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Mastering Conflict: A Journal on Peace & Obesity

Written by Juliet Bennett
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Welcome to Peace and Conflict Studies. First assignment: to write write five journal entries that reflected on the learning process throughout the first half of semester. Written on the first day back at university, after five years of working,  travel and a six months teaching myself everything I could at my Opas place, this is what I wrote:

3rd March 2008

Some quotes that stuck with me from today’s class:

“Peace is an active process”

“While hunger rules peace cannot prevail”

“The real weight of peace starts in everyone’s mind.”

In the PACS hallway a picture grabbed my attention: a dove in jail with a ball and chain, and blue sky shining through the window. Peace behind bars. What are the bars? Why has human civilisation led such a violent path? Why are we still living in conflict? What is standing in the way of peace? Who is standing in the way of peace?

Peace exists, it is alive, it is possible – why are humans preventing it? Man-made barriers hold back peace from prevailing. Man can free the dove. Peace is possible, and it’s up to us to identify the barriers, and develop ways to break them down.

Barash (1991) describes the scenario of lifeboat with sufficient resources for everyone. Squabbling breaks out among the occupants, and resources are thrown overboard, including the compass. Is that what we are doing to our planet? How can we prevent our boat from capsizing and losing our resources altogether?

Conflict occurs in many forms: within an individual, between individuals, within groups, between groups, within nations, and between nations. Each of these forms of conflict is inter-connected. Conflict between nations may be driven by a conflict within the individual, which may be driven by conflict with another person for example resentment towards an abusive father may influence a leader to respond aggressively towards another nation. Similarly conflict between individuals may be due to conflict between nations, for example argument over food due to hunger due to poverty caused by war.

What are the core motives of conflicts? Money? Power? Status? Fear? Desire for “happiness”?

Do we continue to live in conflict simply because we haven’t envisioned anything different? Have we just accepted that conflict is part of life?

…

On the bus home, a rather large man squeezed into the vacant seat beside me, and I started thinking about obesity. Is obesity a form of conflict?

Is there an ongoing battle inside this man’s head that says: “Shall I eat this donut, or an apple… eat the donut!!!” Or does this thought not even enter his mind. Does he eat out of depression, or maybe is it addiction? Depression and addictions must also be forms of personal conflicts.

Galtung (2006) says “Violence, insults to the basic needs of body, mind and spirit, is caused by unresolved conflict and polarization.” Obesity must involve some kind of conflict between the Mind and Body.

What does obesity reflect about the inequality in our world? There are so many people dying from lack of food, yet growing numbers are dying from excess of it. Can what was once a sign of wealth, now be considered a sign of lacking self-worth or self-control? If only we could share it around, maybe everyone could be a whole lot happier and healthier.

Is obesity a reflection of a structural violence in our own society?

Galtung (2006) discusses structural violence, saying it is typically built into the very structure of social and cultural institutions. He says that when people starve or go hungry, suffer from preventable diseases, or are denied a decent education, housing, opportunity to play, grow, work, raise a family, or express themselves freely – violence is occurring. I do think that obesity is a reflection of structural violence in the world.

Just look at the popularity of McDonalds and KFC – food soaked in fat and thick salt layered on top. To make things worse, due to the ‘low fat’ revolution, now even when think we are eating ‘healthy’, we are being tricked. Processed packages of preservatives labeled ‘low fat’. Diet coke – ‘cancer in a can’. Man-made chemicals that the body doesn’t know how to process. Should this food be legal? Is this a form of legal genocide? Does it remain legal only due to economic reasons? Greed. And due to the fact that death is drawn out over a number of years rather than immediate gun, trigger, death. Is there a lack of education – do people not know how to eat properly, following their parent’s habits who followed their parent’s habits, creating a line of obesity in their genes?

What are the consequences of obesity? Of course there are society pressures on the health system, which I suppose means higher taxes for everyone else. If obesity is a cause of unhappiness and a lack of satisfaction in people’s lives, could the flow-on affect go as far as influencing people’s daily choices that in turn impact on the world as a whole?

I know when I’m feeling down, or lacking energy, my passion for helping others and helping the environment fades away- not that I don’t care anymore, it just becomes second priority to thoughts about myself and my own unhappiness. Kind of like in Maslow’s needs hierarchy – I have to have my lower needs met – physical security & belonging needs met first, before I can think about higher needs like helping others.

Obesity is not only a barrier to positive peace like in these examples, but it’s not much good for negative peace either: will people care about preventing war, if they are in the middle of their own war, with themselves?

The percentage of obesity in Western society is growing rapidly, and as fast food makes its way into China and other developing countries, they face obesity problems too. Doesn’t this prove to the government that fast food is structural violence – slowly killing their population? Shouldn’t this be stopped?

What is going to happen in the future? Obesity causes low immune and many diseases, and ultimately shortens the life of the individual. Deutsh (2000) discusses Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ and Marx’s ‘directly antagonistic classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat.’ Could the future of humanity see a class split based on healthy vs. obese? Or will they find it difficult to reproduce, and in the end just die out and leave our society with healthier fit people left? Maybe I’m taking this train of thought a little too far …

Are there any solutions? Is an obese person, now faced with a large burden-of-a-body, do they just give up? It would seem quite an impossible task, to get healthy again. I wonder what it would take for them to get them on the right track. Still Rupenstein (2003) says that destructive conflict ‘which destroys or injures valued lives, psyches, institutions, and possessions’ is by no means inevitable. I do think there are solutions to every conflict, we just have to find them and implement them. It all starts with understanding the problem.

In conclusion for today’s thoughts, I consider the concept of conflict. Is conflict something we can not escape? Its existence throughout history does show conflict as a part of human evolution. Conflict is good – it is the conflict in my life that has led me to be who I am today.

Is peace realistic? Of course it is. Peace does not mean the end of conflict, but the end of all forms of violence.

In order for our Earth to have a future, we must make peace with our environment, with other nations, and we must come up with ways we can keep harmony and peace and allow everyone the opportunity to live this way. How? That’s what I’m in this course to discover!

Photo: Photo of the back of the KFC uniform in Bombay, India. I thought it strangely appropriate for this student of peace’s journal on obesity…

Peace

My Blog’s Birthday: One Year On

Written by Juliet Bennett
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Birthdays, for me, are a time of reflection. I started this Blog on the 7th of September 2009, which means I have just missed its one-year birthday. That makes it due time to reflect and evaluate this blog: where it’s come from, where it’s going, and why. And I would like your input.

This blog’s subtitle was initially a quote from the Alchemist, “When you want something, the whole universe conspires to help you achieve it”. It has evolved over time. For a while it read, “A Pursuit for Truth, Beauty, Love, and Lasting Satisfaction,” and now it reads more simply, “A paradoxical journey toward Truth.”

Be it through photography, travel, sharing life experiences and through more academic research, everything that I am doing appears to ring true to this purpose: a quest for Truth. I realise the paradoxes surrounding this pursuit: is there such thing as Truth? Won’t your truth always be relative to mine? And these paradoxes make this journey of life every so much more fun.

Where did this blog come from?

One year ago I had already spent two years quenching my thirst for knowledge and understanding of the world. Rewinding these three years, I guess my “search for truth” began when I packed up my apartment in Tokyo, abandoned my slow-building career in Vienna, and moved into my Opas house. I knew modelling wasn’t a long-term prospect, so I had to figure out what I was going to do with my life. It was time to “skill up” as I called it. At my Opa’s place I studied to be a Pilates teacher, a photographer, and I taught myself history and evolution and about other religions – all the other things I missed out on at my Christian school. Six months later I still didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I followed my Dad’s advice: I went back to uni. Unlike the study I’m sure he had in mind (more boring money-related disciplines like business, finance, law, and marketing – my undergraduate majors), if I was going back to uni, I was going to learn about life.

I was going to study something that wouldn’t help me get a job, but would be fun: The Arts. Majoring in “Peace and Conflict Studies” offered me the broadest base of life subjects: history, psychology, politics and philosophy, all presented in relation to what seemed to be at the crux of all human issues: conflict, violence and peace. This blog started three-quarters the way through this Masters degree. If you were to read this blog from the beginning you would tune into the thought processes that began as this episode of study was coming to an end.

Where is this blog going?

As I learn, I will share. Even without the scholarship I had hoped for I have decided that I’m not going to give up my research aspirations and dedicate my life to money. I will continue in academia, paying my own way through. So when it comes to this blog, it will surely continue along the lines of a pursuit for Truth, contemplating the paradoxes that arise along the way.

Before I share my current research, I think it is beneficial to revisit the foundations of my research – the two-years of the search for truth from before this blog. I shall dedicate blogs for the month of October to “Mastering Conflict”. Using old writings and journals I shall tell the part of the story that has thus far been missed. I shall revisit the core concepts of Peace and Conflict Studies, which you will might find useful to apply to various conflicts in your own life.

November onwards, this blog will probably take a philosophical turn, following the thoughts and discoveries of my new research project. As I’ve mentioned previously, my new research will be for a Master of Philosophy (still in Peace and Conflict Studies) – focused on Narratology (the study of stories), Process Philosophy/Theology (the idea that nothing is ever static) and Panentheism (the idea that everything is inside “God” ie God is the personification of The Universe, and whatever might be outside our universe too).

Last question: Why?

You may wonder why am I dedicating my time to “search for Truth”. Why search for something you will never find? The answer is quite simple: because I enjoy it. I love learning. I love writing. I love increasing my understanding of the world, and I love being able to share that. I figure it is rare to land oneself in a position where they can do this, so I best make the most of the opportunity. I have this chance only because I was born in Australia where they provide an allowance for people living and caring for the elderly. By moving in with my Opa I lived like a retiree for two-and-a-half years – reading and reflecting on life. These factors, combined with the fact that my childhood dreams have already come true (modelling, fall in love, travel the world), leave me the remaining 70-or-so years of live to dream even bigger. And there ain’t no bigger nor more impossible dream than Truth.

I would love to know which entries you enjoy most – the peace/conflict ones, the photos, travel stories, religion, relationships, personal life? Please email me or add a comment on this site or on facebook and let me know.

I am very happy to tell you that viewership of this site is growing and today I checked google analytics and it said that in the last 30-days there have been 999 “absolute unique viewers” and 1633 visits!!! (I’m pretty excited!) So… I would like to thank you for reading. I would also like to say a special thank you to those who leave comments – I’m sure everyone else appreciates reading your views too.

I would love to grow these numbers, but this depends on you guys. If you like this blog then please make an effort to recommend it to a friend or two so that more of us can share the paradox-filled journey.

Thanks again!

Juliet xx

Photo:

Taken on 25/12/2006 – the Christmas I shocked my mum by turning up on her doorstep after about 100 hours on trains, buses, taxis and planes in transit from Vienna to Paris to London to Singapore… I wouldn’t want to do that again. For Christmas with the family after years away, a hot Aussie summer, and a major change in life trajectory – it was worth it.

Random Life Stuff

Optimal Trajectory: your choice, or chosen for you?

Written by Juliet Bennett
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Is your optimal trajectory something that you choose, or something that chooses you?

I think the answer to this question can be found in the study of narrative, quantum physics, and process philosophy – the topic areas I’m studying for my Master of Philosophy – so I’m sure after I’ve studied this further my answer will be far more articulate. But, led by intuition and whatever I’ve read, so far I’ll share my thoughts in brief:

I think the answer is BOTH. You choose this path, AND it chooses you.

I think this seeming contradiction is possibly through an expanded conception of “identity” – where “you” as your microcosmic individual consciousness are co-creating with the “you” that is the macrocosm of the universe we are a part of. (The macrocosm being the universal energies that religions personify as “God.)

So while I think your life is completely self-deterministic, I also hold it completely relational to the self-determinism of others, and the universe as a whole. That is, if I slap your face, you will experience your face being slapped. If this happened, it is probably due to something you said or did that motivated my action. Thoughts, actions, and consequences, between me and you and everyone and everything else, are intrinsically interrelated. If our sun dies, as it one day will, humanity (if they are still around) will also die.

I think that somehow, among the mysterious dimensions of this universe, every possibility exists side by side, yet the one that manifests is the one you choose to observe.

I think that if you listen to that emotions and energy you feel when you imagine a particular scenario for your life, then you’ll live the best life story for yourself that you can possibly live. I think the optimal scenario is most often one that allows you to live on forever, through the procreations you leave behind (be they in the form of ideas or children or other aspects of this reality you (hopefully positively) affect.)

In sum, I think you choose your own story, which is impacted by the stories others choose for themselves, and which will be closer to your optimal story the more you can preview the perspective of hindsight that a Universe transcending earth’s time limitations can see from.

If you “connect with the universe” by tuning your vibrations, beating in sync, and listening to the signs, then you can gain the power of hindsight before it’s due time. This means that you can write the story that will bring you (both the individual and the collective you), along the most optimal trajectory that you can (or even better than you can) imagine.

But of course, like I said in my last entry, all of this is much easier said than done.

Truth,

Practicing what I preach

Written by Juliet Bennett
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“It’s easier said than done.” I think we all have discovered this at some point or another. A couple of weeks ago I was struggling with a few big decisions and I punched the following rant into my phone on my way to work. In short, I consider the relationship between money, stories, optimal-trajectories, and the dynamics involved in putting these into practice. It’s not always easy to practice what you preach…

When you are happy, it’s easy to say that if you’re not happy you should change something. Figuring out what to change and actually changing it is another thing altogether.

When you have enough money to do the things you want to do, it’s easy to say you don’t care about money. It’s easy to say that you let creative passions & intuitions guide your life, and never money be a driver in your decisions.

When doors are opening as you approach, it’s easy to say it’s because you are “following the signs”, “listening to your intuition”, and “traveling along your optimal trajectory”.That’s easy when you feel like you’re in sync with the universe. During times where everything is falling into place without so much as a hiccup or a sneeze, it’s easy to preach about optimal trajectories. As long as the traffic lights are green, you can keep going. But what happens when you start to get caught at reds? Is this a sign that you’re going the wrong way?

Sometimes  “the signs” are blurry. It can seem as though a sign is pointing in many directions, and there is no way to know which road you should take.

I have faced some roadblocks in this last couple of months.

First, I found out I not only missed out on the scholarship, but my grades were 1.5% too low, making me ineligible to even apply for it. Second, my iMac broke. Third, the editor I hired to give me feedback and correct the grammar on my book had been taking forever.

What was “the universe” trying to tell me?

“Maybe that door’s closing,” suggested my Dad. “Maybe it’s time for a career change.” Subtext: go and get a “real job” in the business world, enjoy the money and security it brings.

It did seem like my plans to do a PhD over the full-time for the next three years with a scholarship – was a door firmly closing on me. And how can I survive without income? A part-time PhD will take forever. If not a PhD, what was I supposed to do?

Like always, I gave the business option some thought… Is my dad right? I am 28 now… Does this mean it’s time for me to “settle down”, get married, get a proper job, a mortgage, and start having babies???

Suddenly I wanted to puke.

I hate that word: “settle”…

It implies compromise.

It implies giving up on dreams.

It implies letting fear lead you to live a life you don’t really want to live.

Life’s too short for that.

From these thoughts and feelings I concluded that the “settle down story” is not the optimal trajectory for me.

Is it a sign that I should pack up my apartment, downsize to a backpack, and travel the world some more? Maybe. But then what about the research I so much want to do? What’s more important for me to do at this stage of my life?

My research thus far into narratology led to some interesting self-reflections on these thoughts. I was clearly looking for a new story. I wanted a story that explained these mishaps and which would set me up on a new trajectory, preferably the one that is optimal for my life.

What was I doing even considering the settle down option? After all I write about on this blog: about not letting money guide my decisions; about how I’m happy to live without security or a fixed plan; and about how important it is to follow one’s dreams… and yet another part of me was saying, “it’s too hard, the door is closed, it’s not meant to be.” I guess yin and yang of life means that no matter how much you believe in freedom, the voice of fear will always creep up inside you.

Am I going to let fear guide my future? No-sir-ee I am not.

I observed as my mind processed the variables, and contemplated possible scenarios. I watched as my mind sought more signs, did more research and tried to connect with “that” feeling one gets inside – that feeling of intuitive satisfaction one feels when they imagine living out a particular future.

I observed as my mind selected one story:

I was “meant” to continue my research without a scholarship. I could start with the smaller research degree – a Master of Philosophy – and then, should I feel so inclined, I could use this degree to get a scholarship and do a PhD after that. Yes it means more work, but maybe is part of the journey I am supposed to take. Yes. I would continue. I love what I’m studying, so why should I let a money-related issue stop me from doing it?

After I had decided on this story I suddenly felt great.

I felt relaxed, and full of an energy I hadn’t remembered experiencing in a long while. The kind of energy that seems to appear when you are connected to the universe. It’s almost drug like – this energy that seems to enter you from no-where – similar to when you do lot of exercise, eat a lot of chocolate, or fall in love. It wouldn’t surprise me if when one feels they are on their optimal trajectory, the same happy buttons in our brains light up.

Observing this mental process, and the emotions and feelings that connected with different stories, got me wondering about self-determinism and predestination.

Is your optimal trajectory something that you choose, or something that chooses you?

This entry has gone long enough. So I’ll finish there and revisit this question tomorrow…

Photo credits

Photographer – Gilbert Rossi

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Homoerotic “platonic” eulogies to Love

Written by Juliet Bennett
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“I have to tell you that I’m really in a pretty bad state from yesterday’s drinking, and I could do with a break. I think the same goes for most of the rest of you as well, since you were there yesterday. So what do you think? How can we best make our drinking easy on ourselves,” says Pausanias at near the beginning of Plato’s Symposium… ‘at this, everyone agreed not to make the party a drunken one, but to drink only for pleasure.’

And from there, this group of homoerotic philosophers take turns in sharing their respective eulogies to the personified god Love.

While the eulogies appear to me as if they are largely motivated by the old philosopher’s need to justify their lust and sexual relations for young males (to them, a fair exchange of beauty for wisdom), this night of drunken philosophy shines a light on many of the forms that love can take and reminds us of the power this force has on our lives.

While Plato admits that ‘Aristodemus couldn’t quite remember every detail of everyone’s speeches, and I don’t remember everything he told me either,’ he promises to give us ‘a pretty accurate report of what he remembered of each speech, at least to the aspects which have stuck in [his] mind.’

The text is the furthest thing from one would expect considering our use of the term ‘Platonic love.’ The words Plato puts in the mouths of his friends presents an incredibly passionate, lustful, and sexual love, with philosophically universal implications. Plato relates love to the desire for happiness and hence goodness, immortality and hence procreation – namely through beautiful mediums. Plato takes love and one’s desire for immortality beyond physical procreation, to the offspring of ‘mental’ pregnancy including ‘above all virtuous deeds, educational discussions, works of art, and legislation.’ (208c-209c)

I like this idea – the idea of creativity as a source of immortality – I suppose if you’ve read my stuff on “creativism” you already know that…

One of my favourite perspectives of love comes from the comic poet Aristophanes. If you are too lazy to read this quote, then skip it and watch the clip from Hedwig and the Angry Inch (a very funny movie my friends showed me in Berlin a long while back) which will sing you through the story:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRol4ByOh6g[/youtube]

Aristophanes tells us about the origins of Love:

‘the starting-point is for you to understand human nature and what happened to it… Firstly, there used to be three human genders… a distinct type of androgynous person…

‘secondly, each person’s shape was complete: they were round, with their backs and sides forming a circle. They had four hands and the same number of legs, and two absolutely identical faces on a cylindrical neck. They had a single head for their two faces (which were on opposite dies), four ears, two sets of genitals, and every other part of their bodies was how you’d imagine it on the basis of what I’ve said…

‘[The reason] is that the original parent of the male gender was the sun, while that of the female gender was the earth and that of the combined gender was the moon, because the moon too is a combination, of the sun and the earth. The circularity of their shape and their means of locomotion was due to the fact that they took after their parents…

‘Now, their strength and power were terrifying, and they were also highly ambitious. They even had a go at the gods… So Zeus and the rest of the gods met in a council to try to decide what to do with them…

‘After thinking long and hard about it, Zeus said, “… What I’m going to do is split every single wone of them into two halves; then they’ll be weaker, and at the same time there’ll be more in it for us because there’ll be more of them. They’ll walk about upright on two legs. If in our opinion they continue to behave outrageously,” Zeus added, “and they refuse to settle down, I’ll cut them in half again, and then they’ll go hopping around on one leg.”

‘It was their essence that had been spit in two, so each half missed its other half and tried to be with it; they threw their arms around each other in embrace and longed to be grafted together.’

When we were beginning to die of starvation and apathy Zeus took pity: ‘he changed the position of their genitals round to their fronts. Up until then, their genitals too had been on the far side of hteir bodies and procreation and birth hadn’t involved intercourse with one another, but with the ground, like cicadas…

‘Love draws our nature back together; he tries to reintegrate us and heal the split in our nature. Turbot-like, each of us has been cut in half, and so we are human tallies, constantly searching for ou counterparts. Any men who are offcuts from the combined gender – the androgynous one, to use its former name – are attracted to women, and therefore most adulterers come form this group; the equivalent women are attracted to men and tend to become adulteresses. Any women who are offcuts form the female gender aren’t particularly interested in men; they incline more towards women, and therefore female homosexuals come from this group. And any men who are offcuts from the male gender go for males. While they’re boys, because they were sliced form the male gender, they enjoy sex with men and they like to be embraced by men… I know they sometimes get called immoral, but that’s wrong; their actions aren’t prompted by immorality, but by courage, manliness, and masculinity… There’s good evidence for their quality: as adults, they’re the only men who end up in government.’ 189d-193a.

Don’t know how much Tony Abbot would like that little remark.

In sum, says Aristophanes, “Love” is ‘just the name we give to the desire and pursuit of wholeness… We human beings will never attain happiness unless we find perfect love, unless we come across the love of our lives and thereby recover our original nature.’ 193c.

So far, in reading homoerotic Symposium’s thoughts on love, I most like the way that Robin Waterfield sums up parts of Socrates’ speech in her Introduction: ‘if I am in love, many things about the world, not just the immediate object of my love, seem lovable. To say “I love X” is somehow really to say “X inspires love in me”, and that love then attaches itself to object other than X as well.’

I guess this Symposium reiterates what we probably already know: there are lots and lots of different forms of love, love changes forms, it knows know boundaries, and it inspires all the good things life has to offer. So, cheer’s to Love!

Random Life Stuff

Peace One Day

Written by Juliet Bennett
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Have you heard of Peace Day? It’s the 21st of September, every year. Do you know the story behind it? Peace One Day is the story of one man trying to get the global community to establish the first ever annual day of global ceasefire and non-violence. For five years filmmaker Jeremy Gilley met with heads of states, freedom fighters, innocent victims, media representatives, aid agencies, and Noble Peace Laureates, in a quest for peace for just one day. Narrated by Jude Law.

This is the intro to the film:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRFLrmQlghA[/youtube]

Tomorrow we are screening the film at 10:30am at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Rm 107, Mackie Building, University of Sydney, Tuesday 21 September 2010. If you’re in Sydney please come along!

Peace

Making time

Written by Juliet Bennett
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Time is an aspect of life I have always been a little obsessed over. It ticks by, “tick tock”, and never returns. When you are bored or doing something you hate it, goes by far too slow; and when you are busy or doing something you love, it goes by far too fast. While time is a somewhat relative dimension on our lives, it also seems to be the only absolute and unchanging aspect of our earthly existence. Time goes on, and on, and on; and I suppose it will keep doing so until our solar system stops expanding. Then, who knows, maybe it rewinds and starts again…

Anyway when it comes to time, one thing I’m acutely aware of at the moment, is that there quite simply is not enough of it.

Any regular readers of this blog might have noticed a drastic reduction of entries in the last month or so. That’s because, for the first time in about 8 years, I have a 9 to 5 job. It’s not even full time – I’m working a total of 3.5 days a week – and I actually love the job I’m doing (an admin role at the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney and a communications role for my Dad’s business) but the new routine nature of my weeks is enough to make my weeks fly by in the blink of an eye.

A social life is part to blame. But hey, I’m 28, isn’t that what I’m “supposed” to be doing? And after a day of work it’s so easy to justify an after-work drink or dinner and then some television or a movie… another week well enjoyed and another week gone down the drain.

Lately I’ve observed my mind complaining that there is not enough time to work and sleep, to see this friend and skype with that friend, to reply to emails, to watch my sister’s netball game, do yoga, read the twenty or so books and pages and pages of articles waiting for me to read, and also to post entries on this blog.

What was God thinking when he created 24 hour days? How much better would it have been if they were 30 hours, even 28 hours – imagine having four more hours to read or sleep or sit in the sun or catch up with friends… I wonder if even that would be enough?

Anyway, for some reason or another, the earth takes 24 hours to rotate, giving us  a 24 hour framework with which to work, sleep, eat, and relax. Every 365 of these rotations and another year is added to our count, and another round of seasons we get to experience is crossed off the eighty-or-so rounds we get in this life.

I’ve lived through twenty-eight summers, I probably have about fifty-two to go.

That, along with a lot of other badly designed features of our planet (and especially our species), is a pretty good case against there being a God. Before I go down the path of God talk, distinguishing between different conceptions of “God” as a separate divine designer, or “God” a personification of the evolving macrocosm we are a part of, I will catch myself and return to today’s topic: making time.

I can complain all I like about there not being enough time to do the things I want to do, but it’s not going to change anything. I need to go back to those good ol’ principles of time management skills: set goals, prioritise the important ones, group & streamline the less important ones, don’t procrastinate, and learn to say no. Implementing these skills, while keeping in mind to live in the moment, enjoy the process, and follow your dreams, is probably far too many paradoxical self-help tips that my mind can deal with today.

I guess in the end the most important thing is to make sure you make time for the things that are most important to you.

We live within twenty-four, 365 days, for an average 80-years framework, so there’s no point complaining about it… we may as well embrace it. Twenty-four hours is plenty – so long as each day is lived to the full. On (western) average, these 29,200 days (80 x 365) in the one conscious is more-than-enough – so long as a whole you spend the time accomplishing whatever you feel you are on this planet to accomplish.

It’s time to make time.

Truth,

Potentialism: a new system based on humanity’s collective creative potential

Written by Juliet Bennett
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I posed this question to Q&A, a political TV show in Australia, sometime last year. They didn’t air it but it’s had a lot of views on their website, and a comment or two…

“We need a new system”

There is something fundamentally wrong with a system that puts profit before people and our planet. Billions suffer so that few of us can accumulate more “stuff”, leading to poverty, depression, and pollution If we continue our current trajectory, our own consumption will cause our own extinction. Big problems require big solutions. We don’t need another meaningless tax – we need to change the system.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqrikYS3EuM[/youtube]

As embarrassing as it is to watch, and as blonde, simplistic, idealist and immature as I sound (“capitalism equals extinction” lol… I’m the first to laugh at myself, so you’re welcome to join me), I think the ideas behind the question are important to address.

As I see it, we are at the precipice… https://julietbennett.com/2009/10/20/at-the-precipice/ … and we have to do something.

These are questions I have posed many times on this blog, and doing a full circle post-India’s hit of realism I revisit them and some of my old answers today.

How can we shift our system to one that doesn’t dictate a worship of capital?

What kind of system would not be based on an infinite growth in consumption?

How about a “stationary” economy that John Stuart Mill suggested in 1848?

How about a system that focuses on IMPROVEMENT rather than GROWTH – one that values the quality of our lives, not the quantity of stuff we accumulate?

How about valuing creativity over capital?

Creativity is the most joyous part of life, it’s where solutions to our problems come from, it’s how we evolve. And creativity is infinite!

Could “Creativism” be the answer to our political, economic and religious dilemmas?

The Urban Dictionary defines:

Creativism = ‘The theory or practice of creation as a way to live and understand life.’

Creativist = ‘someone who is attuned creatively to their surroundings; a person who understands and expresses their life through creative works or motifs.’

https://julietbennett.com/2009/09/10/creativism-a-philosophy-for-life/

A seemingly similar philosophy has been called “potentialism”.

Potentialism is a fast-spreading trend. Already since the GFC, one in five Australians are downsizing their wealth in order to dedicate their lives to the things they most enjoy.[1]

As the flight magazine I read on Virgin Blue summed, “We got greedy in the 1980s, grungy in the ’90s and geeky in the noughties. This decade, we’re eager to explore our potential.” [2] Read more here: https://julietbennett.com/2010/04/26/potentialism/

I couldn’t find an official definition of “potentialist” so from what i have read on the topic, I made up my own: A “potentialist” is an alchemist of potential – someone who strives to achieve their mental, physical and spiritual potential.

… I wonder what a society with a stable economy, focused quality not quantity, valuing creativity not capital, and with it’s sight set on the manifestation of our collective potential, would look like?

References:

[1] Deborah Robinson, Australians leading the way in a return to Global Financial Optimism (November 2009) URL: http://www.australianwomenonline.com/australians-leading-the-way-in-a-return-to-global-financial-optimism/

[2] “The Potentialists”, Virgin Blue Magazine (April 2010) pp. 34-38.

Photo: I snapped this on my phone on the weekend: kites, colour, sunshine, nature, friends – Bondi was alive as Sydneyites enjoyed the simple pleasures life has to offer.

Truth, ,

Imagining ten dimensions

Written by Juliet Bennett
1 Comment

Okay, so we draw in two dimensions, live in three, and think in four (I guess seeing as most of our thought is based around time…). What would a fifth dimension look like? And a sixth? Or a tenth? Could other dimensions exist outside our own lived experiences?

This may help you imagine how such a strange idea could exist:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q_GQqUg6Ts[/youtube]

“I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” J.B.S. Haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 286.

It’s a pretty queer place.

Picture:

The cover of a book written by a friend I made through this blog. James M. Harvey wrote “Singularia: Being At An Edge In Time – A Meditation and Thought Experiment While Crossing the Galactic Core” published by Alchemica Productions in Mullumbimby, NSW – a book based on the idea of the “Singularia” – defined as ‘A noun for which there is no plural form, but which is not grammatically uncountable. Example: information, humanity, consciousness.’ (p. vi.)

“Humanity” is one, and yet it is many. We are part of a universe, yet we contain a universe inside ourselves. Ten dimensions may exist, many universes within universes may exist, but it is all part of the same thing: it’s all a singularia.

This book reminded me that we are all together on this journey for truth and understanding of our place in the universe. Thank you James for contacting me and sharing your story. Check it out: http://www.singularia.com.au/

Truth