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"It's All Related, It's All Connected"

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

Intro: SJS / GreenPolicy360 Siterunner:

With many thanks to Charlene Spretnak and her years of green eco- and feminist-writing, her green politics and especially her explorations in her book, "Relational Reality", let us begin to recall 'the early days'.

Many threads were coming together in the 1980s and 1990s to form an interwoven tapestry. As Thomas Kuhn writes, a transformation in science was in process, a paradigm shift was about to occur. It is worth taking a few moments to recall these days.

During the beginning years of the Bioneers network in Santa Fe in the early 1990s, a common saying of ours was "it's all connected" and it is. It's all connected, it's all related. Nothing is separate in nature. It is well to remember this -- and as we endeavor to craft smart, resilient and sustainable politics and business practices, to keep in mind nature's lessons.

The 90s were a decade of transformational ideas. The Santa Fe Institute was pioneering new frontiers of science -- and so were we with green politics beginning globally. As a forward-looking center of these developing thoughts and values, we spoke of new physics, advances in scientific understanding, earth systems science, deep ecology, the web of life ... our mission in the city named after St. Francis was to speak of earth science, 'seeds of change', new green ideas of biodiversity, wellness, food, politics, and change. aAnd then we really got going, going green as the 21st Century began and challenges grew..

In speaking of the natural biological world, we delved into and wrote of interrelatedness. We began a publishing initiative and went on to 'bioneering' green ideas over three decades, and in 2019 at the Bioneers 30th annual conference, we again brought environmental thinking over the years forward as we turned ideas into action.

Kenny Ausubel, co-founding the Bioneers with Nina Simons, would explain this foundation of ideas that he wrote of with wonder in one of his (and our) first books, "Seeds of Change: The Living Treasure". Biodiversity was "nature's strategy of survival". A Bioneers lesson, in a deep, rich ecology of nature, is 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. We spoke of all species having a place, a vital role in protecting and preserving life, and how ancient wisdom needs to be recalled.

During the 1990s, your GreenPolicy360 siterunner met Charlene Spretnak as the beginnings of the New Mexico Green Party began in Santa Fe. As a drafter of the founding NM Green party platform, then US Green party platform, I looked to Charlene's writing as one of the founders of Green party politics especially through her books and exploration of a green spirituality, green thought and a green paradigm. Charlene and her women's group in its diversity, brought this understanding further along with Green Key Values (KVs as we called them).

Charlene went further with her integral writing of "Relational Reality". Interconnections and interrelatedness are there to see all around us if we look carefully and closely, and take time to 'be' with nature and appreciate the amazing beauty of nature. Green values can help us see and experience new, fulfilling ways of 'being'.

We were fortunate to discover Charlene's work at Bear & Company publishing in Santa Fe in the late 1980s on the beautiful high mesa. When the drafting of the US Green party platform was formally initiated, one street away from Bear & Company's office where I was first introduced to Charlene's writing, my work began with the Key Values from Charlene's book on the origins of green party politics. The Spiritual Dimension of Green Politics captures a spiritual vision taken into today's world.

Our values-based politics looked to quality of life as an 'integral ecology' and the Green founding platform brings forward the ideas of a world all connected... We speak of #strategicdemands and #newdefinitionsofnationalsecurity. We see how global security has connections across national lines, now green ideas of connectivity have led to new visions, new opportunities, new challenges.

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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.

Relational Reality, Green Values & the Green Platform

SJS/GreenPolicy Siterunner: In the early, formative years of the Bioneers, our group of 'bio pioneers' looked to nature's lessons as guides for knowledge and action. We often talked about how "It's all connected, it's all related" as we went about our organizing work, writing, and publishing. Today, Bioneers continues in its third decade. The message continues on, learning from nature, sharing lessons, wisdom that is deep and needed in our time.

In the 1990s your GreenPolicy360 siterunner brought these ideas of interconnectedness into the drafting of the US Green Party platform, and Global Green Charter. The Green Key Values (KVs) were introduced to us in Santa Fe, New Mexico by Charlene Spretnak and her Santa Fe publisher at the time, Bear & Company.

Charlene's work to bring forward the original Green Key Values was inspirational during the formative years of the green movement.

Beginning in the 1990s in Santa Fe, I set to work on developing a "serious, credible, platform-based" US Green Party. Our green politics group explored the initial Green Party roots and work of Charlene Spretnak, including the "key values" statement that was a foundation from the 1980s for the Green Party. Charlene and the women who pulled together a values foundation for the policy and positions to be developed became my own starting point in proposing then drafting the founding Green Party platform. Connectivity, as we were exploring in Santa Fe with the Bioneers, the Santa Fe Institute, St John's "Great Books" program and political strategy for organizing became a "tapestry of threads". We proposed a national Green meeting a plan that I presented for a "40 state organizing effort". The strategy was adopted, including a proposal for a new platform, a presidential campaign, a first nominating convention (in Los Angeles, the "city of angels".) High hopes were floated and incorporating extensively from the works I drew from History of Ideas study at the Graduate Faculty of the New School in NYC, became a basis for the Green platform. Tying ideas together was a Whole Earth philosophy, one of seeing a big picture, and relationships that draw us together as 'planet citizens'. Connectivity based on values, a "relational reality" became a key element as I drafted an initial platform from 1995 to 2000. The comprehensive Green platform was adopted in 2000, on the cusp of a new century and millennium, as the US Green Party was formed and in 2001 formally approved as a "national committee of a national party" by the US Federal Election Committee.

Green concepts of living systems, 'it's all related' connectedness, go far beyond Green parties. A green perspective is vital and vitally needed, a new vision for the 21st century, of common bonds, protecting and preserving life, valuing the use of science and physics and acknowledging the challenges we all face in our Anthropocene era. Planet Earth is literally "in human hands".

Earth system science and relational reality, in a values vision of inter-connectedness and "the Commons", continue at the heart of our green politics and global green work.

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Green Politics

Flowing from Green Values

• http://www.greenpolicy360.net/mw/images/Green_Key_Values_Spiritual_Dimensions-Spretnak-1.pdf

• http://www.greenpolicy360.net/mw/images/Green_Key_Values_Spiritual_Dimensions-Spretnak-2.pdf

• http://www.greenpolicy360.net/mw/images/Green_Key_Values_Spiritual_Dimensions-Spretnak-3.pdf

Green Politics by Charlene Spretnak and Fritjof Capra

The Systems View of Life by Fritjof Capra

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Relational Reality:

New Discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World

By Charlene Spretnak

• 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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