Who owns the biodiversity of the planet? Is the distribution of these and other valuable natural resources an issue of public concern? I think that natural resources ought to be owned by all, and those who take or degrade them should be made to pay a fee to the owners, the people at large, as compensation. (02/28/02)

When a strong unconscious belief is held by a group of people or a nation of people, it affects the whole group or the whole nation. …  We have been hearing Cassandra’s cry of catastrophic consequences to the living matrix – stories of the life support system undergoing unprecedented deterioration. Yet we take this information in passing as if it mattered of little consequence. The blizzard of entertaining distractions and sensations of modern day life soon overtake the few voices of warning. Sooner or later we tune these jeremiads out as irritants. Our day to day awareness reduces the eco-catastrophe to an incidental epi-phenomena in a world committed to consumption. … Instead of advising others that “we must change”, perhaps it is more to the point to ask why we stay asleep, as if in a spell, collectively hypnotized, drugged to the trance of normality? Even if normality brings with it, the death of nature, how is it that we dare not break this Trance? How is it that we so easily surrender to this collective hypnosis? (02/28/02)
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Lincoln Electric of East Cleveland, Ohio (a rustbelt company with 2700 employees), welding equipment and electric motors – To glean more innovative suggestions from employees, Lincoln instituted a lifetime guarantee of employment in 1959. The company reinvests massively in its products and its employees. It distributes to employees a huge merit bonus annually. Lincoln employees have the highest productivity and morale and the most pay of any rust-belt employees in the world. Lincoln has not had a layoff since 1959 when the lifetime employment guarantee was extended to the entire company after 8 years of testing. (02/27/02)
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This website is a Weblog. The SynEARTH.network takes advantage of the web publishing tools developed for Web Logging–Weblog–Blog. We make use of ManilaSites hosted by Weblogger developed by Userland. Weblogs are becoming a phenomena of interest on the Internet even to the traditional press.“Blog” is short for “Web log.” Several years ago, heavy Web surfers began creating logs—compendia of curious information and interesting links they encountered in their travels through cyberspace. Improvements in Web design tools have made it easier for beginners to create their own Web logs and update them as often as they wish—even every five minutes if they wish. (02/27/02)
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Much of the prevaling “wisdom” in evolutionary science today assumes that humans formed in a caldron of conflict and competion must thrive on conflict and competition. This belief is frequently used to excuse much of the adversity in our present world. While I agree that conflict and adversity were common experience of early humanity, there is a growing evidence for cooperation as a powerful adaptation allowing groups of humans to overcome adversity. Contributing editor Jivan Vatayan shares some of that evidence with us this morning in his article: The Primacy of Cooperation. (02/26/02)

A new voice at CommUnity of Minds gives us food for thought about the recent discovery by George W. Bush that he and Vladimir Putin are “soul mates”. He goes on to review a recent book by Octavia Butler that may help us better prepare for the impact of the Fossil Fuel Depletion-Overpopulation Crisis. (02/26/02)
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Human intelligence science reveals that we all live in two worlds. The world of “is” is the way things really are. And, at its very best this picture of reality approaches the “real” world. Now we don’t have a perfect picture of the universe the way it really is. But our space-mind is pretty good. It keeps me from running into the walls and safe in high speed motor traffic. The time-mind forms an opinion of reality from words and thoughts. This opinion of reality is what I call the world of “ought to be”.  This world at its very best is the “ideal” world. Understanding these Dual Worlds can change your life. (02/25/02)
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Daniel Quinn writing in 1998:  “Protecting the environment” is the business of those among us who never expect to achieve more than stalemate with the forces that are rendering our planet uninhabitable. We must have more than that. Stalemate is just not good enough. And that’s the very first mind-change we must make — getting rid of the notion that “protecting the environment” is the very best we can hope for. Protecting the environment is for bureaucrats and vote-getters. We can safely leave that in their hands to screw up in the usual fashion. But saving the world is different. Is anyone here waiting for Bill Clinton and Al Gore to save the world? No, saving the world is too important to leave to them. Saving the world is for upstarts and lovers. Saving the world is for the rest of us. (02/25/02)
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Some thought will show that human nature practically dictates that the Moses Syndrome will rear its head when the price of gold begins a sustained rise. At the very least it will be born from envy that the Gold Bug is making lots of money while all other markets stagnate. It will be exacerbated by a feeling of disgust, firstly at the Gold Bug for being proven correct after all this time and, secondly, at oneself for finally not listening to him. Whichever way it goes, Gold Bugs had better prepare themselves for a more lonesome life than they had enjoyed before gold took off. Friends will become acquaintances at best, and many former acquaintances will no longer speak with him or even acknowledge his now affluent existence. (02/25/02)
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Life’s pattern of organization is the tensegrity, it has been in use on earth for over three and one half billion years. The tensegrity is the basis of organizing all living systems including our own bodies. Up until now we humans have not understood the mechanism and therefore could not use this pattern to organize our marriages, our businesses, our organizations and institutions, our communities, or even the entire human species. Humans who organize themselves using the pattern of tensegrity will find themselves orders of magnitude more efficient, more productive, more creative, more intelligent. More importantly they will be much more successful in pursuing their goals and desires. (02/24/02)
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There are many challenging aspects to explaining human evolution including the origin of anomalous features such as the large brain, diving reflex, bipedalism, relative hairlessness, subcutaneous fat (especially in neonates) and development of speech. The shore-based hypothesis views at least two of these features (neonatal subcutaneous fat, large brain) as being dependent on nutrition. Animals including primates do not develop these features on terrestrial diets but do on shore-based or aquatic diets. A fully aquatic habitat would not be necessary to derive the benefits of the shore-based food supply. However, positioned as it is between the two extremes of fully terrestrial or fully aquatic evolution, a shore-based existence would permit humans to evolve in near constant contact with water or quite remote from it. It would support the development of bipedalism (through enhanced buoyancy, especially in infants) and could plausibly promote hairlessness and development of speech. The shore-based hypothesis only attempts to explain human brain evolution and, in parallel, neonatal fat stores. In so doing, it accounts for the known and ongoing vulnerability of the human brain and neonatal fat stores to undernutrition. Competing hypotheses need to explicitly address these important physiological and metabolic limitations or explain clearly why they are not relevant; otherwise, they are untenable. (02/24/02)
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I am in the process of writing a new book based on the synergic analysis of human evolution and history. My book begins approximately 200 million years ago. Most of my research for this book was completed a few years ago, but I always keep by eye open for new or additionally sources. Yesterday after lunch, my daughter wanted to stop by the bookstore. As always, I wandered over to the science section where I noticed a small book by Elaine Morgan entitled The Descent of Woman. It was subtitled “The Classic Study of Evolution”. I had never heard of Elaine Morgan so I purchased the book. It turns out she is the leading proponent for Sir Alister Hardy’s hypothesis that we humans were remolded by a ten million year holiday at the seashore. First proposed in 1960, the Aquatic Hypothesis of Human Evolution has been controversial since its inception. Hardy was told not to talk about it or it would ruin his career. He did stop talking about it and it is not even mentioned on the website celebrating his long and distinguished career as a marine biologist. In 1972, Elaine Morgan became excited by the idea and remains its strongest proponent to this day. (02/24/02)
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