Agenda
- Check In
- Weekly Events Logistics
- Review WWWs
- Review Agenda
- Space Elevator Conference
- SeedVillage
- OnePagePlan
- Evaluation
Check In
- Ren ... waah!
- Brandon ... we're going to Vancouver BC today, and we're not very packed yet, I feel bad about that ... but I feel really good about getting my SolSeed homework done
- Sequoia ... looking forward to being on the train
- Ben ... woke up with a terrible sinus headache, but I had a good time at GeekGirlCon yesterday
- Shelley ... looking forward to our trip, making some Zucchini bread with the gianormous Zucchini from our back yard
WWWs from last time
- <s>Brandon ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Brandon ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
- Brandon ... put in 2hrs on the book ... by next call
- Brandon ... schedule the first 'seeing nature' Portland meetup event ... by next call
- Brandon ... write SolSeedCreed stanza II commentary ... by next call
- Brandon ... post SolSeedCreed stanza I commentary ... by next call
- Shelley ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Shelley ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing</s>
- Ben ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- <s>Ben ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing</s>
- Eric ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Eric ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
WWWs
- Ben ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Ben ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
- Ben ... send the lyrics to John and Will ... by tonight
- Ben ... finish PowerPoint for the Space Elevator Conference ... by Wednesday
- Brandon ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Brandon ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
- Brandon ... print Ben new SolSeed business cards that aren't misspeled ... by Friday
- Brandon ... interview Shelley about the SolSeed practices ... by next call
- Shelley ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Shelley ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
- Eric ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Eric ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
Weekly Events Logistics
Service Saturday Aug 18, 9am PDT, (Eric) --- Shelley and Brandon are out Rotation: Brandon, Eric, Jerry?, Shelley, Ben Work-Bee Sunday August 19, 1:30pm PDT In-person service with Vliets: Saturday 10am Ottawa Seeing Nature Excursion: ?
Space Elevator Conference
Ben has until this Friday to turn in a PowerPoint for his presentation; the actual talk is on the 27th
- Ben is close to getting the presentation into presentable form, but would like to give a practice talk before submitting the PowerPoint
- Sticking with 6:30 PDT, 9:30 EDT on Wednesday the 15th for the practice talk
- The Sanders will be home but Ben should call them
One Page Plan
Agenda
- <s>Where do we want to be in 20 yrs? In 10 yrs? In 5 yrs?</s>
- Read through values, beliefs etc of the OnePagePlan
- What are the projects that we want to do soon?
- What are the first 3-4 projects?
- Consider order and overlap of projects first and ask (how long is it going to take?)
Core Values/Beliefs
- All life is precious. This is the root of our value system. Respecting and cherishing life is the reason for everything we do.
- More possibilities are good? Life creates an upward spiral of possibility. This is one of the reasons we value life so much.
- We ALL are precious SolSeed. SolSeed (which contains Gaia) is defined as "the body of all life on Earth," encompassing every human culture and belief system as well as all other species. This is a statement of belief in the Gaia hypothesis, at least as a valid metaphor. This connects particularly to the "Openness/welcoming differences" practice below.
- Body of All Solar Life, SolSeed/Gaia, and "ecosystem/biosphere" have very different visceral content ... having a name gives it a kind of personhood (with a name, it brings it to life ... not just a corpse)
- The finger is the body (as it is expressed in that portion of itself), so saying "I am Life itself" is a valid and true way of looking at the world (though not the only one) ... further, there is power in that perspective ... it is a perspective that is inaccessible to most of the world
- SolSeed is the most precious thing we know?
- We all belong to the Body of All Solar Life?
- Consider whether to keep the word "Solar" in the main text or relegate it to a commentary
- Living and working in community? (We don't do this yet, but it's on our business cards and banner) ... could relate to the more universal ethic through conferences bringing communities together in a network
- Elucidate with Captain Planet language, "By our powers combined"? God is a metaphor for the immense power of society to do things that its individual members could not.
- By living and working together in community the SolSeed Movement can achieve more than its individual members could ever achieve. The goal of fulfilling The Destiny is only possible throught this mechanism.
- By living together in 'community', the species that make up SolSeed can achieve much more than each individual species could achieve on their own. In fact without the diversity of the biosphere, most species (trying to survive alone) would die off.
- Living in a community of practice, where there is an established practice of carving out time for living according to our aspirations, makes those activities effortless and joyful rather than a slog. If your friends and family and social activities are all in support of your aspirations ... then just hanging out is moving toward your aspirations (your activities naturally support the aspirations) ... there isn't the need to "add them to your life" ... your life already has them built in
- The Destiny of SolSeed is to take root amongst the stars. To protect the future of life, we must help it grow beyond Earth and even beyond the Solar system, so it can never be wiped out. More importantly, our belief in this audaciously optimistic goal, and in the epic story of a future with life thriving on many worlds, is central to defining the SolSeed Movement.
- This is the one value that makes us unique among movements whose core value is respect for all life.
- Stuff about being worthy
- Steve: We should tread lightly and not use universalizing rhetoric, e.g. "bring terrestrial life to as many worlds as possible," which could lead to running over other biospheres
- Brandon: Even if there is an increase in wars, hunger, and systemic injustice, life will still be precious
- Shelley: We should be gentle
- Brandon: TheDestiny as a term is not necessarily gentle ... it's not a "shy violet" term
- We're not necessarily the only biosphere expanding out into the galaxy, so worries about us taking over everything may not be required. We won't know until we go and see. But we can't go look without establishing ourselves along the way.
- Science as the way to know truth. We believe in the scientific worldview, the principle that observing the world is a far better route to knowledge than religious texts and magical thinking. We talk about Gaia, a controversial scientific concept, and about a Destiny that sounds like a prophecy, but we admit that these are stories, not knowledge. We believe in the Destiny as a worthy and inspiring goal and Gaia as a useful and inspiring metaphor, but what we believe to be true (or rather, as close to the truth as we can presently get) is based around mainstream science.
- We don't try to answer scientific questions through our religion; we accept the answers from science and then base our religion on them
- Care, Loyalty, Liberty, Authority, Fairness, Sanctity
- Care is easy: we care about all life
- Sanctity is easy: pollution, habitat destruction, etc are forms of violation of sanctity
- Fairness is harder: how do we accept proportionality if it extends to letting people starve if they can't or won't work? are those people not worthy of being cared for?
- Loyalty (to the SolSeed Movement) is okay as long as we don't have to be in harmful competition with other groups
- Authority is hard because we (the SolSeed Movement) are a kind of rebel. We are being creative in a realm (religion) that is generally conservative. Oddly, many would assume that we're starting a new religion so the founder can aggrandize himself and have authority over cult followers (as many recent "new religions" have done), but this is the opposite of true. And so we reject authority within SolSeed partly because we don't want to be like that and partly because we hold strong democratic/open-source values.
- Eric: Imagine a forest spanning different climates, where trees in cloudy, rainy areas could send water to trees in sunny, dry areas and get sugar in return ... the trees could establish a "tyranny"
- Ben: Environmental regulators, and police and courts enforcing laws that protect people from harm, are authorities that we could respect. May exert authority as long as it's in directions approved by a majority of the citizenry?
- Brandon: I value having an identity that is more about membership in a group than about me as an individual, and I see "religions controlling people" as a good thing if translated as "helping me control myself," even if not always in ways I would choose on my own
- Liberty is pretty easy: freedom to follow our religion and others' freedom to follow theirs? Also, science requires freedom from oppressive ideology that tells people certain things can't be true. Also, creativity and making beauty and possibility happen seem to require freedom if you're intelligent (or millions of years of evolutionary time otherwise). On the other hand, we support limiting people's freedom to "desecrate the sanctity of nature" and harm other living beings.
Evaluation
- Ben ... concern about your two kids being so distracting that they might bring our workbees to a halt or make them unreasonably burdensome on Shelley (who is less interested in the work bees, therefore ends up with the bulk of the work of looking after the kids)
- Shelley ... usually kids are napping during the work bees ... I like the values discussion, think it's important ... I like that the agenda seems more short and doable ... our quarter seems a little more concrete in terms of what we are trying to get done (maybe I mean limited more than concrete)
- Brandon ... I think we've just got to keep muddling along ... creating things is slow, placing one block on top of another, and we're doing that