Seeds of Change - Heiner Benking's Blog - quergeist.info
Welcome to the NewsLog or Blog of Heiner Benking. A kaleidoscope of insights and impulses collected first in the DaZiBao (Rio) process Seeds of Change Viewsletter of the Club of Budapest since 1995, continually updated ever since. Now available for broader distribution and comments in this blog - enjoy, and come again !
8 Dec 2009 @ 19:48
We just learend that access at UNFCCC is a mess - so business as usual, the typical Murphy's law and exclusion as it is easier than to bother about others, or the Worlds...
So we could not enter to the Press center, a calmity given teh preparation of months since UN-CBD and UNESCO-DESD in the last year and all the efforts to make a difference. But wait a minute, you have read Asterix, we are brave, share, care and dare and event smart enough to do something outside of the walled communities, I think you calle it in the US gated communities. Luckly we planned to do something out the UN maze ! - as in Rio 30 kilometers apart, but here we are close, even F2F sometimes, even without a badge for the "inner city" and "holy gral".
Most important on my to-do list is Copenvegan. See links, come back,... I will report more duriong the days to come as it perfectly links with the FOOD and POPULATION ROUNDTABLE last week in Canada, [link] AND ! the Interview with Aleco about him meeting at a Pub in New York and wondering if Club would be a good name for such union of concerfned scientists and humanists, and what should be in the first 2 reports of the Club of Rome, [more] [link] (more later] and the Nobel Peace Laureats gathering last week in Berlin. I have reported below..... see here [more].
So what is up !? Turning Copenhagen not TopsyTurvy but into a CopenVegane urbane cultured and civilized place, maybe much wider, deeper, and culturally appealing than my old "Christinia" [link]
More about our event you can learn at the Survival Academy and bring sharing, caring, daring friends. Most welcome Sunday 13th 1-9 PM - tell your neighbour !!
[link] http://survivalacademy.ning.com/events/copenvegan-vegetarianism
Sorry - extremly busy these days - will keep you briefed vai twitter or my blogs, or just write if you care and dare something to share....
More >
a thrilling and important event !
here a session synopsis by the GREEN CROSS.
I will report after the second day, have just spoken form the floor in the last session: see stream - or this audio: the outlook interview they did with me is available here:
and soon I believ on YouTube and other streaming platforms - so no need to download any-more !
16.45 – 18.45 Third session: Walls of menace to the Environment: Breaking down the walls that constrain environmental and sustainable development prospects
Session Leaders: Martin Frick, (General Director of the Global Humanitarian Forum), Prof. Mohan Munasinghe (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), Jan Dunlop (Independent international energy consultancy group), Thomas Stelzer (Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Inter-Agency Affairs, UN),
Remarks by: Emily Büning (German Youth Delegate to the UN General Assembly)
I was speaking from the floor - close to the end after about 2 hours ! see the link above !! More >
9 Nov 2009 @ 22:51
just comming back from Brandeburg Gate !
here is my blog at BenkingNews:
Busy times... we had last week the NEW RENAISSANCE 3 - and helping to organize it was hard to keep track and in balance.
AND last years presentation of Marilyn at the Medical and Scientific Network event:
Towards a New Renaissance 3: Harmonizing Spirituality, Nature, and Health;
[link]
30 October – 1 November 2009 Humboldt University Berlin, Germany.
see also: [link] maybe see also: [link]
Here is the presentation which I will need to seperate in some shorter video-courses maybe on youtube or teacherstube.
[lowres] [highres - VERY LARGE FILE !!] Renaissance-Harmonizing:
It all comes back to take viewpoints in and out, navigate frames of references, include multi-modal representaions and sign systems. All nicely put by Rückert and covered in the Interview at the Nobel Peace laureats the next 2 days: [link]
Whoever imagines mental barriers
which actually do not exist
and then thinks them away, has understood the world.
As space is entrapped in geometry's network of lines,
thought is caught in its (own) inherent laws.
Maps make the world comprehensible to us;
we are still waiting for the star-maps of the spirit.
In the same way that ambling through fields
we risk getting lost, the spirit negotiates its terrain.
Friedrich Rückert, Wisdom of Brahmins
I have translated and cited the poem mentioned here the next day (Nov 10.) at the Peace Laureats gathering in Berlin - see the link above and hear the interview !: here: see also the slides on NEW SCIENCE, NEW LANGUAGE, NEW MODELS, NEW THINKING .... all nicely comming together to form a "bigger picture".
[link]
17 Sep 2009 @ 18:27
I just returned exhausted from an exceptional event: 5 years M 100 - Sanssouci Colloquium, Potsdam 2009
It was not just Genscher, Azouley, .... and all the big names of politics and media, but people which impressed me most like Tariq Ramadan.
I have covered Azouley and Genscher exchanges earlier, so this blog will be about the challenges raised in the final podium, where Tariq and ***, CNN where authentic and deep - beside all the other panelists and invited participants.
Important is to dig deeper into the challanges of odern media and globalisation, segregation and a "loundspeaker for noise" as one participant said. Time is short now so I need to add more on this special event later - but want you to have the latest breaking news..... specailly about Azouley and the Anna Lindh Foundations mission and potential. Please see the Press releases and come back later... [link]
"Den Anderen in seinem Anderssein wollen" "To appreciate the other in his being different" was the final press release and synopsis, please study the whole site and follow the links! specially to the YOUTH MEDIA FROUM the week before !!
For me being allowed to meet such celebrities was a lasting mindprint, me subsuming and resonanting the old days of Culture of Peace or ME; WE OTHERS MODELS ... with UNESCO, or the the Dialogues of Civilizations - which I strongly recommend. Please visit lasting CULTURES or DIALOGUES as I am rushing towards the GLOBAL FUTURES CAMP, not time to waiste...
1 Jun 2009 @ 20:05
I was much concerned the automobile and automation in the early 80ies. Little has changed over the last 30 years. Our industry is not looking for perspectives for iteself, humanity and a sustainable planet. Narrow shortsighted tactics hinder longview, big-picture strategies. So we are waiting for sound solutions these and other industries. As I wrote in this blog at share-holder meeting of Daimler-Benz-Mercedes. It was like a deja-vue when share holders where asking for a change in policy and direction. The picture of the Chinese government asking in 1992, nearly 18 years ago, the same questions to the automobil, transport and building sector insdustry. That time, like today, nothing seems much different. Some look long distance, the others short-sighted for direct return and personal objectives.
Do we need more wake-up calls to make us look into positions, perspectives, values, orientations, and co-existences ??
I have just visited GM's Global Operations. As you can see the site is not yet updated, but only the list of international subsidiarties, but also the grid needs to be revisited ! As long as their map show greenland and africa having equal-area on their map - which means think about Siberia is if you take your equal-area glasses on !! I wonder how we can have a fair view onto Planet Earth, and how groups like GM can come to appreciate the area of a market in relation to purchasing power, the number of people per square kilomaeter, and other local conditions....
Have a look on erlier blog entries about earth literacy and map-analaphabetism and check the map of today and come back later to the world-view underlaying the public and corporate reason in the US and elsewhere...
26 Apr 2009 @ 04:14 McPlanet this year is about very deep and tricky questions: What should we do when we eat up the whole planet? or leave it in the hands of a few. Should we reboot the system in times of multiple crisis? Is this a crisis of norms, values, our ways to analyze, imagine, communicate, present? or share, care and dare to confront issues and challenges as the same time? A multiple Crisis, or a multi-modal, many facetted crisis ??, a multiple crisis? Is shock a good treatment? as proposed by some as a "wake-up" call !?
I WONDER - having met Naomi Klein and have read and discussed with her some books and needed concerns and actions .... - how to leapfrog this dilemma of fear and dis-empowerment, not development but belittling important individual and common concerns...
The question in the article below is what to do, pragmatics and ethics, and how to address the root or driver probems, like how to overcome the fight over words, find ways of co-existence and co-creation without the compulsion to make others agree, and come to listening and sharing "modes" - not to experiment with back to "square one" demagogic drives, as the issue is not to restart an engine in operation, but check the metaphors and images we use, AND care for living things, greater goods and what we inflict onto others. Please read more also about dialog and decision cultures and a much need art of the arts: wise communication and good governance. (more) More >
8 Apr 2009 @ 13:01
Daimler Annual Meeting of Daimler - futures, personalities, perspectives, positionalities, proportions and consequences ...
I am reporting today from the Daimler Annual Meeting held on April 8, 2009, at the Messe Berlin, in Berlin, Germany. For me it is like a déjà-vu of topics dear to me in the nearly 80ies as a management consultant here at the ICC when it was just opened here in Berlin and we had the WCGA looking into visualisation and mangement, and in the early 90thwhen we were with UN stateplanners in Beijing and were discussing national and sectoral strategies for countries and how to bring appropriate technologies for the building and transportation sectors to anchor countries and "developing" countries! More >
5 Apr 2009 @ 04:19
Outcomes from the Bonn Unesco-DESD, the UN FCCC and the economic Crisises summits in London overshadowing what it means for and beyond "you" and "me".
This week the City of Bonn of in a state of emergency and axiety, the UN city experienced "hands-on" how the different focus and priorities of all these different sectors and agendas, an experience you can make if you are lucky on a daily basis in New York, Geneva, Paris.
In the press rooms in Bonn you learned that the climate conference is leaving out education and the educators were blamed to ignore climate or economy (just an example).
This is the old story of the blind men and the elephant: all are right and in the wrong when being to attached to their focus and having to picture of the "situation", even avoiding certain words as this would distract and destabilize our sweet isolation. An example: it was impossible to get the word Crisis into UN documents, manifestos and declarations, as "crisis" like in "Climate Crisis" or "Economic Crisis" was excluded from the official vocabulary and so out of sight - but also out of mind and reality?
At Unesco's "Education for Sustainable Development" decade half-time gathering it was great to be with "cultured" people and see with educators how to possibly bridge natural, cultural, lingual diversities and search for ways to broaden public awareness and learners understanding of the environment and how action can help to safe and restore a heavily impacted nature by the human "footprint" [more] More >
20 Mar 2009 @ 06:57
Today at EARTH DAY at EQUINOX we start a campaign towards more meaningful and tangible education and caring for the Commons.
It is part of a series of side event taking place locally and concerted globally since some years. See History and visit the Symposion page. Pls. come back later as we are now going to ring the PEACE BELL for EARTH DAY at Equinox.
Later the week we include the UNESCO- DESD, March 31. - April 3. in Bonn, Germany. Stay tuned, and please follow the links !
Here is the annoucement and invitation: see [more] below: More >
This is Heiner Benking's News Log, a private-public diary presenting events, symposia and happenings in Berlin and elsewhere - my farings, foci, issues and concerns.
PLEASE CONSIDER THIS PERSONAL BLOG an ARTISTIC and PERFORMATIVE MEDIA INTERVENTION !
The Log links to my work and interests and presents issues and special concern of maybe a very small group of "concerned, engaged generalist" - a Global Interest Group (GIG). This needs to be seen in contrast to the ubiquitous Specialized Interest Groups (SIGs), the "scientific" approach to organize subject areas and specialization and standardization and harmonization! of means, nomenclatures, and modes of thinking. My favorite stories in the WHOLENESS SEMINAR include:
BELA BANATHY: "GENESIS
OF GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY" and "IVAN HAVEL: Longing for Unified Knowledge" where a "specialist" runs into the founding session of the early foundations General Systems, mumbling "this is not my field" or where Ivan M. Havel expresses his search for other kinds of knowledge.
As a starter I also recommend to check my MINDPRINT site, where we add the need for HANDPRINTS and MINDPRINTS, as FOOTPRINTS are good to visualize and communicate numbers, densities or consumption per area, but are not sufficient to negotiate and "harmonize" across domains and communicate gains in different cultures, technologies, times,... in short: incompatible but relevant information and our work on dialog, peace, policy-making, and multi-modal, faceted issues and consequences.
What am I? This is a "well-packed" question for which I have not the or a single answer. Some called me an in-betweener, go-getter, facilitator, hub, marvel-hero, trim-tab, bricoleur, bricoleers??? - career designeer, .... Some even "hank" which I disliked or Story which I liked very much !!
I have no single answer as I feel we need to walk the talk and sing and dance Life ! in spectra and fields in multiple embodied spaces.
To nebulous an answer? I am sorry but I do not go for overclaims and oversimplifications, under-complex and over-simplistic approaches with clan-think mindsets about real issues in clear contexts!
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8 Dec 2009 @ 19:48
10 Nov 2009 @ 21:12
9 Nov 2009 @ 22:51
17 Sep 2009 @ 18:27
1 Jun 2009 @ 20:05
26 Apr 2009 @ 04:14
8 Apr 2009 @ 13:01
5 Apr 2009 @ 04:19
20 Mar 2009 @ 06:57