The Bi-Polar American: bi-polar american in amsterdam

Out of the box...

We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.
- Buckminster Fuller, "The New York Magazine Environmental Teach-In" by Elizabeth in New York Magazine (30 March 1970), p.30

Women's history month

Those who have been trampled on seem to get their own history month, though the most prominent history books have left women, the largest group in the world, as ancillary players. So many groups have been oppressed for one reason or another. Do you actually think women are less intelligent, less deserving, less creative, less sexual than their male counterparts? Only if you believe everything you hear. It's time to wake up to the truth. I will honor those left out of the history books. That is how perceptions are changed.

No Room for Timidity

"And therefore, all of those for whom authentic transformation has deeply unseated their souls must, I believe, wrestle with the profound moral obligation to shout from the heart -perhaps quietly and gently, with tears of reluctance; perhaps with fierce fire and angry wisdom; perhaps with slow and careful analysis; perhaps by unshakable public example—but authenticity always and absolutely carries a demand and duty: you must speak out, to the best of your ability, and shake the spiritual tree, and shine your headlights into the eyes of the complacent. You must let that radical realization rumble through your veins and rattle those around you. . . . And this is truly a terrible burden, a horrible burden, because in any case there is no room for timidity. The fact that you might be wrong is simply no excuse: You might be right in your communication, and you might be wrong, but that does not matter. What does matter, as Kierkegaard so rudely reminded us, is that only by investing and speaking your vision with passion, can the truth, one way or another, fully penetrate the reluctance of the world. If you are right, or if you are wrong, it is only your passion that will force either to be discovered. It is your duty to promote that discovery—either way—and therefore it is your duty to speak your truth with whatever passion and courage you can find in your heart. You must shout, in whatever way you can.” ^{11 Ken Wilber--Integral Life}

The Bi-Polar American

Monday, April 30, 2012

On the wheel in Hamsterdam...