Are Human Beings Asleep to What's Real?

Cultural and societal expectations...our race, religion, sexual orientation, age, gender, ethnicity, disability, language, socioeconomic status, intelligence, appearance, etc., all combine to create the unconscious bias that filters our reality. These filters mostly exist in our unconscious; therefore making it virtually impossible to employ objectivity. Nevertheless, by “thinking about our thinking” we can take steps to increase our understanding of our external reality, independently of the many perspectives we operate from.

Moreover, individual personality colors the way we perceive and interpret ourselves, others, and the world around us.  Peter O’Hanrahan, in an interviewon Gnostic Media with Jan Irvin, explains an organizing framework for a system of nine different personality types (way of seeing the world and relational style), whose origins date back to ancient times, called the Enneagram.  The first time an enneagram was published in  western culture occured in 1305 when a Franciscan friar who was trying to reach some common truths shared by all three religions used the 9-pointed diagram that is the enneagram to achieve this.

Fast forward to the early 20th century, and George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, a teacher and "seeker of truth" used the enneagram as a central part of his teaching. He believed our personality - the part of ourselves that has adapted to our social envirnment - covers up our inner essesence, and that human beings were asleep to what's real.  Inner development takes place when we  wake up, become self-aware, start thinking for ourselves, and ultimately, come out of our trance. And finally, he believed that in order to fully develop, human beings needed to integrate our three centers of intelligence: mental, emotional and body/instinct.

The Enneagram system of personality types is used by individuals and organizations around the world. Below are the 9 different personality types.

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Surviving Globalization,Transforming Self-Interest into Enlightened Self-Interest

Times Atlas:

Africa (30.3 million km) is larger than the combination of China (9.6 million km), US (9.4 million km), Western Europe (4.9 million km), India (3.2 million km) , Argentina (2.8 million km), 3 Scandinavian countries, British Isles.

I always thought a map is a map, but apparently maps can be misleading, as it is very difficult to map out the spherical earth on to a flat surface without distorting the reality. Therefore, assuming most maps are the creation of the Eurocentrist, it comes as no surprise that reality is distorted in favor of the land masses that house "Europeans" (white people) and scale Africa down to the size of the U.S. in some cases.

Why is this important?

Well, since a picture is worth a thousand words, and maps are essentially pictures, it's very important that maps allow us to perceive the relative size of countries and continents in order to get a sense of their comparative importance.

As our world continues to shrink, we can't afford to live as if we are the only ones on the planet. We must create a new belief system based on, at the very least, enlightened self-interest. We must recognize that we benefit most when we can couple our own interests with those of the people around the globe. In some way we, the people, must truly embody collective interests, rather than buying into the illusion that we do, in order to guarantee our future.

Africa is a "gold mine" of natural resources, however, the continent is deteriorating at an alarming rate. For hundreds of years, policy makers and "big business" from developed countries, all around the world, acting in the interest of their people, have and continue to neglect, ignore and rape the continent without much thought for anyone but themselves.

Perhaps if we readjust our "mental maps" to incorporate the sheer size of Africa and its inherent value, we will start to pay more attention to the continent and start to influence our policy makers to protect what some day could be our savior.

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Remembering "9/11" Past and Present Here and Around the World

Six years have passed since the most devastating terrorist attack in the history of the United States of America. Personally, I can't think of anything else that has impacted me more than that day, when it appeared the world had stopped revolving.

On a personal level, there is no doubt that my world stopped for a second as it did for most Americans, but the further we get from that day, the easier it is to gain perspective, while at the same time celebrating the lives of those that were taken from us on that brutal day. 3,000 deaths over the course of a couple hours is an event of enormous scale in US history, but of infinitesimal scale in world history and at present.

Just as we mourn one death amongst our family and/or friends profoundly, we mourn the victims of 9/11 in much the same way. But as the intensity of our grief starts to dissipate we must also reflect on the people around the world that are currently experiencing pain and suffering on the scale of 9/11 every day, especially those who we may be partially responsible for, whether through our outright support or complete ignorance of the situation causing so much death and destruction around the world.

Having said that, I still believe the good America does globally far outweigh any evil we may happen to contribute.

Some 9/11 Memorial sites:

September 11th Web Archive

September 11th Television Archive

September 11th Digital Archive

NPR Special Coverage of 9/11

9/11 Calls: Audio and Transcripts

Sonic Memorial

Special Collections (Federal Resources for Educational Excellence)

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