What is Mother Telling us about Population Growth?

"As a woman leader, I thought I brought a different kind of leadership. I was interested in women's issues, in bringing down the population growth rate... as a woman, I entered politics with an additional dimension - that of a mother."
~ Benazir Bhutto 
Source: brainyquote.com: BrainyQuote: Population Growth Quotes

Image Collage by GenesisEcoFund.org: What is Mother Telling us about Population Growth? 

Image Source: motherthefilm.com: Mother Caring for 7 Billion, An Award-Winning Film

As a tribute to Earth Day, the film “Mother: Caring for 7 Billion” is free to watch for the month of April! This means you have just a little over a week to watch the full-length version of this award-winning documentary about global population growth online. Here’s the trailer:

Video: Mother Caring for 7 Billion Trailer

Source: YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPc9BdWVl5s

If that trailer is not explanation enough, here’s what the filmmakers have to say:

“Mother, the film, breaks a 40-year taboo by bringing to light an issue that silently fuels our most pressing environmental, humanitarian and social crises - population growth.”

~ Motherthefilm.com

And there it is in a nutshell: there are simply too many of us. No ecosystem can support an imbalance for too long. No ecological framework—even as immense, complex and diverse as this planet—is immune to the consequences of having too many of one particular species.

Even if that species were really conscientious about living in balance and harmony with the rest of the planet (which we are not), there is no getting around the sheer mathematics. What’s worse, the mathematics are not working in our favour—nor the favour of the planet.

The film does a splendid job of illustrating the various issues and challenges around population growth, including the perceived negative economic impacts of negative population growth. In other words, despite the fact that population growth has turned negative in some industrialized countries around the world, there are powerful forces aligned in favour of continued population expansion…be it religious dogma and cultural traditions to economic dogma and the belief in perpetual growth.

This is ludicrous. Utter madness. A complete lack of awareness, comprehension and appreciation for the nature of…well…NATURE!

But let’s not go there just yet. It is all too easy for economists, businesspeople, and scientists who busy themselves with high-tech, biotech, etc. to dismiss arguments about what is or is not ‘natural’ by chanting the universally accepted mantras of ‘efficiency’ and ‘innovation.’ So here’s Richard Heinberg, journalist, educator and expert on energy, economic and ecological issues to put the slow drone of consensus materialist intellectual dogma to rest…

Video: The Law of Diminishing Returns

Source: YouTube https://youtu.be/q3meq7br1rE

In the simplest terms, then, what this law tells those believing in unlimited growth is what natural law tells ALL creatures, communities, civilizations, ecosystems, planets, stars, solar systems, even galaxies:

“Nothing lives forever; nothing grows forever…diminishment, decay and DEATH is inevitable. Sure, renewal is possible and very real. But renewal, the great circle of life, cannot advance without periodic death and destruction.”

~ Mother Nature

Only the ego believes it can cheat death. And it is clear that ego is behind all those ‘grand religions, traditions and economic dogmas’ which encourage ongoing population growth.

Consider an Ecosystem for your Family…

A selfish child throws a tantrum when he can’t get the latest video game console, or a dog, or a little brother to play with. Hypnotized by desire, the child is completely oblivious to the fact his father is unemployed and his mother is working two jobs just trying to make ends meet, while the family slips deeper into debt.

Having a connectedness with our family gives us the awareness of what our household—our parents and/or siblings—can bear. We develop empathy and compassion and seek ways to alleviate the suffering of those around us. The result is we become net contributors in a positive way. We become creators; problem solvers; true innovators…inspired…as opposed to being simply consumers; inventors of new gadgets and/or schemes for consumption.

Having an ecosystem in our life—in our home, office, boardroom, school, church, etc—helps us to reconnect with our bigger family—our GREATER MOTHER and our brothers and sisters around the globe.

Connecting to the ecosystem connects us to the wisdom and inspiration which resides at the very heart of nature; we become in-tune with what works and what doesn’t; and in no uncertain terms, what’s right and what isn’t. This isn’t an intellectual knowledge, it’s an experiential knowledge. It’s an intuitive kind of knowing: something that you feel in your gut, heart and bones. And it’s the kind of knowledge which informs us, in an individual basis, what we can do to help our Mother care for the other 6.999… billion on this planet.

The full-length version of Mother: Caring for 7 Billion will be available to watch for free on YouTube for the remainder of April, 2015. Click HERE to watch Mother show you what you need to know about population growth:

Image: Screenshot of Mother: Caring for 7 Billion

Source: YouTube https://youtu.be/fetnSYasbjA

War of the Wolves B.C. Should look to Yellowstone Case before Wolf Cull

Video: Wolf cull in B.C. | A War on the Wolf   
Source: CBCNews http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/ID/2653349257/

“Nature needs no help, just no interference.”
~ BJ Palmer
Source: greatest-inspirational-quotes.com: The Greatest Inspirational Quotes Nature

Today we look at a contentious issue again, one which rattles people on both sides of the argument: human interference or non-interference with nature?

Should human beings overtly get in the way of natural processes, systems—ecosystems—extinctions, even? It is a contentious and emotional issue. After all, as people we tend to get pretty attached to one of two deciding factors in the argument:

1. Nature First:be it a moral position of superiority over human judgment; or, an ethical statement on the rights of animals and plants to exist free from suffering. 


2. Humans First:be it our position of moral superiority (being “conscious,” the most “evolved” of all animals, and/or divinely assigned the role of guardian and custodian of the planet and all life on it; or, a pragmatic secular statement on humanity’s rights to exploit nature however and whenever it deems necessary; that this, too, is survival of the fittest.

These two positions are not mutually exclusive.  In the case of the proposed B.C. wolf cull discussed in the video which opened today’s article, advocates of the cull are claiming good ecological stewardship, claiming they have the best interests of the “endangered” caribou at heart—a “beloved Canadian symbol.”

We can’t help but wonder if those considering this cull have looked into the Yellowstone case for what the large-scale impacts that top-level predators have on ecosystems.

Video: The importance of predators, the Yellowstone case 

Source: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAGEXDlUHDE

We wish to try and be somewhat balanced in sharing this information; so for the sake of balance, we should point out that even the Yellowstone “success story” has its detractors. One man’s success is another man’s disaster. This should come as no surprise.

Video: Crying Wolf: Exposing the Wolf Reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park – Preview 

Source: YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHRWIrbrlHI

Good or bad, right or wrong, for better or for worse, one cannot debate that the re-introduction of wolves to Yellowstone was a human intervention…albeit reversing previous human interference which included culling wolves and/or driving them from Yellowstone in the first place.

The point is, human beings have an ongoing and unquestionable knack for intervening in nature which leads to highly disruptive if not all out disastrous results.  The planet even has a continent which more than any other has served as a massive experiment in species introduction, relocation, and interference…Australia.

Video: Human interference with nature - it doesn't work! - BBC wildlife 

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMG9CzArGBE

So where do we end up? Species introduction bad? Species reintroduction good? In the final analysis, these questions of good or bad, right or wrong have no place in the discourse of nature. We should, by now, know all too well that nature does not share humanity’s ideas of morality, nor does it function on a purely binary code of conduct.

At times life appears sacred to nature, and we see it nurturing and fighting to protect life at all costs from all threats. At other times, nature appears callous and uncaring, partaking in wholesale destruction of entire species.

Nature is mysterious that way, and the thinking human doesn’t like mysteries…the thinking human likes to be in control. We like to think we have the answers, and want to believe we know what we’re doing. Humanity like to think ourselves masters of the universe, whether we are scientists manipulating genes in test tubes, or spiritual gurus professing ourselves to be one with the Source of the Universe.

The problem is precisely our point of view…not which point of view we have, but the fact that we have one at all. It’s the very notion of imposing what we think—from our subjective perspective—needs to be done on what operates on a fundamentally objective paradigm.

Say what you will about nature, it at times appears fair and other times unfair…but what it is not is biased. Nature is what it is. And truthfully, it’s only from this level of consciousness that anyone can hope to approach any problem in nature and hope to get it right.

Intervention? Non-intervention? Who knows? Here’s what we do know: you’re never going to think it through…like so many of our experiences of nature, you have to feel it, but not subjectively in the mind (“poor caribou, poor moose, poor wolves”), but objectively: what is most beautiful.

You can fill countless textbooks on the ecological effects of this or that; using statistics, satellite imagery, head-counts of fauna, and every conceivable metric to stimulate the mind in an attempt to convince it of what is right or wrong. But to know what’s most beautiful you only need your imagination...

Australia overrun with foreign invaders? Yellowstone returned to her former glory? Unknown consequences to B.C. ecosystem?

Just feel it. What feels right?

World Wetlands Day 2015: Wetlands for Our Future

Image: WLE Postcard (back/front) highlights ecosystem services provided by Southeast Asian wetlands
Source: http://wle.cgiar.org/blog/2015/02/02/wetland-ecosystem-services/  
February 2nd 1971, the Convention of Wetlands was adopted and began the annual tradition of celebrating World Wetlands Day.

This year, the International Water Management Institute, or IWMI, has marked the occasion with the theme, Wetlands for Our Future, a photo contest, and communication materials available for download.  

In addition, they have produced the following infographic which highlights how broad-reaching the impacts of wetlands are on all of us.

Image: IWMI Infographic “Wetlands at Work” Source: http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/Publications/infographics/infographic-wetlands-at-work.pdf

What is particularly telling is the foundational impact of wetlands on ecosystems.

The Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) and International Water Management Institute are a part of CGIAR—A Global Agricultural Research Partnership.

CGIAR research partnerships focus on reduction of rural poverty, improvement in food security, nutrition and health, and sustainability in managing natural resources.

What International Wetlands Day signifies is the recognition that ecosystems are the backbone of sustainable agriculture, and that ecosystems themselves have a foundation—wetlands…water.

More than anything else, wetlands produce living water. This ionized energy-rich flow is capable of supporting massive plant and animal populations, in addition to providing naturally filtered water for human consumption, so long as it is an agricultural ecosystem.

What wetlands cannot support (what no living system can support) is industrial agriculture model built on a paradigm of exploitation.

Any attempt to use wetlands as a “silver bullet” to support inherently unsustainable western-style industrialized agriculture is doomed to fail. Trying to bring increased productivity and efficiency to the rural poor using an anti-ecosystem model, supported by what can only support ecosystems, is folly.

That said, opportunities do exist to uncover and embrace nature’s modus operandi, thereby producing everything required by local populations in environmentally responsible and sustainable ways. In other words, to comprehend how wetlands and other ecosystems interact, and use that comprehension to enable those systems to flourish naturally. 

Any exploitative model, however ingenious it may seem, will be in a constant state of conflict with the underlying natural world which seeks harmony and symbiosis. An ecosystem approach, built on harmony and symbiosis, will be met by nature as an ally, and will be supported by nature to succeed.

It’s an infinitely complex process summed up by a very simple fact. All research in this area should be focused on restoring humanity’s harmony and symbiotic relationship with the ecosystem—wetlands included. How can we contribute and support ecosystem (as oppose to “exploit and manage” resources).

Can Plants Think, Talk, Read your Mind? Evidence for Plant Consciousness Mounts

Image: Still Frame from “Little Shop of Horrors” 

Source: dishesandhoes.com: Dishes and Hoes: An Urban Garden and Whole Food Blog: Getting Schooled by Solomon

“I just come and talk to the plants, really – very important to talk to them. They respond.”

~ Prince Charles

Source: dailymail.co.uk: Daily Mail Online: Prince Charles has revealed he now 'instructs' his plants

The Prince of Wales took some flak from his critics for that comment back in 1986. When asked again recently if he still spoke to planets, joked in a self-deprecating way, “No, now I instruct them instead.”   

But how strange, really, is the notion that plants are sentient beings capable of awareness and interaction which is more akin to its higher-order cousins (animals and humans)?

There is mounting evidence that plants have such capacities—albeit in rudimentary forms. We won’t spend time recounting the same info, we’ll give you links and you can read it for yourself.

From The Economist article on the question to The Epoch Times blog(s) on the subject, and many other sources online in between, a growing debate on the question of plant sentience among “serious” scientists is reason enough to stand up and take notice. 

The challenge materialist scientists face is not so much proving or disproving the phenomenon exists; but rather, explaining how/why it should exist. Materialist science has this challenge precisely due to its own limits: materialism.

The fact that plants have no brain or central nervous system puts “serious scientists” into a bit of a quandary. Yes, they can come up with alternative theories, chemical processes and point to alternative bio-electrical pathways in plants. But that’s precisely the point: they assume that the brain and central nervous system (or corollary bio-chemical-electric network in plants) is the origin of consciousness.

Pardon the analogy, but this is like saying the Internet produces what it outputs.

A reasonable person observing only the Internet in isolation—that is, the technology alone—could easily come to such a conclusion. Electrical signals whizzing about this vast network of interconnected nodes. It’s obvious, is it not? The Internet is sentient in and of itself and reacts to the events of the world around it via technology. This is what is commonly referred to as the ghost in the machine.

Image: “Ghost in the Machine” 

Source: blog.microtask.com: Ghost in the machine: crowdsourcing the meaning of life

But those who know the truth about the Internet know that remove humans from the situation and what you get is a big, hulking mass of cables, circuit boards, screens and keyboards…dead tech.

The activity is dependent on CONSCIOUSNESS.  In this case, the consciousness of the humanity who designed, built and use the technology. Even if that consciousness is mostly bottled-up inside ego (cravings for and aversions to all manner of conceivable and inconceivable things reaching into the highest heights of conscious human awareness to the darkest depths of subconscious desire and depravity).

Sure your iPhone6 will give the appearance of sentience. Complete with a name (Siri) and lots of autonomous activity. But without an operator, it’s just a fancy little box with blinky lights and nifty sounds. That complex device was designed and constructed according to a template, and is an expression of the human mind.

Working backwards, then, how is the human brain any different than the iPhone6 or the Internet? We can observe lots of activity, and we can see it accept inputs and produce outputs. Thanks to EEG, MRI and other imaging technology we can see it very active during thinking, dreaming, meditation, etc. But is this evidence that it is the origin of it all?

If you sent a “bot” into the Internet which was incapable of detecting anything but its own nature—digital technology—it would be completely blind to the biological organisms that are truly behind and at the heart of the Internet, yes? It could explore the whole of the Internet as part of the digital paradigm and be completely blind to the underlying biological creators of the Network, despite the “signature” of those strange biological creatures all over the place…the digital representation of them.

Likewise, if one identifies solely with the material paradigm and “reason” (which is the intellectual paradigm on which artificial intelligence is based), one becomes blind to the underlying paradigm on which physical reality is based.

That underlying paradigm is energy and consciousness. Now, even physics (quantum mechanics in particular) recognizes that matter as such doesn’t exist. The fact that the observer effect has direct consequences on certain quantum experiments is reason enough to begin questioning the underlying “metaparadigm” of materialist science…the unquestioned underlying assumption that the physical universe is primary.

This question is explored in the excellent talk by Peter Russell called The Primacy of Consciousness.

Video: The Primacy of Consciousness - Peter Russell - Full Version

Source: YouTube: http://youtu.be/-d4ugppcRUE

The erroneous assumptions established by the metaparadigm of material science (that the material universe is primary and all phenomena stem from the foundation of the material) lock science into the problems of the scientific method: of concocting elaborate theories and then hunting for physical explanations which support said theories. As if material evidence is the only—and ultimate—arbiter of what is real and what is not.

Still, there is no reasonable scientific, economic, physical explanation for altruism and love…self-sacrifice, for instance. The many values we hold most dear fly in the face of all manner of logical argument, when reduced to that most “ultimate” arbiter…materialism. Materialism and love are incompatible, fundamentally, and so science simply ignores the latter in favour of its foundational metaparadigm.

Why? Were the metaparadigm proven—somehow—to be incorrect, the very foundations of the scientific community would be shaken, and much of what we hold true today would simply collapse like a deck of cards.

And that day is coming.

The real question we should be asking is this: what sense does it make to construct a universe where consciousness is an emergent phenomenon reserved for certain beings but not others? Does it not make more sense to design a universe on a common platform using a similar paradigm at all levels? Just as we constructed the Internet?

So here the atheists chime in with their evolution versus creationism argument. Sorry, it doesn’t hold up in this case.

Evolution is a theory, and while it is true that organisms change over time, no one has ever witnessed the birth of a new organism by means of natural selection. But all that aside, there’s an even greater reason why it doesn’t hold up in this case.

In the context of the present discussion, all life is bound by the same fundamental matrix with DNA at its very biological heart. Be it single-celled organisms to multi-cellular organisms to multi-individual super-organisms (ecosystems) to the planet itself, life follows repeating shapes and patterns at all levels. This happens on the physical as well as metaphysical planes. Truth be told, biology’s definition of “life as we know it” is far too narrow.

The sooner materialist science recognizes this, the sooner scientists will not only talk to plants, they will LISTEN. And REAL science can “emerge”…and the REAL magic can begin.

“Smarty Plants” & the Roots of Plant Intelligence

Video Link: The Nature of Things with David Suzuki: Smarty Plants: Uncovering the Secret World of Plant Behaviour

Credit: cbc.ca: The Nature of Things: Episodes: Smarty Plants

“We think the Sagebrush are basically eavesdropping on one another.”
~Rick Karban, U.C. Davis Ecologist
Source: The New Yorker – The Intelligent Plant

A few weeks ago, PeapodLife posted a blog entitled Do Plants Hold the Secrets to Consciousness? . Today, we offer a good deal more dramatic evidence that plants not only behave, it is quite possible they have complex behaviour and even intelligence.

Genesis Eco Fund also wrote on the topic of plant communication as it relates to ecosystems back in July: Do Trees Communicate? Ecosystems & the Communication of Plants.

Mainstream materialist science has no choice but to accept plants are not the passive organisms it assumed them to be. And while many still dismiss the notion of plant intelligence, others are embracing a different view.

Probably the most well-known of these is Stefano Mancuso, Plant Neurobiologist. Here is his TED Talk from 2010:

Video: TED Talk - Stefano Mancuso: The roots of plant intelligence 

Credit: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIfwFLDXFyQ

Listening to the passion of his presentation, one can easily comprehend why Mancuso is the Co-Founder of LINV - International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology.

Plant Neurobiology? Plant Neurobiologist? But plants don’t have a brain. “If you are a plant, having a brain is not an advantage,” Mancuso says. And yet, he has dedicated his life to the pursuit of plant intelligence. Source: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligent-plant

There is certainly much more which could be said on this topic.

For starters, the conversation must invariably and inevitably move from the question of individual plant intelligence, or indeed, plant and animal intelligence, to one of ecosystem intelligence. That is, the ability for the superorganism to exhibit behaviours which show intelligence.

And certainly, in the view of Genesis, the conversation must (and will) eventually migrate from the question of intelligence, to the issue of consciousness and the discussion of what these two terms describe and how they differ from one another.

But today, we think we’ll just share some more videos demonstrating that something is indeed going on with plants, and it’s a secret world that we’re only just beginning to explore in any meaningful way.

Video Link: Mind of Plants: Documentary on The Intelligence of Plants, produced by Gédéon Programmes, K Production, ARTE

Video Link: Nature: What Plants Talk About – Documentary

Why “Education” Gets a Failing Grade; Ecosystems Encourage “Growth Mindset”

Image: The Teacher from “The Wall”

Source: The wondeful life of being a Pink Floyd fan: Another Brick In The Wall

We don't need no education

We dont need no thought control

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teachers leave them kids alone

Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

All in all it's just another brick in the wall.

All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

~ Pink Floyd, The Wall

Source: The Original Pink Floyd Lyrics site: Another Brick in the Wall Lyrics - Part 2

Video: Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall, Part Two (Official Music Video)

Source: YouTube: http://youtu.be/HrxX9TBj2zY

How little has changed in 35 years.

Oh, we know: the educators will cry foul at a statement like that. But the truth hurts sometimes. And that’s the point of today’s blog. To truly get better, one better get used to the idea of failure.

Real learning comes by way of trial and error, exploration, discovery and—effectively—self-learning. But our education system—and indeed culture—worships “success” and fails to recognize the immense importance failure plays not only in the learning process, but in personal growth, all manner of progress and evolution itself!

Allow us to change the dark tone to a more positive one by way of sharing a video from Khan Academy.

Video: You Can Learn Anything 

Credit: Khan Academy

Source: YouTube – Khan Academy

Salman Khan started the not-for-profit Khan Academy on his earnest beliefs that:

1. Anyone can learn anything—evidenced by so-called neuroplasticity of the brain.
2. Everyone should have free access to learn anything—why his online academy is 100% free.
3. Failure should be celebrated and efforts rewarded—in the struggle to succeed one will naturally and inevitably face failure, and that’s a good thing since failure teaches us more than success.

In a recent blog post, Salman Kahn describes a heartwarming story of his son reading a story out loud, struggling for over a minute before finally pronouncing the word “gratefully.”

“He then said, ‘Dad, aren’t you glad how I struggled with that word? I think I could feel my brain growing.’ I smiled: my son was now verbalizing the tell¬-tale signs of a ‘growth¬ mindset.’…I decided to praise my son not when he succeeded at things he was already good at, but when he persevered with things that he found difficult. I stressed to him that by struggling, your brain grows. Between the deep body of research on the field of learning mindsets and this personal experience with my son, I am more convinced than ever that mindsets toward learning could matter more than anything else we teach.”

~ Salman Kahn

Source: Khan Academy: blog: The Learning Myth: Why I'll Never Tell My Son He's Smart

Brilliant. Finally, decades since the release of The Wall, educators are coming around to the conclusion that their job is about teaching how to think not what to think.  To create a learning mindset: immersing children in a culture of trial and error, where failure and success receive equal billing; children are rewarded for overcoming obstacles, not for succeeding at tasks that came relatively easy to them. Can calls this the “growth mindset.”

Of course, the challenge is we live in a culture which lives in a “fixed mindset.” Not only does society tell us what to think, how to feel, what we need to be, buy and/or experience to be happy, etc. Our culture also glorifies success. We are inundated with advertising, game shows, reality TV contests, films, newscasts, sports stars, celebrities and “success stories” of all kinds proclaiming “the glory of victory” and “the agony of defeat.”

More than anything else, our culture worships “celebrity”—sports stars, actors, billionaires, royal couples, religious icons, even mobsters and famous criminals like Bonnie and Clyde. This tendency to embrace a “cult of personality” suggests our conditioned belief that talent (such as intelligence) is fixed—something we are born with, in our genes, etc.—for the masses to celebrate (and envy). 

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell turns the ideas of innate intelligence and ambition—“born talent”—on its head. He argues that environmental factors and one’s attitude to achieving success through constant struggle and effort are paramount to success.

Image: Outliers Cover 

Credit: Malcolm Gladwell, Penguin Books Australia

Source: Fell From Fiction: “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell (2008)

In said book, he coins the phrase “the 10,000 hour rule,” implying that mastery emerges only after thousands of hours of efforts, failures and renewed efforts.

In fact, one “superstar athlete” Gladwell mentions in his book would like to take a minute to go on record and apologize if he added to the mass contemporary cultural delusion which forgot the old adage, “success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.”

Video: Michael Jordan 'Maybe It's My Fault' Commercial

Source: YouTube: http://youtu.be/9zSVu76AX3I

Controversial as Gladwell’s argument and Kahn’s “growth mindset” may be to those entrenched in their fixed mindsets and established worldviews, one cannot argue Michael Jordan’s first-hand experience, nor the fact that we are products of our environment. Even the recent science of epigenetics indicates that genetics are not “fixed”—that environmental factors can turn certain genes on and off.

Finally, we come to evolution and nature itself. In nature, nothing is fixed. We recommend watching the videos posted on PeapodLife’s Blog Article: Meditations in Motion, Living Ecosystems Give Life to see the significance of that statement.

Evolution is both success and failure. We recently coined the phrase, survival of the most fitting, in response to Darwin’s erroneous conclusion that evolution came down to survival of the fittest. The fact is that the environment of the ecosystem is an intelligent growth environment. Like the growth mindset described by Khan, it gives equal billing to success and failure.

What we know for certain is that evolution takes time. Ecosystems are patient; far more patient than individual organisms. Nature tests…nature experiments…nature explores…nature discovers and surprises itself.

Nature is not just always about ripping the throats out of prey, chasing off competitors, etc.  Evolution tries new directions with new species, and abandons species which longer serve the “superorganisms”—ecosystems, biosphere. Ecosystems function on collective harmony and symbiosis. Darwin’s model would turn nature into nothing more than a bleak free-for all and terrible chaotic anarchy.

Perhaps it’s no wonder that our world, fixated as it is on “fixed mindsets,” on success, on glorifying and rewarding winning while denouncing and punishing failure, on competitiveness and “survival of the fittest” is looking more and more like a bloody mess. And why, all too often, has degenerated and degraded into scenes right out of Pink Floyd’s legendary Rock Opera.

So here we’ve come full circle and wound up back in the dark, cold classroom of that rock and roll hell. Before we sign off, let’s do so on a positive note about the growth mentality, and receive some valuable advice and a hearty “Thumbs Up for Rock and Roll!” by a true expert on learning, and what it means to succeed.

Video: Thumbs Up for Rock and Roll! 
Source: YouTube: http://youtu.be/eaIvk1cSyG8