esotericvoyage.com

Sometimes new ideas are old ideas.

From Janine Benyus and Ideas from nature:

Opening her talk, Janine introduced Biomimicry, a term she coined. It begins with learning about Nature, but then takes the second step of learning FROM nature. This knowledge of natural processes then inspires a completely different approach to technology, materials and production processes.

A set of principles underpin Biomimicry that explain how life, which has been evolving for 3.8 billion years, creates conditions that are conducive to life. Natural processes use as little energy as possible; they produce no waste – all by-products are consumed by a nearby natural process and are never hazardous to the source organism; Nature conducts its chemistry in water; and Nature uses a small subset of the elements that can be obtained nearby. This contrasts to the human developed industrial manufacturing processes which typical use “heat, beat, and treat” methods of high temperature, high pressure and a cocktail of additive chemicals of varying toxicity, extracted from all corners of the earth.

Janine gave a wealth of examples of modern technology inspired by natural designs that evolved to perfection over hundreds of thousand of years. She showed revolutionary technologies already in practice including gecko-inspired adhesives and leaf-inspired solar cells, and showcased research and development in progress in many, many other fields.

Her talk covered the importance for both students of design, engineering and business, as well as those in industry, to learn about nature’s solutions to functions such as pumping, filtering, collecting and purifying water, generating energy, minimising waste, preventing decay and disease, etc. She is working on a database of these functions for designers, and this will be prepared together with Google. A large collection of Janine’s work is available on the web at her two sites –

• http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/
• http://www.biomimicry.net/

The Spiritual Importance

I post things like this that I find on the web because I want to share with you the things that catch my eye.  I think that may help you understand the way I think.  I have learned from have observing my teacher and trying to emulate the way he thinks.

Humanity is not “a disease” on the planet, the way some think.  But the large and growing population we have is straining the resources of the planet.  This is a good think because it will force humanity to adopt better, cleaner technologies.  And it will evenutally force humanity to fufill our manifest destiny and leave this planet and populate the solar system.

From Clock Running Out II.

The reality is that the financial markets never fix recurrent failures. The market did not fix apartheid, fascism or World War II. Politics did. Governance did. The yield of good politics is another kind of ROI, the Return on Insight. We own the necessary insight into the acute and massive ecosystems crises but not yet the responsible politics needed. Let’s invent them.

The Spiritual Importance

The world we live in is not static.  The only constant is change.  Either humanity will evolve forward or fall backward.  But adopting conservative political views can not work.  We can’t change the  world back to an earlier paradigm.  The world that conservatives long for no longer exists.  Conservatives are death.  We must find models that work in the world that exist as it is today.  We can’t undo the internet.  We can’t undo globalization.  We can’t undo demand for natural resources. 

Ideas are the seeds of change.  One of the problems is that there are only a few of us that recognize the problems and are actively seeking to find and implement solutions.  First we have to work on ourselves so we can be the most potent agents for change possible.  Secondly we must be very strategic and find the solutions that require the least amount of energy to implement.

Al Gore from the movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” quoting Winston Churchill from 1926,

“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences.”

An John F. Kennedy,

“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream of things that never were and say why not.”

The Spiritual Importance

Quotes from people we admire can provide motivation to carry out the work we know we need to do.  To steal a title from book, I believe in living a “purpoose driven life.”  I do and I can attest to the fact that it provides me much satisfaction, especially when the low points in life happen.

When big corporations use money, political influence and the patent system to stifle innovation, new business models are required to move society into a more positive direction.  I recommend watching the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car” (2006).  You can read a summary on Wikipedia.

Malcolm Bricklin has one such idea.  See “Detroit 2008: AutoblogGreen Q&A: Malcolm Bricklin talks about building a PHEV supply base”.

Malcolm Bricklin: Actually, we are using the vehicle only as a way to sign up the dealers. But to truth of the matter is what we are really doing is trying to set up the infrastructure for electric vehicles and electric hybrid plug-ins. What we are doing is we are designing a vehicle as you can see right over there, which is going to be the size of a Mercedes S about the width of a Lamborghini that will get 100 miles to the gallon and sell for 40 grand. That, we think, will dispel everybody’s thoughts that you can’t build a big car and use electricity and get great gas miles and still sell at a decent price.

…

So that was our purpose, but the real purpose is to be able go to the dealers and say look; Here is what we have to sell to begin with and we are going to give a new product every year on that platform. But more important than that, we are going to do two things that we believe the industry needs or there is not going to be an industry. That is outside of the Big Three, if you are going to build electric or electric hybrid, you have got to find a way to distribute it and you have got to find a way to bring the component prices down. In order to bring the component prices down, if you are the Big Three you subsidize it. But if you are a little guy you can’t subsidize it, which means that a lot of cars are going to come in to market for $100,000 and although they may be a nice value at $100,000 there is not a big market for $100,000 cars. We think the market is under $50,000, under $40,000 and of course if we get down to $30,000 then we really think that the market is going to open up.

Read the full article for more information on Mr. Bricklin’s idea.  Then watch the videos at his Visionary Vehicles website.