Wired has a great article debunking various tenets of today’s environmentalism. I’m especially excited about the first charge: Live In Cities. I’m a big advocate of high density living and I look forward to San Francisco growing upward, skyline be damned.

There is an ongoing debate in SF about the skyline and new high-rises like One Rincon pushing poor residents out of the city. This puts “progressives” in a rather hilarious predicament, social justice or environmental pragmatism? Gotta love the Green meme.

An Integral approach to this problem would take into account the perspectives of all parties: Green social activists, Orange developers, Green environmentalists, Red/Blue residents of the neighborhoods being redeveloped. By taking each group’s concerns and knowledge into account, a workable and sustainable solution could reached. How nice!

More fun with eco-quandaries:

Slate’s The Green Lantern

Wallet Mouth

In the coming weeks, Considering the Universe will be undergoing a complete redesign. We will be eliminating the static pages currently housed at consideringtheuniverse.com and the blog will likely be moving to that URL. In the meantime, please send us your thoughts and suggestions on features you’d like to see included in the new CTU.

This redesign was spurred by my work on another site, YConnectNow.com. I highly encourage our San Franciscan readers to check it out. I’m happy to answer questions about YNow as well.

Love, Emily

This is classic:

“How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere? Just as we consider earthly creatures as ‘a brother,’ and ’sister,’ why should we not talk about an ‘extraterrestrial brother’? It would still be part of creation.” - Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory

The Vatican has released a statement regarding the possibility of life on other planets. The official stance is that aliens would also be God’s creations. I know almost nothing about the Bible, but isn’t Genesis explicitly human-centric? I guess this is what happens when you take a 2000 year old faith and try to maintain its relevancy.

I’d like to conclude with a shout-out to all my Martian/Klingon/Gallifreyan/Ewok brothers and sisters across the cosmos. If you’d like to carpool to mass on Sunday, I’m down.

I often have to remind myself that we are all One. Each a unique manifestation of the infinite. Chris at Blogging the Singularity has some touching words on this subject:

The Earth is a single organism of which we are a part. You are the Earth, we ARE the Universe. You are Korean, You are African. You are the rivers, the trees, the galaxies, and the fire. You are every animal, every burning star and every square inch of the vastness of space. You are the most beautiful thing because existence is beautiful and enchanting.

Lonely it may be,
confined within our nervous systems
remember,
communication binds us
and extends your reach and understanding
to the vast corners of existence.

Do not feel lonely,
for you are One
with all things
small and large
alive and dead
and connected
with understanding
to all.

We are One, All
travelers
wherever time takes us.
A Universe alive.
A fate unfolding.

Toward only
God knows what.

It certainly can feel lonely to be bound up in our little cages of flesh and bone. We are so much more than our shells indicate. Not only bound by body, but by our expectations, assumptions, roles, and history. Remember to stretch your own boundaries each day. God is creation, expansion and your own growth is divine.

Ok, truth be told, I’m getting tired of blogging about the conference. I think the first three days filled my head with so many great ideas, I could hardly fit anything else in toward the end.

Most of the presentations on the last two days were about specific projects. The projects were incredible, but I was much more excited by the theory discussions than the details of actual projects. What does that say?

What I did take away from the last two days of the conference was a big sense of hope that Integral is a powerful tool for reframing problems and taking new perspectives. I was especially impressed with Anna Cowen’s work in South Africa and Anne Caspari’s work in Syria. They both seem to be using Integral to solve unique problems. Keep up the good work, ladies!

I also felt that we had built a very strong community space by the end of the conference. It was very sad to see everyone go home. I look forward to seeing many of the same faces at the Integral Theory Conference in August.

(Sorry about this anticlimactic conclusion to the conference blogging. I’m just not feeling it anymore.)

(Just another thing we talked about in Istanbul.)

Integral loves perspectives. So let’s look at God from three places:

I - This is the perspective of Buddhism. I can realize my own Buddha-nature. I am all. I am God. Nice!

You - Most popular religions take this perspective: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc. I can pray to God and have a relationship with him (or her). I can know God and connect with him. God loves me and I love God.

It - Taoism and nature mysticism take this perspective. The Tao, the Way, the Universe is divine. When you see the Infinite in a beautiful sunset or the night sky, you are taking this perspective.

Most people naturally gravitate toward one of these perspectives. All three are valid paths, but its important to realize that there are other dimensions to the divine. Infinity is multi-faceted, to say the least.

Learning about the three faces of God was very helpful for me. I have always leaned toward the third-person perspective, which is woefully underrepresented in Western culture. Consequently, I’ve never been able to get into mainstream religion and thought I was an atheist for a long time. Now I can see that my perspective is just another way of looking at God and it is just as valid as the first and second-person perspectives. Hooray!

Day Three of the Integral Without Borders Conference was the first day of presentations. I am not going to attempt to recap each presentation in its entirety. I will give you the interesting points that stood out to me.

Vernice Solimar - Integral Spirituality and Social Change

Love = expansion = transcend and include

Love = capacity for presence

How love is expressed at various altitudes:

• Red - Love is power. Domination/submission.
• Amber - Helping, serving, loyalty
• Orange - Self-love, self esteem, self reliance, values freedom & justice
• Green - Love another by empathizing with their path, dialog, holding space for another
• Teal - Understand levels of love, interconnection of all beings, each person’s truth is a partial truth
• Turquoise - Everything as a dynamic unfolding of consciousness

Carissa Wieler - Integral Perspectives on Resilience

Resilience = Being present to paradox

In individuals resilience looks like bouncing back from challenges and being present to ambiguity and loss.

In systems this is the capacity to absorb resistance, to change and develop.

Panarchy: growth -> conservation -> release -> reorganization. Think of a forest. It grows and settles. Then a fire comes along and it has to restart. It’s capacity to thrive in this cycle is its resilience.

Lisa Chacon & Julian Gonzalez - Towards an Integral Theory of Human Needs

This was a very interesting presentation of Manfred Max-Neef’s fundamental human needs as an alternative to Maslow’s hierarchy. I’ve always been sort of fascinated by Maslow’s nifty pyramid, but lately it hasn’t been sitting well with me. After Lisa and Julian’s presentation I have a lot of new ideas on this topic. Let’s begin by looking at Max-Neef’s needs, which arise simultaneously, not hierarchically (with the possible exception of Subsistence for obvious reasons); in no particular order:

• Understanding
• Identity
• Freedom
• Affection
• Transcendence
• Subsistence
• Protection
• Creation
• Idleness
• Participation

A person can have a poverty in any of these areas which they will attempt to fill with satisfiers and sometimes false satisfiers. For example, to satisfy my need for affection I might find a fulfilling relationship. Or I might sleep with a prostitute, which would be a false satisfier; I’d feel better for a little while, but the poverty would not really be alleviated.

I have a lot of thoughts on this topic that I will dedicate a full post to. I look forward to hearing more from Lisa and Julian at the Integral Theory Conference in August.

Emine Kiray - Integral Politics: The Islamist Movement and the Recent Political Crisis in Turkey

This was fascinating, but very complicated. The best I can offer is a post by Emine on this topic from last year and my encouragement to come to the Integral Theory Conference so you can hear her talk firsthand.

Karen O’Brien - Climate Change Adaptation

Karen is trying to bring an Integral awareness to her work on climate change. Essentially, until we address the problem through all four quadrants, we will not be able to solve it. Again, you can hear more about this at the Integral Theory Conference. Can’t plug it enough.

That’s it for Day Three! See you tomorrow for Day Four.

Awhile ago I promised you an ongoing series of posts introducing you to some of our favorite music in a variety of genres. I’ve been slacking. I do most of my blogging at work without speakers so I can’t search Songza for working links, but I’m home sick today so let’s dance:

Untrust Us by Crystal Castles is my favorite song today (it changes frequently). I can listen to this on a loop for an hour. Really.

Tombstone by Midnight Juggernaughts makes me feel serious and mean.

Justice is meaner though. Embrace your inner anarchist.

Aerius Light is a former title holder as my favorite song. Makes me dance around the house.

A New Sky from The Presets keeps you up.

I Monster will bring us back down to earth with Daydream In Blue. Nice and calm.

If you enjoyed my selections, I highly recommend checking out The Sound Culture podcast and Missing Toof. Both are great resources for new music.

Laura and I talk about the virtues and vices of vegetarians a lot. It’s surprising that vegetarians face so many cultural roadblocks these days, even in California. Slate has a great article on the tribulations of going meatless:

Every vegetarian remembers his first time. Not the unremarkable event of his first meal without meat, mind you. No, I mean the first time he casually lets slip that he’s turned herbivore, prompting everyone in earshot to stare at him as if he just revealed plans to sail his carrot-powered plasma yacht to Neptune. For me, this first time came at an Elks scholarship luncheon in rural Oregon when I was 18. All day, I’d succeeded at seeming a promising and responsible young man, until that fateful moment when someone asked why I hadn’t taken any meat from the buffet. After I offered my reluctant explanation—and the guy announced it to the entire room—30 people went eerily quiet, undoubtedly expecting me to launch into a speech on the virtues of hemp. In the corner, an elderly, suited man glared at me as he slowly raised a slice of bologna and executed the most menacing bite of cold cut in recorded history. I didn’t get the scholarship.

The Elks don’t strike me as the most accepting group to unveil your hippie-diet to, but even less stereotypically old-fashioned audiences can react oddly to vegetarianism. We’ve noticed that people take a defensive posture as soon as we mention we don’t eat meat. Why is this? Flashbacks to a frightening encounter with militant vegans? Unconscious guilt for eating our furry friends? Enlighten me, meat-eaters.

And if you’re really brave, watch Earthlings. Guaranteed to turn you vegan, at least for a day.

The conflict dates from the day when one man flying in the face of appearance perceived that the forces of nature are no more unalterably fixed in their orbits than the stars themselves, but that their serene arrangement around us depicts the flow of a tremendous tide - the day on which a first voice rang out, crying to Mankind peacefully slumbering on the raft of Earth, “We are moving! We are going forward!” It is a pleasant and dramatic spectacle, that of Mankind divided to its very depths into two irrevocably opposed camps - one looking toward the future and proclaiming with all its newfound faith, “We are moving!” and the other without shifting its position obstinately maintaining, “Nothing changes. We are not moving at all.”