|
Click here to go to a
Printable version
of this page
|
Angel Alley. Designed and
painted by Lily Yeh; mosaics by James Maxton.
From the beginning of
time humans have been involved in a battle between the “Forces of
Light” and the “Forces of Darkness”. It is the primary human
struggle. Our common awareness of the battle is seen in the
popularity of film series’ like the Lord of the Rings and Harry
Potter and Star Wars.
In real life the “Dark
Forces” are not always so easy to identify – as in many a children’s
fairy tale where the wolf (or wicked witch) wears a disguise to
trick the hero or heroine. The disguises are often very effective
and many an intelligent, well-meaning but unwary soul is drawn into
a relationship with the “dark forces”. It comes disguised as the
pathway to happiness and fulfillment; if you could just dress in
this way or drive this kind of car or live in this kind of house or
make this much money, you would be happy, right? If you belong to
this ethnic group or are this gender or go to this church God will
favor you. If you honor this set of beliefs and worship God in this special way you will find peace
and gain a special place in Heaven. These kinds of ideas feed a
subtle belief that we and our needs come first - before the needs of
immigrants or animals or trees or the poor or the “general public”
or other countries or other – well – anything… And so we fear the “other” and
work to protect ourselves from “them” – with guns and
war and legislation. We need to get “them” before they get us.
It’s not that the nice
clothes or the great new car or the latest electronic wonder is evil
in disguise. It’s what we believe about these things – deep in our
hearts. It’s what we give up to get them. Did you take a job instead
of staying home with your kids because all your friends had great
cars and went on great vacations and sent their kids to prestigious
schools, and without the second income you couldn’t afford those
things? Do you work a high-pressure job you hate because it pays so
much better than the work you would really love to do – because it
would mean giving up the new SUV and the big house in the great
neighborhood? Are your kid’s lives so filled with tennis lessons and
dance lessons and soccer practice that they never have time to just
hang out with you? That is the subtlety of “evil” - that gentle
nudge
toward prestige and power and more material wealth. In order to
fulfill this “urge” there are things we must do and things we must
give up and our view of the world becomes ever so slightly skewed in
the direction of those things that will support and fulfill this
need for more. And so it goes.
There are many on this
planet who are enamored of the “American Dream”. Thousands strive to
come to America that they might live this dream themselves. But where is
it the American Dream is taking us? Citizens of the United States
consume six times more of the world’s resources than the rest of the
citizens of our planet. Our consumer demands negatively impact the
water, air, plants, animals and humans in every part of the globe.
It’s a challenge to think that the American Dream has become a tool
for the “Forces of Evil”. But look what the wonderful vision of all
our citizens having enough food and a good home and a secure
job has become over time. When did we go from striving to have
“enough” to becoming obsessed over having the biggest and the most?
When did we forget what the pursuit of happiness is all about?
Join us in an exploration of our quest for the good life…
"The
lines of cleavage have grown steadily until now they can be expressed in terms
of a humanity which is oriented towards the higher spiritual and altruistic
values and whose keynotes are sacrifice, group good and world understanding,
and those whose focus is predominantly material and whose aims are selfish,
animated by ambition and the spirit of acquisition." A.A.Bailey
|
l
|
 |
|
the good life
~ summer 2004 Yes! Magazine
http://www.yesmagazine.org
the secret to happiness
by David Myers
Watch
television, and you’ll learn that the good life is in a new
car, a cold beer, or a new drug. Look at surveys, and
Americans say they want more money. But look inside at what
actually gives you joy, and the good life may be closer than
you thought
What is the good
life? The old American Dream offers an answer: It’s
individually achieved affluence. It’s the indulgences promised
by magazine sweepstakes: a 40-foot yacht, a deluxe motor home,
a personal housekeeper. (“Whoever said money can’t buy
happiness isn’t spending it right,” proclaims a Lexus ad.) In
a phrase, it’s life, liberty, and the purchase of happiness.
Does money
indeed buy happiness? Few YES! readers would answer yes. But
ask another question—“Would a little more money make you a
little happier?—and many readers will sheepishly nod. There
is, we assume, a connection between fiscal fitness and feeling
fine, an assumption that feeds what Juliet Schor has called
the “cycle of work and spend”—working more to buy more.
According to one 1990s Gallup Poll, one in two women, two in
three men, and four in five people earning more than $75,000 a
year say they would like to be richer.
But we delude
ourselves. The good life springs less from earning one’s first
million than from loving and being loved, from developing the
traits that mark happy lives, from finding connection and
meaningful hope in faith communities, and from experiencing
“flow” in work and recreation.
Rising
materialism
Materialism
surged during the 1970s and 1980s, as evident in the annual
UCLA/American Council on Education (ACE) survey of nearly a
quarter million entering collegians. The proportion
considering it “very important or essential” that they become
“very well-off financially” skyrocketed from 40 to 74 percent,
flip-flopping with the shrinking numbers who considered it
very important or essential to “develop a meaningful
philosophy of life.” Materialism was up, spirituality down.
What a change in
values. In the recent UCLA/ACE surveys, “very well-off
financially” has been the top ranked of 19 rated goals,
outranking “becoming an authority in my own field,” “helping
others in difficulty,” and “raising a family.” And it’s not
just collegians. Asked by Roper pollsters to identify what
makes “the good life,” 38 percent of Americans in 1975 and 63
percent in 1996 chose “a lot of money.”
In Luxury Fever,
economist Robert Frank reports that, with more people having
more money to spend, late-1990s spending on luxury goods was
growing four times as fast as overall spending.
Thousand-dollar-a-night suites at the Palm Beach Four Seasons
Hotel were booked months ahead for weddings, as were
$5000-a-night suites at Aspen. The number of America’s
100-foot yachts doubled to 5,000 compared to a decade ago, and
each may cost more than $10,000 per hour of use. Cars costing
more than $30,000 (in 1996 dollars) increased during the 1990s
from 7 to 12 percent of vehicles sold.
Does such
unsustainable consumption enable the good life? Does being
well-off make for well-being? Would people—would you—be
happier if you could exchange a modest lifestyle for one with
a world-class home entertainment system, winter skiing from
your condo along the Aspen slopes, and being wined and dined
on executive class travel? Social psychology theory and
research offer some clear answers.
Are rich people
happier?
To a modest
extent, yes, rich people are happier. Especially in poor
countries, such as India, being relatively well-off does make
for greater well-being. We need food, rest, shelter, and some
sense of control over our lives.
But in affluent
countries, the link between wealth and self-reported
well-being is “surprisingly weak,” notes researcher Ronald
Inglehart. Once able to afford life’s necessities, more and
more money provides diminishing additional returns.
“People who go
to work in their overalls and on the bus are just as happy, on
the average, as those in suits who drive to work in their own
Mercedes,” observes David Lykken, summarizing his own studies
of happiness. Even the very rich—for example, the Forbes 100
wealthiest Americans in a 1980s survey by psychologist Ed
Diener and his colleagues—are only slightly happier than
average.
Over time, does
our happiness rise with our affluence? A recent windfall from
an inheritance, a surging economy, or a lottery win does
provide a temporary jolt of joy. But as soon as one adapts to
the new wealth, the euphoria subsides.
If personal
happiness does not enduringly rise with our rising personal
affluence, does a rising economic tide lift our collective
happiness? Are we happier than in 1957, when economist John
Galbraith was describing the United States as The Affluent
Society?
Continued here...
To read this
article at it's source...
http://www.yesmagazine.org/30goodlife/myers.htm
Hope College
social psychologist David Myers is author of The Pursuit of
Happiness (Avon) and The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in
an Age of Plenty (Yale).
http://www.yesmagazine.org/30goodlife/myers.htm
|
|
All of you want
to do well.
But if you do not do good, too,
then doing well will never be enough.
Anna
Quindlen's Villanova Commencement Address
It's a great
honor for me to be the third member of my family to receive an
honorary doctorate from this great university. It's an honor
to follow my great-Uncle Jim, who was a gifted physician, and
my Uncle Jack, who is a remarkable businessman. Both of them
could have told you something important about their
professions, about medicine or commerce. I have no specialized
field of interest or expertise, which puts me at a
disadvantage, talking to you today. I'm a novelist. My work is
human nature.
Real life is all
I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work.
The second is only part of the first. Don't ever forget what a
friend once wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator
decided not to run for reelection because he'd been diagnosed
with cancer: "No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had
spent more time in the office." Don't ever forget the words my
father sent me on a postcard last year: "If you win the rat
race, you're still a rat." Or what John Lennon wrote before he
was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota: "Life is what
happens while you are busy making other plans."
You walk out of
here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has.
There will be hundreds of people out there with your same
degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want
to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who
has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your
entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a
bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of
your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank
account, but your soul. People don't talk about the soul very
much anymore.
It's so much
easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume
is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or
broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results
and they're not so good.
Here is my resume. I am a good mother to three children. I
have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of
being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the center of
the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good
friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean
what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.
I am a good
friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there
would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a
cardboard cutout. But I call them on the phone, and I meet
them for lunch. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.
I would be
rotten, or at best mediocre at my job, if those other things
were not true. You cannot be really first rate at your work if
your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you
today: get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the
next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you
think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew
an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?
To read the
rest....
|
|
Kujenga Pamoja! Together
We Build!
“He who knows he
has enough is rich” (Lao Tzu)
The Garden
of Simplicity
with permission
from © Duane Elgin
Emerging
Lifestyles magazine, Spring 2003
Simplicity of
living is not a new idea. It has deep roots in history and finds
expression in all of the world’s wisdom traditions. More than
two thousand years ago, in the same historical period that
Christians were saying “Give me neither poverty nor wealth,”
(Proverbs 30:8), the Taoists were asserting “He who knows he has
enough is rich” (Lao Tzu), Plato and Aristotle were proclaiming
the importance of the “golden mean” of a path through life with
neither excess nor deficit, and the Buddhists were encouraging a
“middle way” between poverty and mindless accumulation. Clearly,
the simple life is not a new social invention. What is new are
the radically changing ecological, social, and psycho-spiritual
circumstances of the modern world.
The push toward
simpler ways of living was clearly described in 1992 when over
1,600 of the world’s senior scientists, including a majority of
the living Nobel laureates in the sciences, signed an
unprecedented “Warning to Humanity.” In this historic statement,
they declared that, “human beings and the natural world are on a
collision course . . . that may so alter the living world that
it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know.”
They concluded that: “A great change in our stewardship of the
earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to
be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be
irretrievably mutilated.”
Roughly a decade
later came a related warning from 100 Nobel Prize winners who
said that “The most profound danger to world peace in the coming
years will stem not from the irrational acts of states or
individuals but from the legitimate demands of the world’s
dispossessed.” As these two warnings by the world’s elder
scientists indicate, powerful adversity trends (such as global
climate change, the depletion of key resources such as water and
cheap oil, a burgeoning population, and a growing gap between
the rich and poor) are converging into a whole-systems crisis,
creating the possibility of an evolutionary crash within this
generation. If we are to create instead an evolutionary bounce
or leap forward, it will surely include a shift toward simpler,
more sustainable and satisfying ways of living.
Although the
pushes toward simpler ways of living are strong, the pulls
toward this way of life seem equally compelling. Most people are
not choosing to live more simply from a feeling of sacrifice;
rather, they are seeking deeper sources of satisfaction than are
being offered by a high stress, consumption-obsessed society. To
illustrate, while real incomes doubled in the U.S. in the past
generation, the percentage of the population reporting they are
very happy has remained unchanged (roughly 1/3) and, at the same
time, divorce rates have doubled and teen suicide rates have
tripled. A whole generation has tasted the fruits of an affluent
society and has discovered that money does not buy happiness. In
the search for satisfaction, millions of people are not only
“downshifting” or pulling back from the rat race, they are also
“upshifting” or moving ahead into a life that is, though
materially more modest, rich with family, friends, community,
creative work in the world, and a soulful connection with the
universe.
To read the
rest....
|
|
Lily Yeh - Angels |
|
Is This Progress?
by Kamla Chowdhry
The time has come to re-examine
our ideas of progress.
The thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi can
help.
Reprinted with permission from
Resurgence magazine.
www.resurgence.org
from Resurgence issue 200
IN THE LAST 200 years science and
technology have changed the face of the Earth. Armed by the Industrial
Revolution, European countries conquered continents, established colonial
empires, had access to raw materials and markets and used their power to control
much of the world.
Modern technology propelled by the
forces of the market and politics has enhanced the power of Western nations
beyond anything known or even dreamt of before. It is power over matter, over
life on Earth, and power over nations and millions of people. Its unfettered
exercise over two centuries has raised living standards of these Western nations
to unbelievable levels of consumption. As Hans Jonas points out, "Not even the
ravages of two world wars — themselves children of that overbrimming power —
could slow the upward surge for long; it even gained from the spin-off of the
hectic technological war effort in its aftermath. The decades after World War II
may well denote the high water mark of technologic economic ebullience."
 Today, faith in technology and
progress is unabated. The dark side of technology is ignored and pushed aside,
and more technology is generated to deal with the problems of earlier
technologies. We live in a world which has obsessive preoccupation with growth
and unlimited confidence in new technological developments to add to our
lifestyles.
But this growth and lifestyle are
by no means shared by all. Forbes magazine has estimated that 225 individuals,
the richest in the world, have a combined wealth of more than $1 trillion, a
figure that approaches the combined annual income of the poorest one half of
humanity. The assets of the three richest individuals exceed the combined annual
economic output of forty-eight poor countries!
Is this a measure of progress?
The Western economic model — the
fossil-fuel based, automobile-centred, throw-away economy — is the model that is
being promoted and eagerly copied by the "developing" countries. The result is
some economic growth, but the divide between the rich and the poor has become
larger, with cities where more than half the population live in unbelievable
slums. Also our economic and technological progress has been achieved by
disappearing forests, disappearing rivers and wetlands, disappearing cropland
for more and more cities, disappearing biodiversity, and disappearing fossil and
mineral wealth and increasing wastelands.
Should such happenings not jolt us
to re-examine our ideas of progress?
In India we have increased our gnp
by 5% to 6% or maybe 7%, but at the same time we have millions who go hungry and
are homeless. Is this progress? No society can truly be called civilized if it
has hunger and homelessness within its communities.
IN 1916 MAHATMA GANDHI gave a
lecture to students of Allahabad University and asked the question "Is economic
progress real progress?" In discussing the subject, Gandhi said, "I take it by
economic progress we mean material advancement without limit — and by real
progress we mean moral progress." The economists point out that there can be no
moral progress, unless there is economic progress, so that the poor can satisfy
their daily needs. Gandhi’s reply to this argument was that of course no one has
even suggested that grinding pauperism can lead to anything else than moral
degradation, that all human beings have a right to live decently and therefore
must find the means to feed, clothe and house themselves. But for this simple
performance, Gandhi adds, "we need no assistance from economics or their laws."
Gandhi, continuing his lecture,
made the point, "I venture to think the religious scriptures of the world are
far safer and sounder treatises on the laws of economics, than many of the
modern economic text-books." And he added, "I believe that Jesus was the
greatest economist of his time."
To read the rest....
Kamla Chowdhry is visiting
professor at Harvard Business School in the USA.
http://resurgence.gn.apc.org/issues/chowdhry200.htm
Together we build
Creating Peace and Beauty from the Rubble - Art
building communities
|
|
Are you a Cultural Creative?
by
Paul H. Ray, Ph.D.
and
Sherry Ruth Anderson,
Ph.D.
Are
you a Cultural Creative? This list can give you an idea. Choose the
statements that you agree with.
You
are likely to be a Cultural Creative if you...
1. ...love Nature
and are deeply concerned about its destruction
2. ...are strongly
aware of the problems of the whole planet (global warming, destruction of
rainforests, overpopulation, lack of ecological sustainability, exploitation
of people in poorer countries) and want to see more action on them, such as
limiting economic growth
3. ...would pay
more taxes or pay more for consumer goods if you could know the money would
go to clean up the environment and to stop global warming
4. ...place a
great deal of importance on developing and maintaining your relationships
5. ...place a lot
of value on helping other people and bringing out their unique gifts
6. ...do
volunteering for one or more good causes
7. ...care
intensely about both psychological and spiritual development
8. ...see
spirituality or religion as important in your life, but are concerned about
the role of the Religious Right in politics
9. ...want more
equality for women at work, and more women leaders in business and politics
10. ...are
concerned about violence and abuse of women and children around the world
11. ...want our
politics and government spending to put more emphasis on children's
education and well-being, on rebuilding our neighborhoods and communities,
and on creating an ecologically sustainable future
12. ...are
unhappy with both the Left and the Right in politics, and want a to find a
new way that is not in the mushy middle
13. ...tend to be
somewhat optimistic about our future, and distrust the cynical and
pessimistic view that is given by the media
14. ...want to be
involved in creating a new and better way of life in our country
15. ...are
concerned about what the big corporations are doing in the name of making
more profits: downsizing, creating environmental problems, and exploiting
poorer countries
16. ...have your
finances and spending under control, and are not concerned about
overspending
17. ...dislike
all the emphasis in modern culture on success and "making it," on getting
and spending, on wealth and luxury goods
18. ...like
people and places that are exotic and foreign, and like experiencing and
learning about other ways of life.
If you
agreed with 10 or more, you probably are a Cultural Creative.
To learn more about Cultural Creatives
go to:
http://www.culturalcreatives.org/
|
|
 |
|
Taking a Stand
There are those who stand for separateness and
materialism, for totalitarianism or for any imposed regime, and those who stand for the freedom of the human soul, for the
rights of the individual, for brotherhood and right human relations, and the
notion that there is one humanity and every individual is as valuable as a
human being as the next, that the ancient divisions of people into classes who
are worthy and those who are unworthy is a broken system
that leads ever deeper into uniformity and the elimination of differences, and
of the very things that make humanity humanity - freedom of choice and the freedom to
be. Tom Carney
|
|
|
A
regular feature...
Lily Yeh's Art of Transformation
By Phil Leggiere
Photo (above) by
Candace diCarlo
Before emerging
as one of America’s most innovative urban designers and, many
believe, social pioneers, Lily Yeh spent much of her
young adult life struggling uneasily in the interzone between
disparate cultural traditions and identities. Born 58 years
ago in pre-communist China, Yeh grew up in Taiwan as the
daughter of an army general. She was just out of her teens
when she was uprooted from the social, aesthetic and spiritual
world she’d known, emigrating to the United States in the
early 1960s to attend Penn’s Graduate School of Fine Arts.
At Penn, under
the tutelage of a faculty that included such luminaries as
professors Jim Van Dyck, Angelo Savelli and fine-arts director
Malcolm Campbell, Yeh experienced an intensive initiation into
the techniques, history and aesthetics of classical and
modernist Western art, a process she found both exhilarating
and “profoundly disorienting,” she says.
“I had started
painting when I was in junior high school, when my father, who
loved classic Chinese landscape painting, first took me to a
master’s house. The way we learned in China was by strictly
copying our masters and studying nature. Personal expression
was not encouraged,” she explains. “When I came to the States,
though, it was all free-style, abstract and geared toward
expressing personalities. In this urban world, no one knew or
cared about landscapes. I’d been catapulted across time. I
felt like a woman with bound feet, and I couldn’t walk.”
...............
To read the rest
of this article on how Lily Yeh transformed a community with her art
go to
http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0700/leggiere2.html
Ile-Ife Park. Design of the
park and mural by Lily Yeh. Mosaics by James "Big Man” Maxton.
| "What
followed over the next several years, as Yeh began to
base herself in the neighborhood, was the founding and
flowering of The Village of Arts and Humanities, an
effort unique in the annals of both contemporary art and
community activism." |
More on
Lily and her award from the Leadership for a Changing
World
organization
http://leadershipforchange.org/awardees/awardee.php3?ID=129
Hear
Lily Yeh speak on
"A
Way Toward Wholeness: How Art Mends Lives"
at the
Hope in Action
Conference
Oct 1-3, 2004
Boston
University, Boston Mass.
http://www.woodenboat.com/HopeinAction/index.html
Lily Yeh -Reconstructing the Environment
|
Go to our
Action page...
Click here
to go to a
Printable version
of this page
|
