Title: Visionary

Gender: Male

Location: Chicago, IL

I guess the easiest way to say this is as follows: I'm a living relic from the golden age struggling to restore it on this fading, failing planet..

Now that's a lot to wrap your head around so let's go a little deeper. My “day job” is environmentalism and software. I burned out badly enough working on “Winning the Oil Endgame” to still be sick years after the project was completed. But my motivations for working that hard on these kinds of subjects is purely spiritual: I know that in any given year, perhaps a thousand women have to choose which of their children to feed, and which to starve, because there is not enough food for all of them.

This is a problem. I know, as a Nath Yogi (I also go by the name Shivanath at times) that every soul on this planet chose to be here, and chooses to be here in an ongoing process of creation.

But why, then, is there so much suffering in the world? Why do we choose these things?

This is why I meditate.

Higher consciousness, whether it is the airy rationality of mathematics and science, or the subtle intutions of meditatitive states or the passion of artistic creation… higher consciousness opens doors to better worlds. And I don't mean that as “better ways of escaping this one” but rather  “better versions of the world we are in.”

We can make a better future for the whole of humanity with our lives.


My current project is to try and design an integral refugee life support system: a shelter, a stove, a toilet, water purification, perhaps eventually solar lighting and something to read. The shelter is called a Hexayurt and is based on the work of Buckmister  Fuller.

I'm not sure that our high tech culture is going to survive the next 100 years. The combination of global warming, oil running out and new forms of conflict involving genetic engineering and the like make me wonder if we'll be able to maintain global society.

But life will go on even if our civilization ends, as it has throughout human history: every empire of the past once felt as we do today. I think that even if the game stops there is still hope that many people can continue to live beautifully and well. My answer to this prospect is called Global Sustainable Peasantry.

I also wrote a fiction piece called “The Unplugged” which tries to combine the ideas of Buckminster Fuller and Mahatma Gandhi , creating  other options for our culture, paths beyond “growth” and into a sustainability not simply of the mind or the economy, but of the spirit.

I'm sorry there is no quick summary of who I am or what I do. My life is not that simple. I am glad to be here.

Vinay

Member Since: Thursday, June 22 2006

Last Visit: 15 days ago.

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