@ellwood
Active 2 months, 1 week agoForum Replies Created
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Films to advance the cause of Peace, Justice and Sustainability
I recently saw the film “Ocean with David Attenborough” (2025). It made me think we are literally “at war” with ALL life on Earth! (even in the depths of the oceans!) If you haven’t seen this film I highly recommend it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_with_David_Attenborough https://www.oceanfilm.net/home/ (Official Website; link works intermittently!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIZAdCtKT_g (Official Trailer)The film was shown as part of a program that organizes free lectures and films at the large IMAX theatre of the Boston Aquarium. It gave me the idea to try to make more such films available at non-commercial venues (e.g., Brian’s “Journey of the Universe”). If any of you have suggestions of really good films to add to my list (I’m particularly interested in films that focus on peace, justice or sustainability) I would really appreciate if you could post them here or in an email to me. Thanks! David
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Hi Francie, So sorry to hear about your challenges. I hope things are improving now? Unfortunately I’m not very active because my schedule is very full for the next couple of months, but I’m hanging onto the mindset and community developed in this course. (I’m also overwhelmed because my Mum is booked in for cataract surgery next week and I’m nervous for her–I was happy for them to operate on her “bad” eye, but yesterday they suggested to operate on her “good” eye instead..). Anyway, here is something about Cosmogenesis I was thinking about this week… Early in his book Brian talks about the “Music of the Spheres”. What strikes me about this — which I think is key to his program — is that “mathematics” (or more generally our use of “symbols”) provides a conduit between physics reality (i.e., a vibrating string etc in the case of Pythagoras, or Brian’s Powers more generally) and human experience/consciousness. After discussing with his wife, he grasps that its not the “bags of ideas” that transform us, i.e., not the mathematics/theory itself, but the way in which we experience those ideas. My grandmother had a different way of saying this; she taught me to “read, learn and inwardly digest”!! That last step goes beyond ordinary understanding (grammar and logic), its when learning becomes a lived experience. This is what I believe Brian wants us to take away from this course, and it’s the great work that lies before us if we are to find our way forward into the Ecozoic.
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After reading Stephan’s post above, I googled to see what IONS might stand for… I guess the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS)”?? Here is the website:
Apparently, the Institute conducts research on topics like the “survival of consciousness after bodily death.” That made me think of your idea/project John!
In 1994, TBS broadcast a three-part, six-hour documentary based on work at the Institute, entitled “The Heart of Healing” and narrated by actress Jane Seymour. I would be interested to watch these if anyone knows how to dig them up?? (Unfortunately the “dusty” room in the basement of Boston Public Library where I found Brian’s videos no-longer exists… all the old VHS cassettes were sold off for a dollar each after the library received a large donation to turn that room into a business library!)
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Thank you John for initiating this discussion. I also wanted to draw attention to a more general problem, the “ethical responsibility of scientists”. Sadly, ethics is a subject often overlooked in the education of today’s scientists. One of the founders of the Pugwash movement (Sir Jozef Rotblat), encouraged the young scientists he met to take the following (Hippocratic style) oath:
“I promise to work for a better world, where science and technology are used in socially responsible ways. I will not use my education for any purpose intended to harm human beings or the environment. Throughout my career, I will consider the ethical implications of my work before I take action. While the demands placed upon me may be great, I recognise that individual responsibility is the first step on the path to peace.”
Although motivation for environmental activism etc may not be contingent upon adherence to Cosmogenesis, I wish more scientists would learn about Cosmogenesis in the tradition of Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry. Once you awake to this point of view, it casts a whole new light on what it means to be human, and in particular, our ethical responsibilities (as scientists).
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Thanks John! Paddling the Grand Canyon sound wonderful!! Living a life that is “dense” in enjoyable experiences is something worth striving for however long we live:) I read the article you referenced and enjoyed it. However, I would like to add a little to the discussion. Although the article gives a nice overview of some current ideas about time… it may well be that current thinking is extremely naive and time is great mystery we have hardly begun to unravel! Indeed, some of the researchers cited in the article have a tendency to reify various ways a particular parameter used to keep track of “time” appears in theory and draw conclusions that are not very convincing… I’m inclined to believe time is not “illusionary”, but a very deep mystery which is well worth exploring… Let me provide a simple example. In the early 20th century, “radioactive decay” was understood (by Rutherford and Soddy) as a natural, statistically governed process in which one element transforms spontaneously into another — overturning once and for all the classical view of immutable atoms. This elementary (quantum) process is clearly time asymmetric. Time is not illusory to the Thorium atom undergoing decay! And a quantitative analysis yielded tremendous insights… Rutherford and Soddy discovered the Thorium samples they were studying produced a strange “vapour” that was chemically distinct (they called this “Thorium Emanation”). Moreover, when isolated, this “emanation” was more radioactive than the Thorium salts from which it emerged! The mystery of emanation became even stranger when they studied its evolution… whereas the activity of the Thorium salts appeared constant (due to the very long half-life), they found the activity of emanation decreased continuously with time, and the rate of decrease was directly proportional to the current intensity. They tried warming, cooling, diluting, etc, but could find no way to influence the rate at which the intensity diminished (let alone reverse the changes…). Furthermore, when they isolated freshly produced emanation, its activity diminished in exactly the same way as older emanation. Since we can take the intensity as a proxy for the amount of radioactive material present, Rutherford and Soddy concluded that the probability of an individual atom undergoing transmutation must be independent of its age… The radioactive atom may not be immortal, but it abides in an eternal present!
More formally, if N(t) is the number of un-decayed nuclei, the “activity” or “decay rate” (A = – dN/dt), i.e, the number of decays per unit time is a constant (\lambda) times the number of un-decayed atoms present at that time. The constant “lambda” is called the “decay constant”. It is the probability that an individual atom will decay, and is intrinsic to the radioactive substance under consideration. Now every physics student knows how to solve this differential equation (what is the function whose gradient is equal to itself?) Rutherford and Soddy had discovered the “exponential decay law”! And as I’ve tried to explain, the deeper meaning of this law is that time is both illusory and real for unstable nuclei!
Hope this helps to add to the wonder as well as the mystery of time,
Very best wishes,
David
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Dear John,
Thank you for starting this discussion and including a transcript of Brian’s response to your question. My personal thinking on this is that our understanding of death is closely related to our understanding (or lack thereof) of time. After all, agency is rooted in time. Time is the great mystery, and I think we all find ourselves much more concerned about the finite extent of our lives in “time” rather than in “space”. Perhaps God is “everything, everywhere, all at once”, but I don’t feel at a loss for not being “omnipresent”. That may limit my agency to fall within my future light-cone. God doesn’t have that limitation, but I can live happily with it. However, I feel a strong yearning to extend my lifespan and those that I love (and try my best to live a healthy life and avoid obvious risks!). Unfortunately, my current understanding of physics offers me little consolation in this respect… I may give the second law a good run for my money, but it doesn’t bode well for my future. And no matter how I measure it, my world line (as a connected living phenotype one could identify as “David”) would seem of finite temporal extent. Different observers may disagree on how long I live, since they may disagree on the rate of flow of time, but all agree that the region of spacetime I inhabit is bounded. Of course a time machine would change all that, but there are good reasons to believe that such devices will remain in the realm of science fiction. So to respond to the “allurement” I feel for agency beyond the grave, I think I must look beyond physics… The spiritual must somehow evade the second law! Perhaps that strong affinity I feel to transcend my own death is a calling for an emergent level of consciousness that transcends the physical universe. Perhaps the physical universe is calling upon us to realize such a state of consciousness for its own sake (should it be destined to suffer a heat death as our current understanding seems to suggest?).
Very best wishes,
David
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