Losing Spark

Comment by Riko Kamachi on March 31, 2010 at 2:47pm

Sobering, Shakwei, really sobering. Thank you for sharing these stories. They're a good reminder of why we're here.

Comment by Mark Mulkerin on March 31, 2010 at 2:49pm

@ Shakwei - Thank you for the stories.

@Michael - Why is it that we are willing to forgive our own Friday night foibles knowing perfectly well that it was three tequilas too many and we cannot understand how large organizations dealing with complex situations and having imperfect knowledge (and people) can get things wrong. It is time to understand that governments, companies, NGOs, etc. can wake up on a Saturday morning next to someone they don't remember and ask where did it all go wrong. Why did you invade the other country? It seemed like a good idea at the time. Why did you have most of your population melt down cookware to make backyard steel? It seemed like a good idea at the time. Why did you try to develop all of these countries using the US and Western Europe as models? It seemed like a good idea at the time. Also, with all due respect to the agent pool, do you really think that this figures highly into WB thinking? Perhaps, if Evoke hits on the right model and suddenly people all over the developed world become passionate, informed, and active, then the higher ups will take the credit for their foresight and pat each other on the back. If it is a fizzle, then they will shrug, think it seemed like a good idea at the time, and be off to their next intergovernmental panel on this and that. Most likely, the organizers will see what worked, what didn't, tweak the model, then look for another round of funding, because progress is incremental.

Comment by uzoma judith katchy on March 31, 2010 at 2:59pm

Shakwei, you are right. Like I have always said, EVOKE is not really about us. It's about the people who don't have the kind of opportunity we have been exposed to. It's about the downtrodden ....etc of the society who may not even be aware of EVOKE.
Whether our efforts are acknowledged or not should not be the yardstick for staying on, but the fact that our contribution can help someone somewhere. Also, that we leave EVOKE with a new sense of mission.
To be an agent of change is no child's play. Challenges are and will always be there in one form or another.Our responsibility is to be resolute and determined to achieve our "positive" goals.

Comment by Michael Texeira on March 31, 2010 at 3:00pm

to be honest, I'm taking responsibility for my own healing, and part of that means creating a space for me to be in integrity with myself, and from that space come my comments. I don't know what it will look like. as far as I'm concerned, this is what it looks like. perhaps the conversations we have here might impact those people at the head of the world bank. perhaps not. personally, from a universal standpoint, I believe healing consists of being in complete unceasing awareness of your body and the energetic field which surrounds it. in such a state, as I've only been once or perhaps twice, all actions done can be seen in real time as being done to the Self. one cannot, in that state, hurt or cause pain to anyone because in doing so, they cause pain to themselves. one cannot lie to anyone in that state, knowing that in that lie there is a seed of suffering which they themselves shall one day have to swallow. the transparency comes about naturally in that state, as the connection between the individual and the wh*** becomes transparent. we see ourselves as cells in the larger body and we understand that healing the body is only possible when we are ourselves healed.

what does the world bank and evoke need to heal...each individual involved in them to take upon personal healing and reconnection with the field as the foremost personal project in their life. I know this and yet I myself fail. alas that I cannot speak truth without being a hypocrite.

Comment by Michael Texeira on March 31, 2010 at 3:10pm

Mark...I think I understand your metaphor. First of all, I don't drink. I have spent the last five years discarding most material possessions I had, and equally as many behaviors. Obviously the people in the World Bank may have realized their errors. If so, I should ask them to stop drinking. Stop pursuing privatization of water in the third world...stop acting with the profit model as the main determinate of effective action. Forgive debts. Use standard of living as the new benchmark. I forgive everyone who wakes up with a hangover. But when they do it the 100th time, I have lost any sympathy. I still have compulsive behaviors and thoughts, tendencies that I engage in despite them not being in my highest potential. I'm sure we all do. Forgiveness is there. But that doesn't mean that we do not have the responsibility to notice that what was the best idea of yesterday is now proven insanity.

Material empiricism denies the basic knowledge that the modern science which was based upon it has rediscovered. As such, all systems which are rooted in that empiricism are outdated and must be changed.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-6568107389365915765&hl=...

Medicine, economics, psychology, ecology...all of these, if based off of cartesian dualism and rational determinism, are merely extensions of a disease and cannot save anyone from anything. There is another dimension of reality that the people at the forefront of consciousness have been speaking of for thousands of years. Science is beginning to understand it, and its widespread acceptance will shatter the fetters that have bound humanity since the inception of this Kali Yuga.

Comment by Mark Mulkerin on March 31, 2010 at 3:38pm

@Michael - The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak and given that I hope for spirit, but plan for flesh. PS Our understanding of science is from two different universes, so I don't think we can have a productive conversation on that topic. Cheers.

Comment by Michele Baron on March 31, 2010 at 5:18pm

Today, feuding lawmakers in Pakistan moved closer to renaming the northwest frontier province, in a move hoped to lessen the ethnic and cultural divides threatening the country of 165 million people, formed under the banner of Islam.

Separatist protests, even violence, tear the fabric of national unity, as political and religious leaders battle for supremacy.
Israr Khan, 33, a manual laborer in Peshawar, urged the politicians to remember that Pakistan has more pressing challenges than what to call a province.
"The price hikes, shortages of flour, sugar, electricity and lack of work are much bigger problems for me," Khan said. "The name of the province is not of any use in my kitchen."
Transparency of politics, of ideas, of motivations--difficult to legislate, and, perhaps, impossible to control. Transparency of finances, food security policies, water security policies, humanitarian activities are more easily presented, monitored and understood. Unless we become a collective of psychics, able to discern the thoughts and motivations of others, how can we hope to moderate the emotions, experiences, and expressions of those with whom we interact and exchange ideas in the pursuit of developing a more secure, sustainable world?
It is not likely that we will develop our higher cranial functions at a rate permitting psychic exchanges any time soon.
If fear of reprisal stifles the free exchange of ideas, the competition of concepts which can improve the collective efforts to develop sustainable practices in the communities of our regions, our nations, our world, if resentments and suppression fester and block the exchange and expansion of ideas, what good is superficial transparency? Ideas posted are monitored in a transparent fashion and all is "wh***" in the system promulgating those ideas--but are the ideas reflecting anything other than the status quo? Are holistic solutions being stifled in favor of wh*** solutions--where there is no dissent, no questioning of efficacy, no testing of sustainability?
After 62 years, Pakistan is still in turmoil, the government seen as indifferent, separatists fighting for the right to try to establish a better life somehow.
We have 10 weeks on EVOKE, to attempt, in virtual, to learn what people, not just in Pakistan, not just in developing nations or the third world, but disadvantaged people everywhere--even in the richest nations--are struggling to learn. How to survive, how, once survival is assured, to make that survival more secure--food security, water security, energy security. How, once systems of survival are more secure, to make life more sustainable. No politics, no arts, no internet--just survival, once secured, then sustainable.
Life is a struggle for so many.
I hope we can ALL share ideas in EVOKE to enable us to mitigate the terrible plight of those caught in the simple struggle to survive. All the voices--the positive, the bleak, the dissenting and disruptive. Because the world is a huge, seething cauldron of change, and a solution set in a virtual world may not survive in the "real world"--"The wheels of change grind slowly, and they grind exceedingly small" may be true--but events can change a life, a society as quickly as a neutrino can oscillate and effect all mass, and all dark matter, in a wh*** universe.
Change is volatile, and cannot be controlled except through suppression. But the energy of change can be harnessed, and thinking people can choose to participate, to be inspired, to follow their own paths and share in their own ways.
If voices are used to harm, to threaten, to attack, change is not positive, and harmful voices probably should be directed elsewhere. But if voices are used to dissent, to lift veils of complacency, even if that is uncomfortable and threatening, that is not the same as a directed threat.
In Pakistan, today, political leaders threaten and argue, and pinpoint a debate over naming a region. A small change, but great in meaning to the participants.
In Pakistan, today, a manual laborer is hungry, and has a family, and a life that will go on despite names and map lines. To quote again from the AP editorial: "The fact is that after 62 years, we are not a nation," said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a political commentator in Islamabad. "And although we could eventually become one, there's been a lot of time lost and we have moved in fact into the other direction."
Israr Khan, 33, a manual laborer in Peshawar, urged the politicians to remember that Pakistan has more pressing challenges than what to call a province.
"The price hikes, shortages of flour, sugar, electricity and lack of work are much bigger problems for me," Khan said. "The name of the province is not of any use in my kitchen."

Comment by Michele Baron on March 31, 2010 at 5:20pm

I am sorry--I am, apparently, still lamentably tech-challenged. Here is the link again, of it works:
http://my.att.net/s/editorial.dll?pnum=1&bfromind=7405&eeid...

Comment by Michele Baron on March 31, 2010 at 5:48pm

sorry shakwei, forgot your spark. +1 thank you

Comment by Chris Frueh on March 31, 2010 at 5:53pm

I thought I saw two questions in your post. First, is the purpose of this game directed by the admins and, secondly, what is our role in this? From the very little I know about McG, I thought the purpose of the game was to get everyone thinking about these problems, the end result of which would be people motivated to engage the issues. As for our role, I don't think the world-changing will happen, or is even supposed to happen, through the game. Rather, after several months of focusing on issues of desperate importance to the undeveloped world, players would go out themselves and work to solve the problems. So, aside from choosing which issues to look at, I don't see how the administration should have any noticeable impact on the players' purpose aside from screwing with the arbitrary numerical system of ranking and progression.

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