evolutionary leap

When faced with a radical crisis,
when the old way of being in the world
of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature
doesn’t work any more,
when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems,
an individual human – or a species - will either die or become extinct
or rise above the limitations of their conditioning
through an evolutionary leap.
This is the state of humanity now,
and this is its challenge.

Eckhart Tolle

google-

So: the Goog takes a fun-filled swat at young upstarts The Crook and the Twit with Google+, bringing us added style, circles, sound and video.... Facebook's response of getting into bed with Microskype looks very desperate indeed, perhaps even suicidal.... watch them fall off their perch hard and fast - does anyone remember Myspace?

But what is Google+ bringing us, other than a welcome way to escape from The Crook? Is the Goog simplifying its own complex mess by integrating Buzz, Gmail, and the profiles and social networking facilities of Blogger, YouTube, and Google reader? No - not yet at any rate... Is it enhancing our real face-to-face in-the-flesh social or work lives? Nope... Is it giving us back the time that The Crook and the Twit have stolen? Nope.... Is it leading us away from inanity and superfluity? Nope.

What I want to see is Google-, whereby all social networking, including email, is replaced by something totally new-paradigm, non-commercial, distributed, stunningly simple, intuitive, and symbolic rather than verbal... realistically this is more likely to be provided by reawakening our natural powers of telepathy, rather than hopping on yet another technology bandwagon.... bring it on! We need it for when the lights go out....

pure nature

Intelligence is not the same thing as wisdom. When a society misuses partial intelligence and ignores holistic wisdom, its people forget the benefits of a plain and natural life. Seduced by their desires, emotions, and egos, they become slaves to bodily demands, to luxuries, to power and unbalanced religion and psychological excuses. Then the reign of calamity and confusion begins. Nonetheless, some people can awaken during times of turmoil to lead others out of the mire. But how can the one liberate the many? By first liberating his own being. He does this nor by elevating himself, but by lowering himself. He lowers himself to that which is simple, modest, true; integrating it into himself, he becomes a master of simplicity, modesty, truth. Completely emancipated from his former false life, he discovers his original pure nature, which is the pure nature of the universe. Freely and spontaneously releasing his divine energy, he constantly transcends complicated situations and draws everything around him back into an integral oneness. Because he is a living divinity, when he acts, the universe acts.

Lao Tzu (reposted from openhandweb.org )