March 2, 2008 We are Staying Awake to our intentions, sensibilities and curiosities while attending our experiences at hand. Subscription Management — Essays — We Need a New Story Our New Knowledge Where We Are What We’re Doing DavidMoorhead.com researcher, author & graphic designer of Staying Awake. Graphic and Web Design Newsletter Production Life Coaching 1+ 214 341 5599 Email Staying Awake I bring together fun-loving, thoughtfully curious and dynamically creative people! That’s the possibility I bring to clients’ businesses. ~ DM I think with intuition. The basis of true thinking is intuition. Indeed, it is not intellect, but intuition which advances humanity. Intuition tells a man his purpose in life. One never goes wrong following his feelings. I don’t mean emotions, I mean feelings, for feelings and intuition are one. ~ Albert Einstein (b 1879) Whatever people in general do not understand, they are always prepared to dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious. ~ Letitia E. Landon (b 1802), British novelist, poet, essayist, playwright, children’s writer Cosmology One of the three philosophies in metaphysics is cosmology: The study of the origin and evolution of Universe, especially with such of its characteristics as space, time, causality, and choice. Besides mathematical equations and scientific interpretations, cosmology is philosophies and stories telling how the physical Universe and our planetary home have influenced biotic forms over millennia. One’s personal cosmology distinguishes trainings and educations, relations with other humans and other biotic forms in local geographical environs. ~ DM If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. ... I get most joy in life out of music. ~ Albert Einstein (b 1879), German-born theoretical physicist, contributed to cosmology, special theory of relativity, quantum and statistical mechanics, Physics Nobel Prize 1921 A word after a word after a word is power. ~ Margaret Eleanor Atwood (b 1939), Canadian writer, poet, novelist, feminist, activist, literary critic Hover your cursor to see Answers to Curiosities. How large is The Encyclopedia of Life? The web site, The Encyclopedia of Life, will eventually contain nearly two million pages, each page dedicated to one species. Developers have already generated enough capacity for one million placeholder pages. Text pages have been initiated by scientists, and one day, the encyclopedia will accept submissions from the public, like Wikipedia. Refer eol dot org Was ancient Egyptian medicine appropriate? Ancient Egyptian remedies are often characterized in modern culture by magical incantations and dubious ingredients. However, research in Biomedical Egyptology shows remedies, aside from sterilization, were often effective with sixty-seven percent of the known formulae complied with the 1973 British Pharmaceutical Codex. Medical texts listed specific steps of examination, diagnosis, prognosis and treatments that were often rational and appropriate. Refer Wikipedia What are implications of a demographic winter? A demographic winter is an old argument: basically, that the European, white Christian West is not having enough babies to replace its old and its dying. The idea is being repurposed now by an international coalition of the religious right, hoping to restore something they call the ‘natural family,’ a patriarchal family where the mother stays at home to raise a large family of children. Reportedly, if a patriot is conceived in Italy or Russia, prizes are given like refrigerators, autos, or $1,000 to $10,000 payouts. Presently, the religious right is tapping into anxieties felt by many Europeans about cultural conflicts occurring from different immigrant populations. Who determines which ethnicity, or which color or religion is most important? Refer The Nation dot com Are deep politics threatening environments? Covert power is like nuclear power: it produces noisome and life-threatening byproducts, which cumulatively are more and more threatening to the environment supposedly served. Byproducts of covert power include: trained terrorists who in the end are likely to target their former employers; the incriminating relations to government which hinder these terrorists’ prosecution; and, the ensuing corruption of society at large. The result is deep politics: the immersion of public and political life in an immobilizing substratum of unspeakable scandal and bad faith. And the result, in practice, is 9/11. From book Drugs, Oil and War. ~ Peter Dale Scott (b 1929), Canadian author, poet, former English professor, University of California, Berkeley USA From Royal Observatory, our Solar System (depiction) From Wikipedia, the core of the Milky Way Galaxy From Hubble Gallery, a galaxy very similar to the Milky Way Galaxy From Hubble Gallery, a distant supercluster (galaxies) † Brian Swimme (b 1950), author, mathematical cosmologist, graduate faculty of California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, California USA; gravitational dynamics degree, University of Oregon 1978; refer video series Global Mind Shift dot org © 2004-2008 All rights in all media reserved. You may quote my words as long as you attribute my name. Staying Awake content may be forwarded in full without special permission for nonprofit purposes only, provided full attribution and copyright notice are given. Thank You. Staying Awake Archive and publication dates. My email database will not be given away, borrowed or sold. This ezine distributed by EZezine.com Our constant curiosity is key to watching what’s being created. ~ DM

Hello Everyone,

There is one idea I’ve not been able to put out of my mind: we are a SPECIES, living on a PLANET, and the SUN nurtures Nature for our nourishment. On top of that, we humans live in fascinating times for, if we wish to think about it, we Earthlings need a new story about ourselves.

It seems when humans’ backs have been against the wall for creating survival, we’ve relied on familiar stories and myths about where we came from, what had led us to where we were, and made up a new story into which we would look forward.

Much of the new story for humans might come from latest findings in the sciences put into stories, especially astronomy and its elements through cosmology. At first blush, even considering our location with the Sun boggles the mind. But, by practicing remembering the Sun, it’s easier to imagine mental snapshots of our solar system’s location in relation to the middle of our Milky Way Galaxy. Those might become first steps in staying awake to imagine the relationship our species has with the cosmos.

By pondering our species’ new story, we eventually notice we’re asking ourselves to hold in mind contradictory ideas. For instance, traditionalistic religions in tandem with possibilities for humankind’s new story through science. A similar sense of conflict may be felt when we think these couples of words: fear—love; war—safety; poor—rich. Cosmologically, conflictions between religion and science have mixed about as well as oil—water.

While staying awake to discoveries unfolding to scientists, new stories can mean simply applying newly found knowledge as it cascades into our lives. Albeit, along the way, many fascinating myths, that have lured and kept Earthlings’ particular beliefs in place for generations, are likely to be threatened.

This ezine was inspired and written into paraphrased parts from transcribed video talks Brian Swimme presents at Global Mind Shift dot org. † Swimme, mathematical cosmologist, inspires us to imagine another phase of our species’ existence in the cosmos. For a while in your busy day, imagining a new cosmic story for our children is an easy way to excuse yourself from testosterone governments fraught with belligerence, underpinned by bad faith and unspeakable scandal.

We Need a New Story

We need a story that actually comes out of what we know about the physical Universe. That’s our moment. We’re done with a certain phase of our existence, and we’re in that exciting moment of entering into a new way of being human, which requires a new story—a new account of what it means to be human.

The cosmic story is a way in which we orient ourselves in the world. Humans require this. Butterflies don’t have a cosmic story they talk about; it’s actually built into their DNA. Wolves, whales—all other animal species—do what they do naturally, because it’s part of their genetic inheritance. We require stories expressed in our culture so we can find our way forward. Stories enable us to know what’s important to do, what’s important to avoid; they situate us in the world that gives us fundamental meaning, orientation, and direction.

We live right in between stories; we live in a chasm between a story that used to function; we’re in the moment before the new story has begun to function effectively. So, the stories of the past we regard as important, and we pay our respects to them, but we know they don’t actually give us a careful, accurate depiction of the Universe. Even though we know stories of the past no longer function as cosmic stories, we try to squeeze psychological insights out of them.

Our New Knowledge

One way to understand the last four hundred years of modern science is that this was humanity’s way of arriving at an understanding of the Universe, but it’s an understanding rooted in empirical observation of detail. The new story is not coming from any particular scriptures; it’s not coming from any particular group of elders; it’s coming from a careful examination of the Universe and of life and of Earth and of humanity.

Now, all of that knowledge has been growing and developing only in the last few decades. It’s all entered into a coherent story. In the 1960s, when two scientists in New Jersey USA discovered the birth of the Universe, they mused about how ‘it’s all fitting together now.’

The four-minute, 3D simulation below moves us silently into and through the Universe. When I first saw this, I gawked.

Our way forward is to actually live in the Universe we know about. It’s as simple as that. It is to live in the life of new knowledge. In the last hundred years, what we’ve discovered in biology, geology, ecology, and astronomy — all of this new knowledge — surpasses all the knowledge in the history of humanity. And, we haven’t yet learned to live within our new knowledge. We regard it as beside the point, that it’s really irrelevant to our personal lives.

So, our way forward is to learn that this new knowledge, this new story actually enables us to see who we are, and to see where we are. And, to see what it is we are to do as a species, as individuals, as nations, as corporations. New knowledge provides us a pathway into a future of vibrant life.

Where We Are

We are in the middle of this vast, cosmic expansion. We’ve just learned about it, but it is perhaps the most radical idea ever learned by scientists, ever.

One way to get a sense of where we are in the Universe is to begin with our planet home, and we have an amazing relationship with the Sun. Our solar system’s Sun is 93 million miles away, or eight light-minutes away. We talk about distances in terms of how long it takes for light to get somewhere, so when we see the Sun, we’re actually seeing light that left the Sun eight minutes ago.

Our Milky Way Galaxy is a fundamental unit in the Universe. Our galaxy is shaped like a pancake, or an egg with the yoke in the middle, and our solar system is two-thirds the way out from the middle of our galaxy. The whole size of the Milky Way is one hundred thousand light years from one edge to the opposite edge; our Planet Earth is some thirty thousand light years away from the middle. And, in a very slow orbit around the middle of the Milky Way, our solar system, with its star, the Sun, moves around with two hundred billion suns.

So, we begin to see our way forward by recognizing our presence here, on this planet, within this galaxy, within superclusters of galaxies, our presence on Planet Earth is dependent upon 13.7 billion years of energy expanding and complexifying out. (As metaphor, visualize our expanding Universe by imagining raisins [galaxies] moving away from each other in a loaf of bread that bakes in the oven.) And, we humans are awakening in the midst of that cosmic expansion—that’s who we are. We are at the cutting edge of an elegant 13.7 billion year expansion event in creation—that is where we are.

What We’re Doing

As Nature’s expansion unfolds itself to us, what we’re doing is noticing our new story unfolding among scientists who keep their fingers on the pulse of myriad energy changes. If only mentally, some of us are preparing for possible alterations of energies, in and around Earth, energies impossible for humans to stop.

What we’re doing is being curious. Part of the ongoing evolution of the Universe is altering mass into light. What we’ve learned about the 13.7 billion years of existence is that humans are an extension of that original energy, that first sea of light out of which our bodies were to emerge.

Throughout history, various words described stars. Some thought stars were gods; Isaac Newton thought they were giant camp fires of burning wood. But, only in the twentieth century did we discover that stars have a birth, mid life, and death. When a star is large enough, it will collect the elements it needs for the fusion process, which is a gravitational collapse in just over a second with an instant explosive rebound, scattering all the elements out into the Universe. Disbursed elements can then form new stars.

One of the deepest mysteries of the Universe is that for every atom of carbon in our bodies, one star went through its process of death.

Staying Awake an ezine with your awareness in mind. … The Universe story is the quintessence of reality. We perceive the story. We put it in our language, the birds put it in theirs, and the trees put it in theirs. We can read the story of the Universe in the trees. Everything tells the story of the Universe. The winds tell the story, literally, not just imaginatively. The story has its imprint everywhere, and that is why it is so important to know the story. If you do not know the story, in a sense you do not know yourself; you do not know anything. ~ Thomas Berry (b 1914), Catholic priest of the Passionist order, cultural historian, cosmologist, ecotheologian, geologian