Learning how to coexist in a mutually enhancing manner is the central concept and the ultimate goal of The Gaia Community College, and in many ways, will be the keystone achievement for ensuring a habitable planet for all species. Thomas Berry reminds us (warns us?) that there can be no viable human community without a viable earth community.

Along those lines, it is the things that we can do everyday that can help make a difference, from calling our legislative representatives (for those of us lucky enough to live in a representational government), to the way that we choose to clean our houses. What we purchase is increasingly a vote for earth awareness and sustainability, as the money we spend does cast a vote heard by the powers that shape market forces.

There are a growing number of books, websites, and periodicals devoted to making green choices in our daily lives, and one of the tasks at hand through The Gaia Community College website is to highlight the ones that we find most aligned and inspiring. Instead of bombarding you with a large collection of daily news items, products, publications, and event listings, it is our intention to offer only the choicest morsels for your contemplation. We all know how valuable our time is in this day and age, and the last thing we want to do is belittle any of our chosen messages with diluted tripe.

As always, please link to us, pass along the good word, let us know of worthy inclusions for these pages, and help support this project and others like it in any way you can. When all is said and done, the only thing we truly have is our belief, and your belief in us does mean a lot. Thank you.

Yours in the Dream of the Earth (thanks Thomas!),

Eric

There’s a great article making the rounds regarding the need to present global issues and perspectives, especially within the sciences, as relevant locally. But what really got me going was talking about making global issues meaningful locally. It’s only when we are able to relate to an issue at home that they really become real for most of us, so the ability to relate to global issues becomes the challenge of glocalisation. It’s the meaning of something that so often gets lost these days, and especially so within the sciences. After all, it is meaning that ties everything together, and once again illustrates the need for story.

The article through the Environmental News Network can be found here:

Glocal approach makes global knowledge local

And there’s a good overview (surprise surprise) of glocalisation in Wikipedia.

So Go Glocal, and lets find ways to understand our local bioregions through addressing the global issues that face us all, and discover ways to understand our global issues by being able to relate to them locally.

Peace.
Eric

p.s. ~ while we’re in the process of going glocal, we might as well consider becoming locavores as well, a person who tries to eat as much as they can from within their bioregion. It’s a macrobiotic diet principle that’s been around for a while, but the word itself is fairly recent, and was even chosen as the 2007 word of the year in the Oxford American Dictionary. Pretty cool any way you look at it.

Since it’s founding in 1975, the Federation of Damanhur touts itself as a living laboratory for the future of humanity and has received numerous awards and recognitions from various institutions concerned with the sustainable future of our species, including the United Nations. The have over 60 different “industries” that function as cooperative businesses, and the standard of living is high. Personal growth through artistic and creative expression are at the core of community live, and as such, the premises themselves speak of exuberant being and flights of fancy made real.

The centerpiece of Damanhur are the Temples of Humanity, a vast and sprawling underground complex of absolutely mind boggling proportions and creativity. If viewing these sacred spaces doesn’t warm your heart to the creative possibilities of human potential and vision than I am not quite sure what will. I am not even going to attempt to summon words to evoke the magnitude of what has been born from dreams there, but suffice it to say, this purposeful creation of sacred space has no equal in the modern world. You just have to see it, and hopefully one day, experience it for yourself.

In all inspiration for what can be, Damanhur is monumental testament to the human spirit. It is one of those activities that, even though I have had absolutely nothing to do with it, makes me proud to be a human. And how often does a feeling of that nature arise? Knowing that we are capable of such heights of expression and depth, not just as individual entities, but as cooperative functions of the creative universe itself is surely raison d’etre in it’s own right.

Visit Damanhur’s website.

Visit The Temples of Humanity.

There is a gorgeous coffee table book documenting Damanhur offered through Alex Grey’s Chapel of Sacred Mirrors website.

Both photographs copyright Damanhur.