24 July 2006
Dear Friends,
What follows deals successively with a recent film, and two not so recent books, related to the human predicament on planet Earth:
- An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore;
- Birth of the Chaordic Age by Dee Hock;
- The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann.
The three subsections were written as a single whole, which I hope combine into a composition of some import and interest.
An Inconvenient Truth
The other evening, at the urging of two different friends, and pushed along by the fact that the local cinema is now only a short bicycle ride from my current domicile, I went to see Al Gore's recent film An Inconvenient Truth. It's about the phenomenon of global warming; and yes, it is probably worth seeing, especially for those who may entertain lingering doubts or confusions about the phenomenon, whether or not it really is taking effect, and the possible or probable consequences for you and me, for humanity, and for life in general on Earth, if it is. Graphic charts, and comparative before / after images of many locations around the planet make abundantly clear that global warming is unambiguously in effect; is of global, not local or anecdotal scope; is due mostly to increased carbon emissions into Earth's atmosphere by humans, or in consequence of human activities; and is already wreaking shattering impacts upon human and nonhuman populations around the world. Global warming is not a respecter of persons or places, and the climactic trends that have been under scientific observation for decades are now in full progress, and may only be expected to accelerate, unless large numbers of people, particularly in America, make decisive changes to the ways we live upon the Earth.
As alarming as the composite environmental picture is for planet Earth, Mr. Gore's presentation holds out the possibility of solution to the problem of global warming. This is not a single "magic bullet" that can make the problem go away, but a combination of solutions, such as converting to bio-diesel, substituting hybrid automobiles for exclusively petroleum-driven ones, utilizing renewable energy resources, such as wind and solar, etc.; each of which can make a contribution to the overall reduction of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, with the possible combined effect of bringing emissions down to what they were during the 1970s.
It is heartening to learn that such an intractable problem as global warming is not, in Mr. Gore's opinion, beyond reach of a possible solution, or combination of solutions; and I think it good that Mr. Gore is making such an intensive effort to get the word out, and is alerting large numbers of people around the world to a critical problem that requires widespread attention. However, I must admit to significant disappointment in viewing this, as well as other presentations I have given my attention, which address only single facets of the many-dimensioned contemporary human predicament on planet Earth.
Within the first three minutes of the film it was evident that, whatever else this presentation was going to be about, it was certainly going to be about Albert Gore, who "used to be the next President of the United States." Throughout the film, we were treated to long sequences of Al Gore, dragging his luggage through the corridors of numberless airports; tight close-ups of Al Gore, looking pensively out the windows of automobiles and airplanes he was riding in, on his way to lecture presentations, or to various environmental trouble spots around the Earth; Al Gore, contemplating the disturbing statistics and graphs displayed on the screen of his laptop computer; black & white photo album stills, and sequences from what must have been 8mm home movies from Al Gore's childhood, grainily adapted to the wide-screen format of the commercial cinema, and backed up voice-over by Al Gore's rich baritone waxing philosophical about our planetary past and future. And of course, Al Gore, lecturing to various audiences, with the aid of his effective and informative (as far as they go) animated graphs and statistical summaries.
I suppose I was disappointed, though not surprised, by Mr. Gore's presentation, because it occurred to me that he might profitably have traded some of these minutes focused upon the person of Al Gore, for more illuminating footage aimed at fleshing out the context of the global problem he appears so passionate to bring to the world's attention.
Serious as it is, global warming is not, in my perception, the crux of the human predicament; and "solving" the problem of global warming, thoroughly, decisively, and permanently – although this is an outcome devoutly to be wished – will not, by itself, bring with it a corresponding "solution" to the incalculably more intractable, comprehensive, and multidimensional human predicament now threatening the lives of all residents of planet Earth. On the contrary, I cannot imagine a plausible scenario in which any one facet of the overall human predicament were "solved," in isolation from all the others.
The "inconvenient truth" about the human predicament, as I see it, is that we are not faced with the isolated and clearly delineated "problem" of, say, global warming "over here," and the additional, unrelated "problem" of, say, impending economic collapse "over there," and then again the additional, unrelated "problem" of nuclear proliferation, and / or terrorism, and / or over-population, and / or an emergent plague of biological pathogens, ...and so on, "somewhere else." The human predicament does not consist of a laundry list of "problems" which need to be individually addressed, and eventually crossed off the list as each one in turn is "solved." The human predicament can only be summed up, if at all, as a catastrophic failure of the entire resident human race to adapt to massive changes we have put in motion ourselves, through egregious misapprehension of the nature of the world we will soon no longer be inhabiting, unless we "wise up" as a global species. In my humble opinion.
Egregious misapprehension of the nature of the world? Now what on Earth does that mean? Our scientists and religious and secular leaders are quite confident – are they not? – that they have a thorough and competent grasp of "how the world works;" and what they understand they teach: in school, kindergarten to grad-school; in church, temple, and synagogue; and throughout all channels of the mass media. "Misapprehension of the nature of the world?" Preposterous.
No, it is not preposterous. It is real, it has real consequences, and it means that we humans (with perhaps some – perhaps even many – exceptions) do not understand the fundamental nature of the world, because we see, apprehend, and are thoroughly mesmerized by external appearances, and cultural programming, yet are clueless about the deep nature of the world and Cosmos of which we are a part. In an infinite universe, such ignorance is not altogether surprising for finite beings like ourselves, or for us to attempt to fill the vast voids beyond our finite scope with our many myths.1 These we can neither prove nor disprove in their infinite context, however, and we err egregiously when we presume that we can.
Human myths are neither "true" nor "false," for they occupy the vast domain of mystery not accessible to human examination. The defining feature of a myth lies not in whether it is "true" or "false," but that it can either be beneficial, or damaging, to those who hold it. The culture of contemporary human civilization is founded upon a complex of very damaging myths indeed, about "how the world works."
Our combined human efforts, based upon our self-destructive myths about "how the world works," produce, in spite of ourselves, with the best will in the world, and with flawlessly "good intentions" for one and all, only an escalating cascade of exponentially growing "problems," at the expense of a dwindling trickle of ineffectual "solutions." Our presumably well-intentioned, yet hopelessly bewildered "leaders" have been, are, and may be expected to continue campaigning for extension and expansion of the very policies and procedures that have produced the human predicament in the first place, in hopes of generating "solutions" for it before The End – which like objects in our rear-view mirror, may be nearer and larger than it appears.
These are matters I have addressed at length in my book, Metaconsciousness: Mythology for a Post-Civilized World; and have recently discovered they are also addressed in penetrating depth from a surprising quarter.
Birth of the Chaordic Age
Absent the prompting of a friend, a subscriber to this list who put into my hands a surprisingly illuminating book, I would never have imagined deep insights into the nature of the human predicament might emerge from the corridors of global high finance at the heart of the now ubiquitous credit card industry. The book is Birth of the Chaordic Age2 by Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus of VISA International, and a fellow who for the past 40 years has been puzzling over three compelling questions:
- Why are organizations, everywhere, whether political, commercial, or social, increasingly unable to manage their affairs?
- Why are individuals, everywhere, increasingly in conflict with and alienated from the organizations of which they are part?
- Why are society and the biosphere increasingly in disarray?3
My friend predicted the book will probably not be widely read, but may be disproportionately influential nevertheless. I read it once through, just to catch the drift of what Mr. Hock was attempting to convey; and then again, with deliberate care, and focused attention, to absorb some of its profounder meanings and implications. Fortunately, I enjoyed the advantage of having already written Metaconsciousness, so I was quickly able to recognize many parallels between Mr. Hock's work and mine – although we have developed different vocabularies to express complimentary thought streams.
Mr. Hock, for example, has coined the words chaord, and chaordic, which he defines as
chaord [kay´-ord], n., fr. E. chaos [GR. and L. chaos, n. formless, primordial matter; utter confusion; utterly without order or arrangement] and fr. E. order [ME. ordre, fr. OF. ordre, fr. L. ordo, ordinis, n. line, row, regular arrangement in accordance with rules]
1. any self-organizing, self-governing, adaptive, nonlinear, complex organism, organization, community or system, whether physical, biological or social, the behavior of which harmoniously blends characteristics of both chaos and order. 2. an entity whose behavior exhibits observable patterns and probabilities not governed or explained by the rules that govern or explain its constituent parts.
chaordic [kay´-ordic], adj., fr. E. chaos and order.
1. the behavior of any self-governing organism, organization or system which harmoniously blends characteristics of order and chaos. 2. patterned in a way dominated by neither chaos or order. 3. characteristic of the fundamental organizing principles of evolution and nature.4
In parallel, I have coined the word metaconsciousness, which I define, in part, as
the overarching phenomenon which is, or can be, analogous to, yet less or greater than, what we humans experience as consciousness, intelligence, and creativity. It exhibits itself in complex information-sharing systems of all kinds, and at all scales, under conditions of sufficient richness, diversity, variety, complexity, and liberty, as a capacity for learning from experience, or its functional equivalent. That is why I spoke above of "the metaconscious pressures of natural selection." This is one way of describing what natural selection is: a mechanism whereby entire biological species "learn from experience" what works, and what does not work in the endlessly evolving process of biological evolution. In its totality, metaconsciousness bears a relationship to human consciousness, intelligence, and creativity that the entire electromagnetic spectrum bears to the narrow band of visible light.5
Where I have identified the conditions of richness, diversity, variety, complexity, and liberty as essential for the function and expansion of metaconsciousness, Mr. Hock has focused his attention upon the Capacity to Receive, Utilize, Store, Transform, and Transmit Information.6
If one is to examine early examples of single-celled life [Hock writes], it is apparent they possess the capacity to receive, store, utilize, transform, and transmit information. In fact, this capacity precedes even such simple life forms, for it is the very essence of DNA. It even precedes DNA, for when physicists attempt to examine the smallest known particles, the particles change their behavior. And when they do, the physicists change their behavior in response. Particle and physicist find themselves in a fascinating, quantum, cosmic dance. Clearly each is perceiving a "difference that makes a difference." They are exchanging information.7
Expressed in the vocabulary I have developed, it is clear Mr. Hock is talking about the metaconsciousness everywhere present at all scales and dimensions in Cosmos.
In ways we don't begin to understand [Hock continues], information escapes particles, transcends them, and binds them together into more complex systems in which all particles constantly exchange information. It seems a principle of evolution, perhaps the fundamental principle, that the greater the capacity to receive, store, utilize, transform, and transmit information, the more diverse and complex the entity. It holds true from neutrino, to nucleus, to atom, to amino acids, to proteins, to molecules, to cells, to organs, to organisms. From bacteria, to bees, to bats, to birds, to buffalo, right on through to baseball players.8
It must be universally satisfying to see one's insights corroborated and complimented by others, who have reached their conclusions via entirely independent lines of inquiry. It certainly gives me a warm and embracing sense of confirmation, which is indescribably precious.
A bit further on, Mr. Hock explores the nuances of distinction among the terms, noise, data, information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, which give symbolic labels to a spectrum that stretches between the least refined and most abundant form of metaconsciousness, to the most refined and scarce, in human evolutionary experience.
Noise, in its broadest sense [Hock writes], is any undifferentiated thing which assaults the senses. It is pervasive and ubiquitous, whether auditory, visual, or textural. The supply of noise is infinite. Noise becomes data when it transcends the purely sensual and has cognitive pattern; when it can be discerned and differentiated by the mind. Data, in turn, becomes information when it is assembled into a coherent whole which can be related to other information in a way that adds meaning. Information becomes knowledge when it is integrated with other information in a form useful for deciding, acting, or composing new knowledge. Knowledge becomes understanding when related to other knowledge in a manner useful in conceiving, anticipating, evaluating, and judging. Understanding becomes wisdom when informed by purpose, ethics, principle, memory of the past, and projection into the future.9
The essence of the human predicament, as illuminated by Mr. Hock's insights, has much more to do with the quality of human metaconsciousness than with any of the innumerable "problems" (global warming, for instance) competing for attention among a beleaguered human population stressed almost to the breaking point.
We are now at a point in time [Hock writes] when the ability to receive, utilize, store, transform, and transmit data – the lowest cognitive form – has expanded literally beyond comprehension. Understanding and wisdom are largely forgotten as we struggle under the avalanche of data and information. In the ever accelerating assault of data and information on cognitive capacity, understanding and wisdom may be declining in absolute as well as relative terms.10
The ratio of "signal" to "noise," in other words, is dropping precipitously among the human residents of planet Earth. Our global capacity to receive, utilize, store, transform, and transmit understanding and wisdom is being flooded out by the tidal wave released by our explosive capacity to receive, utilize, store, transform, and transmit noise, data, and information. Here, we are circling close to the cause, or a fundamental causal principle, as distinguished from the effects (such as global warming, etc.) of the human predicament. Although this lopsided and damaging "signal to noise ratio" of the contemporary human metaconsciousness has recently taken an exponential turn for the worse, its development has long roots and antecedents that stretch back to the dawn of what we call "civilization." Yet it has not always been so.11
Native societies [Hock writes] which endured for centuries with little increase in the capacity to receive, store, utilize, transform, and transmit information had time to develop a very high ratio of understanding and wisdom to data and information. They may not have known a great deal by today's standards, but they understood a very great deal about what they knew. They were enormously wise in relation to the extent to which they were informed, and their information was conditioned by an extremely high ratio of social, economic, and spiritual value.12
So it has been in the past; so it must be in the future, if any of us are to get out of this thing alive, and have an opportunity to try once again to create a viable, sustainable human social system upon the Earth.
In contrast [Hock continues], our society understands very little about what it knows. It has ever less wisdom in relation to the information it commands. The immensity of data and information that assaults our cognitive capacity is also conditioned by a very small ratio of social, economic, and spiritual value. The result is vast technological power unleashed with inadequate understanding of its systemic propensity for destruction, or sufficient wisdom to guide its evolution in holistic, creative, constructive ways.13
If this doesn't capture the causal essence of the human predicament, it comes mighty close. In prior eras of the Dark Age (meaning the past five thousand years of so-called "civilization"), those whose agenda was conquest and enslavement of their fellows, and plunder of the Earth, had to go to extraordinary lengths in order to short-circuit their conquests' metaconscious capacity to receive, utilize, store, transform, and transmit information. This they accomplished mainly by means of religion, education, and protracted wars of extermination, far and near. By diverse and various means, the ecclesiastical and political hierarchies were ever vigilant to capture and retain control of the flow of information throughout their domains. Accused witches and heretics were burned at the stake; books, scrolls, and manuscripts were systematically destroyed; indigenous tribes were exterminated; and far-reaching Inquisitions kept widespread populations in terror of what they thought, and spoke, and believed. In Medieval Europe, this control had become virtually absolute – when the invention of movable type intervened, an almost universally illiterate population suddenly learned to read and write, and the hierarchical information monopoly was broken. Although it struggled manfully to hang on, the omnipresent Church thereby lost its grip on absolute tyranny; new life was breathed into the collective metaconsciousness, and Medieval Europe blossomed into the Renaissance.
Today, the careful concealment of compromising, revelatory information no longer seems necessary. Where the bodies are buried can now be freely admitted into the corpus of "public information" – and simply overwhelmed by a tidal wave of noise, data, and irrelevant information that effortlessly renders the damning evidence of little or no consequence. Even if a particularly compromising item makes it into the headlines, those it compromises can rest assured that in most cases, within a day, or a week, or a month, whatever it was will be swept downstream by an endless flood of incoming data and irrelevant information, and lost in a sea of meaningless noise. Countless people have televisions in several rooms, turned on virtually every waking hour they occupy their homes; car radios turned on while they travel from place to place; speakers and video screens in their work spaces, supermarkets, banks, everywhere they go. The stream of noise, data, and information is endless and uninterrupted, from dawn until late at night, every day of every year. Is it any wonder then, that understanding and wisdom, the most refined and rare forms of metaconsciousness, are literally swept away on an endless tide of omnipresent noise and data; and that we live in a world mortally threatened by "vast technological power unleashed with inadequate understanding of its systemic propensity for destruction, or sufficient wisdom to guide its evolution in holistic, creative, constructive ways?"
Case in point: in one of many appearances included in his film, Al Gore introduced himself by saying something like, "Hi, my name is Al Gore, and I used to be the next President of the United States." When his audience laughed, he soberly remarked, "I don't think that's very funny." Or words to that effect. No, it isn't very funny, and the notorious irregularities of the 2000 Presidential Election have been commented upon in various swirls and eddies of the onrushing data stream. Never mind though, they may as well have been whispered "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away," for all the impact they have had upon the American metaconsciousness.
More recently, an in-depth exposé of the 2004 Election was published in Rolling Stone magazine,14 providing detailed, exhaustively documented evidence of widespread election fraud, vote tampering, and blatantly obstructive practices which combined to give the appearance of victory to George Bush over John Kerry – in spite of overwhelming exit polls predicting the opposite. But the data torrent rushes on, and the article may as well have been published on the far side of the Moon, for all the notice it has received in America.
Let us not become sidetracked, however, by yet another of the many "problems" (global warming, fraudulent elections, etc.) that are mere symptoms, not causes of the human predicament.
The true strength of rulers and empires lies not in armies and navies, but in the belief of men that they are inflexibly open and truthful and legal. As soon as government departs from that standard, it ceases to be anything more than "the gang in possession," and its days are numbered.
—H.G. Wells15
One way or another, the days are surely numbered of "the gang in possession" – and maybe of most of the rest of us along with them; for the human predicament cannot be prolonged forever. Either we human residents of planet Earth gain for ourselves in time the widespread knowledge, understanding and wisdom about "how the world works", or it will cease altogether working for us, and we will be swept into the same extinction we have already engineered for so many of our co-residents on this planet. If that sounds like an unpalatably pessimistic appraisal of our situation, I'm sorry. If it is accurate, I see no advantage in attempting to sugar-coat it.
So how do we go about it? How do we boost the ratio of knowledge, understanding and wisdom to noise, data, and information in the cascading flood we have set loose?
The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight
While in the midst of composing this essay I encountered for the first time another book,16 which rather took my breath away.
During the years I have spent committing my thoughts to writing, and sharing them on the Net with any who might take an interest in them, I have often had the sensation of being a quite isolated voice, howling in the wilderness. For although I have found resonance with various aspects of many books, analyses, and commentaries that have come to my attention, I have seldom encountered works which seemed to me to be saying quite what I was groping to articulate, and even formulate on the fly within the recesses of my own mind. I concluded from this that, whether my mutterings contained any sense, or only nonsense, clearly if I do not write them down, nobody else will, and whatever value they may have, if any, will then have no possibility of being shared. So, I have written them down, and continue to do so, with little concern as to whether they may ever be appreciated by anybody else. If my "insights," or "ravings," have any validity, I assume someone, somewhere, sometime will stumble across them, and extract from them whatever of value they may contain.
Meanwhile, I have stumbled across the work of Thom Hartmann, and found in his book, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, astonishing corroboration for virtually every thought I have endeavored to articulate in Metaconsciousness: Mythology for a Post-Civilized World, and its antecedents. I have the startling sensation that "I might have written Mr. Hartmann's book myself" – except that he has done it far more ably than I ever could, and has articulated insights that I may also have come to, sooner or later, that had not yet occurred to me (such as the insight that the most insidiously intoxicating and addictive "drug" ever developed is television, and that virtually the entire population of America is addicted to it17). Discovery of Mr. Hartmann's book has been an invigorating and encouraging experience; for unlike myself, he has garnered widespread and exuberant praise in influential circles for his insights – which sheds reflected affirmation upon mine, and confirms that my "voice in the wilderness" may not be hooting total nonsense after all.
Mr. Hartmann's point of departure is the matter of Peak Oil.18 The petroleum and other fossil fuels which today energize the exponential growth of "civilization" constitute the Ancient Sunlight, The Last Hours of which we are feverishly consuming at the present moment.
Of particular interest to me is the final Part III of Mr. Hartmann's book, What Can We Do About It? – because this is the point where I often find myself running short on palatable ideas. When I review the entire scope of the human predicament, and get a clear and concrete sense of how awesomely alarming and immediate it is, and how improbable it seems to be that very many of us at all will live to see the end of it, even though that end may be only a few years ahead, I find myself hard pressed at times to maintain my habitual optimism and joi de vivre. Or else my "optimism" may turn out looking to others as indistinguishable from bleak pessimism.
In general, I figure that some of us will probably survive whatever's coming down the pike in the next, say, ten to fifty years; and that those that do will pick up whatever remains of their lives on poor, battered Mother Earth, and commence creating human social systems that are consciously and deliberately not patterned after the, by then, extinct and universally discredited dominator civilization. If so, I figure life for the survivors, and particularly for their descendants, might be pretty good; happy; free; and filled with interest, challenge, and diversity. The global destruction wrought by so-called "civilization" will have come to an end, the wounds will heal, life will return to the planet, the biological niches left vacant by recently exterminated species will gradually be filled by new ones; and the human race will continue to evolve, and explore undreamed frontiers in the endless spiral of becoming. Perhaps the children of some of our children's children will be among those future explorers. Is that an "optimistic," or a "pessimistic" view?
Alternatively, in my brighter moments, I have the sense that the vital changes necessary for us to evolve out of our predicament and into a much more congenial and satisfactory future are taking place, right now, everywhere, quietly, invisibly, in the hearts, minds, and spirits of countless individuals in all walks of life, in all parts of the world; and that the transition out of our global nightmare may take place as effortlessly as waking up from a bad dream on a gloriously sunny morning; or as naturally as the birth of a brand new infant, after gestation, and the trauma of being expelled from an overcrowded womb. I can feel profound and spontaneous changes taking place within myself over the past couple of decades, and am thereby led intuitively to assume that similar, or comparable changes must be just as quietly, just as profoundly, transforming the lives of those around me. Encountering writers like Dee Hock, Thom Hartmann, and many others, tend to strengthen this intuitive sensation.
Mr. Hartmann corroborates this latter speculation by citing findings in quantum physics which strongly imply that what we call "reality" may be a manifestation of the dynamic fluid interchange among quantum fields and fields of consciousness; or what Rupert Sheldrake calls morphic fields, and I call metaconsciousness. In this view, we are creating the "reality" we experience, every moment of every day, by the very thoughts and emotions we project into the universe. As we grow and mature, reflected in the flux of our thoughts and emotions, the "reality" we experience changes too, and reflects back to us the quality of our internal content.19 The net result may take shape as a seemingly – or literally – miraculous transition to an entirely different "reality," at least for those who are able to "boost the ratio of knowledge, understanding and wisdom to noise, data, and information" in the content of our thoughts and emotions, from moment to moment, and day to day.
In Part III, Mr. Hartmann suggests numerous ways this, and complementary changes, might be achieved in the individual lives of those who deliberately undertake to bring them about; and he emphatically confirms my conviction that in order to change our world – our "reality" – we must surely change our stories – our myths – about "how the world works," and our proper place in it. This too seems to be a work in progress, in me, and in others that I am drawn to, and resonate with.
In any event, I have to agree with Dee Hock when he writes,
It is written with deep conviction that it is far too late and things are far too bad for pessimism. In times such as these, it is no failure to fall short of realizing all that we might dream – the failure is to fall short of dreaming all that we might realize.
We must try.20
In "conclusion," (for the time being) I highly recommend Thom Hartmann's book, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, if you have not already read it – or even if you have. And if you have already read it, why didn't somebody bring it to my attention sooner?! I also highly recommend Dee Hock's book, Birth of the Chaordic Age. Both bring deep insights to bear upon the human predicament. As to Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth.... The inconvenient truth is that I'm a bit ambivalent about it. I'd say it seems to fall more toward the noise or data end of the information spectrum, than toward the understanding or wisdom end.
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1. See Grahn, 2005, 2006, II.4. The Myths of Infinity and Hierarchy
2. Dee Hock, Birth of the Chaordic Age, Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, California, 1999.
3. Hock, 1999, p. 28.
4. Ibid., front flyleaf, sic (I would have given chaordic the syllabification, kay-ord´-ic); also, pp. 29-30.
5. Grahn, 2005, 2006, What I Mean by Metaconsciousness, in the Prologue.
6. Hock, 1999, p. 208.
7. Loc. cit. Compare Grahn, 2005, 2006, I.1. Genesis and Evolution of Metaconsciousness; I.3. Metaconsciousness Among the Microbes; and I.4. Metaconsciousness Among the Quantum Fields, and Metaconsciousness in section II.5.
8. Hock, 1999, p. 209, emphasis in original.
9. Ibid., p. 223.
10. Ibid., p. 224.
11. See Grahn, 2005, 2006, Dominator and Partnership Civilizations in section I.11.
12. Hock, 1999, p. 225, emphasis in original.
13. Loc. cit.
14. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?," Rolling Stone, Issue 1002, June 15, 2006, p. 46, ff.
15. Quoted in Hock, 1999, p. 269.
16. Thom Hartmann, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Waking Up to Personal and Global Transformation, Harmony Books, New York, 1998, 1999.
17. Hartmann, 1998, 1999, pp. 106-9.
18. Also discussed in Grahn, 2005, 2006, I.12. The Future of the Future.
19. Hartmann, 1998, 1999, pp. 207-12.
20. Hock, 1999, p. 3.
