“Nature is the standard of beauty,” said Emerson, and the Nature Institute website is displaying some beautiful fall foliage at the moment. Alongside that are words of H.D. Thoreau which may be helpful in connection with the previous paragraphs:
“The question is not what you look at, but how you look and whether you see.”
How you look. Whether you see. The metaverse will not be prevented, but it will help us to withstand its unwise motives if we can look at it in the right way. What is this new reality? What does it intend to do for us, or to us? How will it do that? What will we gain by overcoming its seductions?
The other encompassing challenge today is the global pandemic, and the Institute site offers “Ways of Looking at a Virus: Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic” by Jon McAlice and Craig Holdrege. This outstanding “long read” (an expression drawn from the attention-shortening power of our artificial mass media) is worth your time and attention.
Returning to the Institute’s front page, there are several other offerings of the highest quality. A new foundation year program coming. A new monograph—the more traditional term for long read—from Craig Holdrege: “Living Perenniality — Plants, Agriculture, and the Transformation of Consciousness.” Buy it in print or download a free PDF. Plus a new podcast episode which explores posing the question, “Who are you?” to animals.
In January Henrike Holdrege will lead a course, “Taking Appearances Seriously — Visual Experience and the World of Light, Darkness, and Color” for the M.C. Richards Program. Doesn’t that sound like a direct response to this metaverse project? And there is a video of a talk by Steve Talbott on the matter of purpose in evolution, and a new chapter for his book in progress, Evolution As It Was Meant To Be. This is a battle that Steve has been fighting quite tenaciously for living, receptive thinking about life.
Finally, there is a short video on the Nature Institute’s mission, asking “the fundamental question, ‘Do we really see the world?’” It is both confounding and inspiring to behold this tiny team in Ghent, New York, working with such care and penetration to awaken us to the sublimity of nature, maya, at just the moment when a corporation worth a thousand billion dollars and hosting two billion customers, and controlled by one man, has turned to summon us into an artificial replacement for nature.
Do spend some time at www.natureinstitute.org
“The question is not what you look at, but how you look and whether you see.”
How you look. Whether you see. The metaverse will not be prevented, but it will help us to withstand its unwise motives if we can look at it in the right way. What is this new reality? What does it intend to do for us, or to us? How will it do that? What will we gain by overcoming its seductions?
The other encompassing challenge today is the global pandemic, and the Institute site offers “Ways of Looking at a Virus: Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic” by Jon McAlice and Craig Holdrege. This outstanding “long read” (an expression drawn from the attention-shortening power of our artificial mass media) is worth your time and attention.
Returning to the Institute’s front page, there are several other offerings of the highest quality. A new foundation year program coming. A new monograph—the more traditional term for long read—from Craig Holdrege: “Living Perenniality — Plants, Agriculture, and the Transformation of Consciousness.” Buy it in print or download a free PDF. Plus a new podcast episode which explores posing the question, “Who are you?” to animals.
In January Henrike Holdrege will lead a course, “Taking Appearances Seriously — Visual Experience and the World of Light, Darkness, and Color” for the M.C. Richards Program. Doesn’t that sound like a direct response to this metaverse project? And there is a video of a talk by Steve Talbott on the matter of purpose in evolution, and a new chapter for his book in progress, Evolution As It Was Meant To Be. This is a battle that Steve has been fighting quite tenaciously for living, receptive thinking about life.
Finally, there is a short video on the Nature Institute’s mission, asking “the fundamental question, ‘Do we really see the world?’” It is both confounding and inspiring to behold this tiny team in Ghent, New York, working with such care and penetration to awaken us to the sublimity of nature, maya, at just the moment when a corporation worth a thousand billion dollars and hosting two billion customers, and controlled by one man, has turned to summon us into an artificial replacement for nature.
Do spend some time at www.natureinstitute.org
