Gaia: Not-So-Secret-Agents of Change

Are you a young person? Be involved in your country's polictical

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:25:14 GMT

Today more and more young people are involved in politics, and this is surely a good thing. I invite you to tell your complaints about your country's politics, inform others, ask how you can make a difference in your community and change it! We will get informed about your problem
Well, firstly I'll ask you. My country faces huge political problems. We are the last communist country in Europe, and after this spring's elections, where the Communist Party won again, the youth (including me & my friends) protested against the evident frauds that would have made us slaves for 4 more years. As a result, the police began torturing the protesters. At least 3 people were killed. One of my friends almost died too. We had new elections, but the situation is still critical. What can I do in a society so against change, with an authoritar president and corrupt and violent police? If you want to know more, I'm from Moldova.
Thanks!
Cheers, Angie

Re: Seeking Feedback on No Child Left Behind

http://obituary.gaia.com — Fri, 22 May 2009 06:55:46 GMT

John,

Your effort looks great. Good to know about your initiative.

In case you are interested in exploring the obituaries or genealogy then this site would be very helpful: Obituaries Online

Seeking Feedback on No Child Left Behind

http://yclept.gaia.com — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 04:12:07 GMT

Hello,

I've posted a new blog on the topic of No Child Left Behind and I would appreciate any comments or feedback you may have on this topic. I'm looking to increase my understanding of this law and to encourage people to voice their opinions on this topic.

As I mentioned in the blog, Ed Kennedy and Mike Enzi have announced that the review of this law has been postponed until 2008. There has been much debate as to the benefits that this law has had on our schools and in the lives of our children.

Thanks!
John

How do you lovingly impeach a president?

http://feliciachavez.gaia.com — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 01:56:46 GMT

Good day!
Ok, so maybe "lovingly" is not quite attainable, but I can try. I've created a website that asks people to participate in their democracy, and impeach the president, in a thoughtful fashion.
www.ImpeachINK.org

Feedback/input recommended.

f.c.

the seed........

http://radiate-soul-light.gaia.com — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 22:43:06 GMT

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208619888961779202&q=meru+foundation&hl=en check it out let me know what you think blessed be

Re: People shape, and are shaped by, ideas.

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 19:13:16 GMT

wow! Beautiful poem - philosophic idea encapsulated in verse....

Let me know if entropy reverses

http://etceterist.gaia.com — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 03:53:14 GMT

I've decided that in order to get anything done with the rest of my life, I must keep my pods to a minimum. For now, the deciding factor is activity, and this is one of three pods due for pruning. I'll say bye when I go, and please let me know if activity perks up and I'll re-evaluate.

Harmony to you.

The Etceterist.

Re: People shape, and are shaped by, ideas.

http://etceterist.gaia.com — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 16:05:20 GMT

Not much else going on around here.

The funniest thing about that metaphor is not a week after posting it, I read an article on 3D movies, only to learn to my chagrin that old 3D goggles were red and blue, not green. Sigh.

Fire the Earth Grid

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 19:28:49 GMT

Global Meditation to heal the Earth

www.firethegrid.com

The Earth needs our help! She is going through some chaotic transitional pains, and She needs our energy. Humans from all around the World, from every corner of the Globe are coming together simultaneously on July 17, 2007 11:11 Greenwich Mean time to fire the energy grid of the Earth. Mass citizens are doing this in order to give our Planet the surge of energy She needs to survive these chaotic times, and come through them resurrected anew, with a willingness to bring about the coming days of peace.

As you probably know, The Earth is being harmed by its residents. It won't be able to stand the poisons that are constantly entering Her environment for much longer unless we help her. Beings of Light, who truly care for this planet, have drawn up a plan for us humans to follow. So what is the plan? The time has been set for July 17, 2007 at 11:11 Greenwich Mean Time, in which volunteers are to simply sit down and mediate, pray, visualize, (whatever you do) for one hour. It is only one hour out of your entire life. During this time, our combined energies will work to direct energy to the Earth and to each other. I ask you to choose the way in which you deliver your intention. For those of you that pray, then pray for the hour asking for the faith and power to accomplish this tremendous task. Those of you who meditate, meditate and see the intention of your thoughts swirling deep inside our Earth delivering the love and healing. Those of you who have no ritual may simply develop one that works for you. If you sit and repeat a phrase of your intention such as "I offer you my energy to heal this world and its people" Any positive words of hope, love, and desire for change will manifest these thoughts as our new reality. If possible, gather with others during this hour. I have found that the intensity of my meditations heightens when I am sharing the experience with other people.

You may be wondering if that will really heal the Earth. The answer is yes. We tend to underestimate the power of creation that we humans have been blessed with. We especially tend to underestimate are co-creative power we have as an entire race. This planned sitting of the people of Earth will demonstrate the love and faith we feel for the goodness of our world and its inhabitants. We are the catalyst to the healing of the Earth. A true believer has the power of ten fold. So if you only think you may believe, know that the faith of the others will boost your own faith and the power will be intensified. That is why we must all sit at the same time. We will feed each others power, strengthening the force of delivery and the compounding the energy we send to the core of our home. Each and every one of us is important alone, but together we are a very powerful source of creative energy. Remember we are all a piece of God, and that energy of creation lives in all of us.

Please join us. We are the hope.

http://www.firethegrid.com/

Re: People shape, and are shaped by, ideas.

http://transmillennial.gaia.com — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 20:01:44 GMT

That's a great metaphor. I think all of us together bring so many unique-yet-universal experiences to the conversation that none of us can benefit by excluding any of us. Looking into another's eyes, we see ourselves and all of us.

Blessings,

Kevin

Re: My Goal to Actively Change the World some more..;-)

http://etceterist.gaia.com — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 14:50:59 GMT

That is an astonishingly ambitious plan and I certainly wish you well. Noble of spirit and broad of scope, and frankly a rather intimidating first post! I'd like to change the world, too, but I only plan to make ripples. Little ones.

Personally, I don't enjoy shopping. I think few do. Even before I worked retail (which I now do) I had empathy for the cashiers. They are the front line, infantry in the battle for the transfer of dollars. They get the complainers, the whiners, the penny pinchers, the barterers, the suave jerks, and everyone who is having a really bad day.

The way I like to change the world is I like to make the harried workers smile. Ripples of laughter are even better. I thoroughly enjoy watching the tension disappate from their bodies as they collapse a little then stand taller, facing the next customer with more of a smile.

Re: People shape, and are shaped by, ideas.

http://etceterist.gaia.com — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 14:02:42 GMT

I like the sunglasses metaphor. It has arisen in my own life, with my girlfriend (the woman who taught me pain isn't the only life teacher). I grew up fully sheltered from the hardships of existence. I had a blissful childhood, skipped most of the teenage angst, entered my twenties without much drive and sort of stumbled merrily through my way without mindfulness or spirit, passion or concern. Mostly because I used to be an ungrateful wretch and I ran with an unhappy crowd, I ended up a twisted, cynical pessimist, looking through the world with jade-coloured glasses.

My girlfriend, on the other hand, survived a monstrous upbringing, horrific relationships with a string of bastards and circumstances that would leave Dr. Phil whimpering, curled in the fetal position under his bed. Her spiritual strength brought her through. She decided that it was her choice to be happy and she chose to view the (admittedly scary) world through rose-coloured glasses.

After we were dating a few months, this metaphor came up. We decided to raise me out of the festering cesspool that I viewed the world as (a result, I believe, of a decade of atheism) and bring her down from of the distant clouds to rediscover the world with a relationship of love, trust, respect and silliness.

So, we each popped a lens out of our respective sunglasses and swapped them. Now, we each view the world with one red lens and one green lens, just like 3D goggles (before the polarized lens, of course), and our lives are magnitudes improved.

Re: People shape, and are shaped by, ideas.

http://catemurray.gaia.com — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 08:51:11 GMT

the small mind experiences

consciously and unconsciously...

.the lenses are lenses....

.sight is not the only sense with which we perceive our world

my world

separate

and

yet

within

your world

worlds within worlds

minds change minds

and the Mind

connecting with a smaller mind can illuminate your world and mine

world changing

and

world changers

with love

and

light

catemurray

Re: People shape, and are shaped by, ideas.

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:55:13 GMT

hi,

i'm very new to zaadz and frankly, i can't believe my eyes! such fresh perspectives!

(i live in Oklahoma. i know, don't ask...)

i's like to interject something about people being shaped by ideas in relation to two contemporary philosophers with whom some of you might be familiar.

Emmanuel Levinas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levinas tells us that we have an innate responsibility to acknowledge we are, for the terms of this discussion, ideas to everyone else. he maintains a reciprocity in every relationship is necessary for it to be vital. maybe this is in tune with what i;m reading in the comments here. i believe so, anyway.

Martin Buber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buber is another contemporary philosopher whose work many of you may know. Buber's philosophy is based on the grace of both an I/Thou and I/It relationship forming when we meet; Thou coming into being as I recognize you as the entity Other; It coming into being when i don't form any recognition due to lack of presence.

Re: People shape, and are shaped by, ideas.

http://siona.gaia.com — Tue, 30 May 2006 23:00:37 GMT

Philosophy in the Flesh is a phenomenal book! I'm not entirely on board with Lakoff's recent political ventures, but I do think he and Johnson have done absolutely brilliant work when it comes to the power of metaphor and language influence the way we understand the world. I'd completely endorse it as well.

Re: People shape, and are shaped by, ideas.

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Mon, 29 May 2006 16:44:49 GMT

You should check out the excellent book by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson: Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought.

It deals with how its is that our 'rose colored glasses' those ideas that shape us get into us - especially those foundational ideas/metaphors.

Re: People shape, and are shaped by, ideas.

Mon, 22 May 2006 00:53:30 GMT

Science really backs this up, too. Current theories of consciousness (founded on excellent studies, unlike many ideas in the past) such as the work of Paul Churchland, confirm that the brain operates using layers upon layers of neural nets that filter the sense data we receive from the world. Those neural nets are formed by our experience and by the ideas that we're taught. As we learn new data, or have new experiences, those nets can be adapted to process our world differently.

Eventually this will become accepted, but right now most of the world sees consciousness as some sort of ghost in a biological machine (the soul), rather than as a process of the brain. What a wonderful world it'll be when everyone realizes what we actually are, human brethren evolved on this planet, inextricable, at home. Maybe then we'll start relating to the natural world (and each other) in a more functional way.

KICK THE HABIT!

http://RainbowBryte.gaia.com — Fri, 19 May 2006 22:33:30 GMT

Re: People shape, and are shaped by, ideas.

http://RainbowBryte.gaia.com — Sun, 14 May 2006 17:05:57 GMT

My thoughts exactly! Thank you.
People are shaped by ideas; People shape ideas. We are all different and have different "filters" or "sunglasses". I wish that more people will acknowledge that fact- it will be a better world indeed.

Good job!

Amber

People shape, and are shaped by, ideas.

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 15:06:07 GMT

Hi all,

The catalyst to change that I offer is the phrase and the realization of the truth of the phrase : People shape, and are shaped by, ideas.

      It works like this. People are shaped by ideas: meaning as children we are taught ideas, which become beliefs and values. This is the affect of the past on us; hence the phrase is in the past tense. Our parents, our teachers, our Rabbis, our Popes, Bishops, Priests, etc, all teach us what they believe to be true, what they were taught to be true. This is the ongoing tradition. As children we take in those past ideas and beliefs without question and we accept them as our own.

      Those formative ideas and beliefs come from our most trusted sources of life. Upon this unquestioned set of ideas and beliefs we build our view of the world. To repeat myself, as children we don’t generally challenge our elders, our parents and teachers, and so we accept those ideas as being true. Later we may feel the need to rebel and then we take on the differing beliefs for the sake of contrariness and opposition.

      Even still, whether we accept or rebel against them or anything in between, these ideas and beliefs are formative and they work in our minds as if we are all given sunglasses, each made especially from these initial traditional set of beliefs. These early teachings, these traditional beliefs are the lenses crafted by parents, teachers, Scientists, Rabbis, Priests, etc. It is important to realize that from the moment we develop the ability to learn a language we are incorporating our parents and teachers culture and worldview into ourselves. From that moment we begin the process of acquiring our life long pair of sunglasses. Each day as a child that we are taught and learn by example our culture’s language, we continue to ‘grind the lenses of our sunglasses’. And the process never ends. With each new lesson we learn, from whatever source, we process that new idea and we adjust the lenses of our sunglasses. These sunglasses shade all further sense data coming in, they give that sense data a tint, a Jewish tint, a Catholic tint, etc. Thus we are all looking at the same world but we see it tinted by the ideas of our acquired ideas and beliefs. That is the past tense ‘shaped by’ part of my equation. As we get older we start to think for ourselves, we question. We can even formulate our own ideas. We are then again in the process of tinkering with those glasses, making the lenses uniquely our own on the basis of our own original ideas. The present tense aspect of the phrase represents this: ‘People shape ideas’. Perhaps we have such good ideas that we convince others and thus those ideas became part of the formula of how to make the next generation’s sunglasses. And this process of the past and the present, of shaped by and shaping, has been going on since the beginning of human history. We live in the world but only see it through the lenses of our beliefs and ideas. We can never take off those glasses we can only adjust them. We are therefore forever biased, biased by our beliefs. We experience the world through the bias built into our sunglasses. If we fail to realize this we will mistake and assume that the world we see through this bias of our sunglasses is as if it were a hypothetical ‘objective, non-personal-biased’ world. Through those glasses some see Jesus as the savior, some don’t. Some see only Teutonic blonde haired and blue-eyed Aryans as being humans, some don’t. Some believe that the only thing that is important is objects that can be measured, while others believe that some important objects are beyond measure. Some believed the world was flat or that the Earth was the center of the universe. As for that last idea it was later on in history of human quest for knowledge that our glasses were made to see the Earth as orbiting the sun. It is most important to always recall that all of these people live in the same world, are taking in similar sense data, but what they do with that data changes the data. What our sense took in never changed from person to person, only the varying differences of the sunglasses changed. Hence they, we, all see and experience the world through our sunglasses. Hence historically it was believed by some that the world was flat while others considered, and eventually the accepted view, that the world is round. The difference in our experience is not the actual shape of the Earth but in our metaphoric and metaphysical sunglasses.      Therefore to understand human conceived of reality we have to understand this process of making these sunglasses, this process of being shaped by and shaping ideas. If we don’t realize this we will have the paradox of conflicting traditions all claiming to be true. The paradox is gone once we accept that it is the ideas we believe that filter the sense data that is coming into us from the real world. In a very real and practical effect and consequence, it is not through the process of seeing that we believe, but rather believing creates sight: ‘Believing is seeing’.