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Intro: SJS / GreenPolicy Siterunner:

"It's All Connected"

During the beginning days of the Bioneers network in Santa Fe in the early 1990s, a common saying of ours in speaking of the natural biological world was "it's all connected". Kenny Ausubel and our founding Bioneers would explain, as Kenny wonderfully did in one of his (and our) first books, "Seeds of Change: The Living Treasure", that biodiversity was "nature's strategy of survival" and the deep, rich ecology of nature was a guide for humanity.

Biodiversity and interconnections (sympatheia συμπάθεια: affinity of parts to the organic whole, mutual interdependence) are key to understanding the natural world, our place within it, and science from small to large, new ways of seeing that bring insight, comprehension and connection.

Charlene Spretnak, one of the founders of Green party politics especially through her books and exploration of a green spirituality, green thought and a green paradigm in its diversity, brings this understanding further along with "Relational Reality". Interconnections and interrelatedness are there to see if we look carefully and closely, and take time to 'be' with nature and appreciate the amazing beauty of nature. Green values can take us all into new, fulfilling ways of 'being' and, in my being fortunate to receive Charlene's work at Bear & Company publishing in the late 1980s, I initiated the drafting of the US Green party platform with key values. A values-based politics looked to quality of life as integral ecology in the Green founding platform...

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QUALITY OF LIFE (From the US Green Party founding platform)

Our overall goal is not merely to survive, but to share lives that are truly worth living. We believe the quality of our individual lives is enriched by the quality of all of our lives. We encourage everyone to see the dignity and intrinsic worth in all of life, and to take the time to understand and appreciate themselves, their community and the magnificent beauty of this world.

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Relational Reality:

New Discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World

By Charlene Spretnak

• http://www.charlenespretnak.com/relational_reality_116771.htm

• https://www.amazon.com/Relational-Reality-Discoveries-Interrelatedness-Transforming/dp/0615461271/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlene_Spretnak

"A vital book" -- Bill McKibben, former adviser to GreenPolicy360

Publisher:

RELATIONAL REALITY reveals the coherence among numerous surprising discoveries, most made since 2004, about the interrelated nature of physical reality. These discoveries are now transforming every mainstream field of human endeavor, as basic assumptions (built on the old idea that everything in the physical world is essentially separate and functions mechanistically) are being reconsidered. No longer a marginal perspective,the Relational Shift is based on the realization that all entities in this world, including humans, are thoroughly relational beings of great complexity who are both composed of and nested within networks of creative, dynamic interrelationships. Nothing exists outside of those relationships. As we try to grasp the interrelated nature of reality, emergent relational approaches are already transforming the way we educate our children, attend to our health, green our communities, and rethink economic activity. New analyses of the crises of modernity and abundant new solutions are the result.

Spiritual Dimension of Green Politics

Key Values, Green Politics

Eco-Spirituality at GreenPolicy360

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