Global consciousness ,the noosphere Pt II

http://noosphere.princeton.edu/


What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?

- - Mahatma Gandhi


Imagine there's no Heaven


It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people



Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace



You may say that I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one



Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world



You may say that I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one"





- - John Lennon, Imagine




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The warrior of light is aware of his or her immense strength, and will never fight with anyone who does not deserve the honor of combat.

- - Paulo Coelho, Ode , channeling Gandhi

Everything is about direction and consciousness. You can be wrong about the details. ... I don't know what it will look like 200 years from now. But I know if we keep moving towards -- again, it is somewhat spiritual, but if we keep moving toward a recognition of our common humanity and the necessary conscquences that flow from that, ... [the world] will certainly be more integrated.




... the main thing that we all have to do is put all the pieces together and sell it so that the world moves in the right direction. We can make a lot ot mistakes. That's what people do. But we ought to be stumbling in the right direction.



- - Bill Clinton, Fortune, Nov 11, 2001

Nearly 70 years ago, a Soviet geochemist, reflecting on his world, made a startling observation: through technology and sheer numbers, he wrote, people were becoming a geological force, shaping the planet's future just as rivers and earthquakes had shaped its past.




Eventually, wrote the scientist, Vladimir I. Vernadsky, global society, guided by science, would soften the human environmental impact, and earth would become a "noosphere," a planet of the mind, "life's domain ruled by reason."



Today, a broad range of scientists say, part of Vernadsky's thinking has already been proved right: people have significantly altered the atmosphere and are the dominant influence on ecosystems and natural selection. The question now, scientists say, is whether the rest of his vision will come to pass. Choices made in the next few years will determine the answer.



- - Andrew Revkin



Fiction leads us, as much as we are willing to be led, and it may be that there is no better guide. David Brin's science fiction novel, Earth, is about a future not very distant, in which it is necessary for a global consciousness to arise and become aware, to save the earth from the consequences of our unending folly, our destruction of our nest and thus, ultimately, ourselves. At one point a bright, though uneducated young man (whose given name is Nelson) says,






In other words, the ideal government should be like a sane person's conscious mind! The World Data Net is the ultimate analog.

Like a person, it too consists of a myriad of tiny subselves (the eight billion subscribers), all bickering and negotiating and cooperating semi-randomly. Subscriber cliques and alliances merge and separate ... sometimes by nationality or religion, but more often nowadays by special interest groups that leap all the old borderlines ... all waging minuscule campaigns to sway the world's agenda and to affect their lives in the physical world.

Our Earth Proclamation, contributed by Alan D. Moore




WE ARE ONE PEOPLE...

WE SHARE ONE PLANET...

WE HAVE ONE COMMON DREAM...

WE WANT TO LIVE IN PEACE...

WE CHOOSE TO PROTECT AND HEAL THE EARTH...

WE CHERISH THE EARTH'S BIO AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY...

WE WILL CHOOSE TO CREATE A BETTER WORLD FOR ALL...

WE WILL BECOME STEWARDS FOR THE PLANET'S THREATENED AND ENDANGERED SPECIES...

WE WILL DEFEND AND PROTECT THE RAIN FORESTS, REDWOODS, AND OTHER SACRED PLACES...

WE WILL DO OUR BEST TO MAKE THIS DREAM COME TRUE...

WE WILL DO THIS FOR OUR CHILDREN, AND OUR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN...

WE WILL TRANSFORM WHAT NEEDS TO BE TRANSFORMED...

WE WILL BREAK FREE OF OUR CHRYSALIS LIMITATIONS...

WE WILL JOYFULLY LOVE, SHARE, AND FORGIVE...

SO THAT PEACE MAY PREVAIL ON EARTH!

MAY PEACE PREVAIL ON EARTH!


"We think the world apart," said educator Parker Palmer. "What would it be like to think the world together?" The philosopher Teilhard de Chardin had a word -- unfurling -- to describe that "infinitely slow, spasmodic movement toward the unity of mankind." He saw education and love as the twin pillars of progress. At this amazing point in history, we have the opportunity to get things right.

- - Mary Pipher, Nebraskan

To sense that behind anything that can be experienced, there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness.




- - Albert Einstein

Noosphere: The mental envelope of the planet above and discontinuous with the biosphere.




"The first stage was the elaboration of lower organisms, up to and including man, by the use and irrational combination of elementary sources of energy received or released by the planet. The second stage is the super-evolution of man, individually and collectively, by use of the refined forms of energy scientifically harnessed and applied in the bosom of the Noosphere, thanks to the coordinated efforts of all men working reflectively and unanimously upon themselves...In becoming planetized humanity is acquiring new physical powers that will enable it to super-organize matter. And, even more important, is it not possible that by the direct converging of its members it will be able, as though by resonance, to release psychic powers whose existence is still unsuspected?"



- - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "The Future of Man"