UNIVERSE
Gardening is an active participation in the deepest mysteries
of the universe.
- Thomas Berry
The Universe story is the quintessence of reality. We perceive
the story. We put it in our language, the birds put it in theirs,
and the trees put it in theirs. We can read the story of the
Universe in the trees. Everything tells the story of the Universe.
The winds tell the story, literally, not just imaginatively.
The story has its imprint everywhere, and that is why it is
so important to know the story. If you do not know the story,
in a sense you do not know yourself; you do not know anything.
- Thomas Berry
LISTENING
To listen well, is as powerful a means of influence as to talk
well, and is as essential to all true conversation.
- Chinese Proverb
Do unto others as they would like to have you do unto them.
- Platinum
Rule
We know that tourism creates serious problems -- environmentally,
culturally, politically -- so we immediately jump to conclusions:
'this is bad so let's make it right.' And because all the 'sustainable
tourism' initiatives come from the more powerful to the less
-- as usual -- we enforce our solutions. Often with the assistance
of the World Bank, the European Union, USAID and the rest of
the powerful donors - who also come from the 'patch it up so
our show can go on' mindset. But do we really understand the
problem? Are we really prepared to listen to those on the ground?
How deeply are we prepared to understand our hosts REAL needs
and accommodate them -- their way? This may be the only way
that new tourism can emerge, and we certainly need it!
- Valere Tjolle
The question of where the money goes is, of course, one of
the hardest to pin down with hard, reliable figures because
vested interests are either trying to prove it does indeed 'trickle
down' and benefit everyone in the local community, or that it
most certainly doesn't. But from just talking to many low-level
tourism workers around the world - the chambermaids, the taxi
drivers, the waiters etc - I must report that the latter seemed
to be much nearer the truth. Improving the quality of the data
available will clearly help to better answers all of the questions
you raise about tourists having the knowledge to book the 'right'
holiday, or for communities to make the best decisions about
how the manage and nurture their destinations.
- Leo
Hickman
How about we do something more powerful, more meaningful? What
if we helped cities express themselves and share their voice?
My first thought was to ask the people of Pittsburgh
what they want to share with the world. That’s one way
to think about it. My next thought was to give them the tools,
show them how, and get the most authentic voice.
- Chris Brogan, How
Bloggers Can Work With Tourism Boards
SEEING
Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range
of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range
of our intellectual ray -- we are not looking for it. So, in
the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.
- Henry D. Thoreau
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
- Henry D. Thoreau
POSSIBILITIES
We don't have anything planned, so nothing can go wrong.
- Spike
Milligan
When I feel impossible, show me what is possible.
- Michael Franti, Love
Invincible
GROUNDED
The seed cannot sprout upwards without simultaneously sending
roots into the ground.
- Egyptian proverb
POLITICS
No ecological problem will ever be solved until it becomes
a political problem and it will never become a political problem
until public opinion demands it.
- Paul Armond
NUDGE
Like all of us, you have desires for things that you don't
really need and aren't good for you. But you shouldn't disparage
yourself for having them, nor should you conclude that every
desire is tainted. Rather, think of your misguided longings
as the bumbling, amateur expressions of a faculty that will
one day be far more expert. They're how you practice as you
work toward the goal of becoming a master of desire. It may
take a while, but eventually you will get the hang of wanting
things that are really good for you, and good for everyone else,
too.
- Rob Brezsny
NEW
We are going to prove that climate change action and economic
prosperity are not contradictions, but mutually dependent.
- Sigmar Gabriel
The mind values most what it learns first hand.
- Promotion, Otago
Polytechnic
Tags work
very well. I knew I could not design an ontology that would
work for all of you because you all have different views.
- Steve Coast, State
Of The Map 2007
Everything that one thinks one understands has to be understood
over and over again in its different aspects each time with
the same new shock of discovery.
- Marian Milner, cited by Helen
Garner
The kingdom of Bhutan, in the Himalayas, has had the genius
to adopt Gross National Happiness as official policy. Anything
that undermines the people's health will be discouraged, as
will anything that fruitlessly gobbles up their time. Their
old people are valued. All major decisions are tested against
their effect on the environment and on society. According to
the United Nations, Bhutan is one of the world's 10 least-developed
countries, yet according to the Happy
Planet Index, it is somewhere near the top.
- Alastair Sawday, The
Slow Way to Go
La ética no es una condición ocasional, sino
que debe acompañar siempre al periodismo como el zumbido
al moscardón
- Gabriel García Márquez
Everyone's talking about it but no one's doing anything about
it.
- Mark Twain (talking about the weather)
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and
the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never
decreases by being shared.
- Buddha
The simplest way of having a straight back is to have a strong
activated core.
- Tackling,
Rugby
Smart
When the objective is to make children composers, performers,
and appreciators of music, it is not enough merely to place
a piano in every classroom and provide each teacher with a one-day
course on how the piano works.
- New Zealand Consultative Committee on Information Technology
in the School Curriculum, 1990
Ask yourself: 'Am I ready to stop equating cynicism with insight?
Do I dare take the risk that exposing myself to uplifting entertainment
might dull my intelligence?'
- Rob Brezsny, Secrets
of Pronoia/The Sun (PDF)
AGE
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count.
It's the life in your years.
- Abraham Lincoln
It takes a long time to grow young.
- Pablo Picasso
Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternatives.
- Maurice Chevalier
The older the fiddler, the sweeter the tune.
- English Proverb
Last week the candle factory burned down. Everyone just stood
around and sang Happy Birthday.
- Stephen Wright
ART
The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all
over the place, from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of
paper, from a passing stranger, from a spider's web.
- Pablo Picasso
BUDGET
I will go to my grave claiming that the less you spend, the
more you enjoy, the more authentic the experience it is, the
more profound.
- Arthur Frommer, inerviewed in A Sense of Place
BUSINESS
When each of these three elements of vision -- concern for
excellence, for people and for the wider environment -- are
present, business is transformed from a tool for making profits
into a creative, humane experiment for improving life.
- Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi
Manaki Whenua, Manaki Tangata, Haere whakamua' (Care for the
land, Care for people, Go forward)
- Maori proverb and the title of a 2007
photo exhibit
CAPACITY BUILDING
I came away from the World Ecotourism Summit excited by the
positive energy and the passion and commitment of countless
people. However, I also came away with the realization that
there is a tremendous 'divide' between the international agencies
and the indigenous leadership. The buzzword in the research
and at the conferences is that 'local people' need 'capacity
building.' With all due sincere respect, I would like to suggest
that there is also a need for 'capacity building' within the
international agencies themselves.
- Consultant quoted in Reflections
on the International Year of Ecotourism
Efforts undertaken in the mode of 'Top Down/Command and Control'
may have immediate impact, even immediate positive impact (people
stop shooting each other), but the longer term effect is not
as promising. The reason is a simple. The mode of operation
is the very antithesis of Peace. The system addressed (company,
county, country, region) is usually not appreciated in its full,
complex diversity. Chaos, confusion and conflict are eliminated
if possible, rather than honored for the gifts they give, and
then invited to integrate into the larger fabric. And most destructive,
and therefore least effective, is the presumption that those
who undertake the project actually know what they are doing,
and therefore feel at liberty to impose their authority, their
design, their control.
- Harrison Owen, Many
Roads to Peace
CHANGE
When you say to yourself, 'That's the way I am am,' you imply
there is no possibility of change. Analysis is, in this sense,
almost always pessimistic. Focusing, by contrast, is optimistic.
It is based on the very positive expectation of change. It doesn't
envision a human being as a fixed structure whose shape can
be analyzed once and for all. It envisions a person as a process,
capable of continual change and forward movement. This 'problem'
inside you are only those parts of the process that have been
stopped and the aim of focusing is to unstop them and get the
process moving again.
- Eugene
Gendlin, Focusing
Un area de conflictos es una area de oportunidades para
cambiar. (An area of conflict is an opportunity for change).
- Hugo Antonio Santiago, Oaxaca
COLLABORATION
Go to the ugliest or most forlorn place you know--a drugstore
parking lot, the front porch of a crack house, a toxic waste
dump, or the place that symbolizes your secret shame--and build
a shrine devoted to beauty, truth, and love.
- Rob Brezsny, Pronoia
There is no competition among lighthouses. (Entre faros
no hay competitores.)
- Dichos
If you appeal to the individual part of the psyche for a collective
purpose, you're on dangerous ground.
- Michael Ventura, Letters
at 3AM
Look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another
story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story
about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before.
It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and
the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online
metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from
the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will
not only change the world, but also change the way the world
changes.
- Time
Magazine
COMMUNICATION
Our critics are our friends, they show us our faults.
- Benjamin Franklin
COMPARTMENTALIZATION
Those who build walls are pretending.
- Michael Franti and Spearhead, Yell
Fire
Give me a one-armed economist!
- Harry S. Truman
COMPASSION
In the face of what is happening, how do we avoid feeling overwhelmed
... turning to the many diversions of our consumer societies?
It is essential that we develop our inner resources. We have
to look at the things the way they are, painful and overwhelmingly
as that may be, for no healing can begin until we are fully
present to our world, until we learn to sustain the gaze.
- Joanna Macy, World
as Lover, World as Self
CONTINUITY
Don't be a horse race, be marathon. Don't fear the long road,
coz on a long road, u got a long time to sing a simple song.
And it's never too late to start the day over. It's never too
late to pick up the phone.
- Michael Franti, Everyone
deserves music
The trick is to keep it going.
- Popular expression
If you can hold on, hold on.
- Killers, All These Things That I've Done
CONVERSATIONS
Being strapped for funds -- the norm for conservation in Olancho
-- should never be reason for inaction. Some of the most important
and genuinely sustainable projects are extensive conversations
which don't cost anything.
- Mark Bonta, Seven
Names for the Bellbird
CONVICTION
You'll never know what is enough unless you know what is more
than enough. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
If the fool would persist in her folly she would become wise.
- William Blake
EVALUATION
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look
at the results.
- Winston Churchill
EXPERIENCE
Experience is what you get after you need it.
- Popular saying
FAST
Run a little bit faster now and breath a little deeper.
- Poi Dog Pondering, Jack Ass Ginger
FINANCE
Being strapped for funds -- the norm for conservation in Olancho
-- should never be reason for inaction. Some of the most important
and genuinely sustainable projects are extensive conversations
which don't cost anything.
- Mark Bonta, Seven
Names for the Bellbird
GENEROSITY
Choose worthy targets and ransack your imagination to come
up with smart, true and amusing praise about them.
- Rob Brezsny, Pronoia
HAPPINESS
God calls you to the place where your deep gladness and the
world's deep hunger meet.
- Frederick
Buechner
The noblest art is that of making others happy.
- P.T. Barnum
Let the beauty you love be what you do
- Rumi
If I stop looking, where is joy to be found?
- Sarah Hickman
HEALTH
The quickest way to a heart attack is to nurse a grievance.
- Proverb
HIJACKING THE AGENDA
Development from outside organizations, governments, and businesses
is necessary for the nation to move forward but it must be on
our terms... Those against development or wishing to profit
from it, use these arguments to hijack the development agenda
and development money. Development will only work if leaders
that are dedicated to Honduras,
to her sustained improvement, and to a national dream, lead
us.
- Honduras
This Week Editorial
INNOVATION
Moving forward is often due less to a blinding stroke of genius
than a sudden cessation of stupidity..... not having a new thought,
but stopping having an old one.
- Edwin Land,
inventer of the Polaroid
INTEGRATION
The nature of the cosmos is a single, unitive process -- an
unbroken flowing wholeness in which each part of the flow contains
the entire flow.
- David Bohm
We are all players in this game.
- Ziggy Marley, Dragonfly
When
we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to
everything else in the Universe.
- John Muir
The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer
world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the
overlap.
- Novalis, quoted in News
of the Universe
For every step of lightness there is a corresponding step of
darkness. Many people try to only take steps of lightness but
end up getting one very sore leg because they spend their entire
lives hopping around.
- Monk
Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically
right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is
right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and
beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
- Aldo
Leopold
Lo
que es contrario a la naturaleza no es bello (Literal translation:
What is against nature is not beautiful)
- Mexican
saying
I'm a part of a circle of friends and we notice you don't come
around. I think it all depends on you touching ground with us.
- Eddie Brickel, The Circle
LEARNING
A lot of tourists have a consumer attitude -- what can I get,
instead of what can I learn. We have to put aside our own cultural
biases and learn as much as possible from the people we visit.
I find that if you stay long enough, learn the language, you
get a sense of who locals are as people.
- Clay Hubbs, publisher of Transitions
Abroad
Awareness by itself is not enough, it must be joined by mastery.
- Piero Ferrucci, what
we may be
MODESTY
Nobody does it better.
- Carly Simon
Anyone else can do it better.
- Paul Orfalea, Copy
This
Your eyes believe what they see. Your ears believe others.
- Paul Orfalea, Copy
This
As a leader, all you do is manage trust.
- Paul Orfalea, Copy
This
It's easy to join associations, but I don't see that I have
an impact.
- Conversation with tour operator
More does not always mean better.
- Conversation
NEWS
How did it come to be that the news is reported solely by journalists?
- Rob Brezsny, Pronoia
Journalists need experts as badly as experts need journalists.
Every day there are newspaper pages and television newscasts
to be filed, and an expert who can deliver a jarring piece of
wisdom is always welcome. Working together, journalists and
experts are the architects of conventional wisdom.
- Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics
OPTIONS
Llegas por donde quieras y como quieras. (Arrive from where
you want and how you want)
- Guatemala tourism promotion
PATIENCE
No matter how early you get up, you can't make the sun rise
any sooner. (No por mucho madrugar, amanece más temprano)
- Dicho
PLACE
A real place
conveys a sense of temporal depth, a sense that people have
been living and laboring here for a long time.
- Scott Russell Sanders, foreward, Civic Tourism
There is no place that does not see you. You must change your
life.
- Rainer Maria Rilke (Archaic Torso of Apollo)
PROCESS
First examine our attitude towards peace itself. Too many of
us think it is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But
that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion
that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are
gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that
view. Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved
by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human
destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have
often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can
do it again. I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept
of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and
fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams
but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making
that our only and immediate goal. Let us focus instead on a
more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden
revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human
institutions -- on a series of concrete actions and effective
agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There
is no single, simple key to this peace; no grand or magic formula
to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the
product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic,
not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation.
For peace is a process -- a way of solving problems.
- John F. Kennedy, American
University Address
One of the benefits of continuity is that the process of communication
and organization is simplified. What works works, what does
not work changes.
- Conversation
When visiting a village, action-oriented conservationists can
become frustrated by ethnographic researchers like me, who linger
over a strong cup of coffee and a good conversation. According
to some, nothing is being achieved by sitting around and chatting.
My belief, on the other hand, is that in many cases it is extremely
important to spend many hours in open discussion on people's
porches. It is important to savor conversations with and among
local people to enjoy conversing, rather than looking upon it
as a requirement or a bore. Finding out about the meanings that
landscapes have for local people is part of the process of becoming
entangled with the local world. If this is not important to
a conservation project, then it will be unsuccessful. Conservationists
who are unable to build trust (confianza), the glue of Central
American social relations, will be perceived as objects to be
exploited for access to privileges and funds.
- Mark Bonta, Olancho
Geography
RULES
Rule #1: The Captain is always right. Rule #2: If the Captain
is wrong, see Rule #1.
- Trader Joe's
SEEING
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes
but in having new eyes
- Marcel Proust
This eye looks with love
This eye looks with judgment
Free me take the sight out of this eye
- Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be
seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.
- Helen Keller
When you see the world as lover, every being, every phenomenon,
can become -- if you have a clever, appreciative eye -- an expression
of that ongoing, erotic impulse.
- Joanna Macy, World
as Lover, World as Self
SIMPLICITY
Give the hardest job to the laziest person and they'll find
the easiest way to do it.
- Popular expression
God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process
of subtraction.
- Meister Eckhart
Law 1: Reduce
The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful
reduction.
Law 2: Organize
Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
Law 3: Time
Savings in time feel like simplicity.
Law 4: Learn
Knowledge makes everything simpler.
Law 5: Differences
Simplicity and complexity need each other.
Law 6: Context
What lies in the periphery of simplicity is deĆnitely not peripheral.
Law 7: Emotion
More emotions are better than less.
Law 8: Trust
In simplicity we trust.
Law 9: Failure
Some things can never be made simple.
Law 10: The One
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the
meaningful.
- John Maeda, The
Laws of Simplicity
SMALL IS BEATIFUL
We ought to focus as much on the micro as the macro.
- David Fennell, Ethics
and Sustainable Tourism
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest
fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light,
not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who
am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually,
who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing
small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened
about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around
you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born
to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not
just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own
light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to
do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence
automatically liberates others.
- Marianne Williamson, Our
Deepest Fear
Surely it is 'about nudging people along the continuum' to
stop the pig-ignorant and filthy to be a little more considerate,
to get the concerned to take another step further, and so on.
Not the big leap, but the small step that makes the journey.
- Peter Hutchison, Everyone
likes a debate, but a discussion is more fruitful
It seems to me that if we can imagine the injustice then we
can imagine its opposite.
- Paul Keating, (sampled in From
little things big things grow)\
Da valor a lo pequeño.
Small is beautiful.
SOLUTIONS
The Golden Rule is a decent ethical principle, but it could
be even better. "Do unto others as you would have them
do unto you" presumes that others enjoy what you enjoy.
But that's wrong. There are many things you'd like to have done
unto you that others would either despise or be bored by. Here's
a new, improved formulation, which we call the Platinum Rule:
Do unto others as they would like to have you do unto them.
- Rob Brezsny, Free
Will Astrology
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To
change something, build a new model that makes the existing
model obsolete.
- R.
Buckminster Fuller
The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis
by using the same thinking that created the situation.
- Albert Einstein
You can't solve a problem on the same level that it was created.
You have to rise above it to the next level.
- Albert Einstein
UNDERSTANDING
So many ways to understanding, one for every woman and man.
Been that way since the world began
- Bruce Cockburn, Making Contact
Given the room and the freedom to move, the complex adaptive
system will do what it is very good at ... create wholeness,
health and harmony. We call that Peace.
- Harrison Owen, A Strategy for Peace
Talk to each other, understand one another.
- Keb'Mo',
Peace
When a thing is intelligible, you have a sense of participation;
when a thing is unintelligible you have a sense of estrangement.
- E.F.
Schumacher, Small
is Beautiful
We must, however, keep in mind that in our desire to help people
who are poor and powerless, that we do not do so in ways that,
in the long run, keep them poor and powerless and dependent
upon us.
- Seattle Community
Network
VISUALIZATION
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it. Try the
'as if' technique.
- William James
Visualize world peace.
- Popular expression and the title of artwork by Hal
Marcus
You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting
to be born ... The future must enter into you long before it
happens ... Just wait for the birth, for the hour of new clarity.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
You can't perceive what you can't conceive.
- Rob Brezsny, Pronoia
We've got smoke building in the crowded theater, but the exit
sign is just a mysterious tangle of glowing of red letters.
- Bruce Sterling, Make
No Decision Out of Fear (Podcast)
Only the act of envisioning can one day become an embodiment.
- Michael Ventura, Shadow
Dancing in the USA
What unifies a movement? After we go home from the demonstration,
are we still a movement? Only if we're grounded in a shared
vision … Having a vision means we have some fundamental
idea of how we want the world to be … A movement articulates
something for the future … It's not enough to express our
individualities. What kind of a world do you want for everybody?
And how can that world be demonstrated?
- Michael Ventura, Letters
at 3AM
Know what you want and all the universe conspires to help you
achieve it.
- Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
WANTING
Like all of us, you have desires for things that you don't
really need and aren't good for you. But you shouldn't disparage
yourself for having them, nor should you conclude that every
desire is tainted. Rather, think of your misguided longings
as the bumbling, amateur expressions of a faculty that will
one day be far more expert. They're how you practice as you
work toward the goal of becoming a master of desire. It may
take a while, but eventually you will get the hang of wanting
things that are really good for you, and good for everyone else,
too.
- Free Will Astrology
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