Salon gathering of October 30, 2010
I was invited to attend a four-hour salon today that focused on growing sustainability globally via the media. Nancy Brown, Marc Weiss and Barbara Marx Hubbard orchestrated it. I'm new to Santa Barbara and was very impressed by the many “movers and shakers” in the area. Nancy introduced the meeting only to really introduce the other main people. She set the tone for us to speak briefly about ourselves, our projects we're working on to give the other participants a range of abilities and networking opportunities within this group.
There are people involved in global development projects, film projects, artistic and sculpture projects. One person is an activist who was networking with young students knocking on doors to educate people about various propositions… as the salon was happening. A Sri Lankan man spoke about his company's technological breakthrough of being able to transmit films in live video coverage all over the world on all computers in real life time.
There were consultants, people involved with negotiating with Wal-Mart for more green products as well as curbing Wal-Mart's energy diet to be more sustainable (plus Wal-Mart is changing their tune to paying their employees much better than two years ago). A woman was telling us the most fascinating account of how her company trains storytellers, writers, screenwriters how to take real-life stories and case histories of cool sustainable and socially justice oriented people and nudges them to use their craft to tell a story. They are no longer pursuing the writers to change them to “our way of thinking,” but to offer the stories and allow the storytellers to simply use their craft.She later on went on to say that some of her “clients” are being sent to various inner cities, to India, and into Africa so they can use their master story-telling talents to write stories for the media. Her basic assumptions is that to “change the world, we need to change the story.”
Most people were totally passionate about what they were doing–whether it was orchestrating conventions around sustainability or presenting workshops in global forums or advising on socially responsible investments (SRIs) or directing monies to socially conscious entrepreneurs to people who have a spiritual/psychic slant to the ongoing shift that so many of us feel happening right now. A alternative health practitioner who is no longer practicing noted that even if we had 100% sustainability that would not alter the psychic/spiritual structure of the current human, to which I concur. An elder told us that she was developing educational programs to assist both young people as well as adults to learn our position in the universe according to “the universe story” as presented by people like Brian Swimm and Thomas Berry (as well as the up-and-coming passionate poet player in this area, Drew Dillinger (http://drewdellinger.org/), who I happened to see at the Science and Nonduality conference last weekend and was blown away. I've seen his segments of poetry via the Pachamama Alliance trainings but to see him live, many people at the recent conference had tears in their eyes as they gave him a standing ovation!)
All in all the second meeting of its kind held at the University Club on Santa Barbara St. was a total success. A list of e-mail addresses was created. The date of late January was tentatively scheduled to be the next salon. After it officially closed, the bar was open for us to continue the networking.
When it was my turn to speak for two minutes I simply said that I was publisher of HopeDance for 15 years, it is now only online and because my MO seemed to be stuck and because I was becoming overly serious I needed to shift and now I am a laughter yoga teacher where we laugh for no reason. I could've had added much more but I didn't. I also forgot to mention the film screenings that I was doing in Santa Barbara for nearly a decade (around social justice and sustainability concerns). I invited people to taste an exercise of laughter yoga by suggesting we do an Inuit pointing game by pointing at someone and laugh. I explained this was not laughing at the person but more of creating a connection. We all stood up and did it and many were surprised that our seeming faking laughter turned to real laughter.
My main point of using these laughter games and indigenous rituals is to cultivate a foundation of joy “no matter what happens,” was forgotten and that's the reason to write this draft of the mini report.
Apologies to those who I've written about but didn't offer their names. Since I'm new it's going to be definitely a learning curve to remember all the names of the movers and shakers that Nancy Brown and Barbara Marx Hubbard brought together.
Bob Banner ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
