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Permalink Reply by Jitendra Darling on July 15, 2012 at 5:47pm

Thanks for priming the conversation, Sea.  This is a poignant topic for DC.  She has some insight and information that may be quite surprising to many with regard to China's advances and openness with regard to sustainable energy...and there is much to be done.  Hope you're with us live to pose your question.  (DC has not yet signed in to be able to respond directly in this thread)

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Permalink Reply by Dyck Dewid on July 16, 2012 at 10:34am

A beginning question I have... that I often ask sincerely of myself too is, what is it that makes anyone think they have something to teach others? (I'm not implying we don't have something to teach. It's just a worthy examination if one is interested.)  I also don't mean this in a challenging or derogotory way because the question doesn't encompass intention at all.

Do we understand how the world as an organism learns?

Certainly, throughout our lives people expand in their experiences.  We sometimes equate experience with knowing.  As the decades roll by some of us can look back and see that at any earlier time we were naive, misinformed, driven by fear-of-the-day, perhaps incomplete at best.  Yet, in each 'today' we seem to be quite certain that we've gotten rid of the ignorance, and built up more knowledge.  So, is it that now I "have something 'others' should learn, for it will improve their lives and the world?"  What is the truth of this? 

Sincerely, Dyck

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Permalink Reply by Dyck Dewid on July 16, 2012 at 3:55pm

So here it is after the call.  A fruitful exploration and sharing. 

My inquiry above is seeking to understand more how my level of compassion IS a part of my knowing.  Maybe we are the messengers (teachers) of what often seems beyond reach tho latent in each. 

CDs use of leverage, in this context, is bringing an analytical, practical contemplation to how each of us changes the world and are changed by it. To seek the company of influential people solely to influence them with my xxx, I have to ponder more.  I am willingly considering it now.  It's an opening to looking at some of my conditioning about powerful or wealthy people, in the eye.  And I'll have to think about what is my xxx to share.

Thank you Pia (for making my eyes smile) and Jitendra and CD

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Permalink Reply by Jitendra Darling on July 16, 2012 at 4:33pm

Thanks so much for your presence and willingness to speak what is present in your heart, Dyck.  All voices are important to a full conversation as they generate deeper thought and consideration for everyone if we treat each other well.  Check this link from the main post above...

BTW-great to have met you in person at our Occupy Cafe in Philly.  Remembering the thoughtfulness of all that you shared in that space as well.

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Permalink Reply by Jitendra Darling on July 16, 2012 at 4:26pm

Much gratitude to DC for our call today.  

I heard a lot of appreciation from people for having their awareness opened and expanded with regard to how we hold people in China.  Isn't it astonishing, each time we dissolve our filters of what we think of people and simply feel from our heart.  As DC described, Chinese people want the same things we do in terms of shelter, food, clean water, clean air and the security of being able to provide for themselves and their loved ones in a dignified manner.

One myth I am grateful to hear busted, is that "Chinese make cheap and inferior goods."  DC was very explicit that Chinese manufacturers take their orders and get their specifications from western companies that place the orders.  Chinese goods are inferior when American companies give instructions to manufacture inferior goods.  I've never heard an American company step forward to take responsibility for this.  Charles Eisenstein referred to this in Sacred Economics as externalization of costs.

American companies reap higher profits while Chinese people take the hit in social/cultural capital by having their entire race characterized negatively as producers of junk.  

Of course, all we need do is look at any Apple product to see goods of exemplary quality.  And wouldn't it feel even better if we knew the people producing Apple's high quality products were receiving high quality compensation in high quality conditions!?

Further, she noted the example of how highly toxic denim production, which was environmentally constrained in the US, was then shipped to less regulated China where, again, US companies reap doubly on profits.   They capitalize on cheap outsourced labor while removing the cost of environmental upgrades, transferring the burden of that cost to the Chinese, particularly the cost of poisoned rivers and air as well as slave wage labor.  We can blame China for "stealing" our jobs, when in fact, they are people, like you and me, doing what they can to survive.  The thieves are the corporations that exploited everyone via exporting the work in the first place, eliminating income in the states, paying slave wages in China, while keeping prices at a premium.

We hear little of how committed the Chinese people are to cleaning up their environment. It won't happen overnight. (US citizens ought not be righteous re: the environment seeing as how US official policies are actually going backward and even globally obstructive regarding the environment and climate change).  We don't hear about the remarkable solar city and the Chinese people committed to renewable energy on a global scale. As DC was saying, there are even westerners, acting as powerful change agents, that hold harsh prejudice against the Chinese people.

How might we work better together toward a world that works for all?  This is at the root of our #Occupy vision, no?  This value.  Never mind strategies for the moment.

How are we common/similar/united in our needs and desires for a dignified and secure life that is humanly and environmentally just and sustainable?

DC mentioned 2 books by R. Buckminster Fuller—The Grunch of Giants and Critical Path, of which, both, I have read. Grunch..., at 90 pages, is the express train to Bucky's considerably insightful perspectives (much from direct experience, which makes it all the more compelling) of how the material world turns.  Critical Path is a much more detailed read.  Personally, I found it hard to put down.  It reshaped my life mission strategy before I had gotten one third of the way through it.  I would say you come away with a global-galactic perspective that you can implement in your personal and community life.  In my case, it catapulted me into a desire to work at a global scale, Occupy Cafe is continually expanding into.

Overall, I see this conversation about China as being much more than about China. Our relationship, perceptions and misperceptions with China are endemic and ubiquitous throughout so much of our western culture and mind.  As Sarah, an #Occupy activist calling from Egypt during our recent #NatGat Middle East cross-cultural panel stated, we Americans seem to be inured and blind to the fact that the oppressive and imperialistic impact of corporate America on foreign countries is also at work in our own home land.  She was wondering if Americans would wake up before the shackles of global slavery clamped down on our "free" world.  Divide and conquer is a tried and tested strategy which has worked in the past—and continues working to a degree in this very moment.

Our great strength, however, and the strength of the #Occupy and other great movements, is that we realize common ground is our salvation.  United we stand.  Today is one more small (for some, I heard large) step toward recognizing the hearts of all people as one force for dignity, justice, freedom and the inalienable right of every person and life form to exist in balance and integrity on our planet, Mother Earth, Gaia.

Peace, justice and freedom,

Jitendra

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Permalink Reply by Dame DC Cordova on July 17, 2012 at 12:56am

I'd like to thank everyone that participated in the conversation this morning.  Please be sure to visit me at:  http://www.facebook.com/dccordovafriends and see the great quote from Buckminster Fuller   and more resources about his work:  http://www.moneyandyou.com/buckminster-fuller    

Have a wonderful week - and may you be blessed with more wisdom, peace and joy -- and a world that works for everyone.  Thank YOU for everything you do to support this vision.  

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Permalink Reply by Ben Roberts on July 17, 2012 at 4:18am

Looks like I missed a juicy conversation!  Thanks for joining us, DC!  As I gather here in Asheville, NC with a diverse group of social entrepreneurs, community organizers, philanthropists, artists and "deep thinkers" for a conversation about how we can all create ("DIY") the "New Economy," I am struck by the importance of this global perspective, which even here is only marginally represented.  I will ask people today to what extent they believe China is a catalyst in this DIY movement, and report back!

Re Dyck's concerns, I had the privilege of spending a few fascinating and delightful hours this Sunday with David Isaacs, co-creator with his partner Juanita Brown of "The World Cafe."  He suggested that many efforts to teach are disguised (even to the teacher) attempts to "fix" others.  The art of dialogue, David proposed, need only be remembered ("re-cognized"), as it is embedded in our DNA, passed down to us from ancestors who gathered in circles around fires to keep watch during the night.  "What if," he asks, "conversation is to humans and humanity as water is to fish?"  And what if the most important "action" we are engaged in when the dialogue is really rich and alive is that we are learning together, and especially that we are learning how to learn together?

We have a vision of Occupy Cafe providing a collaborative learning/play/development space for people with projects and ideas they want to bring forth through a collective/cooperative/synergistic process.  It seems to me that this is an exciting opportunity to put these principles into action.  Interested?  I know at least one Cafe regular (yes, YOU, C.A.!) with a hot project that might be a great one to play with in our new "sandbox."

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