is a reflection of light and shadow, literally and figuratively. This artist certainly has a grasp of our shadow." These are visuals of the staggering statistics of consumption in our culture. (The image is a visual representation of the number of cell phones retired in the US DAILY.)



From the artist's website:

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.