After watching several ted.com presentations, I found myself in a somewhat darkish place after David Keith spoke of the possibility of seeding the upper atmosphere with a sulphur compound in order to accelerate global cooling as a counter to global warming. The distress of this caused me to ponder more on who we are and where we may be going. Of course, as usual, the really big picture is that we are consciousness beings that are struggling to wake up. I sense we are in process on this, and there seems to be a silent / invisible / unconscious race between the parts of us that want to stay asleep while we, like Mickey M in the Sorcerer's apprentice, get Way Out of Our League (here, seeding the planet's upper atmosphere to avoid dealing with global warming seems an example) vs the parts of us that with what seems like an excruciatingly slow and complicated process struggle to craft a new paradigm, a new self-awareness or self-definition, and then hope to replicate this, perhaps by example, perhaps by information dissemination (self-help books, ted.com, etc.) so, like a spreading virus, the Mickey Part gets steadily less significant.

Perhaps, even probably, this has been an age-old struggle, commented on over the centuries by the usual suspects (writers, poets, philosophers, etc.) and likely by plenty of other folks who didn't bother, or had other challenges, to add their voices to the debate. Actually, I don't think there ever has been a debate. The folks who are losing the wake-up-now battle (or more likely never have known they were even in one) simply replicate the current paradigm much like a cancer cell which happily destroys the host without fully appreciating, or most likely never appreciating, that it (dare I give this cell a gender?) is committing suicide. I surely come across as judgmental. I don't see the point in getting into a semantic debate between "judgment" and "description". I'd characterize this struggle as a description of an observed process. Judgment would be to call the "stay-asleep" energy as stupid, wrong, or evil. Who could argue that it is not suicidal, or, at least, staggeringly inefficient? I sense within myself an ancient reverence for integration and smallness, for respect for the system of which I am such a tiny part. Think of the share of total atoms on the earth that I represent. Almost immeasureably insignificant; throw in my atomic share of the known material world, and it is clearly totally and thoroughly irrelevant. No other species on earth has ever impacted the existing life-cycles of all other species as well as the planet's fundamental operating systems (like the warm/cool cycle); indeed, until the late 20th century, even humans had not done this. What I find worthy of comment is that few (I am no student, but the only one I can recall is Ian McHarg) have ever discussed the current paradigm. This would be the "multiply and subdue the earth" paradigm, tho here I take it further--I think--than McHarg did. The domination paradigm that has us all unconsciously gripped now is the one that presumes there is an expectation, or right, or correctness, to consume without measure or consequence the atoms of the earth for whatever purposes we choose. Perhaps in the western world the largest motivation for this process would be the pursuit of happiness. The notion here is that atom clusters (read: stuff) will bring us joy. So far, the record on this is not sanguine, for two Really Big reasons. First, as captured in the lyrics of a song, "the best things in life are free" (the corrollary to this is that joy is grounded in the non-material, the ineffable; thus even thinking that stuff brings joy means that one is already walking on the wrong road), and second, the more we pursue happiness through stuff, the more we foul our home. We're starting to see this big time now, but even so we're still in denial. (When I say "we" I refer to the vast majority of folks who aspire to the glitter of a consumer society.)

So far I've said nothing new. When I heard David Keith's ted talk, I felt a wound that reminded me of the moment in the film Star Wars when Obi-Wan Kenobi winced when the Death Star destroyed the planet Alderaan. "We would actually do this?" crossed my mind, and the answer was "sure". Throw in our manipulation of our genetic material and we are clearly poised to simply remake the planet. Is this a good thing? The foundation of the answer lies in a conversation that is at its infancy. We've never had to deal with a problem this big before. The biggest impact of the mid-20th century might have been the decision to make and then deploy a nuclear weapon, and the discussion regarding that involved a tiny tiny fraction of the world's human population. Since then, information and its associated replicating technology has become distributed to a reasonable percentage of the world's population (I used an internet café with broadband connection in Tashigang, Bhutan in October 2006). The illusory idea of happiness through stuff is being distributed without restriction throughout the world (look at what is offered via television anywhere in the world). This paradigm may have been useful to create an elevation in the standard of living through the development of physical (roads, water treatment, fiber optic communications) and intellectual (education, laws) infrastructure, but, like the cancer cell, has grown from a snowball to a village-eradicating avalanche. Unlike an avalanche, we create it/we can modify it.

The idea behind conceptualizing and then changing the current paradigm has the same foundation as the idea behind mindlessly replicating a paradigm that is rapidly crossing the cost/benefit line; we are powerful. We are rational. Being able to make this change is really a no-brainer.

That it is so difficult can be explained by the recognition that we are dealing with 3 brains, two of which are largely well-known, while the third is just beginning to have some traction even tho it has been known and revered for millennia. Brain 1 is the limbic brain; Brain 2 is the rational brain; Brain 3 is the spiritual brain.

B1 got us to the time when recorded history began; B2 has been taking over an ever larger proportion of decision making since then. However, that proportion is still small. B3 has had more or less no traction in the recorded history of humans; it may be that it's rising interest now is analogous to a maturation process. It is needed now, so it appears now. Still, B1 owns the territory, B2 represents a faithful servant who may quietly aspire to the throne when B1 gets old, while B3, tho way more powerful than B1 and B2 combined, can only exercise its power through gentleness. Recall Aesop's fable of the sun and the wind, vying for dominance. They see a man walking on a road, wearing a coat. They agree to determine which of them is stronger by demonstrating their power to get the man to remove his coat. Wind goes first, and blows up a tornado, but can't get the coat off. Sun comes second, and just cranks up the radiance. Coat comes off without struggle.

Why not a simple grading system to characterize the proportion of each brain component that is being triggered by any action, item, idea, event, situation? Use a 5 point scale for each brain, where 1 represents a small energy and 5 is the maximum. Display the characterization (the scale) in a format like B1/B2/B3. An example of a scale (think of it as similar to a bar code or a nutritional chart on a food label) might be 4/2/0; this would tell the consumer that whatever this "thing" (which includes an idea or position) was, it was dominated by the limbic brain, had a bit of rationality to it, and had no spiritual value. Let's take something hopefully non-controversial at first, like, say, a conventionally grown ("industrial agriculture" to use Pollan's nomenclature) onion. This might have a 4/3/0 rating, whereas an organic onion ("industrial organic") might get a 3/4/1, and a home grown in your back yard onion might get a 2/4/2 rating.  Think of the ratings as developed by the usual cluster of critics, which, as an example, could be compiled like movie ratings have been on rottentomatoes.com; the goal would be to create awareness of what it was that you were making conscious to yourself (a big mac, an iphone, a vote for a candidate) in terms of which part of your brain you were feeding with this awareness. The goal (of course) would be to shift from feeding yourself B1 food to feeding yourself B3 food. Virtually anything imaginable as well as physical could (and would) be rated, surely with a whole lot of smoke and maybe fire. (The more smoke and fire, the more that B1 was dominating the scene.) However, the conversation would begin, and would begin on a topic that is the foundation for a Whole Lot of Things (from invading Iraq to building malls to creating the hydrogen economy) that dominate the surface, the conscious, level of our actions in the world. 

Take the news. Fox might get a 5/1/0; NPR might get a 4/3/1. "If it bleeds, it leads" is still the dominant paradigm. Advertising is the motivator; the economic benefits that accrue to dominant capitalists serves as the foundation for this activity. NPR may be trying to lead by example, setting (what do I know?) a higher 'brain-level' ground upon which they offer their work, but their progress compared to CNN is slow (just look at market share data, which I haven't). Rationality (B2) generally just doesn't hold up well against B1 (this is where sex, greed, violence, addiction and unwavering—and generally unexamined—opinions thrive). B1 has a grip on the balls of B2; the slightest aspirations of B2 can be vaporized by a mere glance by B1. B3 takes a whole lot of work, which is at first largely but not exclusively focused on delinking B2 from B1. What does it matter, really, whether gays should be allowed to marry? This is a war between B1 and B2 (both within and between people); B3 quietly laughs at the squabble, and holds to the truth, accepting with simplicity the patience required for these kids to grow up, even if they literally kill themselves off before they do. The oldest religious and philosophic traditions use the chakra system to describe human motivations.— B1 is chakras 1 and 2 (survival and sex), B2 is chakra 3 (materialistic power), and B3 is chakras 4-7 (the heart, the truth, the spirit).

The foundation for much of human activity is built into the economy; this structure (some would argue) is Brain Level neutral. However, while it may pretend to wash its hands of any position, it is has been coopted by B1 in order to fulfill B1 aspirations (both for the buyer and the seller). Since those aspirations fulfill neither side (neither the buyer nor the seller is ever satiated while the planet suffers in consequence), the paradigm fails to meet a critical requirement: sustainability. What good is any structure, process or system if it self-destructs? It's ok to destroy scaffolding once the building has been certified, but what if there is no building? What if all we've got is scaffolding? Following this analog, what building would anyone say is being constructed here? B1 dominates the playing field; we've learned (B2) how to build ever more attractive carrots (B1) for the donkey part of our minds. We replicate these carrots (tv ads, toys made in china) and think (?—with which brain here?) that we are all better off, that this process of extracting, manipulating and shipping atoms all over the world makes everyone (generally) better off. The combination of efficiency in replication combined with a huge increase in replicators and consumers clearly blows the B1 dominated paradigm into laughable absurdity. Who will be laughing a century from now?

Hopefully, B3 types. In this (next) paradigm, B2 gets its direction not from B1 but from B3. B3 looks outside itself, since "itself" is a construct of B2 looking at B1. B3 transcends the 3 temptations of the buddha (lust, fear, duty) and celebrates buddha (the awakened one) mind. Did Ghandhi operate from B1 or B3? How about Jesus? Mohammed? Mother Theresa? MLK? These folks are sunshine. Everyone can be sunshine. (Everyone IS sunshine.) Since we do have some uncontaminated B2, lets give it an opportunity to self-reflect on a mass scale. Give a brain-level label to everything, so when you eye that new sweater in the mall, in addition to the price (you could call this B2 but really it's B1) and the color, shape, size, fit (definitely B1), you get some indicator of which part of your brain is being activated. Look for large numbers on the right side of the scale. You are what your brain eats.