Review : Global Shift–How A New Worldview Is Transforming Humanity

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Environment (Solutions), Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Priorities, Religion & Politics of Religion, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal Integration of Ideas–Superb “Once Over”

February 10, 2010 [final review 21 February 2010]

Edmund J. Bourne

I have sent INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty to the printer and it is on that foundation that I highly recommend this book for a simple easy to understand overview of the fifteen converging forces that the author lists and then discusses in superbly-crafted very easy to read overviews. He covers:

01 A conscious universe

02 Multidimensional reality

03 Interconnection of all minds

04 Complementarity of science and spirituality

05 Radical empiricism [revalidation of intuition and visioning]

06 Consciousness has a causal influence

07 Natural ethics [I really like this, hugely beneficial for all]

08 Reverence for nature and earth [in my book, diversity rocks]

09 A sense of inclusiveness toward all humanity [diversity again]

Continue reading “Review : Global Shift–How A New Worldview Is Transforming Humanity”

Review DVD: The Good Soldier

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Force Structure (Military), History, Military & Pentagon Power, Philosophy, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Reviews (DVD Only), Truth & Reconciliation, War & Face of Battle
Amazon Page

World – The Good Soldier – 50/79 min [15 December 2009]

Four veterans from different generations of wars show us what it really means to be ‘a good soldie

View Free Video Clip and More Detail

5.0 out of 5 stars Righteous and Clear-Cut Contribution

January 22, 2010

Michael Ulys and Lexy Lovell

I found this movie very compelling and am putting it into circulation as a shared good. It is built around four specific veterans (one each from WWII, Viet-Nam, and Gulf I) and does a superb job of weaving direct interviews, past photos of the three protagonists, and archival film clips.

The Marine from Gulf I is especially compelling as he tells of his deliberate refusal to accept a Conscientious Objective discharge after killing over 30 people in Iraq, and ultimately, with the aid of a high-powered lawyer, prevails in getting an Honorable Discharge.

The same Marine–and the others–discuss how one must train normal people to kill, and there is no thought of how to untrain them (war dogs get reintegration training, humans do not).

The clear message, in these words:  We are One, and War is no way to settle disagreements.  That is of course both correct and naive–it discounts the fact that Empire is about money for a few, and the troops are merely cannon fodder.  That's the first thing we have to change–take the money out of war and into peace.

In that light, I add General Smedley Butler's book, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier and removing my earlier recommendations of DVDs in which war is glorified.

I add instead several references that probe who we are as a nation (America).
What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States
The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country
A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship

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Review: The Bhagavad Gita–A Walkthrough for Westerners

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Information Society, Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Religion & Politics of Religion, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page
5.0 out of 5 stars Speak the Truth, Lose the Anger, Be Part of the Whole
February 10, 2010
Jack Hawley

It took me fifty years to recognize the deficiencies of the command and control or top down elite-dominated model of governance, and to discover the spiritual and practical integrity of collective intelligence, openness, appreciative inquirty, deliberative public dilaog, and so on. It's taken another seven years to discover detachment from outcome, and that in turn set the stage for what I find to be the absolute essence of this book: speaking truth to power is half the battle, losing the anger is the other half. Harder to do than it sounds, this Westernized version of the Bhagavad Gita does help.

Here are the two paragraphs I pulled from page 129 and then 147 for intelligence (decision-support) professionals:

“Those who transcend the gunas are in essence watchers, beyond the worldly. Although constantly aware of the inevitable cycle of birth, disease, senility, grief, and so forth, they dwell above it all, and merely witness it.

My personal take on the above is that sacred dispassion is a prerequisite for both spirtual vision and professional integrity.

“Always tell the truth, Arjuna, and present it in as pleasant a way as possible. If you cannot do that, remain silent. If something absolutely needs to be said, you must uphold the truth, but find a way to do it that is gentle and obliging.”

Talk about one's life flashing past–A for truth, F for gentle. Something to work on in my last 20 years.
Continue reading “Review: The Bhagavad Gita–A Walkthrough for Westerners”

Review: Comeback America–Turning the Country Around and Restoring Fiscal Responsibility (Hardcover)

3 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Economics, Electoral Reform USA, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

3.0 out of 5 stars Ten Years Late, More Whimper than Roar

February 7, 2010

David Walker

I was watching David Walker as he served nine of his fifteen years at Comptroller General, with light-weight whimpers to Congress until he finally got Peter Peterson to bail him out of government and give him a chunk of cash for making movies and writing a book and creating a web site that very few serious under 40 pioneers pay attention to.

I was thrilled to see him tell Congress in 2007 that the US was bankrupt–both Senator McCain and Senator Obama could have cared less–and so he walked quietly back to his holding cell at the General Accountability Office (GAO).  His “loyalty” to impeachable masters is just as troubling to me as the loyalty of our military leaders during the neo-con rampage.

This book loses one star for the publishers arrogance and ineptitude in failing to use all of the tools Amazon provides, so that readers like myself who read a great deal and do not buy books on whim, can actually look at the table of contents. If you want a sense what the author has to say, see the Wikipedia page on the US Federal Budget where the author's fingerprints are elegantly visible.

If and when the publisher acts more responsibly and provides Look Inside the Book information as well standard entries via Amazon Advantage (about the book, about the author, editorial reviews), I will buy the book, read it, and review it.

The book loses a second star for being wildly praised by all the unethical losers that got us into this mess in the first place by sacrificing their ethics and selling the two party system out to Wall Street. Bill Bradley in particular is a major disappointment, he slunk off to Allen and Company where George “Slam Dunk” Tenet is also in hiding, and they have profited handsomely for betraying the public trust for over a decade. Edumund Burke said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Even better is the following from Chief Justice Louis Brandeis:

Continue reading “Review: Comeback America–Turning the Country Around and Restoring Fiscal Responsibility (Hardcover)”

Review: The Empathetic Civilization–the Race to Global Consciousness in a World of Crisis

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Future, Information Society, Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars HUGE Book, Deep Look From One Perspective

January 14, 2010

Jeremy Rifkin

This is a society-changing piece of work.

This is a magnum opus from a very specific point of view that overlooks both major consciousness figures and major biosphere figures. Herman Daly gets one note, Tom Atlee, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Steve McIntosh are not in this book. Buckminster Fuller, Paul Hawken, the Meadows, E. O. Wilson on Consilience, J. F Rischard on HIGH NOON, etcetera, are not in this book. My review begins after the Table of Contents, which the publisher failed to provide using standard Amazon tools for publishers.

Table of Contents

I The Hidden Paradox of Human History

HOMO EMPATHICUS

2 The New View of Human Nature
3 A Sentient Interpretation of Biological Evolution
4 Becoming Human
5 Rethinking the Meaning of the Human Journey

EMPATHY AND CIVILIZATION

6 The Ancient Theological Brain and Patriarchal Economy
7 Cosmopolitan Rome and the Rise of Urban Christianity
8 The Soft Industrial Revolution of the Late Medieval era and the Birth of Humanism
9 Ideological Thinking in a Modern Market Economy
10 Psychological Consciousness in a postmodern Existential world

THE AGE OF EMPATHY

11 The Climb to Global Peak Empathy
12 The Planetary Entropic Abyss
13 The Emerging Era of Distributed Capitalism
14 The Theatrical Self in an Improvisational Society
15 Biosphere Consciousness in a Climax Economy

– – – – – – – –

If this book is reprinted, it should be single-spaced. The massive bulk (675 pages) is pretentious and not necessary, especially for those of us that read when traveling, and for students having to carry books around. As noted earlier the author leaves out a great deal and I will offer ten links below (and over 300 links at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog where I have posted “Worth a Look: Book Review Lists”). This review focuses on the righteous theme the author has pursued across multiple literatures.

The book's bottom line is well summarized in the jacket flaps and comes at the very end as the author aspires for a combination of biosphere consciousness and distributed capitalism, the latter made possible by a combination of backyard energy and global information and communications technologies (ICT). Early in the book the author discusses how the wealthy dominated water power in the Medieval Period, but the poor were able to use windmills anywhere–this makes an impression on me as it did on the author.

The author has a story to tell and as I go through the book I am constantly reminded of books and points not in this book, but I abandoned my first draft of my review because it focused too much on work by others and not enough on the enormous task this author has taken on. In a nutshell, the author believes that the same revolutions in energy and communications that lead to a growth in human consciousness also lead to a commensurate crisis in earth or biosphere viability. In today's era the potential crisis (widely anticipated in the 1970's and deliberately ignored by the White House and the Senate for selfish corrupt reasons) is playing a forcing function, potentially catalyzing the rethinking of philosophy, economics, and our social models.

There are three negatives to this book that for any other author or theme would have dropped the book to a four, but I feel a five is still warranted for both the heroic personal effort of the author, and the importance of the theme.

#1. There is no appreciation that I can see of the fact that we are returning to the wisdom of the indigenous cultures that we have genocided since 1941, not only in the USA but in Australia, Africa, and elsewhere. This is not new wisdom that the author is bringing to bear, but old wisdom that is being rediscovered.

#2. The author fell prey to the Climate Change manipulation of data and hyperbole as well as nine documented errors in the British law suit against Al Gore, who has been asked to return his Academy Award. I won't belabor this now that the fraud of Climate Change has been adequately exposed, I will just say this: the UN High Level Panel on Threats, Challenge, and Change is the more honest and substantive endeavor, and Environmental Degradation, #3 of 10 after Poverty and Infectious Disease, is properly ranked. Climate Change is less than 10% of that, and within Climate Change carbon emissions are 10% at most, and much less important than sulfur or mercury. Carbon trades are fraud–a form of phantom wealth engineered by Maurice Strong and shilled by Al Gore, with the International Panel on Climate Change director–a railway engineer, not a scientist–happily lining his pockets by making the science fit. Learn more at the ClimateGate Rolling Update at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.

#3. This is a book for the one billion rich, and it does not really address the five billion poor, and so I felt a continuing sense of annoyance as I read, recognizing this as a “salon” work for funders and the well-off, rather than a grass roots books focused on bottom-up social change. For that, see the books I list below.

Having disclosed those three “nits,” I am hugely positive on this book and its theme. The author observes that historians tend to document the negatives–the wars and the conflicts–and gloss over the periods of peace and prosperity and I buy into that. We don't do enough to isolate and extend the “good news.”

Here are other fly-leaf notes:

+ Empathy is rooted in selfhood, enables dialog that in turn allows reconciliation.

+ Today transparency and cooperation are displacing secrecy and competition.

+ Importance of touch, of reversing the isolation of the individual as a cog in the machine.

+ Herding of humans began in 4000 BC with hydraulic civilizations, not with the Industrial Revolution as some have suggested

+ Energy advances appear to stimulate changes in communications (including computing and intelligence)

+ Mothers and mothering matter, root of selfhood and stability that enables exploring and innovation

+ Darwin's later work looked at empathy among animals and between different species

+ Faith and emotion are an important part of “humanity” and of “intelligence”

+ Religions are NOT inherently empathetic, tend to both focus on the other worldly and to exclude those not of the same religion

+ The author does well as a single individual researcher but there is a lot in this book that is simplistic for lack of access to deeper works by others

+ Soil salinity has collapsed civilizations before ours including the Romans

+ Nice discussion of the Gnostics who felt that the real sin of man was in not understanding self and the human potential for divinity (Barbara Marx Hubbard and Buckminster Fuller have focused on this in more recent times)

+ Medieval Period ran out of wood the way we are running out of oil

+ Interesting discussion of print as a facilitator for both individuality and the scientific method

+ Light discussion of schools, not connected with the broader literature on pedagogy and mass instruction.

+ Energy changes impact on space and time perceptions. Electricity and Morse code took global communications and connectivity to a whole new level

+ Child development runs throughout this book in an interesting manner

+ Disconcerting notes include English as the universal language (Chinese over-taking fast followed by Hindi); everyone is a tourist (this would be news to the five billion poor); no more aliens, decline of religion (not from where I sit).

+ Author is excessively dependent on Climate Change as a stimulus, I totally agree with the author's sense of urgency, but all ClimateGate has done is set science back in the public esteem by at least a decade.

+ The author provides an engaging discussion of the coming 3rd Industrial Revolution in which we will further embrace new indices of immaterial wealth and move from property to access and from co-optation to cooperation.

+ The book closes with a discussion of how social skills are changing and now half theater and half authentic, which may not be as odd as it sounds, as individuals must master both deep multi-cultural empathy and the ability to project open authenticity despite violent disagreement with “the other.”

This book is absolutely worth buying and reading–it would be better if it were single spaced and much less bulky. I hope the paperback version goes to single space; there is no justification for doubling the bulk of this content.

Ten links as allowed by Amazon:
Reflections on Evolutionary Activism: Essays, poems and prayers from an emerging field of sacred social change
Radical Man
Social Change 2.0: A Blueprint for Reinventing Our World
The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness
Conscious Evolution: Awakening Our Social Potential
Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century
Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

See all my other reviews relevant to this specific books and its focus at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, but specifically the “good news” books visible through  Worth a Look: Book Review Lists.

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Review (Guest): Bathtub Admirals (Hardcover)

5 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Force Structure (Military), Leadership, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Strategy, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle
Amazon Page

Reviewed by BookList

Jack Hogan and Buzz Rucci are a couple of buddies in the modern U.S. Navy. They signed up to risk their lives defending their country, but instead they’re risking their sanity playing at war in a series of military maneuvers and preparedness exercises. They are “bathtub admirals,” performing meaningless exercises in the name of global peace . . . or something like that. In the spirit of Phillip Jennings’ recent Nam-A-Rama (2005), or Joseph Heller’s classic Catch-22 (to which Huber makes a brief reference, acknowledging his novel’s pedigree), this is a witty, wacky, wildly outrageous novel that skewers just about anything you’d care to name, from military budgets to political machinations to America’s success as the self-appointed guardian of the world. Considering that Huber, a career navy man, has mostly written for military publications and Web sites (although he has turned out some short satirical pieces), and especially considering that this is his first novel, it is a remarkably accomplished book, striking just the right balance between ridicule and insight. –David Pitt

Jeff Huber's Joint Coalition Blog

About the Author:

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) commanded an E-2C Hawkeye squadron and was operations officer of a Navy air wing and an aircraft carrier. Jeff's essays have been required reading at the U.S. Naval War College where he earned a master of arts degree in neoconservative studies in 1995. His satires on military and foreign policy affairs appear at Military.com, Antiwar.com, Aviation Week and Pen and Sword. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals, a lampoon of America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now.

Review: Peace–A History of Movements and Ideas

5 Star, Civil Affairs, Civil Society, Consciousness & Social IQ, Democracy, Diplomacy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Future, History, Humanitarian Assistance, Insurgency & Revolution, Iraq, Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Truth & Reconciliation, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars An Utterly Superb Intellectual Contribution–a Major New Reference

January 10, 2010

David Cortright

This book is a gift to humanity, a foundational reference of such extraorindary value that I earnestly believe it should be required reading for every single liberal arts program in the world, and used as a core book in all graduate international relations programs.

Part I reviews the history of peace movements; Part II reviews core themes of peace within religions, populism, democracy, social justice, responsibility to protect and wraps up with three cahpters on a moral equivalent, realizing disarmament, and realistic pacifism.

The footnotes, the bibliography, and the index are world-class. The paper is glossy and annoyingly unreceptive to ink, but as a library volume or one that does not allow notes, this is an absolute top-notch production at a phenomenally reasonable price. I have the note mid-way: utterly brilliant blending of works of others within own architecture–superior scholarship.

The book does not touch on the evolutionary activism, conscious evolution, integral consciousness literature, and this is not a criticsm as much as a roadsign: the following five books complement this work in a distinct fashion.
Reflections on Evolutionary Activism: Essays, poems and prayers from an emerging field of sacred social change
Conscious Evolution: Awakening Our Social Potential
Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution
The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness

HUGE EYE-OPENER; Pashtun Peace Army in Pakistan-Afghanistan, the Servants of God, discussed on pages 193 and 313. I've been working Information Operations (IO) and used to do Covert Action and I am pretty sure neither CIA nor DIA have a clue that this is a major historical movement that could be reactivated.

Continue reading “Review: Peace–A History of Movements and Ideas”