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We are not what we think we are, of that I am sure. And yet, what we think we are shapes our behavior, the quality of our relationships, our values, feelings of right and wrong, justice, and compassion. The key to personal and social transformation, which as we will see, are the same thing, is ‘identity.’

A breathtaking scientist, author and friend, Howard Bloom, writes about social biology, how independent particles, molecules, simple organisms team up to form super-organisms, how they share information, act in unison, form even bigger networks or gangs called species, on and on. Zooming back these appear as continents, oceans, planets, solar systems and galaxies, all moving, changing, forever.

Where do we draw the line that separates ‘me’ from everything else? The sieve-like membrane we call skin is so full of holes it forms no boundary at all. 30% to 40% of our body weight is bacteria and other parasite-guests hitching a ride. Without these micro-beasts we would not be. Is the bacteria living inside each of us – us? If not, we are a little more than half of what we think we are.

Perhaps we are defined by our thoughts which seem to emanate from nowhere between our ears, in the black hole just behind eyes. But thoughts just don’t happen, nor do feelings. Thoughts and feelings are shadows first cast by sensations coming from out there and then bouncing around like pinballs inside, triggering feeling and thinking bells along the way. Take away out there and in here disappears too. Inner and outer give rise to each other, and I am both.

Every now and then something new appears, a fresh perception. Musing about the reciprocal nature of what we are – suddenly, after reading a particularly explosive paragraph Howard had written, there it was. What I call me, my social-cultural identity, my personal ego or image of self-inside and the outer images that make up the culture-outside are the same. Looking through different ends of a toy telescope the inner and outer appear completely different – but they are, in fact, the same process, both are images.

Right, wrong, do this, not this, good boy, bad girl, language, the names we give things are all embodied reflections of the collective super-ego we call culture. Growing up, needing to belong, we personify these collective images as a self-image, and that’s what I think I am, but am not.

The point is maintaining relationship – not connecting something that is broken.

The terms bonding and attachment imply separation, to bond, connect, glue together separate parts. Life is relationship. We are never separate, except in our minds.

We are the light, the air, the water, the nutrients, the heat, the vibration, gravity, ever-changing movement and much more. The human body and brain is defined by the environment. Each mirrors the other. But we forget. The deeper reality and challenge is to prevent this ongoing, dynamic and reciprocal connection from being broken.

Joseph Chilton Pearce and I were exploring the root cause of our social and political calamity. Joe lamented that nature’s agenda during pregnancy, birth and the sensitive postnatal period – doesn’t happen. What could be fails to unfold. ‘Houston, we have a problem.’ See: http://ttfuture.org/files/2/members/esa_jcp_biology_culture.pdf

Compassion? Wisdom?
Sorry, no one by that name lives here...

My son recently graduated from college. He could have been one of these UC Davis students. The well fed skin-head on the right is the riot clad officer hosing our children with pepper spray as they sit, Gandhi style, arm in arm, nonviolently. This act, not by students but by our friend the civil mercenary, and others like it around the world (see below), rips the thin skin of civility off our eyes. Serving and protecting, yes, but who and what? Watching his unaffected cruelty, like food poisoning, vomits up the question, How could he do such a thing?

In 1981 when a friend was nearly raped and murdered by a stalking stranger I asked the same question, Why would a man do such a thing? How can a man who supposedly loves his wife beat her so violently it caused brain damage? Or a coach, scream at an eight year old for dropping a ball? Violence is so easy, so natural. Or is it?

I must be a psycho or suffer from multiple personality disorder. Part of me gazes out, soaking in the world and can’t find anything to be thankful for. Not one thing. The other part, gentle as a lam, could walk hand in hand with St. Francis of Assisi through a forests of wild beast turned peaceful by the simple fact that we were not acting like the wacked out human beings that we are. We are the mad species and every creature, tree and blade of grass in the garden knows it. That’s why we were tossed out long ago.

Indeed, each of us is brimming with boundless innate goodness. And every one of us is carrying around a brain chock full of nonsense, calling ourselves Democrats, Republicans, all the ideologies, all the religions, nationalities, casts, races and the self-centered money-power-politics this collective madness spawns.

Our hypocrisy is so vast, so blatant. We teach our little children about the first Thanks Giving when the nice Indians helped the Pilgrims. We don’t tell them that Columbus boiled their grandparents in oil or that we, white God serving men and women, used biological warfare (smallpox) to steal these first nation people’s land and murder off their culture. We are a greedy, selfish, self-righteous lot and proud of it.

I have been aware of this important documentary for some time. Now you can view the entire film free for a short period of time.

The Greater Good "weaves together the stories of families whose lives have been forever changed by vaccination," and shows how modern medicine, especially when driven by politics and big business, can rob you of some of your most basic rights. The results of such politically- and financially-driven policies can be devastating and one movie reviewer, who saw the groundbreaking documentary, commented:

 "What's being said is staggering, especially if you don't know too much about the science of, and politics behind, vaccines." - LA Weekly

You can support THE GREATER GOOD's Community Engagement Campaign by purchasing a Limited Edition DVD for only $10! Click HERE to purchase a copy to show your support!

Landmark California Law now Bypasses Parent Consent
Recall our newsletter warning that corporate government is stripping away parent informed consent rights. It was signed into law. Seventh graders can now be vaccinated without parents’ knowledge or permission.

Dr Tim O'Shea was the first to introduce me to the vaccine controversy with his book Vaccination Is Not Immunization.

Tim recently published a review of the new California Law and the MONEY, not health of our kids behind it.

Vaccine marketers scored a landmark victory in California in October 2011 when Jerry Brown fetched the stick and signed into law a new bill allowing schools to vaccinate 12 year olds without informing their parents.

A friend sent a link to a New York Times article about technology in the classroom – NOT.

The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard. But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home.

Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don’t mix...   More

Related articals:

The Weaver Becomes the Web

Just Say NO to Baby Einstein

A list of interesting essays

Appropriate Use of Technology in Education

The overarching insight in neuroscience the past decade is:

‘Brain and environment are one, interdependent, reciprocal dynamic process. Change the environment and you change the brain.'

The human brain created Technology that changed the environment that is now changing the brain. In the mid 1800’s Emerson, cautious of the industrial revolution, noted; the weaver becomes the web.

Yes, technology is here to stay, and like guns and sugar can be very useful in moderation. The typical young child, teen and adult however, invest five or more hours each day relating to flat, two dimensional screens. Relating to a flat screen with eyes and fingers is sensory deprivation compared to swinging on a rope and dropping in a rushing stream.

Screen based technologies are all ‘virtual’. To have an appropriate relationship with a virtual reality one must first have a well-developed physical, emotional, cognitive foundation in what used to be the only reality – natural experience and relationship based and perception.

Introduce virtual reality too early, when the natural reality is still forming and you displace, push aside, critical experiences in the development and stabilization of that natural reality. Do this, and do it in mass and we weaken the core foundation upon which individual and collective life and all its complexities rest.

Consider the crippling retardation of descriptive language as it has been pushed aside by screen based technologies. We have moved from Tom Sawyer to Spiderman. Every picture displaces the need for a thousand descriptive words. Descriptive language is the only way imagination unfolds, imagination being the brains capacity to create inner images not present to the senses, which Einstein openly and correctly declared is much more important than knowledge. Push aside symbol and metaphor with pictures and we retard the capacity to deal with abstractions such as mathematics and science. Imagination is THE core capacity upon which all higher human potentials depend. Knowledge is content. Knowledge without imagination however, is like fireworks on the fourth of July without a match and that is what we have.

It is capacity not content that ‘real’ learning cultivates. The whole body, feeling, movement and thought, in the moment, interacting with the natural world – not some buzzing, flashing, gadget – this rich ‘organic’ engagement and experience, running, jumping, squishing with fingers, smelling, laughing, changing, bigger, smaller, heavy, light, hot, cold, wet, rough, smooth, symphony of three dimensional sounds, and the quiet, intuitive inner ‘knowing’ and shared meaning of real communion with our ‘god given’ natural universe. That is what learning is.

Reality is brain development dependent. Introducing screen – and that means image based technologies - to young children, before age eleven, is like feeding steak to a baby or sexually explicit material to a seven year old. The developing ‘reality’ is not prepared nor is it stable enough to ‘appropriately’ digest these inappropriate experiences. All the so called ‘learning’ that is taking place, at a precious price in terms of money and more importantly in the child’s attention and true whole development is placed on a malnourished foundation.

Virtual reality is sensory deprivation to the developing brain, similar in many ways to bottled feeding. Not only is bottle feeding ‘junk’ food compared to the infinitely more complex nature of the breast but it displaces the touch, smell, the warmth, the heartbeat, the closeness of mother’s loving smile, not to mention the pleasure that mother and baby, possibly even orgasmic pleasure the shared experience offers. The pleasure inducing hormones released through this simple experience is the glue that bonds human relationships for a life time, not only mother and baby but baby and the natural world. Technology has none of these ‘experiences.’ The developing body and brain weaned on technology is more selfish, less empathic, far less imaginative, less connected to the ‘real’ natural, organic world around him or her.

The known addictive techniques the gaming industry use are exploitive to the young child’s body, emotions and mind. Like pimps the gaming and most of the so called – educational media products –steal all these living, moving, relationship based experiences for a profit and call their dolled up prostitute-products ‘learning.’ I know. I am a documentary film maker and have studied and developed media for 30 years.

Yes, technology is here to stay. So are genetically engineered food, toxic pollution in the environment, radiation in the air, food and water and our bodies, broken families, domestic violence, corruption from sea to shining sea, sexual exploitations and addictions of every kind. All these are here to stay but are they necessary and appropriate? Do we cozy up to, embrace and become these or do we see the dangers they represent to ourselves and to our child’s ‘real’ development and put them in their proper place?

A question the blind leading the blind can’t ask is: ‘Does a population deprived of what was normal and natural (organic) developmental experiences have the capacity to know what they have missed?’ Obviously not.

Those who are color blind experience their monochromatic world as ‘normal.’ If they ruled the world, published the text books, sat on school boards, like Midas, everything they touched would be beautifully black and white. Systemic sensory deprivation alters the perceptual baseline we call reality. Entire colors of the human potential spectrum can disappear in a single generation and won’t ever be missed. In there lies the rub.

Michael Mendizza

See:
Michael Mendizza
Virtual Reality is Sensory Deprivation
http://www.ttfuture.org/blog/2/Virtual-Reality-is-Sensory-Deprivation

Jerry Mander
on media, the mind and democracy
http://ttfuture.org/files/2/members/int_mander.pdf

Ralph Nader
On corporate exploitation of children
http://ttfuture.org/files/2/members/int_nader.pdf

Joseph Chilton Pearce
Play is Learning
video: http://ttfuture.org/store/play-is-learning

Bev Bos
Tour of the Roseville Preschool
video: http://ttfuture.org/authors/bos

James W. Prescott, PhD
The origins of love and violence,
how sensory deprivation impacts the developing brain.
video: http://ttfuture.org/bonding/front

Marian Diamond, PhD
Enriching Heredity, how stimulation grows the brain
http://ttfuture.org/authors/marion_diamond

We have been deeply conditioned to believe that others, the experts know what is best. We assume that the FDA is looking out for ‘our’ wellbeing and best interest. That the foods we gather from the super market are safe. It is our responsibility to be informed and make healthy decision about the quality of life we experience.

Thirty years ago I took a nutrition course from a certified chemist, pharmacist, nutritionist, three disciplines. Referring to the cereals we feed our children, Cheerios, Wheaties, CoCo Puffs, he said eating the box would be more nutritious than its contents; at least one would be getting some fiber. In the United States we pay far more for packaging at the market than what the wrapper contains.

And to this we must be aware (beware) of the pesticide, depleted soils. chemical fertilizers, genetically engineered seeds, polluted oceans so the fish that we eat almost glow in the dark. And then we ask why our children are the least healthy ever.

I encourage you to take the time to look at two video presentations;

Food and Behaviour
The first is by Dr Blaylock on the relationship between food and behavior. A classic.

Food as Medicine
The second is about food as medicine. Only online for one week. so don't miss it.

Together they provide a super reminder that we are what we eat. What we eat determines to a great extent our moods, behaviors and even the quality of thoughts we think. Food is indeed the best preventive medicine when packaged with lots of pure water and joy filled movement.

As the toxic ring in the tub goes up, we need to be even more mindful every day.

Cheers
Michael Mendizza

I love social media (sometimes) because it helps us see that we are not alone and crazy. Others are as concerned as we are. What we need to do, each and every one is to pick a cause, get upset and get involved. Each of us must become pro-activists, passionate and skilled at creating nonviolently the world we know is possible, one driven not by books, religious-political propaganda and dogma, not by fear and greed, by the flowering of innate human kindness, creativity and values.

Regarding our recient newsletter:

Recall how with the fake Swine Flu pandemic ‘mandated’ was the buzz, teachers, nurses – the goal was ‘everyone’ in the world. Mandated! So the terrorists, the boggie man won’t get us. False hopes and false fears are converted into ‘false flag’ acts, designed to herd the population in profitable directions. (False Flag events are those created by a local government that points to ‘the other guy,’ the feared enemy to get the local population to go to war or give up their liberty, or do whatever they are told for the good and safety of the people. The Romans did it, Hitler did it. The USA-CIA are the best in the world at this.

Fear is ‘always’ the screen behind which our informed choices and civil liberties are taken away – and by who – by ‘the government’ that we have been sold to believe is there, like a loving parent, to protect and save us. BUT, this loving government, regardless of the original intent, has been infiltrated by corporations, that are not people, stock holders who are protected and yes mandated by law to do one thing and one thing only, that is, to make shareholders MONEY.

The soul job of a corporation and therefore the government they control with money - is to make money. One of the heads of Monsanto is now the head of the FDA, the very government body that is there to ‘protect’ us from Monsanto. Look under every department, every cabinet post, every section of the pentagon, health, and education and this same corporate corruption of the original intent of the agencies that shape our lives is there. Even the Supreme Court.

Do you really think that the members of the Supreme Court would proclaim that corporations can donate to political campaigns anything they want - wityout limits - if it did not benefits the corporations from influencing government policy?

To really appreciate what is taking place with this issue and with our government, and that means education, finance, health, corporate media, Fox-talk double speak news, our environment, our very way of life, we must wake up from the dream that the FDA and the CIA are there to protect US. After we sober up from this well publicized enchantment by design – we can act. And not before.

To get some perspective on this I offer an extremely important talk given by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Michael Mendizza

Click to download the full PDF

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, New York City, 2004

Corporate consolidation (of government) is happening now. We are seeing the privatization of the American government and we have a government now that turned FEMA over to somebody who pays them campaign contributions. And the head of the Forest Service is a timber industry lobbyist Mark Gray, probably the most rapacious in history [Rapacious means to "rape". Not in the sexual sense but the older sense of plunder and destruction.]. The head of public land and mining industry lobby, Steven Griles, believes that public lands are unconstitutional.

The head of the Air Division at EPA is the utility lobbyist Jeffrey Homestead who’s represented nothing but the worst air polluters during his entire career. The head of Super Fund is a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Super Fund. The second in command of EPA is a Monsanto lobbyist.

I did another piece in this month’s Vanity Fair that shows that the top 100 environmental officials in the Department of Commerce which regulates Fishery, Department of Interiors, Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, at the FDA, on the EPA and even the relevant division for the Justice Department are virtually, without exception, lobbyists from the worst of the worst of the worst of these polluters. And this is happening throughout our government, not just in the pollution but everywhere else where you’re getting corporations who are now running American government.

What happens when you allow corporations to run our government? What you get is plunder. And I have to say this, the American people have to understand that there is a huge difference between free market capitalism, which is a good thing because it makes us more efficient, more prosperous, and more democratic, and the kind of corporate-crony capitalism which has been embraced by this White House.

The reason they shouldn’t be running our government is because corporations don’t want the same thing for America as Americans want. Corporations do not want free markets and they do not want democracy. They want profits and the best way for them to get the profits too often is to use our campaign financing system which is just a system of legalized bribery, to get their hooks into a public official, they use that public official to dismantle the market place, to give them monopoly control, and then to privatize the commons, to turn over our Treasury, our air, our water, our public lands, our wild life, our fishery, the shared resource of our society that give context to our community, that connects us to our past, that are the source of our values and our virtues and our character as a people, and we are turning that over, for profit, to these corporations.

We have to remember this, legally corporations cannot do good things. They cannot do true philanthropy, they can’t do things that are good for our country or for our community. When you see Wal-Mart bringing bottled water down to the Katrina victims, they’re not doing that to be good guys, they’re doing it because they think that over the long run the public view of them will be enhanced and that that will enhance their shareholder value and their dividend distribution. If they have another reason for doing it, any one of their shareholders can sue them and they will win that lawsuit. It is called wasting corporate assets. It is against the law in this country for a corporation to turn itself into a philanthropy. And if they’re caught doing it their board members will be punished and their shareholders can sue them.

We want corporations to be this way, to focus narrowly. We don’t want them to turn into philanthropies because nobody would invest in them. We want them to focus narrowly on shareholder value, BUT, we would be nuts to let them anywhere near our government because we designed them to plunder and that’s what they’re going to do to us if we let them run our country. That’s what they’re doing now. That’s why from the beginning of our national history, our greatest political leaders, Republicans and Democrats, have been warning Americans against the domination of corporate power.

Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, said that America would never be destroyed by a foreign enemy, by an Osama bin Laden, but he warned that our Bill of Rights, our Constitution and our treasured democratic institutions would be subverted by malefactors of great wealth who would steal them from within.

Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, in his most famous speech ever warned Americans against a domination by the military industrial complex. Abraham Lincoln, the greatest Republican in history, said during the height of the Civil War in 1863, “I have the South in front of me and I have the bankers behind me and for my country I fear the bankers more.” Franklin Roosevelt, during World War II, said that the domination of government by corporate power is “the essence of Fascism.” Benito Mussolini, who had an insider’s view of that process, said essentially the same thing. He complained that Fascism should not be called Fascism; it should be called Corporatism because it was the merger of state and corporate power.

What we have to understand in this country is that the domination of business by government is called Communism and the domination of government by business is called Fascism.

Our job is to walk that narrow trail between free market capitalism and democracy, holding big-government at bay with our right hand and big-business at bay with our left. And in order to do that we need an informed public that is able to recognize all the milestones of tyranny. To do that we need an aggressive and independent press that is willing to stand up and speak truth to power, and we no longer have that in the United States of America.

RFK, Jr.

Click to download the full PDF

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We are attracted to experiences that feel good and turn away from those that hurt, pleasure and pain. Both are driven by millions of years of natural intelligence.

Affectionate touch, eyes that assure care and trust, warm cuddling, the life giving sensation of mother’s breast, being held when frightened, all the experiences we call nurturing involve pleasure. Like a beautiful flower, delicate and radiating, the female body percolates with pleasurable possibilities. Life’s continuity depends on pleasure. See Sex At Dawn.

Puberty transforms pleasure into reproductive sexuality, still deeply rooted in nurturing, but with a twist. The game changes. Clearly the enchantment of female pleasure is something few males can resist, which is, after all, nature’s intelligent design.

Being the source of pleasure the value and importance of the female body’s pleasure potential increases, at least in the often sensory deprived male imagination. Anything that valuable, like gold, becomes a commodity to be possessed and controlled. Doing so brings social power. The stakes are indeed high.

Anything that brings pleasure, whether it is substances or sex - individuals, governments and political-religious organizations step up to the gaming table and play their controlling hand. They make up rules, pass laws, boast of divine revelation, and have for centuries to possess and control - pleasure.

It is well know, to control one’s currency is to control its people, and controlling pleasure, in this regard, is worth its weight on gold. Ask the Mafia, similar in the way it profits from pleasure as the church and governments. No? Just glance at the 300 year Catholic Spanish Inquisition with its witch hunts and how many of its torturous techniques were sadistic sexual pervasions.

One of the easiest ways to control the enchantment and political power of pleasure, and therefore entire populations, is to reduce its potency. Locate the most sensitive pleasure producing tissues and remove it, claiming of course that an old bearded man seated on his cloud throne demanded so. Do this over and over and like any Big Lie (referring to Joseph Goebbels’s the German Reich Minister of Propaganda famous remark), becomes the truth.

Like Shakespeare’s ‘rose’ a lie, be it by the church, the government, Fox or the Wall Street Journal, is still a lie. It is well documented. Female and male circumcision was invented to reduce and therefore control pleasure and this unnatural and completely unnecessary procedure is forced. Like hooded prisoners at Guantanamo or the Inquisition, young girls and boys by the millions are held down by force, their legs spread and the most sensitive tissues, that nature evolved over millions of years is cut off, in most cases inflecting unbearable pain.

James W. Prescott, PhD, argues that circumcision, female and male, is a form or torture, illegal, demanding equal protection under 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Jim cites The General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10, 1948 that adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, specifically Article 5: "No one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Jim’s position is clear and lucid as the arguments raised by Joseph Chilton Pearce in The Death of Religion and Rebirth of Spirit, and by Sam Harris in End of Faith, both startling analyses of the clash of faith and reason in the modern world.

Pleasure is not nearly as demonic as is the behavior of those who seek power by controlling and profiting from it.

See more…

Michael Mendizza