Syntropic World

This morning the Ocean temperature felt summery. Blessed am I to have crystal clear water. A dolphin jumped the wave a meter from my face. And then, later, I was surrounded by a pod of dolphins. Under me. Around me. Feasting off the garfish that brushed my feet. We have not seen the dolphins for a while. But as the whales are now further South, the dolphins have come back. Many cormorants dived. One, clearly intent on his feast, chased a garfish that wriggled right across my surfboard as I was lying on it. Quite a squirmy experience for the garfish and me. The garfish did not escape capture. One of my fellow surfers said it was far better than SeaWorld. Indeed. My daily life is rich with encounters from our animal kingdom. Being a water person, I respect the Ocean completely. She is constantly morphing, never predictable, moving from gentle to rage. Such a great teacher. I am at home in her embrace. I have spent hours underwater diving in some of the most pristine dive spots in the world. This new over-water experience extends far beyond catching a wave. Encounters with sea creatures and bird life in their domain, where I am the guest, humbles and thrills me. And then the near perfect wave comes, and the lessons continue. https://lnkd.in/gZ4rpScx #beautyofbeginnings #syntropicworld #syntropicenterprise

As a white Australian living on land that has never been ceded, I have, over the last few years of seeking a truthful education about settler Australia’s history, gone through cycles of grief and confusion. What happens now? How do we, this generation, make reparations for the horrors of our ancestors? What I know, and am committed to, is that it is essential to dismantle the systems of oppression that my ancestors built. Systems that are alive and well today allowing ongoing oppression, which has morphed from not just the indigenous peoples but also anyone who doesn’t conform to the neoliberal mould. Oppression of women’s bodies and minds. Oppression of particular tribes or races of people. Oppression of the poor and divergent. Caste oppression. Oppression of animals. Workers. Journalists. The list is nauseatingly long. Even protesters are oppressed more frequently. If there is one good thing that can come from the privilege of my birth, it is a commitment to dismantle the tools of oppression of anyone or anything. To do this, we need a new set of tools - ones untainted by the oppressors. This is the work of Syntropic World. We have started, we are committed. It is a long road to our destination. I hope you join us. It is the least I can do. https://lnkd.in/gErYmSTG #syntropicworld #syntropicenterprise #beautyofbeginnings

Against an endless sea of lies. People telling lies knowing they are telling lies and people listening knowing they are lies, but no matter, the liar is more important than the lie. And then the lie becomes a virus and spreads, capturing our drama hook and desire for righteous indignation, paving the way for sanctioned atrocities and egregious acts. From the inane - I have heel spurs - to the dangerous and cruel - We commit to environmental responsibility. They are eating the dogs. The election was stolen. They beheaded the babies. When the lie is seized upon so vehemently, truth is hard to speak, for the refusal to listen is a bunker. Deeply held opinions might unravel and with it, your identity. Telling the truth is rare. Pointing out lies is rare. Seeing the lies that have woven the structure of our existence and identity takes commitment and courage. When we tell the truth, we set ourselves apart in an ocean of lies and propaganda. I recall a quote: First, they will not believe you. Then they will ridicule you. And then they might believe you. History tells the tale long after the sharp edges of a well-maintained lie are exposed. History speaks of atrocity, immorality, cruelty, injustice, making one race inhuman, exploitation, colonisation and endless death. Humans. Animals. Oceans. We wonder how humans in those times watched it happen.  Yet here we are. https://lnkd.in/g_3MB8Kv #syntropicenterprise #syntropicworld #beautyofbeginnings #truth

A true coalition is one that brings together and unites. It is not a quid pro quo, where we trade back-scratching. You violate your principles over there and I will violate my principles over here. A healthy coalition is based on Principles that transcend negotiation. It asks participants to commit to a set of mutually agreed upon Principles, and then stay in the conversation and debate until the seemingly impossible solution is uncovered that doesn’t violate the Principles. Is this easy? Not at all. Staying in the conversation to find common ground that doesn't violate Principles requires dedication, endurance, courage and love. Qualities that are lacking in most coalitions. But the start of any coalition is to anchor the core Principles with clarity and full commitment by all. They become the guiding star of all actions henceforth. In Syntropic World, we call these Principles and values the Pattern Integrity. Coalition.1610s, "the growing together of parts," from French coalition (1540s), from Late Latin coalitus "fellowship," originally past participle of Latin coalescere "unite, grow together, become one in growth” Coalesce 1540s, "grow together, unite by growing into one body," from Latin coalescere "unite, grow together, become one in growth," from assimilated form of com- "together" (see co-) + alescere "be nourished," hence, "increase, grow up," inchoative of alere "to suckle, nourish," from PIE root *al- (2) "to grow, nourish.” From the Online Etymology Dictionary. https://lnkd.in/g3TVBdm8 #beautyofbeginnings #syntropicworld #syntropicenterprise

Hypocrisy From hypo- "under" (see hypo-) + middle voice of krinein "to sift, decide” c. 1200, ipocrisie, "the sin of pretending to virtue or goodness," From Etymology Online Pretending good or virtue. The practice of claiming to have higher standards when that is not true. Sometimes we speak hypocritically and it is a genuine blind spot. A failure of perspective. Sometimes, we deliberatively fail to seek another perspective. This type of hypocrisy is steeped in the love of righteousness. I am right, and I have no interest in not being right. Other times, we speak hypocritically because we are masters at distraction. If I repeat a lie enough times, people will believe it. Atrocities are atrocities. There is no good atrocity. No right atrocity. To weep over one atrocity while ignoring or even perpetuating another is hypocritical. Nothing justifies an atrocity. Nothing. Not even an atrocity. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. I was taught this principle in kindergarten. Also, do unto others as you would do unto yourself. The Golden Rule. Simple principles of all-living to enable the increased well-being of all life. Principles. Those rocks that create a healthy culture. These types of principles shredded in our geopolitical class. When our mainstream media fail, again and again, to point out the hypocrisy, it is up to us to do it. Again and again. https://lnkd.in/g6f4cKdi #syntropicworld #syntropicenterprise #beautyofbeginnings #hypocrisy

What is the biggest question you could possibly ask right now? The one that tugs your dreams in the night.  The question you do not want to see, or hear, let alone ask? That question that, like quicksilver, slips clumsily through your mind, words and images jumbled. That question. When we ask a question, quantum entanglement ensures that is registered in Universe. The answer is there. Somewhere. Not on our timeline. Not from where we expect it. Maybe not even looking like we expect it. That is the point. If it was what we expected, we would see the answer already. No is a short-term answer, not the end of the story. The Daring Ask invites a new world of possibility, expanding our world. Making a Daring Ask grows us. We should make daring Asks a practice.  https://lnkd.in/gcD93W9K #syntropicworld #syntropicenterprise #beautyofbeginnings

Naomi Klein, a journalist and author I admire, wrote an important piece for the Guardian today. How humanity now weaponises the story of the victim to justify and launder extended horror. Just as Ta-Nehisi Coates has written and spoken of, using a victim status of being the oppressed to enact extraordinary violence and horror to the oppressor perpetuates into eternity the cycle of horror, and in the process, everyone at that particularly nasty game slowly then quickly divorces themselves from their humanity, justifying the very cruelty and atrocities others inflicted upon them. They become the evil they rail against.  In these times of ‘it is almost only propaganda, ’ truth is hard to find. My forty-plus years of applying the law of Synergy to my practice means that I must start with the biggest multi-perspective view possible. The Omni-Perspective. Always the question why. That delightful natural instinct of childhood that our education systems do a dangerously brilliant job of wiping out.  Curiosity. Why did this happen? Why did a group of people do this? What do they gain? Where is the power centre? What does the power centre want? All the way down to the root of the root. The Source. This is the truth we must confront. Anchored by another lesson from kindergarten. Treat others as you want to be treated. (Dare I say all others, not just a particular type of others.) Be kind and respectful. Listen more than you talk. Seek to understand.  I fail at doing this well many times. I get reactionary. I bite back rather than pause and examine the why of my biting back.  Yet this practice is one we humans might all re-learn.  To see the Omni-Perspective. On October 7th, 1830, more than 2,200 Australian settlers, military police and convicts, the largest force ever mobilised against the Aboriginal people, representing about 10% of the European Australians, formed what they called The Black Line to push the Indigenous Australians off their land.  I am informed that tonight, The Sydney Harbour Bridge, one of the most iconic centrepieces of Australia, will have a candle to commemorate October 7th. But not the one that fractured the heart of our history. Nor one that pauses long enough to respect the deaths of over 43,000 Palestinians.  Violence, whoever wields the sword, has never been the answer. I stand against its every expression. Weaponising violence to sanctify exponentially more violence must end. I hang my head in memory of all of the innocents lost to violence on October 7th and every other day of the year.  The genuinely curious question I hold in my heart now is how the Israeli lobby of setters colonists - this small group of people - became so powerful in the Western political landscape to dictate the response of my country and so many others, leading to the escalation we now face, which will affect every human on the planet.   https://lnkd.in/gpwJfNUC #syntropicworld #syntropicenterprise #beautyofbeginnings

Oh, data gathering. How we love it. It is useful, no doubt. And it does make people so much money, scraping the data off humanity to repackage it back into a sales-making machine to feed the consuming beast. Yet, we attempt to shove beauty, love, care, culture, kindness, awe, relational quality, experiences - all the weightless, immeasurable glory that makes us human - meaning, purpose, intention - into a vast funnel, with a desire to reduce these complex, nuanced, glorious emotions, feelings and experiences into zeroes and ones.  So we can data them, and, in so doing, commodify them to make more money to feed the rapacious beast. Everything that makes life meaningful reduced. No wonder we have a mental health crisis. The essence of life is data-ed.  If there is hope, it is that to do this is impossible. The essence of life is weightless and immeasurable. Those Gods of design have more wisdom than we can fully grasp. They keep the faux gods of technology hungry and lost. The Singularity. A joke. Uploading human consciousness into silicon. More of the same hubris. Half of human experience cannot be captured in zeroes and ones.  Only art, music, dance and poetry come close. https://lnkd.in/gB82prXF #syntropicworld #syntropicenterprise #beautyofbeginnings #data #AI

Your oppression will not save you. Ta-Nehisi Coates I am extraordinarily lucky and privileged. From the place of my birth to the colour of my skin, to my parents and an easy childhood, free of fear.  I got to start my life with advantage blessing me in every domain.  We must account for this. For our beginnings. Those who bow at the altar of meritocracy forget to do this, and it is shameful and cruel. Do we have to climb a mountain just to make it into our teen years? If we do, let us acknowledge this when we champion success.  Young people in Australia who go to University begin their careers with forty thousand dollars or more in debt. In the USA, it is worse. My tertiary education was free. The advantage of this is exponential for me and negatively exponential for those who begin with education debt. I do not know the weight of oppression. I have no idea what life would feel like born buried under hardship, be that poverty, racism, domestic violence or terror. I have definitely felt the hardships of being a single mother. Of living in precarity day in and out. Of being a self-employed woman. I know gender bias well, as most women do.  I have a small taste of systemic oppression. But not the crippling ocean that so many people were born into. We must account for this.  Yet oppression will not save us. We either live the story of oppression even beyond the oppression, animating it daily, feeding it, having it become the first voice our being speaks. Or we see it, know its reality, and then remove, with enormous courage and tenacity, its tentacles that insist on keeping us small. If we do not, oppression has won.  And we must rise above oppression. Not with cruelty and vengeance, for this is to remain oppressed. But with the dignity of loving our being so much that no one, no group, no other, can tell us who we are and why we are so unworthy of being human. If Nelson Mandela had a message for the times, it was this.  https://lnkd.in/gRK4Ee6B #syntropicworld #syntropicenterprise #beautyofbeginnings

Here now. Safe. Far removed physically from the terrors humans inflict upon each other. Gifted by some random birth lottery. Rage, rage roiling inside. Rage at hypocrisy - one nation sanctified as having the right to defend itself while another has no right to defend itself, even against acts of genocide, deliberate starvation of an entire ghetto of 2.1 million people, assassinations on sovereign territory, 162 murdered journalists and 222 UN workers and strikes and invasion of another sovereign country. Not to mention the children. So many dead children. But let's do tit for tat. As if that works. Escalate the escalation until the inevitable. Even when the ‘evil’ side has shown incredible restraint. Good Westerners didn’t start off hating Israel, but if they are truly good, they end up hating Israel, writes Caitlin Johnstone. Zionist, settler colonialist Israel, to be very specific. Not a hatred of Jews. Nor Arabs. Nor Muslims. I am offended by states built on ethnocracy no matter where they are. Either apartheid is right, or it's wrong. It's really that simple. Ta-Nehisi Coates. I agree, Ta-Nehisi. Any human, no matter their pigment or religion, who stands as superior to another, seeds the ground for violence. Anyone who believes their rights are greater than another’s rights to the same. Anyone prepared to do terrible things, to enact terrorism on others. Anyone who thinks it is perfectly permissible to kill hundreds or thousands, just to kill one particular person. Anyone who thinks one atrocity on them needs to be met with vengeance and atrocity after atrocity multiplied one hundredfold. Every time I find myself taking a superior position, with my sense of righteousness, something I see in myself often, my discipline is to catch this act and return to humility. This is so hard, as I like being right. Yet this is the work. It is also our work to not allow enthocracy and apartheid to exist. There are no grounds at all, no justification, zero, none, nada, that live in alignment with human decency, for ethnocracy and apartheid to exist. The rage, mixed in with the joy of my life. Mixed in with all the miracles around me. And the ocean. Telling the story this morning. The waves a mess. Unpredictable. Tricky. Lucky to be in the right place to catch one. A fractal expression of the pattern of my being. What, I wonder, weaves this greater thread of all life - this rage and joy and grief and awe all tangled in this moment? The question goes into infinity, landing with the billion times a similar question has been asked by others. Silence returns with a wise smile.  https://lnkd.in/gK_UGxtC #syntropicworld #syntropicenterprise #beautyofbeginnings