Rare indeed is the scientist who has not at one point or other been seduced by the beauty of his own equations and dumbfounded by what the physicist Dr. Eugene Wigner of Princeton once called the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in describing the world. The endless fall of the moon, the fairy glow of a rainbow, the crush of a nuclear shock wave are all explicable by scratches on a piece of paper, that is to say, equations. Every time an airplane safely touches down on time, a computer boots up, or a cake comes out right, the miracle is recreated. “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible,” Einstein said. … Math is the language of physics, but is it the language of God? (03/31/02)
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Jacob Needleman writes: Douglass then called for that rarest of movements a human being can make—a fusion of inner opening and decisive outer action. Feel the truth of what you are, America, and at the same moment act! Risk yourself for what you know is right and true. It was what Douglass himself had done when, as a 16-year-old slave, he committed the unthinkable act of physically turning against his slavemaster. …  The hope of America cannot be renewed without acknowledging the reality of slavery and allowing its consequences to speak their truth to our hearts and minds. Seen in their universal meaning, America’s fundamental failures enable us to root our moral actions in the harsh soil of history, rather than in a vague and anxious self-condemnation or a mindless fog of self-justification. It is by facing our nightmares that we may pull ourselves free from America’s futile dreams of progress and face our role in the barbarism that has so deeply stained the fabric of human history. …  American seekers When we accept these truths about ourselves—both our triumphs and our failures—how will the story of America change? Will our heroes no longer be heroes? Our triumphs no longer triumphs? Not at all. Instead, something entirely new and necessary will fill every limb and cell of the story of America, and that “something” has a very precise designation—humility and remorse. (03/31/02)
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“Do to others as you would have them do to you.” This formulation is credited to Jesus of Nazareth who intuitively discovered the synergic way 2000 years ago. He gave us the rules for synergic relationship in his sermon on the mount. “You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. Ö Go be reconciled with thy brother.” (03/31/02)
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As a synergic help exchange — the Gift Tensegrity will be radically different from both the adversary help exchange — the Coercion Tensegrity and the neutral help exchange — the Product Tensegrity. One of the primary differences will be how the roles of giver of help and receiver of help change in the new synergic help tensegrity. Active control shifts away from the predators and buyers (receivers of help) to active control by the giftors (givers of help). (03/30/02)
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Making money on the Stock Exchange is easy. All one has to do is wait for the start of a long bull market, invest your money and wait until the top is reached. Then sell and bank the profit until the beginning of the next bull market. Actually very simple. … But only during primary bull markets, of course. … If making money is easy, losing money is an art. Many people daub paint at canvas and think themselves artists, but the work of the true artist stands out from the rest, easy to recognise as superior talent. The same is true of losing money on stocks. There are the amateurs and then there are the masters. (03/30/02)
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Terence R. Wilken editor of the RWWNL writes: There was a war that I fought in over 30 years ago.  I have finally come to a point in my life where I can look back.  There are still holes in my memory where I can not go.  I have decided that I will continue to look back, and let the memories come back as they will.  (03/30/02) 
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BUENOS AIRES – The sinking of Argentina is leading impoverished women and men to take desperate measures, selling their hair or blood, jumping on an overturned cattle truck to butcher the animals on the spot, or taking money to hold a place in a queue outside a bank all night long. These cases, which occurred within the past week, have traits in common. They involve desperate, spontaneous, improvised and massive reactions that are caused by the basic need to obtain food. In December, the same necessity led crowds to plunder supermarkets. (03/29/02)
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Reliance on fossil fuels and their extended pipelines contributes to our insecurity. Even where fuel is extracted from politically stable regions, it must be safely transported via accident-prone ships, trucks, rail, or pipeline. On October 4, 2001, a drunk shot a bullet through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, shutting it down for 60 hours and spilling 285,000 gallons of oil. Previously, the pipeline has been shot at on over 50 occasions. A disgruntled engineer’s plot to blow up critical points then profit from oil futures trading was thwarted by luck two years ago. How, then, can America become less vulnerable to attack and more resilient to mishaps that do occur? How can we prepare for a future that may hold increasing uncertainty, unrest, and even violence? The answer may be found by basing engineering on nature. Natural systems are efficient, diverse, dispersed, and renewable, hence, inherently resilient. …  Central power stations, no matter how well engineered, can’t supply really cheap electricity and simply cannot be made secure. The power lines that deliver the electricity cost more than the generators and cause almost all power failures. On-site and neighborhood micro-power is cheaper and eliminates grid losses and glitches. Rooftop photovoltaic systems, fuel cells, or biomass-fed microturbine or engine generators can be built on site to provide power for individual buildings or neighborhoods. When such systems fail, the effect is small and localized. If several small systems are interconnected, one failure may hardly be noticed. Widespread disruption of such a network would be difficult because it would require too many agents and too much coordination.  (03/29/02)
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Dee Hock writes: I have been searching the world for educational systems that embrace chaordic principles. Let me tell you about one that is not at all well known, but extremely interesting.  In this system, every individual, from birth, has a lifetime learning-account into and through which money flows from many sources including government, family, employers, philanthropy or earnings. The funds are under the direction of parent or guardian until the individual is of age. They are fully invested in secure, tax free instruments to maximize return. They are accessed by an electronic transaction device acceptable at any qualified provider of learning services. Every transaction is electronically authorized and can be paid electronically, either in advance or as learning service is provided at a cost of less than two cents per transaction. Each individual, in concert with learning advisors, constructs a life-long educational program unique to their interest, ability and need, using any combination of courses, educators, or self-instruction whether personal or electronic. The learning can take place at any combination of home, work place, computerized neighborhood centers or traditional schools.  (03/29/02)
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How will we make decisions in a synergic future? In today’s world 2002, it is assumed without question that majority rule democracy is the best way to organize humanity. To even offer a criticism of majority rule democracy is to invite an immediate and often emotional charged attack on oneself. We are quickly asked to choose between majority rule democracy or the dictatorships of communism/fascism. We are quickly reminded that if we don’t like it here in a majority ruled democracy, we are free to leave. … But what if there were something better? (03/28/02)
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Chris Lucas writes: Scientists, in their attempts to maintain a detached ‘objectivity’ have always rejected the consideration of subjects, of values, of teleology, of purpose. This bias has had the unfortunate effect of throwing out the baby of ‘meaning’ with the bathwaters of ‘delusion’ and ‘irrationality’ by trying to force a continuous complex reality into a straitjacket of disjoint either/or ‘factual’ categories. Under the misguided assumptions of Aristotelian logic, if the ‘objective’ is ‘true’ then the ‘subjective’ must be ‘false’ and thus to be avoided at all costs. The results of this has been blindness to much of our human reality and it has allowed emotional and holistic indifference by thinkers full scope to destroy the very structure of our planet and our lives as sensing, feeling and acting organisms. A world of detached ‘things’ has replaced, under a scientifically falsified philosophy, a reality of connected ‘processes’. To repair this long-running erroneous worldview we must first realise that science is about people – no people, no science. It is humans that generate all scientific theories, that categorise the world, that act on those theories. To deny science has values is to deny ourselves, a self-contradiction quite absurd in its repercussions within both our academic and economic structures. (03/28/02)
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