Thursday, October 22, 2015

Mutually Reinforcing Interdependence

"You should meditate often on the connection of all things in the universe and their relationship to each other.  In a way all things are interwoven and therefore have a family feeling for each other: one thing follows another in due order through the tension of movement, the common spirit inspiring them, and the unity of all being. "Marcus Aurelius, 160 CE, Meditations, Book Six, C 75, Translated by Martin Hammond

"How can we fret and stew sub specie aeternitatis
- under the calm gaze of ancient Tao?  The salt of the
sea is in our blood; the calcium of the rocks is in our bones; the genes of ten thousand
generations
of stalwart progenitors are in our cells.  The sun shines and we smile.  The winds rage and
we bend
before them.  The blossoms open and we rejoice.  Earth is our long home." 
- Stewart W. Holmes

"A spiritual sensibility encourages us to see ourselves as part of the
fundamental unity of all being.  If the thrust of the market ethos has been
to foster a competitive individualism, a major thrust of many traditional
religious and spiritual sensibilities has been to help us see our connection
with all other human beings." 
- Michael Lerner "We are seeking another basic outlook: the world as an organization.  This
would profoundly
change the categories of our thinking and influence our practical attitudes.  We must
envision
the biosphere as a whole with mutually reinforcing or mutually destructive
interdependencies." 
- Ludwig Von Bertalanffy