HNR

  A way to reconcile the independent trajectories of Humanity and Nature — the spiral as the shape that carries us between the deep time of Earth and the shallow time we live. INTRODUCTION The Sacred Spiral  is a way to reconcile the independent trajectories of Humanity and Nature. Actually, by Nature here, I mean  Earth  — the source of Nature, thanks to  the planetary metronome  — day and night, summer and winter. The revolutionary spinnings and the evolutionary orbits upon orbits upon even more orbits. (Evolution took countless generations. Hundreds upon thousands upon millions if not billions of years, altogether.) DETAILS In the meantime, there is yours and my lifetime. The time we share. The love, the awesome gratitude and inter-dependence, the coming-togethers even throughout the growing-aparts. Everything we know and share takes place within Shallow Time, and yet we would not have any of it, one iota, without the utterly imaginative, creative, dynam...

The two primary forces in human culture — the urge to belong as one and the urge to stand out as oneself — and what happens when technology rewrites the balance between them. INTRODUCTION There are two primary forces in human culture:  Unity  and  Diversity . I mean, it is also about virtuosity, and the progression of creative innovation, and the movements of fashions and trends. But through all of this I see unity and diversity. America is home to all cultures, at least in theory, as a “melting pot.” Indigenous Americans who were here first still get the short end of the stick, and after that, we are all descended from some generation of immigrants. The languages and cultures follow suit. Finding a place to belong in the big mix-up of American culture. Kids here are taught to differentiate early on. To be unique, to be  his or her (or their) OWN . This isn’t worldwide, however. There are many global cultures that teach and inculcate unity from the beginning. I’m loo...

Most of us live in shallow time — the brief now of lifetimes and fashions — while culture accelerates past nature’s pace. What happens when we try to hold both? INTRODUCTION Most of us are living in small time,  shallow time . It is an egotistical perspective, by definition. We are aware of what will take care of yours and my well-being, for our lifetimes. If we are doing it right, we may have our tiny tribe — mostly family and maybe a little bit of community — to be aware of and to take care of. Parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren.  Siblings, cousings, and all of us — especially the ones that consider we may all be related.  Believe! And then after 40, 60, 80, maybe even 100 years, a lifetime ends. Your life is over. You are mortal and you will die. If you are especially good you have a positive effect on tribe and community, who knows maybe even society! But it’s not expected, and mostly it is a simple achievement to live a full life and then pass away gently...

Explosions and extinctions in our deep past, and a nod to the deep future. INTRODUCTION There is life/living/ordinary “day-to-day” time, and then there is deep time. Or  Kronos . I’d like to namedrop Stewart Brand and the Clock of  the Long Now  project  [brand-1] . Deep time  includes the ancient past and the unthinkable future. (Not unthinkable because of the horrors that might take place — that is certainly a possibility. But just beyond anyone’s real grasp.) For example, who would have predicted twenty-six years ago that we would be living like this in 2026? (Or whenever you the audience may be reading this.) In terms of deep time past, it is fun — if not mind-blowing and unfathomable — to look at the rock record. Layers and layers of minerals that form a natural deep calendar of life’s activity on earth. Or also the inanimate chemical/geological activity of the ancient past. Like the rings on a tree, the layers tell a story. DETAILS One of the major stories...

The division (and harmony) of time — the calendar as the singular achievement of Nature and Human Civilization working together, and a thing worth worshipping. INTRODUCTION There is a singular achievement — one of Nature and Human Civilization working together. We couldn’t have done it alone. Either of us. Well… technically it always existed in Nature, and we humans just came along and observed it. Discovered it, if you will. As we tend to do, we will say that we human people “invented” it. But Nature’s people — plants and animals and weather and the elements — have been using it since day one. What is it? It is the calendar. It is so monumental that most of us take it for granted, every day. But it is something to believe in, and, in a sense, to worship. It is the truest and most natural thing that we have. DETAILS We might re-word it as: the division (and harmony) of time. It has existed since the beginning of time? Well. Actually no. Cosmic time has no division, and therefore, no ha...

Emotions begin as undifferentiated sparks — and in that fleeting moment before they crystallize, you have the power to choose what they become. INTRODUCTION This is about emotion. In the absence of religion or spirituality, emotion can hold the highest crown. From philosophy and psychology — and self-help and motivational materials — there is a lot of theory thrown around. I, for one, am very confused by the results. But I think I have some valuable insight. Now. Let’s break it down. I want to scrap Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and similar pyramids of negative-to-neutral-to-positive emotions. People want to feel things. The promise of an emotional experience remains alluring. I’m going to sort of  isolate  the emotion — like a scientist might find the first signs of life. Cell division, an embryo, et cetera. DETAILS I want to say that emotions are, or at least can be, tiny fleeting things at their core. And as undeveloped sparks they maybe require support — to be drawn out of ...

The sense that it was all made for you and me — our divine cosmic birthright — and how that exhilaration somehow becomes mundane, and what it means when it doesn’t. << >> << >> INTRODUCTION The musician-poet Elliott Smith said he had a joke he’d been dying to tell you:  “No one deserves it.”  Equal parts tragic and ecstatic. Perhaps the thought isn’t so naïve — that the world, the universe, the one successful tree-branch of survival in the history of life on this planet, and the surrounding resources and social infrastructure, not to mention the beauty and the majesty and the art and even the seemingly mere entertainment — to imagine, to  dare  to imagine, that it was all made for you and me. Our divine cosmic birthright. We are standing on the shoulders of giants. It’s exhilarating, and somehow, bizarrely, becomes mundane now and then. DETAILS How? Because we just can’t take it — the full realization. It is the stuff that dreams are made of. ...

  Awe and Gratitude The two emotional precepts at the foundation of the Humanitarian/Naturalist Religion — the responses most fitting to the strange fact of being alive, here, now. INTRODUCTION No matter how well science understands everything, and no matter how much technology and the culture depending on it change everything —  awe  remains the appropriate response to human existence. To living a life, after birth, here on planet Earth. And  gratitude  is its natural companion. I didn’t choose to be born. My raising as a baby, a kid, a young adult, was thanks to my mom, my family, my friends, my community, to society at large. The unlikelihood of our existences makes gratitude look almost automatic — even without a God obvious to owe the gratitude  to . Awe and gratitude are, to me, the most beautiful and necessary precepts to a life. To  this  life. At  this  time in history. DETAILS On awe.  For the record: even with all our und...

 Prelude The overview — where this project came from, what it’s reaching for, and why “Humanitarian/Naturalist Religion” is the working name. INTRODUCTION I am deep into a project that I am calling “The New Religion.” I’m not in love with the title — meanwhile looking for something else. Could be “A Modern Philosophy,” something like that. The former shows some of the profound necessity reflected in a lot of the ideas. Like a religion — but not exclusively about social morality, so pretty different there. It may be political, but I’m aiming at a primarily grassroots method of development and sharing. Not based on governments, or corporations for that matter (the new nations). Anyhow. DETAILS For the social side of things, I am seeing it as being a religion of  awe and gratitude . Awe and wonder and gratitude. Fundamentally. I am pretty fortunate myself, but I think a perspective of awe and gratitude at the nature of existence — and our fate to be in it — is pretty much univers...