Opinionated - Insights of Change

Jigsaw Change

26/10/2014

» More free online jigsaw puzzles at thejigsawpuzzles.com/

One of the common misconceptions about change is that people are clear about what they're talking about when sharing change information. Even more is the conception that people understand what others are referring to when discussing issues of change. The truth is there are so many differing perceptions about what the word of change means, that discussions about change can quickly disintegrate into cross purpose communications, without people even being aware that they've lost vital connection with each other.

A social systems theory approach to change communication includes exploring life experiences, traditional beliefs and conversational biases. However, life in general doesn’t get to analyse why people think the way they do. Exchanges about change can become very heated, especially in matters of power and control like social justice.

In the 21st Century, the verb and noun called Change is rapidly becoming as over used as the verb, noun and adjective called Love. Modern advertising uses the word Change like it’s about gaining access to free lollies instead of being the complex jigsaw puzzle it is. Change, lost from its’ reflective qualities, desensitizes the listener from taking its’ word seriously. Today Change is more about it being a marketing fashion statement than the huge geophysical human force it is.

In change analytics, putting the word Change into context can be as complex as putting together an overwhelming jigsaw puzzle. It’s not impossible if the puzzle is small, despite any tedium to getting started. However trying to put a seven billion piece jigsaw together can be a dangerous task because of all of its differentials. Change jigsaw stakeholders bring with them conflicts of perception. The bigger the jigsaw the more conflict there is. In this way the Jigsaw here is of a Butterfly.

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions which, from a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system, can result in large differences in another state. The resolution proposed here is to behave Kaisen as carefully as possible, when putting together your jigsaw puzzle in any world not lacking in chaos.
© Chris Tyne, 2012

Earthly Change

25/10/2014

“Nature is forever changing and we must learn to accept it.” Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote into his private diary .   “go with the flow of life” and “Our body is like a river and our soul is like a vapour.”   I think the earth might agree.

Today some human bodies are more like obese rolls of fat and our soul (scientifically called the psyche) is better known as the brain. To go with the flow of modern life might be, sitting on your butt for most of the day, staring into the visual aids of rapidly changing technology. It might be about diabetes from digesting too much genetically modified and processed ‘food stuffs’.   It might be about how the ‘soul’ represents the bio-psychology of the human brains plasticity to change, and just like it was in Marcus Aurelius time, it might be about the military.  Humans claiming authority over life that belongs to Earth.

Humans enacting their authority to do this in the name of their Gods, just like Marcus Aurelius.

In Marcus Aurelius day, God was Zeus. The earthly nature of his forever changing was all about the human heart and how its body flowed like a river, and how its soul vaporised from its rhythm.  Nature is forever changing referred to the activities of Zeus on the ground and how Marcus had to learn to accept it.

Today, despite industrial advances and sophistication, I think not a great deal has changed since his time. People are still learning to accept the activities of Zeus but not as a mythical God, more as a game of economic strategy and war.

Taurus born Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD. He was the head of all military command. He legitimized Gladiator wars, sometimes alone and sometimes in partnership with other ‘royals’.   Today, he is considered by some to be the last of the "Five Good Emperors". He is also considered by some to be an important Stoic philosopher who did not care much for Christianity.

Marcus Aurelius modern claim to fame are his personal diary entries during the decade of 170 to 180. The distribution of his private diaries after his death has increasingly secured him the reputation of being a philosopher king within his lifetime. During his reign, Marcus was considered by his peers to be

"More philanthropic and philosophic"

Than other Roman Emperors of the time.

The historian Herodian wrote

“Alone of the Emperors he gave proof of his learning not by mere words or knowledge of philosophical doctrines but by his blameless character and temperate way of life.”

It seems Marcus was more ‘understanding’ than most and believed in self-improvement through reflective writing. Despite his philosophical leanings, Marcus was a man of his time and he carried out his traditional duties of Emperor as best he could.

The importance of his influence upon the modern term “go with the flow” is that Marcus is credited as being the first one to coin the saying.   He wrote a lot about his thoughts of happiness and from his meditations going with the flow implied that keeping the peace, even if that peace was about war, was important. In other words, it was better to get along with other people, in accordance to traditional convention, than to make waves against it and upset the social and cultural flow of early 2nd Century political life.

While ‘going with the flow’ is the more popular expression today, there is also some debate about what it truly means. Most references cited on the internet seem to agree that going with the flow is about a desire to be socially accepted and that to achieve that desire you are to:

not push against prevailing behaviour/norms/attitudes, occasionally bowing to peer pressure, and
Not attempt to exert a large amount of influence on the course of events, whether a specific series of events or events in general.

There is no doubt that, during the industrial revolution, anyone with a desire to ‘climb’ the modern human socio-economic ‘ladder of success’ could utilise the Aurelius concept of ‘go with the flow’. Behaving like a chameleon and affording the ‘right’ people in the ‘right’ circles with the go of flow desired, helped the chameleon to achieve his/her business goals. Is the Aurelius “go with the flow” the same as “going with the flow”? It seems to me that they are both about the ability to take personal control of a given situation through submission to external forces.

While political ‘go with the flow’ activities both positively and negatively impact on culture and society, for example: through democratic voter apathy or motivations, what about the introduction of the psyche? When Marcus referred to the soul in his meditations, he had no idea that centuries into the future, people called Freud and Jung would be talking about his soul in terms of accepted norms about the psyche.

In his day, the Stoics taught materialism, in which everything, including God and words, was material. Even emotions were considered to be material because of their physical manifestations of say crying and smiling. Not even nothing was immaterial because the Roman world view of the stoic individual was pantheistic, meaning that Stoic Marcus Aurelius believed a divine reality pervaded everything, even nothing, for even in nothing divinity, which in his view arose from fire, remained.

There were two kinds of matter in his philosophy. The larger matter, that could be seen and touched, and the finer matter, that was in the breath and in the spirit of life holding everything together. The Greek God Zeus (the “war” God considered to be of reason) was considered by the Stoics to be ‘a perfectly good and wise vapour of gas’ and as all life began and ended with fire, praying to Zeus as the King of all of the Greek Gods, represented a life of purpose and meaning in the name of fiery wrath. The Stoics also considered that the known Gods of the time did not actually do the things attributed to them, but were rather descriptors of natural events. For example, Zeus as Fire had to have a wife who ‘ inflamed’ him. Therefore, his wife, Hera was as Air.

Marcus believed the human soul stretched throughout the body and had eight parts:

the five senses of eyes, ears, nose, touch and mouth
the voice,
the generative power of reproduction and
the "leading power" of the mind, which was located in the heart.

Therefore, Marcus believed that his mind was in his heart. In this way, his go with the flow related to the condition of his own heart in keeping with its soul, and he indulged in the mind of his heart through regular reflective and meditative writing practice.

As the Stoics believed that their Universe was like their own giant living body, where all parts were interconnected and influencing of each other (much like the economic ripple effect referred to by economic rationalists of today) everything was pre-determined. Therefore, Marcus believed in fate.

However, it is from the stoic realm of free will that Marcus considered his heart as a river of nature forever changing, yet ago with the flow. As his ageing heart was his soul (psyche) and his soul was his heartbeat, and this combination represented a Zeus river of Hera filled blood, human free will had to be like the river of blood, flowing into and out of his heart in accordance to his will. For men, like Marcus, irrespective of any want for a quiet life, commanded political and lawful wars. Men lived and died under his command in the name of Zeus. His stoic rule upheld the will of one man to take the will of another. This meant that nature forever changing was actually like a ‘river with eddies in its current’. In Stoic philosophy this was more than acceptable because all Gladiator men were being carried down the river to perfection and the will to resist this river was an allowable rule under ‘go with the flow’. The harsh reality was, that despite how people may have felt, go with the flow was about getting on with the business of the establishment, irrespective of how much the emotional self may have disagreed with the business. Again, I think that despite industrial progress, not much seems to have changed in the will of human kind from Marcus Aurelius time to ours.

Aurelius and the Stoics believed that, as the world was once fire, the world would become fire again. Therefore, their wars of fire were permitted acts of the divinity of the king of all Gods, Zeus, and to go with the flow in accordance with the divinity of Zeus was a 2nd Century Roman virtue that was more than acceptable.

As reason was the hallmark of a wise Stoic, Aurelius had to practice indifference to everything, but the virtues of his realm, and he could not be seen to be distressed by external circumstances, passions or emotions. The very fact that Marcus Aurelius kept a diary seems to indicate that he was indeed a creative individual who had a need to explore, if not unburden himself of, the philosophical ideals arising from the conflicts he faced in his traditional role of leader of a Gladiator Society.

In war-time, Stoicism developed it strength from its belief in all people as being manifestations of the one universal spirit. The universal spirit in the mind of Aurelius would have been the capability of his military force to win and keep him and Roman society safe from the enemy. Achievement of this would have required the stoic ability to connect with inner calm, logically reflect about possible options and make split second decisions about how to ‘go with the flow’. Stoicism under Zeus offered Aurelius the difference between being murdered, imprisoned, injured or de-throned and living to tell the tale. He was able to ‘go with the flow’ by living a life disciplined by his philosophy and he reflected upon and reviewed his decisions privately as evidenced by his diaries. He wrote:

“Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill... I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together...”

Should information age people work together to consider the original relevance of ‘go with the flow’ when making decisions about our future? I think mother earth would say yes.

Now that we know that our bodies are scientifically akin to all mammals, that our minds are located in our heads instead of our hearts, that Zeus is not the king of all Gods, but only one of the many and that global economics is the nature forever changing against the earth: Is Marcus Aurelius stoic definition of ‘go with the flow’ applicable in today’s market? Do we really want to accept traditional warfare as the way forward or do we want the Age of Aquarius teach us something else? In other words, is it time to stop going with the flow, no matter how easy it may be to do so? My short answer, on behalf of preserving life on earth, is yes.

“Nature is forever changing and we must we learn to accept that” wrote Marcus Aurelius in 167 AD

It is now 2012 AD and it is no longer the nature of society that is forever changing, but the very nature of the earth that human society depends on for evolution. The God of fire has changed the ecological footprint of the earth and the children of today are about to face the consequences of that furnace.

In Marcus Aurelius meditations, to go with the flow is not about making a change. It is about accepting what is. It is a reinforcement of societal norms that condones and further enables tradition.

Marcus lived at the beginning of the Pisces Age where traditionalists arguably still practised the ‘bold behaviours’ of the Aries age, but with a growing sense of passivity. Today, we are coming to the end of the Pisces Age of philosophical growth and enlightenment. How this will be interpreted into the new age of Aquarius is already being experienced as a Lions showcase of technology and entertainment. The true implications of the ‘new age’ is anyone’s guess, but one thing is for certain, global peace will only be achieved by trying something different, like protecting and sustaining earthly life instead of setting fire to it. Putting the brakes on traditional economic rationalism with a new wave of reasonable humanitarian preparedness might help to get us ready for the Age of Aquarius. The global increase in corporate philanthropy seems to support this, but this is but a spit in the ocean. The bio-diversity of life earth depends on to sustain life, is diminishing at a rapid rate, while the people who need this life are increasing and yet the economic wars continue. Are the decisions of yesterday, tomorrow’s unsolvable problem? Did our fore-fathers condemn us to death long before we were born?

The nature forever changing in the 21st century is happening now and if you are to believe Marcus, the outcome rests in the fateful hands of his traditional fire God. It’s going to be interesting to see if the Age of Aquarius has the capability to pull life out of the Zeus mentality. I think the capability is there, but is it strong enough to stop wars from successfully ending the world as we know it? I sincerely hope so because I'm buying into the new generation of information natives as being the ones who will lead the way into a new kind of harmonious existence, where materialism is no longer about stoicism or Greek Gods, but about the real spirit of earthly life, biology.

I think going with the flow today is about not so much about stoicism, but about resilience and sustainability. This is the positive psychology approach to climate change. Yet already the USA military are using this approach to enhance their soldier’s ability to endure more war.

The earth is changing and the over concentration on technology may well find us the victims of a Zeus called climate change that may or may not have been due to human activities. Irrespective of what may be at fault, the fact remains that while it might be too late to do something about the loss of fresh water from the rapidly melting polar glaciers, it is not too late to start changing our ways in favour of cultivating earth as a living, life-giving organism instead of the burning rock Marcus believed it to be.

“Change is by way of nature and in the way of nature there can be no evil”

Marcus wrote at the beginning of the era that is now coming to an end. The new dawn is on the horizon and changing the nature of flow is your call and it’s also mine. To prevent the earth from deciding our fate, now is the time to focus on healing the damage already done. The new nature forever changing will be the power of the earth to change us in accordance to its need to survive. Earth will decide the fate of human Gods, and earth will decide the fate of human life, and no amount of good or evil philosophical meditation will stop her activities of flow once her self-healing gets under way. The only way we can slow down our extinction is through preventative activities of environmental renewal. Ignoring the earth will not make it go away because earth’s nature is our only reality. If we want to live we have to stop plundering for marketing purposes and find a better way to live and this does not mean going with the flow. It means taking the time to consider how to make some life-giving changes by no longer taking earth for granted.

© Chris Tyne, 2012.

References:

Constitutional Change

25/10/2014

What does it mean when a Constitution is changed?
For that matter what does it mean when a Constitution is written?
After a war, it means that human culture is now under the control of a dominating force. A power enforcing the rules of its kind.

William Dampier, a former pirate, was the first British citizen to see, what is now known as, Australia. In 1688, he explored the north-west coast of Australia in, Cygnet, his small trading vessel. He made another voyage in 1699, before returning to England. He described some of the flora and fauna of the land he had witnessed. He was the first man to report to the British that he had seen large hopping animals (Kangaroos).

The Kingdom of Great Britain was the first power to officially claim any area on the Australian mainland. A vastness named New South Wales was defined by Lieutenant James Cook's proclamation. The proclamation excluded: Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania because it had already been claimed for the Netherlands by Abel Tasman in 1642. A small part of the mainland south of 38°, now known as southern Victoria, and the west coast of the continent, now known as Western Australia was claimed by Louis de Saint Aloüarn for France in 1772.

Today, Australia and Tasmania are part of the British Commonwealth which is united under the Australian Constitution. Prior to the Constitution, Australia was made up of colonies with customs houses, railway gauges and military. It was neither natural nor inevitable that Australia would be united, yet through the dedication and hard work of a small group of people, the colonies eventually came together to form the Australian nation in 1901.

January 1901 marks the birth of the Australian Constitution. Aboriginals were not involved in the development of the Constitution as they were not considered as humans by the law makers.

In 1901, the only two laws that related to Aboriginals were:

1. The government was allowed to make special laws for Aboriginals only and
2. Aboriginals were counted as flora rather than human beings in the Commonwealth.

This meant that when the number of people in a state, or in the whole country was counted, Aboriginal flora was not counted. The laws also meant that Aboriginals were excluded from any rights, responsibilities and benefits of migrant Australia.

It took a ten year, constitutional awareness campaign for Aboriginal people to be released from the burden of these laws. As a result of the campaign, word of mouth facilitated that the Aboriginal laws were unfair and needed to be changed. 66 years after the Constitution was written, the Australian Commonwealth Government held a referendum to erase or retain the two laws that related to Aboriginals.
In the 1967 referendum, a sheet of voting paper was given to Australian citizens and on this piece of paper, voters were asked whether these laws should be changed.
The voters were to mark either Yes or No to a question about equality.
Over 91% of Australian citizens voted yes for equality and as a result, the constitution was changed. The two laws that discriminated against Aboriginals were banished.
The 1967 Referendum changed the way Aboriginal people were treated. Aboriginal people were now human in the eyes of Constitutional Law. Now Aboriginal people were obligated by the same laws as everyone else.
This change meant Aboriginal people could travel from State to State and State to Territory and not be discriminated against under the Constitution. The large amount of people who voted “Yes” demonstrated that migrant Australians believed in Aboriginal equality as humans under the law. Aboriginal people were now Australian people too.
So, what does it mean when a Constitution is changed?
What does it mean when a Constitution is written?

© Chris Tyne, 2012.

References:

http://www.aboriginalheritage.org/history/history/
http://www.reconciliation.org.au/
http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/federation
http://www.australianhistory.org/
http://www.sydneyline.com/Pygmies%20Extinction.htm
http://bobcarrblog.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/invasion-a-better-approach-to-this-boring-argument/

The Aboriginal Flag proclaimed on 14 July 1995

Prophetic Change

25/10/2014

On December 21, 2012, humankind will meet its doom by either

drowning in apocalyptic floods,
being walloped by a secret plant,
seared by an angry sun or
thrown overboard by speeding continents.

If not, I hate to break this to you, but you might have to rush out and buy those Christmas presents, you've been putting off getting the rellies, because you were not going to be here.
Seriously, did the Maya, whose civilisation peaked between A.D 250 and A.D 900, really predict the end of the world in 2012, or is this another George Orwell’s 1984?
If it does happen, and we all leave the earth on the 21 December 2012, then I bid you a fond farewell adding, from the bottom of heart, that I have appreciated your little visits to my humble website; Plus I do hope that the life you have lived was a good one. Not that it will matter because we're all with that spirit in the sky now, especially if you are not reading this, so I guess I'll see you there.
However, if you are still here, then I’d like to congratulate you on getting this far into this article, and as a reward I’d like you to be able to tell your friends that you knew the prophesy was a load of hogwash all of the time (the fact that you did think it was going to happen, even for a nanosecond, can be our little secret).
To help, back up your denial argument convincingly, I am reproducing the information 'our saviour' Brian Handwerk shared with the National Geographic way back in November 9, 2009. To think, people were scared even then!
On that day, Brian advised his readers that “the only thing that is all too real about the coming end of the world is fear”.
I think fear is a perfectly reasonable word to use to describe a change of impending doom resulting in imminent death. Not a happy thought, that’s for sure.
Yet, in 2009 NASA was getting thousands of questions about the 2012 doomsday predictions. David Morrison, Senior Scientist with the NASA Astrobiology Institute said to Brian “ People are genuinely frightened”. David also said
"I've had two teenagers who were considering killing themselves, because they didn't want to be around when the world ends. Two women said they were contemplating killing their children and themselves so they wouldn't have to suffer through the end of the world." Not good. Not good at all.
So, now that we’re remarkably close to the very edge, I think that it is more than time to ease some of those scary thoughts so you can indulge in a little retail therapy.

Happy New Year!

2012 MYTH 1

Maya Predicted End of the World in 2012

The Maya calendar doesn't end in 2012, as some have said. Plus, "the ancients never viewed that year as the time of the end of the world" said Archaeologists.
But December 21, 2012, (give or take a day) was nonetheless momentous to the Maya.
"It's the time when the largest grand cycle in the Mayan calendar—1,872,000 days or 5,125.37 years—overturns and a new cycle begins," said Anthony Aveni, a Maya expert and archaeo-astronomer at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.
The Maya kept time on a scale few other cultures have considered.
During the Empire's heyday, the Maya invented the Long Count—a lengthy circular calendar that "transplanted the roots of Maya culture all the way back to creation itself," Aveni said.
During the 2012 winter solstice, time runs out on the current era of the Long Count calendar, which began at what the Maya saw as the dawn of the last creation period: August 11, 3114 B.C. The Maya wrote that date, which preceded their civilization by thousands of years, as Day Zero, or 13.0.0.0.0.
In December 2012 the lengthy era ends and the complicated, cyclical calendar will roll over again to Day Zero, beginning another enormous cycle.
"The idea is that time gets renewed, that the world gets renewed all over again—often after a period of stress—the same way we renew time on New Year's Day or even on Monday morning," said Aveni, author of The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of 2012.

2012 MYTH 2
Breakaway Continents Will Destroy Civilization

In some 2012 doomsday prophecies, the Earth becomes a death trap as it undergoes a "pole shift."
The planet's crust and mantle will suddenly shift, spinning around Earth's liquid-iron outer core like an orange's peel spinning around its fleshy fruit. (See what Einstein had to say about pole shifts.)
2012, the movie, envisions a Maya-predicted pole shift, triggered by an extreme gravitational pull on the planet—courtesy of a rare "galactic alignment"—and by massive solar radiation destabilizing the inner Earth by heating it.
Breakaway oceans and continents dump cities into the sea, thrust palm trees to the poles, and spawn earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and other disasters. (Interactive: pole shift theories illustrated.)
Scientists dismiss such drastic scenarios, but some researchers have speculated that a subtler shift could occur—for example, if the distribution of mass on or inside the planet changed radically, due to, say, the melting of ice caps.
Princeton University geologist Adam Maloof has extensively studied pole shifts, and tackles this 2012 myth in 2012: Countdown to Armageddon, a National Geographic Channel documentary airing Sunday, November 8. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News and part-owns the National Geographic Channel.)
Maloof says magnetic evidence in rocks confirm that continents have undergone such drastic rearrangement, but the process took millions of years—slow enough that humanity wouldn't have felt the motion (quick guide to plate tectonics).

2012 MYTH 3
Galactic Alignment Spells Doom

Some sky-watchers believe 2012 will close with a "galactic alignment," which will occur for the first time in 26,000 years (for example, see the Web site Alignment 2012).
In this scenario, the path of the sun in the sky would appear to cross through what, from Earth, looks to be the midpoint of our galaxy, the Milky Way, which in good viewing conditions appears as a cloudy stripe across the night sky.
Some fear that the line up will somehow expose Earth to powerful unknown galactic forces that will hasten its doom—perhaps through a "pole shift" (see above) or the stirring of the super massive black hole at our galaxy's heart.
Others see the purported event in a positive light, as heralding the dawn of a new era in human consciousness.
NASA's Morrison has a different view.
"There is no 'galactic alignment' in 2012," he said, "or at least nothing out of the ordinary."
He explained that a type of "alignment" occurs during every winter solstice, when the sun, as seen from Earth, appears in the sky near what looks to be the midpoint of the Milky Way.
Horoscope writers may be excited by alignments, Morrison said. But "the reality is that alignments are of no interest to science. They mean nothing," he said. They create no changes in gravitational pull, solar radiation, planetary orbits, or anything else that would impact life on Earth.
The speculation over alignments isn't surprising, though, he said.
"Ordinary astronomical phenomena are imbued with a sense of threat by people who already think the world is going to end."
Regarding galactic alignments, University of Texas Maya expert David Stuart writes on his blog that "no ancient Maya text or artwork makes reference to anything of the kind."
Even so, the end date of the current Long Count cycle—winter solstice 2012—may be evidence of Maya astronomical skill, said Aveni, the archaeo-astronomer.
"I don't rule out the likelihood that astronomy played a role" in the selection of 2012 as the cycle's terminus, he said.
Maya astronomers built observatories and, by observing the night skies and using mathematics, learned to accurately predict eclipses and other celestial phenomena. Aveni notes that the start date of the current cycle was likely tied to a solar zenith passage, when the sun crosses directly overhead, and its terminal date will fall on a December solstice, perhaps by design.
(Take a Maya Empire quiz.)
These choices, he said, may indicate that the Maya calendar is tied to seasonal agricultural cycles central to ancient survival.

2012 MYTH 4
Planet X Is on a Collision Course With Earth

Some say it's out there: a mysterious Planet X, aka Nibiru, on a collision course with Earth—or at least a disruptive flyby.
A direct hit would obliterate Earth, it's said. Even a near miss, some fear, could shower Earth with deadly asteroid impacts hurled our way by the planet's gravitational wake.
Could such an unknown planet really be headed our way in 2012, even just a little bit?
Well, no.
"There is no object out there," NASA Astro-Biologist Morrison said. "That's probably the most straightforward thing to say."
The origins of this theory actually predate widespread interest in 2012. Popularized in part by a woman who claims to receive messages from extraterrestrials, the Nibiru doomsday was originally predicted for 2003.
"If there were a planet or a brown dwarf or whatever that was going to be in the inner solar system three years from now, astronomers would have been studying it for the past decade and it would be visible to the naked eye by now," Morrison said.
"It's not there."

2012 MYTH 5

Solar Storms to Savage Earth

In some 2012 disaster scenarios, our own sun is the enemy.
Our friendly neighbourhood star, it's rumoured, will produce lethal eruptions of solar flares, turning up the heat on Earthlings.
Solar activity waxes and wanes according to approximately 11-year cycles. Big flares can indeed damage communications and other Earthly systems, but scientists have no indications the sun, at least in the short-term, will unleash storms strong enough to fry the planet.
"As it turns out the sun isn't on schedule anyway," NASA astronomer Morrison said. "We expect that this cycle probably won't peak in 2012 but a year or two later." (See "Sun Oddly Quiet—Hints at Next 'Little Ice Age'?")

2012 MYTH 6
Maya Had Clear Predictions for 2012

If the Maya didn't expect the end of time in 2012, what exactly did they predict for that year?
Many scholars who've pored over the scattered evidence on Maya monuments say the empire didn't leave a clear record predicting that anything specific would happen in 2012.
The Maya did pass down a graphic—though undated—end-of-the-world scenario, described on the final page of a circa-1100 text known as the Dresden Codex. The document describes a world destroyed by flood, a scenario imagined in many cultures and probably experienced, on a less apocalyptic scale, by ancient people's (more on the Dresden Codex).
Aveni, the archaeo-astronomer, said the scenario is not meant to be read literally—but as a lesson about human behaviour.
He likens the cycles to our own New Year period, when the closing of an era is accompanied by frenetic activities and stress, followed by a rebirth period, when many people take stock and resolve to begin living better.
In fact, Aveni says, the Maya weren't much for predictions.
"The whole timekeeping scale is very past directed, not future directed," he said. "What you read on these monuments of the Long Count are events that connected Maya rulers with ancestors and the divine.
"The farther back you can plant your roots in deep time the better argument you can make that you're legit," Aveni said. "And I think that's why these Maya rulers were using Long Count time.
"It's not about a fixed prediction about what's going to happen."
So there you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth of a 2009 NASA scientist.
2012 by Shaahin Cheyene
Filmaker Shaahin Cheyene has also explored the mysteries of the “end” of the Mayan Calendar and he made a movie about it called. 2012 Prophesy Change. Shaahin challenges people to not only learn more about the truth, lies, myths and possibilities surrounding 21 December 2012, but to find out how you can discover what you can do, to not only survive in challenging times, but to thrive.
The thrive concept will be explored on Chan6es in 2013: But for now I’d highly recommend that, if you are still here on the 22 December 2012, why not grab a DVD copy of 2012 Prophesy Change, just for some light relief: And count your blessings over the Christmas holiday period.
You might also fancy popping a few of those ‘blessings’ into your new year’s resolution to live a long, happy, loving, caring, gratuitous and fulfilling life. Then again you might not, but whatever you do, live.

© Chris Tyne, 2012.

Service is Changing

24/10/2014

You can make positive deposits in your own economy every day by reading and listening to powerful, positive, life-changing content and by associating with encouraging and hope-building people ~ Zig Ziglar.

“So what do you think about the new place?”

“it’s al-right, I’d much rather be in the old place, but I will adapt. There’s lots of changes in between.”

This is a brief conversation I had yesterday with a close friend of mine, who I will call B.

B recently moved business premises, because the company employing B decided to shatter the headquarters superstore into a state-wide shower of localised customer service outlets.

There has been a shift in personnel too and the people, B was once working with, have been assigned to other places, leaving B as the only member of the original team left standing in the locality of the old headquarters.

Despite the briefness of the conversation I had with my old friend, I was fascinated by B’s perspective of organisational change. B’s expectation of more changes to come before getting to changed, intrigued me because B doesn't like change, especially if that change is initiated by someone else. I found myself immediately crediting B with a tolerance for other people’s goals, until it dawned on me that we were sitting on the alert signal of traffic lights.

While it seemed to be that the organisation was about “all systems go” for an increase in the amount of green going into the till, my friend saw the change like an orange traffic light, with the promise of red or the promise of green, depending on how factors, beyond B’s control, went. The light may go up or it may go down. He was sitting at orange waiting for the order to go or the order to stop.

B’s preference is for the past. B lives in the music of his childhood and follows the same routine of activities every single day. B likes to maintain life and rides the waves of change with a mixture of fear and excitement. B likes novelty changes, but simply can’t afford them.

The strategic specification tsunami took the old life away and its waves caused a storm that helped increase B’s income and that pleased B. Yet, what was once an accessible place for customers and staff is gone and in its place a smaller, less appointed place has been born. In the old headquarters customers had plenty of room to park. The new premises has limited parking facilities and B wonders how this is going to impact on customer trade, but the decision was out of B’s hands. Such is the nature of organisational changing. The process from change decision birth, through its life of changing and onto its final death as changed is the complete life cycle of business. This life cycle contains lots of other change project life cycles and a premise move is a big one because the very nature of changing lasts until the extinction of the species. The species in this case is B’s customer service environment that was re-organised in accordance to a foreign strategic planners vision, and in so doing the need for space for customers to park has become an after-sight.

For all employed people to enact a desired change goal, as say written up as a strategic plan, the changing process tends to reflect an empowerment of multiple intelligences¹. Under the umbrella of Professor Howard Gardner's theory of intelligences, the outcome of any new learning curve (moving premises) is largely the result of the learning preferences of the doers. Moving premises is a learning curve for those who have not done it before. Fortunately for B he had been there and done that.

In all large organisations, it is always one person who initiates a change idea, that becomes decided through a process of presentation, group discussion and persuasion. The decided change then enters into various performances of communication, which, if it gets enough nodding heads, culminates into a jumble of input and output variables. In this case the new jelly bean stores forgot to incorporate parking into the engineering specification. An important variable that may cost B’s livelihood if the customers can’t shop because there is nowhere to stop and park their vehicles. Front line people like B can see it, the customers can see it, and the decision makers consultation process either forgot to include the front line or didn't think their perspective was important enough.

This omission of customer service from the change blue print might see otherwise loyal customers going elsewhere and it may also see new customers arriving. Time will tell and by watching the orange traffic light, B is not doing any forecasting.

Change for most employees represents something new like eating in a different restaurant, going to see a recently released movie, travelling to experience foreign culture and scenery, investing in a new recipe, taking out a mortgage, leasing a car, starting an accreditation journey. Some employees also come up with change ideas including a re-structure of the organisation. In the quest for bigger and bulging profit margins, innovation can mean the making or breaking of an employment contract.

What nearly all employees have in common is their desire to keep their wage and what almost all non-God fearing humans share is their desire to initiate change in their own image, as opposed to it being impacted upon them. Control of the environment for human gain has been going on since humanity discovered that they could influence the hand of God². But human change actually does mean work and work is all about changing and changing is all about continuous learning that is impacted on modern-day folk all of the time, whether they consider it to be a pessimistic reality or an optimistic one.

The reality is, there are people in this world who make decisions in the name of change and, the economic changing process tsunami that hits the population, depends upon how many permission votes those people get from the circles they represent. The customer vote is a particularly powerful one, for without customers no amount of re-structure will make any difference. In a world of supply and demand, trust is the biggest thread that can be woven into any transactional fabric. Trust is all about fear reduction and not being able to park next to your favourite store.. well you do the equation.

To be successful within a bureaucracy, employees generally have to establish a routine, irrespective of whether or not the employee has more to offer the world in initiative, intelligence or skills. Bureaucratic structures that pigeon-hole employees with status profiles, also stifle customer service and working people like B live this political reality every single day. Where leaders of organisations are expected to initiate change, followers are expected to interpret them, and it is in this interpretation that the best of all intentions can break down. Employees, like B, are not so much expected to make changes, but to ride them out, warts and all, if they want to keep their income steady. So change is a skill denied to some employees until it is required, say during a performance appraisal, where the employee is encouraged to suggest what else they can offer the organisation, as if customer service was not enough.

There are millions of people in the world who need change and by this I mean monetary reward. There are millions of workers in the world who are over ruled by the change decisions of others. Workers who heavily rely on changing in accordance to their own decisions about how to surf the waves.

To gain access to monetary change, workers have to accept the imposition of change, again and again. It’s as simple and as complex as that. In this way, change is essentially about order. The monetary system is structured in accordance to the laws of economic rationalism.⁴ However, for most employees, economic rationalism simply means keeping a roof over their head and food on the table by paying the bills as they come in. When bills get bigger than the financial reward, the desire of the employee to be the best at changing might increase, or diminish, depending on what Professor Martin Seligman⁴ calls their explanatory style. The stress a pessimistic explanatory style can place on an employee, who fears unemployment, can translate an organisational re-structure into one filtrated with anxiety. The result of which could be an ignoring of who is truly giving the orders in any business, the customer. For without customers there would be no business. In a competitive market place, ignoring customer need equates to ignoring the financial reward needs of those investing in the business. Should the customer take their business elsewhere, the investment in time and effort does not get fed. If the investment does not get fed, the employee suffers. It’s an economic dependency that I think requires a re-think about changing as being all about the human side of customer service. It requires this because of the lives of people like B who are constantly on the front line. B absorbs orders from the back and orders from the front and B manages those orders in the best way B can. People like B use the best of their personalities and acquired professional knowledge, to solve human customer problems and provide revenue generation solutions for the employer. People like B are worth their weight in gold.

When an employer decides to make a change, it is people like B who turn the cogwheels and take the knocks. It is people like B who move the decision forward into the arena of changing and it is people like B who wear the mistakes of others with the fragility of their employment servitude and dependency. Organisational decisions are way beyond B’s control, but this does not stop B from adding influence. B knows that in business the true decision maker is the customer. If the customer decides to go elsewhere, no amount of environmental re-structuring is going to make a halfpenny of difference. The loss of parking worries B because if the customers leave, B may also be asked to leave and B's survival depends on the income. The customers listen to B. The customers ask for B and the customers rely on B to give them what they need to get their job done, so they will also get paid. B is an important cog in the wheel of fortune. B is also an important customer of the organisation because good customer service is about knowing your product and people like B have not only bought the products, but have used them and intimately know how they perform. Customer service people, like you and B are the thoroughbreds of all trading posts and your opinions deserve to be recognised. Zig Ziglar explains the customer service role this way,

“ Many years ago, I was selling a product I did not believe in. You guessed it, I did not sell it often. The product was dictation equipment. Since I didn't use dictation equipment for my correspondence, I didn't have a deep belief in the benefits of the product. Consequently, I did not sell it. However, once I began to use the equipment, I began to see the advantages it offered. It saved time and energy when I produced proposals and letters. I began to believe and I began to sell dictation equipment. You have to believe “ ~ Zig Ziglar

B has that belief. Without employees like you and B, there would be no one changing the business of the change decision makers. Even though B has no extrinsic decision-making powers, B’s personal decision to go with the flow, absorb and contribute to the changing landscape means that B can adapt, and a desire for adaptation in order to keep the flow, is the key to my friends resilience in employment.

It could be argued that adaptation is about modifying the environment as opposed to resisting it. This would mean that there is a certain amount of resistance in any adaptation process if the employee is to survive the onslaught of waves. In B’s case the resistance is called denial. Despite any change intelligence my friend may or may not have, the employment contract is about providing a service. This means that should the circumstances of that employment be changed, the process from change to changed rests in the hands of those who can process changing. Professor Howard Gardner helps us to think about any process of changing as containing multiple intelligences in accordance to personality preferences. What this simply means is that people learn best when they are able to learn in their own way. In this case, the learning curve is about acceptance of being denied a voice in A's decision about C (change) that impact upon B. In this way B is the orange light.

There are millions of employees throughout the world who have the changing capability. Anyone who can achieve schooling can succeed in the work place. We are all capable of changing and we are all capable of making change decisions. However not all of us has the prerogative of being the initiator of change and when it does happen the result can cause a lethargy instead of a moving forward, simply because the self – imposed change may be outside the comfort zone of employment conditioning.

My friends acceptance that the move was a ‘had to be done’ helped shift A's decision into C through another day another dollar customer service actions. So while B’s preference was to remain in the old place, B had the emotional intelligence to recognise a lack of decision-making control. B silently mourns the loss of space, toileting facilities and decent air-conditioning, but B also recognises the new place has benefits. B accepts change by modifying personal data for acceptance and this is an internal fight. Through modification of attitude, B is able to contribute to the learning curve through actions that will move B closer to identifying with the new wave. As B’s area of speciality is customer service, B applies customer service to the wave. In so doing, B is able to take control of the wave influencing customer service by going with the flow and offering his expertise to all of the customers involved.

B is a front line worker and line managements actioning of the leading humans decision to change the environment landed on B’s service lap. By replacing the change order into more customer service, B was able to accept defining change impacts as requiring more of the same. Serving the changing process allowed B to take control of the situation by focusing on what had to be done. So B “mucked in” and the new premises emerged with B as key contributor in the changing process. B’s determination to will adaptation with an eye on "more changes to come" helped B to drive a personal stake into the new mould.
B’s psychological traffic light on orange, means that B is prepared for the green to go and B is prepared for the red to stop. B is a customer service solider ready for the next order and until a sometime in the future when his working day arrives as changed, B will keep on changing using service as a powerful register.

© Chris Tyne, 2012

References:

George n' Change

24/10/2014

 “ Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw

This quote is quite regularly used as an introduction to a blog, just like I have used it here. It seems most suitable for many advisory blog causes from capitalist and altruistic change advocacies to well-being philosophies to wealth generation opportunities. The plethora of interpretations arising from Shaw’s statement, intrigued me so much, that I found myself wanting to hear Shaw’s side of the story. So I began a little desk top research that, after seven days of scouring the internet, resulted in no factual confirmation that Shaw actually authored this quote. However, what I did find led me to think that if Shaw did say what he is being quoted as saying, the catalyst, if not the true facilitator of his opinion, might well be the American author Henry George, and for some reason unknown, George Bernard Shaw suffers the credit. I say suffer because Shaw was a passionately opinionated man, whose orations regularly found him extensively popular from applause or in front of booing political audiences. After seven days of reading and scouring the internet pot in search of whatever I could find about Shaw, I’d say that if he was alive today, he would not be amused, but swamped and over whelmed with the many and varied wild interpretations about what he really meant by progress and change.

George Bernard Shaw was born at the end of the great famine of Ireland, under the fire sign of Leo in the equally fiery Chinese dragon year of 1856. He was youngest child and only son of, a female dominated, Irish working class family. In Shaw's world both creativity and hard work were embraced.

In the year he was born, The Irish Parliamentary Party was striving to attain Irish democracy under Home Rule, as opposed to being governed by and from England. In 1856, Ireland was very much a part of Britain, and Britain had just used its men to defeat Russia in the Crimean War. Policemen were also being employed in greater numbers, to enforce Queen Victoria’s laws’, in every town throughout Britain and British Ireland. When Shaw was two years old, the British Parliament forced India under the umbrella of British rule and Queen Victoria was crowned Empress of India.

When Shaw was a teenager, Scotsman Alexander Bell invented the telephone. By the time he was 30, the world's first recording of the human voice had been heard, the first public electric lighting of London had replaced the old gas lamps, the first electric railway had been opened, the gramophone had been invented and education (an institution that Shaw despised) was now compulsory for children aged 5 to 10 years old. By the time Shaw began his career as a professional art and music critic, industrially progressive thinking was being peddled aggressively, not only by British Authors, but by American authors too.

In the second half of the 19th Century, socialism was on the rise, partly as an outcome of the industrial revolution, partly as a result of the gentry's identifications of their growing needs from the working class, partly because of the rise of working class snobbery and partly as a fashion statement of emerging middle class Fabian Victorians.

In 1882, Shaw was particularly moved by his attendance at a London promotion of the book Progress and Poverty by its' American author, Henry George.

Henry George was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania under the astrological sign of Virgo in the Chinese Year of the Earth Pig. He was the second born of ten children. His father, Richard George, was a publisher of religious texts and a devout Episcopalian who sent George to the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia. George left the academy without graduating and went to sea as a foremast boy at age 15.

When 26 year old Shaw met 43 year old Henry George in 1882, Henry was peddling his self-published work Progress and Poverty (1879), which was essentially a treatise about inequality, the cyclic nature of industrial economies, and the use of the land value tax as a remedy.

Shaw had grown up with working parents who had suffered the great potato famine of Ireland and where the main cause of disaffection was land as property.

In 1846 it was reported to British Parliament that

"It would be impossible to adequately describe the privations which they [Irish labourer and his family] habitually and silently endure . . . in many districts their only food is the potato, their only beverage water . . . their cabins are seldom a protection against the weather... a bed or a blanket is a rare luxury . . . and nearly in all their pig and a manure heap constitute their only property."

Irish, working man Shaw was inspired by American George by crediting George's book about equality as 'changing the whole current of his life'. So much so, that Shaw furthered his interest in equality by reading the English version of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital from cover to cover whereupon he fell in love with the ideals of communism. As a result of his passion for social justice, Shaw decided to commit himself to the communist left of British socialism and joined the emerging Fabian Society with a social justice thirst for righting the capitalist wrongs against people like his family.

Shaw’s Fabian Society was a British socialist organization whose purpose was to advance the principles of democratic socialism in a gradualist and reformist way rather than a revolutionary one. In other words, the Fabian Society favoured gradual change rather than revolutionary change and Shaw’s was a leading Fabian.

The first Fabian Society pamphlets advocating tenets of social justice coincided with the zeitgeist of Liberal reforms during the early 1900s. The Fabian proposals however were considerably more progressive than those that were enacted in the Liberal reform legislation. The Fabians lobbied for the introduction of a minimum wage in 1906, for the creation of a universal health care system in 1911 and for the abolition of hereditary peerages in 1917.

The Fabians favoured the nationalisation of land rent, believing that rents collected by landowners were unearned, an idea which drew heavily from the work of Henry George.

In the early 1900's, Fabian Society members advocated the ideal of a scientifically planned society and supported eugenics by way of sterilization. This is credited to the passage of the Half-Caste Act, and its subsequent implementation in Australia, where children were systematically and forcibly removed from their parents, so that the British colonial regime could "protect" the Aborigine children from their parents. In 2008, the Australian Labour Party Prime Minister apologised to the Aboriginal people, for the outcomes of the implementation of the Half-Caste Act.

As a Fabian, Shaw defended the Half-Caste Act. He was a strong advocate of Eugenics as a social philosophy for the improvement of human hereditary traits and he was an Imperialist with communist leanings.

In 1900 the Society produced Fabianism and the Empire, the first statement of its views on foreign affairs (drafted by Shaw) that incorporated the suggestions of 150 Fabian members. The foreign affairs statement was directed against the liberal individualism of those such as John Morley and Sir William Harcourt.  It claimed that the classical liberal political economy was outdated, and that imperialism was the new stage of the international polity.

Imperialism, as defined by the Dictionary of Human Geography, is

"the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination."

Imperialism, as described by that work is primarily a Western undertaking that employs "expansionist, mercantilist policies". Lewis Samuel Feuer identifies two major subtypes of imperialism; the first is "regressive imperialism" identified with pure conquest, unequivocal exploitation, extermination or reductions of undesired people's, and settlement of desired people's into those territories, an example being Nazi Germany. The second type identified by Feurer is "progressive imperialism" that is founded upon a cosmopolitan view of humanity, that promotes the spread of civilization to allegedly "backward" societies to elevate living standards and culture in conquered territories, and allowance of a conquered people to assimilate into the imperial society, examples being the Roman Empire and British Empire.

In contrast to Shaw's commitment to Fabian eugenic imperialist socialism, Henry George independently professed a socialism where all land should belong to all living and that the government should be the equitable coordinators of that land. He laid the blame of poverty squarely on the shoulders of land values. In Progress and Poverty he advocated:

“ It is not the relations of capital and labour, not the pressure of population against subsistence, that explains the unequal development of society. The great cause of inequality in the distribution of wealth is inequality in the ownership of land. Ownership of land is the great fundamental fact that ultimately determines the social, the political, and consequently the intellectual and moral condition of a people. And it must be so. For land is the home of humans, the storehouse we must draw upon for all our needs. Land is the material to which we must apply our labour to supply all our desires. Even the products of the sea cannot be taken, or the light of the sun enjoyed, or any of the forces of nature utilized, without the use of land or its products. On land we are born, from it we live, tho it we return again. We are children of the soil as truly as a blade of grass or the flower of the field. Take away from people all that belongs to land, and they are but disembodied spirits. Material progress cannot rid us of our dependence on land; it can only add to our power to produce wealth from land. Hence, when land is monopolized, progress might go on to infinity without increasing wages or improving the condition of those who have only their labour. It can only add to the value of land and the power its possession gives. Everywhere, in all times, among all peoples, possession of land is the base of aristocracy, the foundation of great fortunes, the source of power.”

As a new world American, Henry George had the unique opportunity of observing the topographical and anthropological formation of an industrially influenced society—the change of an encampment into a thriving metropolis. He saw a city of tents and mud change into a fine town of paved streets and decent housing, with tramways and buses: And as he saw the beginning of wealth, he noted the first appearance of pauperism. He saw degradation forming as he saw the advent of leisure and affluence, and he felt compelled to discover why they arose concurrently. Henry George was suggesting that investment in land was the answer to rising above poverty. George Bernard Shaw was also aware that inequitable control of land caused poverty in times of famine.

While Henry George was unable to read Marx, because this work hadn't been translated into English before his self-publication of Progress and Poverty, George Bernard Shaw had this opportunity. This opportunity furthered Shaw’s determination about sharing Henry’s ideals that all land should be subjected to altruistic central governance.   However, George took his ideas further than Henry’s observations by suggesting that communism held the answer. While Henry George’s ideas were largely ignored by the masses at the time of publication, George Bernard Shaw infiltrated his ideas into British society using the media of criticism and drama. He believed that it was the wealthy who should change to accommodate the needs of those poorer, as opposed to the other way around, and he utilised his influence of middle and upper class circles of British society to further this message with subtleties; Like in Pygmalion when Henry Higgins tells his ‘social experiment’ that she is the one who has to change because he is not going to change. In this way, George was sending a message that the person with the power to refuse gentrified un-change was the bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza. Henry’s refusal to change also increases the power of Eliza to take control of her own situation, once she has integrated his phonetics into her own. In this way, Eliza has the opportunity to become more informed than Henry and Shaw’s message, about integrating new ways of thinking into society through the use of self-development and oration, reverberates with his own socialist propaganda efforts. Yet, even today, the question remains open about why anyone would want to belong to a gentrified social circle that, according to Henry George, induces more human poverty by capitalising on the inclusive wants of the most dis-empowered.

Shaw answers this question in his original play, when Eliza the “Pygmalion” comes to life in Henry’s phonetic image. In his original version of Pygmalion, Eliza retains her pride and triumph of emancipation beyond the end of the play, where in the last scene Higgins goes out onto the balcony to watch her departure. He is happy that he 'sculptured' Eliza into life and he is happy to see her take her leave to live her own life. In other words, Higgins is pleased to have supported the emancipation of Eliza and Eliza is empowered to take on the duty of being responsible for living her own life.

While he was married to the celibate Irish heiress Charlotte, George advocated the freedom from unequal rights to be the duty of women as opposed to the duty of men. In 1891 in his Freedom for Women he wrote:

“ Unless woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself. It is false to say that woman is now directly the slave of man: she is the immediate slave of duty; and as man's path to freedom is strewn with the wreckage of the duties and ideals he has trampled on, so must hers be.”

Yet the American's changed the ending of Pygmalion to what they considered to be a happier ending for increased box office profits and Shaw was livid. Imagine the sense of injustice he must have felt for not having his social justice statement, of the emancipation of women, repudiated in favour of capitalizing from the ignorance of the audience. Shaw was inflamed and spent many of his years trying to get the ending changed back, without success.

Shaw’s friend, Beatrice Webb wrote in her diary:

"Bernard Shaw is a marvellously smart witty fellow with a crank for not making money. I have never known a man use his pen in such a workmanlike fashion or acquire such a thoroughly technical knowledge of any subject upon which he gives an opinion. As to his character, I do not understand it. He has been for twelve years a devoted propagandist, hammering away at the ordinary routine of Fabian Executive work with as much persistence as Graham Wallas or Sidney (Webb). He is an excellent friend - at least to men - but beyond this I know nothing.... Adored by many women, he is a born philanderer. A vegetarian, fastidious but unconventional in his clothes, six foot in height with a lithe, broad chested figure and laughing blue eyes. Above all a brilliant talker, and, therefore, a delightful companion."

The similarity between Henry George and George Bernard Shaw lay in their belief in emancipating people from the circumstances of poverty. Henry considered that people needed to think more about the consequences of buying into capitalism and George considered people needed to be led away from buying into capitalism through legislated political action. Both agreed that the government should take responsibility for equitable distribution of land to ensure a moralization of property values in favour of fairer wages. Both agreed that greed arising from any possession of the earth, that rightfully belonged to no one, should not be the reason for any human poverty. Shaw also agreed with the morality of Henry George’s Progress and Poverty’s message, that civilisations are destroyed by the very process that produces its growth, (and that is ) the unequal distribution of wealth and power.

“ Inequality is the necessary result of material progress wherever land is monopolized. These rights are denied when the equal right to land is denied—for people can only live by using land. Equal political rights will not compensate for denying equal rights to the gifts of nature. Without equal rights to land, political liberty is merely the right to compete for employment at starvation wages.The world is pulsing with unrest. There is an irreconcilable conflict between democratic ideas and the aristocratic organization of society. We cannot permit people to vote, then force them to beg. We cannot go on educating them, then refusing them the right to earn a living. We cannot go on chattering about inalienable human rights, then deny the inalienable right to the bounty of the Creator. While there is still time, we may turn to justice. If we do, the dangers that threaten us will disappear. With want destroyed and greed transformed, equality will take the place of jealousy and fear.”  ~ Henry George.

In a letter to Henry James dated 17 January 1909, Shaw wrote,

“ I, as a Socialist, have had to preach, as much as anyone, the enormous power of the environment. We can change it; we must change it; there is absolutely no other sense in life than the task of changing it. What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.”

Both Henry George and George Bernard Shaw agreed that the refusal of the individual to think, the refusal of the individual to act against the will of traditional progress, and the inability of government to protect the interests of humanity by prohibiting capitalist property interests, lay at the heart of human poverty.

With all of the above in mind, I again ask, what could the quotes meaning of progress, change and those who cannot change, be?

capitalism vs socialism : “Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything”
Should progress be the freeing of land ownership, should progress be the right of the individual to retain their identity despite articulation, should progress be a reduction in capitalism in favour of altruism, should progress be a rejection of capitalist monetary policies in favour of a cooperative society managed by government, what now is the impossibility of progress? I think that, irrespective of whether the quote reflects the work of George Bernard Shaw or Henry George, the progress being referred to is socialism.

Therefore, in my mind, the story behind the quote is:-

“Socialism is impossible without change, and capitalists who cannot change their minds in favour of socialism cannot change anything.”

Can you imagine the change implications of this in your society and the role that you play in its progress? My imagination now makes me think of this:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man” ~ George Bernard Shaw.

and this:

" There is danger in reckless change, but greater danger in blind conservatism "  ~ Henry George

At the end of the day, with both of these great influencers gone from the earth, does it matter how the quote is interpreted if it furthers the cause it is applied to? In terms of authenticity of purpose, I would vote yes. In terms of creative licence of something that is freely available on the internet, I'd also vote yes.
If you can offer a link to documented evidence of how Shaw is the rightful author of the progress is impossible without change quote, please share the reference here, and in so doing, support or refute this socialist conclusion. Looking forward to your connection.   © Chris Tyne, 2012.
References:

Maria’s Change

24/10/2014

Maria Letizia Buonaparte

One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Italian Catholic Maria Letizia Buonaparte was born in Corsica in the metal horse year of 1750 under Virgo sun of the 24 August. Her mother was Angela Maria Pietrasanta, a stay at home mother, and her father was Giovanni Geronimo Ramolino, an army man who was Captain of the Corse Regiments of Chivalry and Infantry in the Italian Republic of Genoa.

In Maria's day, Genoa was a coastal area of rugged land in the far north of Italy. It was divided by social conflict and banditry, which was controlled by a tiny elite of patrician families. Its economy was based on shipping and the silk industry. Genoa was an important centre of banking where most bankers loans were made to the Spanish Crown. This meant that much of Spain’s gold was sent to Genoa and as a consequence Genoa was gold wealthy.

When Maria was born, Corsica was fighting Genoa for independence.

Corsica was formed through volcanic explosions, and is the most mountainous island in the Mediterranean. It is 183 kilometres longest and 83 kilometres widest with 1,000 kilometres of coastline.

Corsica is 90 kilometres from Tuscany in Italy and 170 kilometres from the Côte d'Azur in France. It is separated from Sardinia to the south by the Strait of Bonifacio, which is 11 kilometres wide.

Maria’s father was employed to fight for the Republic of Genoa. When she was 5 years old, Corsican revolutionaries won their war against Genoa and Maria’s mother was widowed. At the time of her fathers death, he was 32 years old.

In 1755, the independent Corsican Republic was formed under the leadership of Pasquale Paoli and his Constitution of Independence was decreed in Corsica’s official language of Italian.

Two months before her 15th birthday, in June of 1964, Maria married Corsican Attorney at Law Carlo Buonaparte. Under the Virgo sun of August 15 in the Earth Ox year of 1769, Maria birthed her 4th Child who she christened as a Catholic in the name of Napoleone di Buonaparte II, after her first born son who had died in infancy.

In the previous year, the Corsican Republic had been occupied by French forces under the command of the Comte de Vaux. France had seized control of the island as a pledge from the Genoese Republic via the Treaty of Versailles of 1768. After losing the island to the independents, Genoa decided to not reclaim Corsica by force. Instead they sold the rights, they no longer had, to the French who were keen to buy the territory to replace what they had lost during the Seven Years' War. In the year of Maria’s pregnancy with Napoleone, she was subjected to France's offensive against Paoli’s Corsican army. In the year Napoleone was born, the French forces had successfully de-throned Paoli and taken Corsica as their own. This meant that the birth of her 4th child was registered as belonging to France.

It’s unknown what effect the wars had on Maria. She reportedly was a highly disciplined and stoic Catholic Italian full time mother who obsessed about cleanliness. Who is to say that her habits were a result of her desire to cleanse her family of the turbulent times she lived in.

Maria was 35 years old when her husband Carlo Buonaparte died of cancer. His career as a Corsican lawyer and politician saw him briefly serve as personal assistant to the revolutionary leader Pasquale Paoli. Just before he died he had risen to become Corsica's representative to the court of Louis XVI. As a result, Carlo and Maria’s children were educated in French.

It was 1784 and Napoleone had just been admitted to the École Militaire in Paris to train as an Artillery Officer. Napoleone had learned to speak French in Catholic School, and he spoke it with an Italio Corsican accent.

Napoleone completed his course in one year because, after the death of his father, his mother Maria could no longer afford to pay for him to stay the normally required two years. He was the first Corsican to ever graduate from the École Militaire and on his graduation in September 1785 Napoleone was made a second lieutenant in the La Fère artillery regiment. He served on garrison duty in Valence, Drôme and Auxonne until after the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789.

In July 1793, Napoleon Bonaparte (as he now called himself in favour of promoting his identity as a French man) published a pro-republican pamphlet which gained him the admiration and support of the younger brother of the Revolutionary leader Robespierre. The Revolutionary leader decided that Napoleon was to be the Artillery Commander of the republican forces against the British military occupation of France. After Napoleon’s successful assault on British Troops in Toulon, he was promoted to Brigadier General and put in charge of the Artillery of the French Army of Italy. Following the fall of Robespierre in the July of 1794, Bonaparte became engaged to a Désirée Clary. In April 1795, he was demoted and the shock of this depressed him into refusing postings. So he was moved to the Bureau of Public Safety where, at 26 years old , he wrote himself a romantic novella, Clisson et Eugénie. An excerpt of which is provided here:-

“ Depuis qu'il a été habitué à des difficultés, il avait besoin d'action et beaucoup d'activité physique. Aucune profession lui apporta plus de plaisir que de se promener dans les bois. Là, il se sentait en paix avec lui-même, au mépris de l'homme méprisant wickednessand folie et la cruauté. Clisson a été surpris de le trouver enchanté par le spectacle qu'il a vu. La naissance et la fin de la journée, le cours de l'étoile du soir car il jette sa lumière argentée sur taillis et sur le terrain, le changement des saisons, les paysages variés, les concerts de chants d'oiseaux ...”

“ Since he was accustomed to hardship, he needed action and plenty of physical activity. No occupation brought him greater pleasure than to wander in the woods. There he felt at peace with himself, scorning human wickedness and despising folly and cruelty. Clisson was surprised to find himself enchanted by the sights he saw. The birth and the close of the day, the course of the evening star as it casts its silvery light over copse and field, the changing seasons, the varying vistas, the concerts of birdsong...”

On 15 September 1795, Napoleon was removed from the Generals list because of his inability to accept his demotion. He now had no income. On 3 October 1795 Parisian Royalists declared a rebellion against the political national convention after they were excluded from the new government. Paul Barras offered Napoleon command against the rebellion. On 5 October 1795 the rebellion had succeeded in murdering 1400 royalists. Napoleon’s reward was influence and wealth and he afforded some of this wealth to his mother, who had adopted her middle name of Letizia and changed her family name to Bonaparte in support of her son’s French ambitions.

Napoleon was immediately promoted to Commander of the Interior and given the command of the Army of Italy. On 9 March 1796 Napoleon married Joséphine de Beauharnais after a whirlwind affair, ending his engagement to Désirée Clary.

Two days into his marriage, Napoleon left Paris to take command of the Army of Italy and led it on a successful invasion of Italy. At the Battle of Lodi he defeated Austrian forces before he was defeated at Caldiero by Austrian reinforcements. He marched on into Rome and dethroned the Pope. Then, in March 1797, Napoleon led his army into Austria and forced it into negotiations. The resultant treaty gave France control of most of northern Italy and the Low Countries. Napoleon then marched his troops into Venice and forced its surrender. Napoleon was on a roll with Julius Caesar as his role model.

In a letter to Josephine, he wrote:

"I have fought sixty battles and I have learned nothing which I did not know at the beginning. Look at Caesar; he fought the first like the last."

As a result of his battle successes, Napoleon became a celebrity. He founded two newspapers: one for the troops in his army and another for circulation in France. Unforgiving royalists, who had fled Napoleons war against them, now attacked him for looting Italy. Napoleon retaliated by ordering General Pierre Augereau to Paris to kill the Royalists. With the Royalists “now out of the way” the Republicans political control was safe. Napoleon then rode his horses and soldiers to Austria where they ‘negotiated’ a peace Treaty in favour of more assets for France. On his return to France, he was at the head of his game, so he turned his war interests towards Britain because he’d always wanted to ‘rule the waves’ since the time he had considered joining the British Royal Navy; When they had control of the French control of his home in Corsica in the year that he was accepted into the French Military Academy in Paris.

As France's naval power was not strong enough to confront the British dominance of eighteenth century maritime trade wars, Napoleon decided to undermine British trade interests in India with a war against Egypt. His intention was to align his army with the Muslim enemy of the British in India, Tipu Sultan.

In May 1798, Napoleon and his army set off for Egypt, with 167 French scientists in tow to help him establish a new province. They reached Malta on 9 June 1798, where Napoleon’s army took possession of Malta’s naval base. General Napoleon Bonaparte then landed at Alexandria and declared war. He successfully commanded the Battle of Shubra Khit and the Battle of the Pyramids. However, on 1 August, British Horatio Nelson destroyed all, but two, French vessels in the Battle of the Nile. Bonaparte's goal of a Muslim allegiance was sinking fast from Egyptian rebellions as well as the raging bubonic plague. So, for reasons of his own, Napoleon decided to go back home.

On 24 August 1799, Napoleon got on a British ship bound for France, leaving his army in the capable hands of Jean Baptiste Kléber. By the time he got to Paris, in the October, the Republic was bankrupt and unpopular with the general public. Their authority was so weak they were not able to punish Napoleon for his desertion of their French Army in Egypt and so they accepted his decision. On 10 November 1799 the failing Republic Directoire was suppressed by troops led by Napoleon. On 18 May 1804, Napoleon elected himself Emperor of the French after he drafted a new constitution that secured his own election as First Consul. Corsican born Napoleone de Buonaparte was now the most powerful soldier in France.

In May of 1803, despite an assets share peace treaty, Britain re-instated their war against France. At the time Napoleon was at civil war with insider royalists who were plotting against his military rule. To protect his interests, he argued that political acts of war against his rule justified the re-institution of a hereditary monarchy in France. On 2 December 1804 Napoleon crowned himself Emperor Napoleon I at Notre Dame de Paris and then he crowned his wife, Joséphine, Empress.

Maria was now the Mother of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of France.

On 26 May 1805, Napoleon also orchestrated his crowning as King of Italy at Milan Cathedral. He then created eighteen Marshals of the Empire from amongst his top generals to secure the allegiance of his closest soldier confederates, before selling some French occupation of Spanish land to Thomas Jefferson’s America, to fund his military defence against the British.

In February 1806, following Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz and the ensuing dismemberment of the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Emperor Selim III finally recognised Napoleon as Emperor, by forming an alliance with France. Together they declared war on Russia and Britain.

Napoleon issued a proclamation decree, for a commercial boycott of Britain. The decree was named The Continental System.

Portugal refused to comply, so in 1807 Napoleon declared war on Portugal with the support of Spain, then he turned around and declared war on Spain, appointing his brother Joseph as Monarch of Spain, to secure the territory, after his win.

In 1807, Napoleon formed an alliance with Persia against Russia and Great Britain. This alliance ended in 1809 when he decided to undermine Persia by getting into bed with Russia. With a substantial amount of conquests under his belt, Napoleon signatured asset share peace treaties with Russia, Prussia, Germany and Poland. He also assured these property assets with his family members by again, turning them into ruling Monarchs and placing them on the thrones of these countries.

The Italian Catholic Church's refusal to support The Continental System and Pope Pius VII ex-communication of Emperor Napoleon, saw the Pope abducted by Napoleon's officers and imprisoned.

In 1804, Napoleon had introduced a codification of laws that established the civil and criminal legal system in France. The Code Napoleon undermined the Catholic Church authorities and revolutionized French society and the societies he plundered as well. The influence of Napoleons father, in Napoleone's developing years, may have been the reason for Napoleons interest in legal reform. Irrespective, this reform upset the Pope.

The first code provided for the fact that all laws must be published and no secret laws could exist. It also prevented ex post facto laws and prohibited judges from legislating from the bench, encouraging them to interpret the laws that were in place. The Code Napoleon addressed public concerns over religion. Crimes of religion such as heresy, sacrilege and witchcraft were no longer acceptable and divorce was also deemed a civil manner, offering a brand new way of disciplining public conduct, outside of the realm of the Catholic church.

In much the same way Britain's Henry VIII introduced a new religion to combat his need for a divorce disallowed by the Catholic religion, Napoleon arguably introduced a civil law to defend the very same identified need. With the Code in place and the Pope confined, Napoleon divorced Joséphine in 1810 and married Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria who birthed their son. Thirteen of Pope Pius VII Catholic Cardinals refused to attend his marriage ceremony and so Napoleon had them imprisoned.

The Code Napoleon, or the Napoleonic Code as it is now called, identified the role of married women as under the authority and protection of their husbands; The implications of which continued the religious theme of women as being under the guardianship of men. The code both protected women from religious abuse and subjected them to lifelong parental decision making in accordance to their husbands station in life, decision making capabilities and means. Napoleon legitimised the financial poverty of French women by according full rights of the financial administration of all family matters to men. He also enforced an almost incestuous 'child-like' dependent status upon women by affording them, unquestionable male, judicial guardianship for the term of their natural lives.

Personality Psychologist David West Keirsey suggests that Napoleon probably had an ENTJ Myers Briggs/Jungian personality profile because of his observable

“natural tendency to marshal and direct”.

However, PhD Psychologist Alfred Jones considers Napoleon as:

“ self-serving, often disloyal, unreliable, greedy, and unscrupulous. He had seemingly little feelings for his fellowman. He demanded complete obedience from anyone associated with him. Logical processes were structured to meet his desires. Drive, ambition and intelligence were the watchwords of Napoleon. In my practice of psychology, I have seen neurotic patients with a following of those who would wait in line to accede to the wishes of those with often very disabling problems. The crazier you are, the greater your following. This was very true of Napoleon. Regardless of how deviate his wishes or commands might be, the more they were acceded to.From a modern day psychological point of view, Napoleon Bonaparte was a psychopath. This type of person has great tolerance for stress and anxiety. Where more rational individuals would be very cautious, Napoleon had no manifestation of fear. Was he a true military genius? He was intelligent, he could read people and could envision outcomes. His limited anxiety enabled him to take rash action and overwhelm his enemies.”

There was a lull in fighting in the winter of 1812–13, both the Russians and the French rebuilt their forces; but encouraged by France's loss in Russia, Prussia joined with Austria, Sweden, Russia, Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal in a new coalition against Napoleon’s rule. These wars were all about gaining control of trade resources and Napoleon was polarising the fight to gain to control of resources through his determination be number one.

While Napoleon took command in Germany and won against the Coalition in the Battle of Dresden of 1813, Napoleon’s popularity as a reputable ally diminished, and the French Army found itself “pinned down” by a force twice its might at the Battle of Leipzig. This was by far the largest battle of Napoleon’s “war of changes” and an estimated 90,000 men murdered eachother along with an unrecorded amount of civilian and live stock casualties. Napoleon was surrounded and his army’s faith in their ability to win was now pessimistic. When Napoleon optimised that the army should continue to march on to protect the capital of France, his marshals said no more bloodshed.

On 4 April 1814, Napoleon had lost all military support and as a consequence of finding himself alone, he was forced to unconditionally abdicate his role as Emperor. The treaty read:

The Allied Powers, having declared that Emperor Napoleon was the sole obstacle to the restoration of peace in Europe, Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his oath, declares that he renounces, for himself and his heirs, the thrones of France and Italy, and that there is no personal sacrifice, even that of his life, which he is not ready to do in the interests of France.  Fontainebleau, 11 April 1814.

Napoleons love, of Julius Caesar style military warfare, had over spent its resources in both human life and gold. Military bankrupt, the Treaty of Fontainebleau now prescribed Napoleon’s sovereignty as Emperor of Elba; a small island of 12,000 inhabitants in the Mediterranean, 20 km off the Tuscan coast. In reply, Napoleon tried to kill himself with an poison pill that only gave him a bad headache. Letizia joined her son in Elbe and with some of the money she always saved to ensure the welfare of her children, he escaped from Elba on 26 February 1815 to land at Golfe-Juan on the French mainland, two days later. The 5th Regiment was sent to intercept Napoleon and made contact with him just south of Grenoble on 7 March 1815.

Napoleon approached the regiment alone. He stopped and dismounted his horse, Then when he was within gunshot range he raised arms and his voice to the Artillery Regiment before him he called out

"Here I am. Kill your Emperor, if you wish"

Where upon the soldiers replied

"Vive L'Empereur!"

In June of 1815, a renewed military supported Napoleon began his offensive against the British and Prussian armies. The French Army of the North crossed the frontier into the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, in modern-day Belgium.  Napoleon's new army fought the Allies led by Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815: But his army was outnumbered and Napoleon lost the battle.

It may well have been that Napoleon would have preferred to die a soldiers death in the Battle of Waterloo. As it was, he was imprisoned then exiled by his enemies to the island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean, 1,870 km from the west coast of Africa, where once again, his mother joined him.

In his first two months there, he lived in a pavilion on the Briars estate, which belonged to a William Balcombe. Napoleon became friendly with this family, especially the younger daughter Lucia Elizabeth, who authored the now classic, Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon. The British didn’t care for this friendship and removed the family from the island.

Maria Letizia Buonaparte’s son, Napoleone di Buonaparte II, died from a diagnosed stomach cancer, may-be caused by arsenic poisoning, on the Island of Saint Helena on the 5th May 1821 when she was 71 years old.
Maria died from frail age, in the care of the Roman Catholic Church, on 2 February 1836.

War of Change:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDz5SzpA3Xw
© Chris Tyne, 2012.

References:

Righteous Change

24/10/2014

In the book Total Recall, Author and Biographer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, talks about the changes he has achieved in his life as stemming from the knowledge that he was able to depend on himself. In light of the media controversy surrounding Mr. Schwarzenegger today, I found myself questioning how self-dependency influences change, and righteousness was my finding.

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s view of righteousness is founded in his concept of the free will, where only the free will can realize itself in the complicated social context of property rights and relations, contracts, moral commitments, family life, the economy, the legal system, and the polity. Hegel advocated that a person is not truly free unless he is a participant in all of these different aspects of the life of the state. Therefore Hegel's righteousness was about the power of human determinism to assert itself within the cognitive and cultural behaviours of human societies.

So how did young Arnold assert himself within the human society he was born into? He exercised his righteous muscle with a determination to free his will over his environment and in so doing, Arnold built-in his desire for change and to change.

Utilising Hegel’s point of view, righteous thinking could be about the cultural and accepted norms of the person seeking to do right: But what about the rights of the person as opposed to the rights of society? What justifies the righteous thinking of an individual?

Richard Sharvy, author of Who's To Say What's Right Or Wrong? argues that people who have PhD’s in philosophy have the right to say what is right and he puts it this way:

“You (the individual) have a right to the free exercise of life; you have a right not to be actively deprived of your life without substantial justification; you may use force to continue the free exercise of your life. But you just have no such thing as a right to life.”

So, utilising Sharvy's point of view, if an individual doesn't have a right to life, but does have a right to the free exercise of their life, you could safely determine that, despite the cultural norms of your environment, you ultimately have the ‘right’ to change your life as you deem fit, in as much as others have the ‘right’ to change your life as they deem fit. But, what if you argue that this righteousness is wrong because this does not appear right to you, and you give your reasons for this view as matter of fact?

The legal system is full of people who deal in "matters of fact" because what is right for one person is not always right for another and until the advocated right is agreed upon and legitimized, it remains an uncommon law. Therefore, when depending upon yourself to do what appears right, is something outside of yourself making the decision about the righteousness to change or is it something inside of yourself or both?

My money is on both, for without an agreement from the outside world, the inside verdict gains no actionable validity. Yet, there is a bit of bull dozing that has to go on for an ambitious sense of righteousness to be accepted by others, and in Schwarzenegger's world that bull dozing was his ability to win physically showy competitions.

So is change about exercising the free will of righteous thinking through the acceptance of others, or through the acceptance of the self? Again, I think it needs both to shine.

The answer, in accordance to Sharvy (who was a righteous thinker himself), lies in the personal philosophy of the individual. Whereas in the eyes of Hegel, it rested with the agreements of the influential free wills of society. In both views, change required an agreement from the will of the self as well as from the will of other individuals. Without agreement change got stuck, as an ideal, unable to move forward because of its lack of muscle.

In Total Recall, Schwarzenegger implied free will as being secure in the knowledge of self-dependence.

Hegel would probably argue that the dependence of Schwarzenegger, was not that of a free will, but that of a will “conditioned” by the cultural influences of the societies he moved in. Sharvy might question dependent thinking with who, or more to the point what, has the right to piety.

Schwarzenegger has historically demonstrated his ability to secure favourable responses to change in accordance to his ambitions. In this way, he truly is a fine showman and a determined individual who has an enormous thirst for free will and agreements favouring his point of view. The right changes in his life story clearly support the complexity of change as needing agreements containing issues of piety.

Plato, in his Euthyphro, defined piety as prosecuting those who actually do wrong, which implies that the free will of the individual is also influenced by the free will of other individuals when enacting their righteousness to change.

What this means is that when considering any context of change, no matter how big or small, the rights of change become internally or politically vexing ones. Particularly when issues of human dependency are at stake.

Arnold recalls, that as a teenager he discovered a knowing that could depend on himself.

The power of his awareness struck me as the beginning of his journey into self-dependency, though the realisation that he had the power to accept or change, not only his physical shape, but his language, his culture and the influences of others upon his life. In this way, the greatest influence upon his life has been himself. Change was his spiritual journey and interestingly enough, it is also yours and mine because human change is about exercising the free will of personal righteousness. Whether or not the world will agree with Arnold's determinations about right and wrong, when it comes to making changes, is another matter, for even Arnold acknowledges that he did not change alone. He had role models and mentors and friends and lovers who helped him, which leads me to my determination about change as being dependent upon the free will of those exercising the changes, and that means all individuals involved in the sphere of influencing the desired change.

Quite simply, while the ideal of change may be your own, the execution of change is a shared experience, and it is in the sharing of ambition that, dependence upon the self shifts into a dependence on others through the dependencies of others. In this inter-dependent way, a change decision requires freedom from self-righteousness because without a shifting of the change ideal, from all for one into one for all, the ideal might be politically construed as not so much righteous but wrong. © Chris Tyne, 2012

References:

Changing Consciousness

24/10/2014

Changing Consciousness

On July 7 2012 a small group of neuroscientists and researchers from around the globe signed a petition that declared:

“all mammals, birds and other creatures, including octopuses, have consciousness”

I personally think this declaration has always been blatantly obvious, because without consciousness the poor animal wouldn’t know how to survive: But in neurological and scientific terms, yes, I wholeheartedly agree; And yes there are millions of religious and law-abiding citizens in the world who firmly believe that humanity is a God like creation and, as such, has no allegiance to the consciousness of other life forms on this planet, sometimes including other humanity.

Early Christians regarded human beings as greatly superior to all other animals. After all, human beings were made in the image of God, and God chose human form for his earthly life.¹

Should the attitude that God clearly decreed that human beings should have power over non-human animals be coupled with being entitled to seek power over other humans (as was the human attitude regarding human slavery and human wars in the 19th and 20th Centuries) the equation now reads like a horror story, where the earth is at the peril of power-hungry factions of humans. For outside of the compassionate animal practices of vegan Hindu’s, feeling and relationship focused Judaism, compassionate law-abiding Muslims, karmic animal re-incarnation retributions of Buddhists and stewardship compassion of Christians, it seems that the people most in conflict with animal consciousness, seem to be from human centric Christian and law-abiding citizen camps of various political denominations. Ouch! I didn’t learn this until I indulged in a few rounds of Google research for this article. It seems the problem began with the book of the early Genesis Bible which, according to BBC dot co dot Uk, stated that God gave human beings dominion over all living things. Today, Christian dominion is interpreted on the BBC website as:

stewardship, where all living things are to serve humanity and humanity, as part of their dominion, must also look after all animals.

Of course, more intelligent souls should look out for the well-being of less intelligent souls. Wasn’t compassion for the meek what Jesus stood up for or have I got my ‘love thy neighbour as you love thyself’ all muddled up, I think rhetorically. Yet, should the argument be that animals don’t have souls, as some traditional philosophical theorists would have it, then my above comment ‘of course’ changes into a philosophical thinking about ‘what is soul?’ and I’m not talking about R & B here.

If the noun ‘soul’ is to be taken literally, then the consideration becomes about the intellectual nature of a person or animal. I think, that should an animal not be conscious then it would have no intellectual nature at all, for consciousness is awareness and if animals are not aware, they would not respond to their environment. The fact that animals respond to their environment as uniquely as humans respond to theirs, simply means that we are all alive and as such, conscious of our surroundings in accordance to the sensory abilities of the organism we are.

Both animals and humans eat nature to survive. Humans are truly superior at wiping out species and the more of us there are to feed, the greater the extinction potentials. This is because most desire a good life and animals, through the good grace of the food industry, have become a commodity to be exploited for financial gain. This doesn’t mean that all animals, killed as food, get eaten. Most of them, whose bodies are sacrificed for us, are thrown away. The human race to win segregated food markets has spun out of control and oceans are being bled dry and animals throats are being sliced and bled in the name of agricultural and marine commerce, and not all of it is needed or necessary for our survival. For if all of this activity was just to feed the family, maybe, just maybe, there would not be a 21st century cry for help from environmental scientists, environmental protection activists and sustainability fiscal economists across the globe.

There is no doubt that humanity has developed amazing industrial capacities, that are once again, in need of a shocking reform, despite medical and life-style advances. It is a huge task for any group of concerned citizens to change yesterday’s cultural habits in favour of the need to change again, but change will be done, whether by “Gods hand’ or humanities, and my preference is for a harmonious balance between the two.

Phillip Low, with his petition, is offering animal researchers everywhere, the opportunity to re-think animal research practices through a recognition of shared consciousness. I believe we all share conscious reality, but to prove this using scientific method is something else and Phillip has made a productive start with his shared consciousness declaration of intent.

Scientific recognition of consciousness is always a good beginning, should the goal be an altruistic one. The very fact that the structures producing consciousness in animals are the structures that produce consciousness in humans does suggest that the brains of both animals and humans can be studied for consciousness. Yet, a reduction in animal testing seems to be the goal of the neurological consensus, and while the alternative remains questionable, the potential of reducing animal testing in favour of human testing, thankfully, still remains on the table, for both are undesirable and in litigation terms could also be an accountants nightmare.

The neurological shift of the 7 July 2002 suggests to me that today we have a hypothesis of cognition that challenges the old human view of difference equating to superiority. In my humble view also, the ability to learn is not unique in humans despite the human ability to learn more. The ability to feel is also not unique in humans despite the ability to emote more. I also consider that the ability to understand is also not unique in humans despite the ability to understand more, and understanding is what is required if humanity is to not only survive the technological changes of the 21st century, but to surpass them with a biological renewal designed to sustain all life as opposed to dominance of the few.

I think, if you truly want to have children and give your children the life enrichment they deserve, then more attention must be paid to altruistic claims of consciousness. Supporting the simple statement that animals have feelings is one almighty step for human kind in the changing pace of survival. For without animal giving of their lives for us, we increase the potentials of cannibalising ourselves. Consciousness for all, animal and human alike, represents an opportunity re-think the need for 'finding cheese' that still continues to keep human 'worker mice' running in a fast lane to nowhere. We need to be more careful. Evolution is the key and humanity is at a juncture where choosing well-being is fast becoming a consciousness about the need to change human awareness about the impacts of any change that smells like yesterday's cheese. A new way of looking at the world is essential if earthly life is to be nourished instead of consumed by consistent industrial innovations. While industrial innovation was the way forward for yesterday's thinkers, today demands a new way of thinking, better designed for the well-being of humanity as living in harmony with all conscious life, as opposed to reforming some out of existence. A focus on how to live with life instead of always trying to control it would also be nice, but such is the nature of some humans to practice change in the name of getting not what kind of soy cheese they need, but getting what cow 'cheese' that they want. In the 21st century 'cheese' greed is no longer a good, but an affliction against conscious life on earth because the truth is that, despite marketing hype, most humans are lactose intolerant despite their lactase persistence.² Why should animals suffer because of our inability to be consciously aware that what we are feeding our heads is not always good for us.

" We spend a lot of money trying to find intelligent life off the planet, while we are surrounded by conscious intelligence here on the planet ".

Be informed is Phillips message and it is also mine.

The Consciousness Petition
Phillip Low and 25 brain researchers believe that the brain structures that produce consciousness in humans are also in animals. "The brain areas that distinguish us from other animals are not the ones that produce consciousness," says Phillip Low, “all mammals, all birds and many other creatures, like octopus, have the nerve structures that produce consciousness. This means that these animals suffer. It's an inconvenient truth: it was always easy to say that animals have no conscience. Now we have a group of respected neuro-scientists who study the phenomenon of consciousness, animal behaviour, the neural network, anatomy and genetics of the brain. You can no longer say that we did not know. We spend a lot of money trying to find intelligent life off the planet while we are surrounded by conscious intelligence here on the planet. In the long run, I think society will depend less on animals. It will be better for everyone. Let me give an example. The world spends $20 billion a year killing 100 million vertebrate animals in medical research. The probability of a remedy, arising from these studies, being tested on humans (test only, may be not operating) is 6%. It is a bad accounting. A first step is to develop non-invasive approaches. I do not think (there is a) need to take lives to study life. © Chris Tyne, 2012.

World Change

21/10/2014

I'm far too opinionated and angry about the way the world works, I need to learn to chill because I can't change it"
This was tweeted by danaa @hanahopemurphy on 17/10/2014 and my first thought when I read her tweet was, when people refer to the WORLD where exactly are they meaning?

The fascinating thing about the term 'world' is that it represents lots of different segments (like pieces of a complex jigsaw) of people and cultures, environments and territories, and it's important to clarify which environment, culture and individual is being referred to when thinking about change. What kind of world change being looked for also tends to be a reflection of the segment of life most accorded to and with.

I think there is a lot of validity in danaa's tweet when thinking about the world of work because most of us can get caught up in what we think we are supposed to be doing, as opposed to what we could be doing to make the organisational world a better place to live in, and at work we do more than live there, we also perform to earn our living in an economic environment that constantly demands that the show must go on.

I think working in an environment that is dominated by stakeholder politics, making a difference is difficult if your organisation stakeholders have a more powerful voice than you do, in the pecking order of things. One of the biggest concerns change project managers report having, when coordinating organisational change, is stakeholder sabotage. It seems in the world of organisational politics, a sense of status and power doesn't always align with organisational goals, and more times than less, lone change project contractors find themselves being undermined by the management structure employed to uphold company policies, procedures and best practices.

Even though listening is healthy, I think being expressively opinionated is also healthy. Sixteen years ago, I was in my forties when I decided to join the opinionated and in the beginning I felt the sound I made was almost like an apology for daring to share my view of the world. But I had no choice but to change from being an attentive listener because my willingness to support the opinions of others had turned into a habit that was threatening to suffocate me if I didn't start asserting who I was as well as what I knew. All of those years of active listening to the many and varied opinions of others helped me to become a competent problem solver. It helped me to understand the limitations as well as the talents of others. It gave me the gift of emotional intelligence. It increased my ability to empathise and it taught me compassion but also turned me into a chameleon. The deficit to not being opinionated was that I had turned myself into a therapeutic mirror for others to reflect themselves in and one day, well, I realised that I’d been neglecting the opinion of the most important person in my life, me. So I decided to change and now I am also opinionated.

In my opinion, anger is the sense that someone or something has over stepped the mark into your heart felt territory of values and standards where, to retain what is rightfully yours, you must defend or suffer loss.
Being angry about the way the world works says there is a need to identify which world is being considered because everyone moves in a different world, that some might refer to as circles, and surprisingly, our circles tend to be not as big as we may originally feel they are. Somewhere in circles of reference is the heart of any contention and sometimes the first thing that comes to mind is generally the truth of the contentious issue and sometimes the truth is buried so deep within us, it's hard to see the forest for the trees, or the life in the seed because of the hard shell that has grown over it.

I think chilling out when aware of an anger brewing is a good strategy if it doesn't promote despondency. However feeling the need to learn how to chill and being able to chill are two entirely different things. If you don't know how to turn down the heat, then there must be a reason and if that reason is boiling point blindness, then let your whistle sing somewhere safe at home. If you have no one to share your innermost concerns with, which is something that I felt for most of my life, Dr. Michael J Mahoney, author of the psychological constructivism book, Human Change Processes (1991), suggests talking to a real mirror. I further this with my suggestion that you talk to your mirror with the sound or video recorder on. Listening or watching yourself, not into the web cam for internet uploading because that can come back to haunt you, but venting privately can help when seeking an answer from the person who is best qualified to resolve your discontent, you. Dr Mahoney calls this form of venting Mirror Therapy and he says it works best on people who feel worse than what they see when looking at themselves in the mirror.

"Everything is opinionated, you can't change the way others think" tweeted ThePrinceOfTheStout @terrymartin86 on 17/10/2014 and to a great extent I agree with the Prince, other than I’d like to add that every single person and event I have come into contact with during my life has influenced me in one way or another, whether I was aware of it at the time or not.
If the people that you are coming into contact with in your world are influencing you in a negative way, which I think feelings of anger suggests, asking yourself why they have power over you in such a way that just thinking about them results in heated emotion, might help. But hey, no one is asking my opinion. However that doesn't mean that I'm not going to continue offering it. People do get angry when the power of change is perceived to be in the jurisdiction of another who may or may not have your personal or professional interests in mind. It may well be that anger is the result of the lack of care, sense of entitlement, passive aggressiveness, dis-empowerment or loss coming from you or another. Should the anger be about social injustice, one way to assert yourself is to stop buying into the injustice. People who buy animal rights do not practice speciesism. People who buy human rights do not practice racism. People who buy fairness do not practice unfairness. Buying what you buy moves you in a world of others who also buy what you buy. When you change what you are buying from others, you also change your world. Chilling the heat when the kettle has already boiled makes for a cold cup of brew.

Caring about the world we live in is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Caring about others is even more reasonable. One thing I did learn from social work studies is that inside the legal framework of a society, thinking is free, empowering yourself is free, happiness is free, respecting the rights of others is imperative and accepting the consequences of living in accordance to our own values is freeing. In public spaces there will be people that we do not agree with and we do not have to change them to suit our way of looking at the world, and they do not have to change us to suit their way of looking at the world. However people can imposition us if they do or don't have a legal right to do it, and even though mutual respect is the key to fairness, there is no guarantee that anyone will use it.

After a day full of opinions, I find the best way for me to turn down the heat is by easing that singing kettle into a relaxing hot cup of tea; But you don’t have to take my word for it because I also know that not all boiling kettles sing and not everyone appreciates reconstituting dried leaves with boiling hot water.

© Chris Tyne, 2014.

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