Humanize the Earth!

An Uplift Economy

Check out this Harry Potteresqe vision from Tom Munnecke.

5. The Principle of Acceptance

At tonight’s weekly meeting, we returned to the Principles of Valid Action:

If day and night, summer and winter are fine with you, you have surpassed the contradictions.

I shared two experiences dealing with airplanes, seperated by over 5 years. In the first, coming back from Chile to Chicago in 1999 I was an emotional wreck over a possible bump off an overbooked flight. In the second, returning to Ghana from Liberia in April of this year, I was in a much more calm space as my flight was delayed, then cancelled. I returned to the city and tried to plan on what happens if I thus missed my flight to Chicago the next evening. Sure, there was some anxiety, but generally, it was pretty calm for me. I can’t change it.

Gerry wondered how much “acceptance” is limiting problem solving in new and creative ways.

Would you care to share your experiences on this principle?

growth, pain, peace

I’m up way to late and night but somehow want to write something before I sleep about my whirlwind, roller-coaster of an emotional weekend. I won’t get into the details now (maybe not ever, we’ll see), but do want to just mention my process of learning how to be totally present and let another person be fully in their own stuff while not losing myself in that storm (even when my actions might’ve triggered the storm). It’s hard for me not to feel insensitive if I don’t allow that immersion and envelopment by the emotions of the other person, especially when I KNOW that my actions were contributing factors. Let’s leave it at that for tonight, shall we?

Humanising the Economy

In a comment to a post about giving at Chris Corrigan’s Parking Lot Jon Husband taks about a forum called Humanising the Economy - The Value of Happiness. My blog is called Humanize the Earth because that’s the work I’m doing with the Humanist Movement and it’s wonderful to see how much other people are also moving in a similar direction. Things are well when they move together, not in isolation!

4. The Principle of Proportion

From the Principles of Valid Action by Silo:

Things are well when they move together, not in isolation.

Tonight I hosted a weekly meeting of the Humanist Movement where we talked about this principle and its application in our daily lives. How do you see this principle applying in your life?

Pam and Pierre Omidyar (eBay)

Tom Munnecke at Uplift tells us about Pam and Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, and their values:

• We believe people are basically good.
• We believe everyone has something to contribute.
• We believe that an honest, open environment can bring out the best in people.
• We recognize and respect everyone as a unique individual.
• We encourage you to treat others the way that you want to be treated. “

Beneficence: Uplift Improv

Lenore Ealy at Beneficence offers:

Tom Munnecke at Uplift makes an Opening Uplift Improv Offer:

We need to create more Weapons of Mass Affection, giving our societies more ways of connecting with each other in positive, life-affirming ways.

Please continue this line of thinking on your blog, beginning Yes, and… and linking back to this entry.

See Tom’s blog for the background on this, but here goes…

Yes, and let’s call them not ‘weapons’ but ‘gifts’ of mass affection.

Yes, and a gift given without expectations can truly liberate both giver and reciever.

Introducing Bryneen K. Gary-Roberson, Chicago Poet

I met a wonderful young poet the other night by the name of Byneen K Gary-Roberson. She has 3 poems published at Poetry.com but I can’t figure out how to link directly to them. Maybe someone can help me with that? Either way, you can search for her by name. I hope she sees this here and leaves us a way to contact her.

Only the Strong Survive

Only the strong survive. Jesus will be here sooner or later alive.
One day when I drive, I will ride by.
Even sometimes when I cry, I try not to wanna die.
I try to get along, stay strong, even where I belong.
I love to sing that same ”ol” song.
Sometimes I wish, I had a dime, I”m blessed with this mind.
I actually take time.
Though my patience is racing, no macing, never tracing,
Even waking up facing. I don”t feel any guilt.
I like to wear silk and I love drinking milk.
I hate to see someone killed
But I see it’’s nice to have a meal.
My innocence is related to sega genesis.
Some kids are menaces, yes I like competitions.
Everybody makes mistakes. Some need time to innovate.
Even when it’’s written on a tape, find a way to contemplete.
I was in the state, not with my own mate.
I had a family, it seems like they have abandon me.
Even if they can stand me, I need a plan for thee.
Even though I can take it, I”m gonna make it!

Bryneen K. Gary-Roberson

My Crazy/Sober plan

Please write to me if you’d like to know more about this or have questions or would like to stay connected with this effort or participate in any way.

The subsection (council) of the Humanist Movement from Chicago of which I am a part has about 1200 people right now, almost 99% of them in Africa. The orientor of that council is also my orientor. Her plan is to grow tenfold between now and December and thus split away from her mother-council. This writing is my personal brainstorming about what I’m going to do to help her. It’s not to be measured or specific, but wild and crazy and creative and fun and light and wonderful.

My first thought is that I will have structral members of the Humanist Movement in my team in many states, Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois to start with. I currently have 72 people (including myself) in my structure, all in Africa (not including myself) but I aim to have at least 4 that have at least 100 each here in the US. This involves inspiring people to see what they’re already doing for themselves and their communities as part of something larger, namely the humanist movement.

Thinking next of the admi function (then coming back to my own team in Africa in a minute), I want to be a permanent influence with my peers and their admis, humanizing the process of opening up the craziness that represents this project. No more limits, no more controls, no more litmus test, no more pettiness. I’m going to find a way to connect with each of my peers and each of their admis each daily from now until Dec 21st. This will allow us to see everything as daily action within the larger process. The idea is to help the admis see that they can help their peers to loosen up and learn without limits while keeping track of the lists and details as we go. All of these people already know how to keep the lists, but they need to show the next level down how to do it, without keeping control of the whole. Communication includes email, telephone, fax, postal letters, post cards, visiting, etc. I would like to use all of these methods this semester. The idea is for us to get to the base the idea and more importantly the action of helping each group delegate register 50 adherents who each register 10 friends.

Back to my structure in Africa: Everyone that we’re recruiting to participate is someone that can be registered. Without regard to ability to pay or desire to surpass limits, invite each one to talk about our project and register those around them, not with some high bar of structural membership, but with the simple idea of staying involved and connected with the malaria project or any other action front. We’ve talked with over 1000 people in the refugee camp in Ghana but somehow exclude those people because we ask them if they want to help and they say no. Or they say yes but then do not come. We can go to the houses, to the people we know are interested, or even just our neighbors that we know like us and ask them to spread out our ideas to their friends and to register the people. We will then come back to them a week later to see what happened. Everyone gets registered and we cover the whole camp in the next 5 months. Other organizations can also be contacted and regsitered, churches, local NGOs and international NGOs are all already doing some good work so let’s ask them to come play with us. The churches are certainly about reducing suffering through human action so let’s approach them with this point of view, even adopting spiritual/biblical language if need be. Same with the NGOs, let’s speak their language.

Connection with the Rotary Club for the malaria stuff also gives us a way to influence large numbers of people all over the US and all over Africa. Bikes are another way. Working bikes, Johnny, Alex, Sarah and Dan can help. Working with Regula to reach the Freddie/Elsbeth network is anotehr way to reach far more people, including them in this project and strengthening what they’re also already doing.

My peer Julius came up with the following during the same Crazy Planning Process:

A Humanizing Network

The Humanist Movement has the aim of Humanizing the earth. Humanists aspire to building a Universal Human Nation. We are now building a network of sympathizers or supporters of the Humanist Movement and its aim.

We humanists believe than many, maybe most people share our aim. They denounce the current state of affair, the unjustices and the violence occurring both in peoples personal environments and on the social scale.

We are building a human network of likeminded people willing to join forces to make a change in ourselves and in our environment with the common aim in view to create a Universal Human Nation. We are therefore appealing to peoples in all factions of life regardless of religion, economy, race, gender, age or any other distinction that might tend to keep us apart as human beings.

This will be will be instrumental in bringing about the necessary personal and social changes since only with massive unity of the ordinary people of this planet it is possible to turn around the unfortunate direction suffered in current times.

With massive movement of people it is possible to put tremendous pressures on the existing powers and influence public attitudes in favor of humanizing the world we live in.

We invite all human beings without any limitation to adhere to following statements, signifying our common aims and attitudes with the following

DECLARATION

• I denounce all violence both in personal relations and on the social stage.
• I aspire to aquire coherence between my thoughts, my feelings and my actions in the world.
• I want to learn to treat others like I want them to treat me.

To be a part of this network means to agree on its aims and attitudes and be registered as an adherent or sympathizer of the Humanist Movement no further commitments are required.

For those who want to participate further can choose one or more of the following options:

• Attempt to apply the above attitudes in my personal life.
• Share my views with other people.
• Take part in gatherings in my neighbourhood sharing ideas with likeminded people.
• Receive information on humanist projects.
• Support humanist projects, financially or with voluntary work.
• Help the Humanizing Network to grow by inviting others.

Plan for action:

Activists go around, door to door, in the streets, in the coffee houses, work places schools etc. and gather adherents of the Humanist Movements.

Weekly gatherings are organized where people can meet and share ideas, in the neighbourhood, in the workplace, in the school etc..

The themes of the meetings will be decided by those present and organized by same people. In the meetings there might form action groups on various themes or not, all according to the interest of the participants.

Material: In the meetings there will be available material from the HM, but any participant can bring his or her own material just as any topic agreed on can be put on the agenda. In the meetings there will be available newsletters about humanist activities and about projects that they can support or promote.

In the meetings there will be open possibility to join as a structural member of the HM.

I laugh with the light within us

I spent this past Friday and Saturday with 4 of my peers in the Humanist Movement (one by yahoo voicechat from Iceland) and our orientor (I’ve been describing the Humanist structre as a pyramid lately, but we’re not each simply connected with our orientor (or guide), but we’re also connected with our peers) at a hotel in Oak Brook to reflect on where we have come from and where we are going, both personaly and structurally. Friday we read Silo’s speech from May 4th, 2004. One of the suggestions after the reading was for each of us to come up with our own personal aphorism that would help us in a particular situation in daily life.

I chose “I laugh with the light within us.“

What does this aphorism mean to you? What’s your personal aphorism?