Patch Adams on fun and friendship...

Patch talks about a hospital that includes alternative medicine, and he includes homeopathy and acupuncture. Here is text from his essay:

Vision for a Free Hospital Based on Fun and Friendship

by Patch Adams

I entered medical school in 1967 to use medicine as a vehicle for social change. I used my free time to study the history of health care delivery around the world and to look at contemporary models with the idea of creating a medical model that would address all the problems of the way care is delivered. I didn't intend to create a model that would be the answer to the problems; but to model creative problem solving, and to spark each medical facility to design their own ideal rather than succumb to the garbage of managed care, or a resignation to the impossibility of humanistic care. Beginning in the climate of the political "war on poverty," I felt confident that a free hospital to serve the poorest state, West Virginia, would find easy funding and that we would be built in four years. I smile writing this as we enter our 33rd year without having broken ground on the hospital. However, we have asked our architect to go to finished drawings so that we can begin building as soon as we have funding in hand. None of the journey has gone as I imagined and the vision is so much deeper, more comprehensive and far-reaching as a consequence of such deliberate progress.

The original vision had all the principles we have maintained all these years. There would be no charge for the care. Barter was also not an option. In fact, we wanted to eliminate the idea of debt in the medical interaction as a way to begin recreating human community. We didn't want people to think they owed something; we wanted them to think...for more click here.

HEALTH CARE INTENSIVE - BALTIMORE

Hey all...Do you dream of a world which is built out of love and care only and everything was free???
Well, for starters, there is a group of loving people who are struggling to redesign Health care and make it a care system...for all!!
We recently went to a Health care Intensive conducted by Dr. Patch Adams and the School for Designing a Society in Baltimore, Maryland for four days.
There were so many activities, lectures and presentations made by loving doctors who are creating waves of love in the society here.
I want to connect you to their blog so you can read all about it...
please visit http://patchadams.org/blog/84

About NYC Screening Event - Sept 20th,2008

As you all know we had this fund raiser screening at the TWO BOOTS PIONEER THEATER on September 20th, 2008. It was a very beautiful experience though we had a turn up of only 9 people and it was 14 including us!!
Each person who had come for the movie liked Wings of Evolution so much and said that it touched their hearts. They said they were inspired by the love that Uma & Muthuram had for the kids and how the kids were so mature and wonderful. We got some more leads with regards to screening the film in other venues like schools, universities etc.
We got a chance to have one-on-one connections with every single person who attended the screening which was very unique. To know about people who love the world so much and who are trying to make differences in their own way was such a positive experience!
I know I did not write about the Urbana, Champaign screening which took place at the Independent Media Center through the School for Designing a Society. It went very well and the film inspired a lot of students who came for the screening. There was a teacher from Korea Ena who was interested in visiting the Siragu School for sometime because she said she wanted to learn about their pattern of teaching. Many of them wanted to visit the School personally and learn a lot. They were also impressed by the kids' strength of mind and their knowledge about the world around them.
More screenings will come and we will create a world-wide awareness till kids all over the world are educated for free.
One of my friends gave me a book called Three Cups of Tea about which I will write another article!

It can be YOU - interconnectedness!

Herbert Brun

When I was in West Virginia at the Summer School for designing a Society, the teachers there mentioned Herbert Brun. Though I did come across a few of his books, I really never had the opportunity to read any of his books until recently I came across one of his books called "My words and where I want them" and went through a few pages...they seemed interesting. Small paragraphs which are numbered fill the small book.
I would like to share a few with you.
1. My words and where I want them.
2. I consider words innocent until proven guilty. Once they are proven guilty, however, I consider their meaning to be irredeemable. Thus words form the limits of personal freedom. While I may be free to express my thoughts in a free society, the words at my disposal may not be free at all. Ignorance of this fact is what turns the thoughts of free people into thoughts of slaves.
76. While we do not find it possible often to share our opinions we have to share the world of their consequences.
for more..please read about Herbert Brun.

Liberate the Marvelous!!

When we enter into people's lives..we are automatically connected to everything else that is connected to them...so...here is Paula Belina's blog...she is a friend of Kyra's.

KYRA's Blog

I met Kyra at the Gesundheit Institute when i attended the Summer School for Designing a Society...i feel inspired and happy to be in a world with people like her..she is so full of love...
i am happy that she has started sharing her thoughts with the world..through her blog..
please check out her blog and spread the love in your heart...
http://www.kyras.net/

From Robert Naiman justforeignpolicy.org

please go to JUSTFOREIGNPOLICY for more information.
Robert Naiman sent this link to spread the awareness...
Just Foreign Policy organized a tour about U.S. policy towards Iran.
We made a about the history of U.S. policy and the need for diplomacy which you can find here:

Documentary clip on Summer School for Designing a Society

This is the initial 3 minutes of the documentary I did on the summer school I attended at Gesundheit for the School for Designing a Society...if you need a copy of this movie please contact Rob Scott

Composing Utopia with words

Articipatory Music and other weird things by Jessica Corey-Butler

Last weekend Articipatory Music happened at the Olympia Community Free School during “A giant party for a better world,” the Love, Imagine, Network, Kindness (LINK) Symposium, an extension of “A World Beyond Capitalism,” The Third Annual International Multiracial Alliance Building Peace Conference. An activist folk music collective called Riotfolk performed and a Secret Café fund raiser was held, benefiting a residential permaculture project. And eight people created compositions, but not made out of notes and played on flutes and guitars.

Huh?

Articipatory Music was an idea originally born when it’s facilitator (and creator) Michael Gaiuranos attended a summer session with the School for Designing a Society, held on Patch Adam’s Gesundheit! Institute in West Virginia.

Initially, Gaiuranos thought he was going there to compose music with the experimental musicians associated with cybernetics.

The second time he attended the school, he recalls, “I knew I was aiming for something else.” He credits the school for “encouraging me to do weird things.”

As such, he feels his extrapolation of one exercise he had learned where participants composed responses, one inane and one an elaborate ideal, and then negotiated within larger groups.

“That was the really really really interesting part,” Gaiuranos remembers, adding, “How do you negotiate your Utopia?”

would you like to read more and more....?

Designing Freedom - Stafford Beer

This is a part of the collection of articles under the title READINGS THAT MATTER TO ME which was suggested by the School for Designing a Society.
This excerpt is from the article Designing Freedom by Stafford Beer
1. The Real Threat to “All We Hold Most Dear”
The little house where I have come to live alone for a few weeks sits on the edge of a steep hill in a quiet village on the western coast of Chile. Huge majestic waves roll into the bay and crash magnificently over the rocks, sparkling white against the green sea under a winter sun. It is for me a time of peace, a time to clear the head, a time to treasure.
For after all, such times are rare events for today’s civilized man. We spend our days boxed in
our houses, swarming in and out of office blocks like tribes of ants, crammed into trains, canned in aeroplanes, locked solid in traffic jams on the freeway. Our unbiblical concern for what we shall eat, what we shall drink, and what we shall put on is amplified and made obsessional by the pressure to consume—way, way beyond the natural need. All this is demanded by the way we have arranged our economy. And the institutions we have built to operate that economy, to safeguard ourselves, protect our homes, care for and educate our families, have all grown into large and powerful pieces of social machinery which suddenly seem not so much protective as actually threatening.
Mankind has always been in battle with his environment. But until quite recently in history his
battles were on a reasonable scale, a human scale.
For more on Designing Freedom click here.

Nature of Time - HUMBERTO MATURANA

HUMBERTO MATURANA
Excerpts from Readings that matter to me shared by The School for Designing a Society
Living

Living takes place in the now, in the moment in which it is taking place. Living is a dynamics that disappears as it takes place. Living takes place in no time, without past or future. Past, present and future are notions that we human beings, we observers, invent as we explain our ocurrence in the now. We invent past as a source of the now or present, and we invent future as a dimension that arises as an extrapolation of the features of our living now, in the present. As past, present and future, are invented to explain our living now, time is invented as a background in which past, present and future can take place. But life, living, takes place as now, as a flow of changing processes. To say this, of course, is a manner of explaining the experience being now in which we find ourselves as we ask for the explanation of our living, of time, . . .
Language
I have maintained, and I think shown, in other publications, that language is a manner of flowing in living together in recursive consensual coordinations of behavior, and that languaging consists in operating in a network of consensual coordinations of consensual coordinations of behaviors, in a relational dynamics of consensual coordinations of behaviors that is constitutively open to endless recursions1. Moreover, we are, as living systems, structure determined systems, and nothing external to us can determine or specify what happens in us. So, the external agents that at any instant impinge upon us can only trigger in us structural changes determined in us by our structure at that instant. As a result, all that we do at any instant arises in us determined in us by our structure in that instant, either as a result of our closed internal structural dynamics, or as a result of the modulation of that internal structural dynamics by the structural changes triggered in us by the interactions in which we participate. In these circumstances, we would have to say that we are constitutively ”blind” to the intrinsic features of the medium as an independent reality , if to speak about the intrinsic features of an independent reality had any sense.
This situation has the following basic consequences for understanding what we do and for more click here

Francis Bacon (1561- 1626)

I was reading this book called ESSENTIALS OF PHILOSOPHY by James Mannion and I wanted to share this topic about Francis Bacon.
Francis Bacon was a British politician and businessman who took a scientific approach to philosophy. He studied the world as an empirical observer would and attempted to avoid bringing his preconceptions and prejudices into the proceedings.
Bacon proposed that, in order to truly understand the world, we must first be aware of the various obstacles and distractions that prevent us from seeing things clearly. He identified these impediments as IDOLS.
IDOLS OF THE TRIBE
This refers to the sense of self-importance that people have about their place in the grand design of things and their penchant to take at face value the observations of our senses. In other words, everything may not be what it appears to be, and we should be aware of that.
IDOLS OF THE CAVE
This speaks about our tendencies to make generalizations about the world at large based on our limited experience in our little corner of the world. Put in simple terms, never assume anything.
IDOLS OF THE MARKETPLACE
This deals with the imperfections of language as a means of communication. By attempting to understand the wonders around us and describing them via the limits of language, we do not do them justice nor are we fully able to comprehend them.
IDOLS OF THE THEATER
These are the inherent flaws of Philosophy itself. Great thinkers devise and put forth lofty notions about things, but these are beliefs built on the shaky foundation of our own faulty perceptions.
He also said that once we notice the effects that these Idols have on upon us, we will be in a position to avoid them, and our knowledge of nature will accordingly improve.
For more Click here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon

There arise a lot of questions in my mind when I think about all this...What then is truth?? What do we believe?? Isn't there something called Instincts that drive us?? Well, if we start to doubt everything, then won't we be at the edge of insanity?? Isn't there a reason why things happen around us and to us in a specific way?? I can agree about prejudices and preconceptions...but whatever we know, we know from this world around us right?? And whatever we perceive is a creative manipulation of whatever was already there right??
or..or maybe Truth is Intangible...or the fact that Truth is Intangible is Tangible...??

Change of State - SDaS

Change of State Performance Project was founded in 2005 by Andrea del Moral and K. Qilo Matzen. The mission of Change of State Performance Project is to fuse improvisation, theatre, and somatic techniques to create precise and absurd live performance. As the vaudevillian duo careens across the dance-theatre spectrum, looming socio-political issues seep into the performance space. For more click here...
I met Andrea and Qilo at Gesundheit this June...the simplicity and genuineness in their dispositions inspired me...they are humans with a purpose to stir some inspiration into the minds of people watching them...their play TAKE THIS HOUSE AND FLOAT IT AWAY
was a many layered piece of art shared with us at the Summer School for Designing a Society
We had a good discussion on a lot of issues after their play...the many layers consisted of society's alienation with every single element, the disjointedness of humans with the community and themselves, the ignorance that is made to prevail in the minds of the existing society, how much humans are trained in drowning of their reason in almost anything they can find...etc etc
The world needs humans who dedicate themselves to a cause and make everyone realize their place in this magnificent universe...
keep up the loving work...humanity needs you to remind them of everything they have pushed to oblivion!!

Language...and its effects! SDaS

Gesundheit - SDaS 2007 - 4 : Summer School Report

Summer School Report-June 2007

Courtesy: SDaS

We enveloped ourselves in a potpourri of unusual offerings for the summer school's point of departure. We've been at the Gesundheit Institute, where costume activist "Madd Maggs" literally wrapped us in clown pants and tie dyes throughout the month -- so logically we had a clown pants fashion show, with most participants opting for the "waist around the shoulders" look (see right). This came in tandem with the "art everywhere" exhibition, which included a showing of the month's returns on art projects that included painted shoes, stencils, hand-crafted paper, political wedding dresses, wish flags...for more check here...

Gesundheit - SDaS 2007 -3 : SUMMER SCHOOL SESSION

SUMMER SCHOOL IN SESSION from SDaS...JUNE 15th 2007
During the first week, we discussed our personal "courts of criteria" -- the "voices" in our heads that we consult when we make a decision. This culminated in an uprising of cartooning, which illustrated the various criteria people consider when making a specific choice. The first week also saw the start of a flurry of "desire statements" writing. We broke into "design groups" to connect...for more check here

Gesundheit - SDaS 2007 -2 :Detour Towards Earth

Rob Scott of SDaS has made it possible for everyone to access the (13MB) pdf of "Detour Towards Earth" booklet which was done by his design group.
The Booklet has been formatted so that when printed doublesidedly, it makes a document with
pages numbered "A" to "Z" plus a cover page.
Happy Reading!!

Gesundheit - SDaS 2007 -1 : My Experience

Hey Beautiful People!!!
Am back after a whole month at the Gesundheit Institute...I was there for the Summer School for Designing a Society...
The experience was amazing...the whole place was filled with so much vibrant energy and I got lots of it to share with the rest of the world...WEST VIRGINIA is a wonderful piece of art by the Creator...
During the train journey, I was engulfed in total awe at the sight of the endless mountains and sky which seemed to hold each other in an embrace that was breathtaking...
There were moments when I asked myself, "If there is so much beauty around me, then what change did I want from the world around me...for a moment, I felt the earth was perfect and there was no chaos or war or hunger or pollution or any atrocities of any kind...How can something so beautiful be messed up?? But my memories of the news about war, poverty, unrest, insecurities etc that existed in the world outside this place brought the harsh reality to me!!
Is it even possible to transform something that is so perfect into something that is totally un-livable?? well, we somehow managed it I guess! SIGH!
This is the first of its kind! More to come my comrades!