Quotes

As Albert Einstein observed, we can’t solve our problems from the same level of thinking out of which they originated. What level of thinking are we at? What level must we get to? How do we get there?

The journalist Edward R. Morrow once said, “The obscure we see eventually, the completely apparent takes a little longer.”

Mark Twain, commenting about life, said, “What tedious training day after day, year after year, never ending to learn common sense.”

From my seventeen-month, nonstop political campaign, I developed a keen understanding of the world of politics. The answers to our problems, I learned, would never come from that battleground of adversarial self-interest groups. Larger issues and realities must first be understood and resolved in order for the political process to serve the common good. Seven Words that can Change the World

“We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness. We’ve added years to life, not life to years.” - Anonymous

The word “democracy” means rule by the people. Abraham Lincoln described this form of self-government as “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” not government of some people, by some people, for some people. Seven Words that can Change the World

Rahel: “If you wish to astonish the whole world, tell the simple truth.”

The Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard observed that “Searching for truth is like searching in a pitch dark room for a black cat that isn’t there.”

From cosmology, we know that every hour we travel in excess of an incredible 1,665,000 miles. How do we do that? It is as though we are on a spacecraft within a spacecraft within a spacecraft (at least). The first spacecraft on which we are passengers is our planet as it orbits the star we call our sun at a speed of 65,000 miles an hour. Our solar system is the second spacecraft. We are passengers on it as it orbits our galaxy, the Milky Way, at 600,000 miles per hour. The Milky Way, the third spacecraft on which we are traveling, is speeding along among other galaxies in excess of 1,000,000 miles per hour. This gives us a total in excess of 1,665,000 miles traveled every hour of our lives. For all we know, we may be on a fourth spacecraft, our universe, as it travels among other universes in a “multiverse”. Our planet, Earth, is small, only 7,926 miles in diameter and 24,000 miles in circumference. In volume, it is only 3 millionths the size of our sun. We exist in a solar system comprised of the sun, nine planets, 84 moons (Earth: 1, Mars: 2, Jupiter: 17, Saturn: 31, Uranus: 21, Neptune: 11, and Pluto: 1) with more being discovered all of the time, more than 30,000 asteroids, and countless comets, meteoroids, and newly discovered planetoids (beyond Pluto). Of the nine planets, four are known as the inner (and terrestrial) planets: Mercury (3,029 miles diameter), Venus (7,519 miles diameter), Earth, and Mars (4,223 miles diameter). The five outer planets, which represent 99 percent of the mass of all the planets, are Jupiter (89,000 miles diameter), Saturn (75,000 miles diameter), Uranus (32,000 miles diameter), Neptune (31,000 miles diameter), and tiny Pluto (1,423 miles diameter), which is smaller than our moon (Pluto was recently downgraded from ‘planet’ status). The sun, in comparison, is so large (865,000 miles diameter) that it comprises 99.85% of the total mass of our solar system. As our planet orbits the sun at 65,000 mph, simultaneously it turns, rotating on its axis, at 1,000 miles an hour. To rotate fully once, it takes what we call a day. As we orbit our sun, our moon, 238,857 miles away, orbits us every 27 days, 7 hours, and 43 minutes. Earth is about 93,000,000 miles from the sun. The closest planet to the Sun, Mercury, is about 36,000,000 miles from it. To give you a sense of the size of our solar system, Pluto, the most distant planet, is 3,666,000,000 miles from the sun. The circuit that we orbit around the sun is 600 million miles. To orbit once, it takes what we call a year. While all this is going on, our solar system orbits the Milky Way galaxy. Envision this: the Sun (comprised only of exploding gases: 75% hydrogen, 24% helium, and 1% other gases) and its nine planets (four made of gas, five solid), moons, asteroids, meteoroids, and comets all orbit together at 600,000 miles per hour like a huge self-contained space station more than seven billion miles in diameter. How long does it take for us to orbit the Milky Way galaxy one time? Recall that it takes Earth a year to get around the sun at 65,000 miles an hour. In contrast, our solar system is traveling around the galaxy at 600,000 miles per hour. But even at that speed it takes 225 million years to orbit the Milky Way galaxy one time. The Milky Way galaxy is huge. It contains about 300 billion stars. The nearest to us of the 300 billion is a star by the name of Proxima Centauri. It is one of a three-star system that also includes Alpha and Beta Centauri, which tumble over each other while Proxima Centauri orbits them. To reach Proxima Centauri from our solar system, traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second (at that speed, we could fly around Earth seven times in one second!), requires four years and three months. To make that same trip at today’s space-shuttle speed would take 155,000 years! That’s to reach the nearest star of approximately 300 billion in our galaxy. Just how big is this galaxy? The Milky Way is 100,000 light-years wide. A light-year is the distance covered in a year traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second: 5,880 billion miles. Multiply that times 100,000 and you have the distance across our galaxy. There is another way, perhaps a little more comprehensible, to visualize something 100,000 light-years wide. If we started at one end of our galaxy and traveled across it at 186,000 miles a second (the speed of light) for every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every year for 100,000 years, we would reach the other end. It’s large. The word “incomprehensible” comes to mind. As recently as the 1920s, we thought the Milky Way galaxy was the entire universe. This was an error equivalent to thinking the earth was flat. As large as our galaxy is, we now know it is only one of 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Why do we say the “observable universe?” We exist on one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy. The gas, dust, and other stars (approximately 300 billion) in our galaxy block our vision, preventing us from observing the rest of the universe. Even though we can actually observe 100 billion galaxies, we estimate that there exists a trillion galaxies in the known universe. Scientists are now pondering the probability that there are many more universes. The nearest large galaxy to us is Andromeda, which contains about 400 billion stars. To reach Andromeda from the Milky Way, we would have to travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, for 2,200,000 years. Galaxies are organized into clusters and super clusters. The Milky Way, Andromeda, and more than thirty other galaxies exist in a cluster by the name of the Local Group. The Local Group is 10 million light-years wide and sits on the edge of a super cluster by the name of Virgo. Virgo is hundreds of millions of light-years wide. To cross it requires hundreds of millions of years of travel at 186,000 miles per second. It contains thousands of galaxies. However, in cosmic terms, thousands of galaxies is not a big deal. Remember, there are an estimated trillion galaxies in the known universe. This super cluster, Virgo, with all its galaxies, is being drawn at a speed in excess of a million miles an hour toward some unfathomable mass that some cosmologists refer to as The Great Attractor. Let’s review all of this briefly. In general terms, our universe consists of clusters and super clusters of galaxies. These galaxies contain billions of stars like our sun. Planets orbit some of these stars. Moons orbit some of these planets. We exist on a planet orbited by a moon. Our planet and its moon orbits a star, the sun, at 65,000 miles per hour. The sun, along with the rest of our solar system, orbits the Milky Way galaxy at 600,000 miles per hour. The Milky Way galaxy, with all its stars, planets, and moons, travels among other galaxies at speeds in excess of a million miles an hour. This is the incredible system in which we exist and of which our tiny planet is an infinitesimally small part, a mere speck on the blueprint of existence. Seven Words that can Change the World

Evidence of religion, art, and recorded events dates back thirty to forty thousand years. There have been an estimated one hundred thousand religions. From the aforementioned survey, we know there exists about ten thousands religions today. One hundred and fifty of these have a million or more followers.

Albert Einstein observed that we can’t solve our problems from the same level of thinking from which they originated.

Infancy of Our Intelligence When I was a child, my family attended church regularly. I served countless masses as an altar boy. It was my nature at a very young age, as it has been all my life, to be observant and contemplative. I observed the restrained and reverential behavior of people in church. They crossed themselves with “holy” water as they entered, bowed, genuflected, stood, kneeled, and prayed in reverent obedience. I also observed, curiously, that many of these same sanctimonious people were often irreverent, insensitive, and sometimes cruel outside of church. I sensed, instinctively, that there was something wrong. I did not yet know the word hypocrisy. As I continued to observe life, I was struck by how we seemed to complicate it unnecessarily. I thought to myself, “Life is not this complicated. Why do we make it more difficult than it is?” Wherever I went, as the years passed, I observed similar hypocritical and counterproductive behavioral patterns that I found disturbing.

Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer observed that all truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

FOUNDATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Health Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kindness Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Respect The quality of our lives reflects the quality of these foundational relationships. This is a sacred construct that exists as an integral part of reality. This is not a human construct.

This is an awesome challenge given that we add approximately 80 million people a year to our planet. That is an addition of approximately 1,538,000 people each week to feed, clothe, house, educate, employ, transport, govern, protect and keep healthy. The key to sustainability is to take the word apart and make two words of it: sustain ability, i.e., our ability to sustain these three foundational relationships: our health, our relationships with others, and the health of our environment.

Life also broadcasts a riveting truth from which there is no escape. I refer to it as the “reverse side of the Golden Rule”. Whereas the Golden Rule commands that we do to others as we would have others do to us, the reverse side of the Golden Rule does not command anything but warns that what we do to others we do to ourselves. In an interconnected world, all exploitation and oppression inevitably returns to its source.

Three rules, seven words. If we follow them, our lives will change. As many of our lives change our world changes. Be healthy. Be kind. Respect the environment. If you wish to astonish the whole world, tell people that—the simple truth. Seven Words that can Change the World

Universal Principles Oneness: All that exists is a part of and is affected by everything else that exists. Diversity: The whole is comprised of an infinite number of diverse parts. Interrelatedness: All parts are interrelated. Individuality: All parts are unique. Interdependence: All parts depend upon each other for survival. Seven Words that can Change the World

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