extent than any other species—have what I call a ‘patterning instinct:’ we are driven to pattern meaning into our world. That drive is what led humans to develop language, myth, and culture. It enabled us to invent tools and develop science, giving us tremendous benefits but also putting us on a collision course with the natural world. Each culture tends to construct its worldview on a root metaphor of the universe, which in turn defines people’s relationship to nature and each other, ultimately leading to a set of values that directs how that culture behaves. It’s those culturally derived values that have shaped history. Early hunter-gatherers, for ... posted on May 16 2019 (6,390 reads)

same place each night to find comfort in the memories still lingering there until a new season called me to move on in new directions.   The catbird eventually migrated south in September as the nights grew cooler and the days shortened.  I missed him deeply but felt grateful for all that I had been given. My heart was changed by that bird. There was no greater spiritual pilgrimage or teacher that summer, no better friend.  https://blog.nature.org/science/2015/06/10/consider-catbird-surprising-secrets-common-backyard-birds/ http://www.poetrycat.com/mary-oliver/catbird https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdgYLuswqY8   https:... posted on Sep 24 2019 (6,191 reads)

which has become a formative group to change our institutional and business approaches towards agriculture and using technology to replace food animals. He co-founded a start-up of sorts, or fundraising vehicle, to support efforts to reduce suffering for animals through alternatives in the food space. Milo has been on a journey himself in this process -- writing books, delving into meditation and yoga, and becoming an advocate outside of farm animals for LGBT rights and for the rights of nature. What follows is an edited transcript of an Awakin Call with Milo in conversation with Ariel Nessel. The unedited transcript and audio recording of the call can be accessed here.  Ari: ... posted on Dec 5 2019 (4,879 reads)

I hope they will continue to evolve and people will come up with even more useful ones. And that’s what makes 21st Century economics exciting. I guess it was a quest for certainty we were on. I mean the analogy to mechanics and physics is obviously very appropriate in the sense that people are trying to find more and more certainty. And one of the things you talk about is that we need a new portrait of humanity at the heart of economics. That there’s something around human nature and self-awareness and maybe even psychology for how we design our societies and economics. How do you reflect on that? So there’s this rational economic man, the little Lego character... posted on Jul 19 2020 (8,204 reads)

countries of Ireland and Scotland, that our ancestors lived in a way that was very deeply connected with the natural world—just in the way that we think of other indigenous peoples now. Our old stories show us that that is our inheritance. So I wrote the book, really, to try to help people understand those old stories and reclaim that way of being in the world. We don’t have to look to other cultures for wisdom about how to live in balance and harmony with nature. Our own connection is right here under our feet, in our own stories, which spring directly out of this land. But we haven’t been taught to see those stories in that way. They’re di... posted on Oct 17 2020 (7,786 reads)

Rather than aspiring to enlightenment, these people delved into the underworld, which is the realm of the soul.  What is the soul in this conception? It is the primitive and essential core of our individuality, the portion of spirit that lives in us and adopts our peculiar characteristics—those that distinguish us from all others.  The descending journey plunges into the depths, in search of that particular expression of the sacred that is you. It explores our animal nature, our deepest fears, our dialogue with death and disease, our experience of sexuality, our desires, our creations, our dreams, our unconscious and its symbols.   This is how the brillia... posted on Nov 18 2020 (7,174 reads)

and critical response to Western ideas of sustainable development, Buen Vivir is about respecting the rights and responsibilities of communities to protect and promote their own social and environmental well-being by driving grassroots change. Cotacacheños have been engaged in resistance against large-scale mining operations in the region for more than three decades in the name of Buen Vivir, because the destructive nature of mining is in conflict with their vision of environmental reciprocity. Local Indigenous community leader David Torres explains, “Buen Vivir signifies first and foremost&nbs... posted on Jan 20 2021 (4,653 reads)

Union for Conservation of Nature still classifies them as Endangered, with only 1,200 to 1,800 birds confined to Cambodia and two regions of India—Bihar and Assam, where Barman lives. Despite the longstanding cultural disgust that surrounded the birds, Barman quickly began to appreciate the storks’ more appealing side. Raised for several years by her grandmother, who often took her outside and taught her songs and stories about birds, she developed a connection with nature that brought her solace during a period when her parents were away. Later, she studied zoology and wildlife biology at Gauhati University, where she earned an undergraduate degree and then a ma... posted on Mar 19 2021 (5,623 reads)

cave people, like, not like. “Me like calm, me no like turmoil,” right or wrong? Who taught you that? Your parents? Do you have to go to school to learn that? Oh, that’s as intuitive as it comes, all right? “I don’t want to be drowning, OK. I like it being comfortable in here.” Of course you do. Of course you do. Ain’t that nice, I get to say that, don’t give that up, you could never give that up. You understand that? That’s part of your nature. So your being is in there, you are resting on this lake. You don’t realize that because you’re so lost in it. You’re resting on this lake, and you’re only OK when the l... posted on Dec 31 1969 (139 reads)

powerful people have created enormously complicated systems based on supposedly scientific theories of government. And this took place at the same time that science and technology made it possible to make and use ever more energy to drive a civilization that allows a few of us to live lives of luxury and ease unknown in the entire history of humankind. The great majority of us, however, are swept aside in this tsunami of what we call progress. So- called progress that is rooted in divorce from nature. Nature has become scenery and resource. We change nature to make it what we want it to look like. Here in Hawai’i we move huge amounts of sand around to make beaches for tourists, we mov... posted on Aug 17 2022 (3,680 reads)

great, wonderful, do it. But it wasn’t the training that created an experience that was there prior to me deciding to be a monk, “prior” meaning it’s so fundamental, our very being. So it was an important insight to actually question, what are we doing here? What is going on with how we’re going about practice? Now, that didn’t mean it wasn’t valuable. It just meant that it was important for me to have an experience where I got to question the nature of what we were doing. TS: That’s so interesting. In a sense, you could say you went from, this is my language, “practice to performance” in deciding to leave mona... posted on Jan 17 2023 (3,002 reads)

the still water. Maybe that was part of the problem: he spent too much time rolling thoughts around his head, not enough time listening to his gut. Or simply experiencing the present moment without analyzing it. Simply being. While his rational side argued that what happened was nothing more than a pretty amazing coincidence, some deeper, intuitive part of him wasn’t convinced of that. He sensed that he stood at a gateway into some different realm, a deeper way of connecting with wild nature, the more-than-human world that he loved so much. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt this way. Sometimes he wished he could be more open to the possibilities . . . There you go a... posted on Apr 6 2023 (5,270 reads)

Dr. Porges also tells us that when we no longer feel safe, we will adaptively fight or flee or dissociate. No wonder it is so challenging for people to stay with awareness of the existential threat to our earthly home. The Polyvagal Theory made us curious: could beauty provide enough safety for people to see the pain and not look away? We discussed Iain McGilchrist’s (2009) ideas about our left hemisphere dominant society, leaving people cut off their feelings, viewing nature as disconnected from who we are. In this left shifted world view, without the balance of the right hemisphere that sees the wholeness and interconnectedness of things, the planet and human bein... posted on Sep 26 2023 (3,242 reads)

goodness. In such a world, we come to believe, it’s compete or die. The popular British writer Philip Pullman says, “we evolved to suit a way of life which is acquisitive, territorial, and combative” and that “we have to overcome millions of years of evolution” to make the changes we need to avoid global catastrophe. If I believed that, I’d feel utterly hopeless. How can we align with the needs of the natural world if we first have to change basic human nature? An eco-mind thinks ... Less about quantities and more about qualities. Less about fixed things and more about the ever-changing relationships that form them. Less about limi... posted on Apr 10 2012 (28,261 reads)

with nature confers a gift of presence. I try to open up to it rather than pursue distracting thoughts or emotions. As an urban dweller, walking in a park fills me with a sense of my roots in the natural world. Seashore, mountains, meadows, woods and desert all invite us to discover our own nature in theirs, to meet their presence with our own. So whenever I feel too far from my deepest wish, off-balance, shaken by the blows of life or mired in the inertia of not caring, I seek contact with nature--a primary source of re-centering. Each of us responds more deeply to one or another great natural scene, depending perhaps on where we received our earliest impressions. At this tim... posted on May 5 2013 (22,991 reads)

Veh told me about Jane Wodening. She told me Jane was an astonishing writer, that she wrote about animals, creatures, about the intimate life of nature around her. That her writing was like no one else she knew of. And then she thought of Barry Lopez. Well, it was okay to bring in Barry Lopez in the same conversation. In fact, Anne was putting together an exhibit at the Di Rosa in Napa, California. It would be called “Entering the Wild” and would feature a hand-illustrated book by Barry Lopez along with works by five other artists. It would also feature several of Jane’s books of stories. Anne hoped to find a way to bring Jane out from Colorado for the opening. I remem... posted on Jun 3 2013 (16,336 reads)

Survival of the Fittest: It Is Kindness That Counts A psychologist probes how altruism, Darwinism and neurobiology mean that we can succeed by not being cutthroat. Why do people do good things? Is kindness hard-wired into the brain, or does this tendency arise via experience? Or is goodness some combination of nature and nurture? Dacher Keltner, director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory, investigates these questions from multiple angles, and often generates results that are both surprising and challenging. In his new book, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, Keltner weaves together scientific findings with personal narrative to uncover th... posted on Oct 19 2013 (26,973 reads)

of the big ports for the whaling community. Shinnecock is on the south fork of the island, if you look at it like a lobster claw. So we grew up fishing. I didn’t hunt. My uncles and my grandfather would always shoot something; a squirrel, a raccoon. That was how we fed ourselves. We didn’t go to the store very often for stuff like that. We had our own chickens. We had geese. We had a huge garden. So we really grew up kind of playing with earth. RW:  Really in contact with nature. CS:  Well, it was interesting, because where we lived in Huntington was on a hill. Even when my grandfather was growing up there, they called it Crow Hill. It was this isolated little ... posted on Dec 1 2013 (22,008 reads)

by the premise that there's not enough of anything: not enough goods, not enough goodness — meaning that there are not enough material things, nor enough good qualities of human character. I love to quote the dear, now deceased, Hermann Scheer, the great German environmental leader, who reminded people that the sun provides us 15,000 times the daily dose of energy compared to what we're currently using in fossil fuel. Hit the limits of the Earth? No. Of human violation of nature’s rules? Yes! FC: That really relates to your early work about food. You said then that it's not the quantity of food that's not enough, but it's the distribution and unbal... posted on Jan 13 2014 (26,583 reads)

Brown: I could ask you as a parent and any other parent that's listening with a young child, you know, say a child over 3 but under 12. And if you just observe them and don't try and direct them and watch what it is they like to do in play, you often will see a key to their innate talents. And if those talents are given fairly free reign, then you see that there is a union between self and talent. And that this is nature's way of sort of saying this is who you are and what you are. And I'm sure if you go back and think about both of your children or yourself and go back to your earliest emotion-laden, visual, and visceral memories of what really gave you joy, you'l... posted on Jul 18 2014 (32,033 reads)