Owl & Ibis - A Confluence Of Minds

Kudos to Mona Leiter for her superb March 25, 2022, Owl & Ibis – A Confluence of Minds multi-media presentation, “From Gulliver’s Travels to Star Trek – Alternate Realities or a Mirror?” A list of links to the videos she showed and her original narrative follow. A veteran presenter at O&I, Mona described this, her most recent effort this way: I really appreciated having the chance to work on this as I covered some of the things that mean the most to me - Star Wars, Star Trek, and Twilight Zone. These movies/shows had a big impact on me and the shaping of who I became. I definitely appreciate the power of story and the ability of speculative fiction to help us reflect on where we have been, where we are, and where we may be headed. – Mona List of Video Links for “From Gulliver’s Travels to Star Trek – Alternate Realities or a Mirror?” 1. Star Wars Trailer from 1977 (before the movie came out) a. https://youtu.be/1g3_CFmnU7k 2. Luke Meets Ben (from Star Wars) a. https:/...

  Background The human pursuit of power, wealth, and empire derives from a fundamental aspect of life on Earth. It originated with life itself as a response to the need to survive and a desire to flourish. At its birth, its coming to life, every organism grows and exploits to the fullest every useable resource it encounters to serve its need to survive and desire to flourish. It does so until it encounters other living and/or physical environmental constraints. This results in that life form being contained or killed, or its continuing to exploit all it encounters to the point of destroying the resources and life systems that give and sustain its life. Humans have been no exception. With our “sapient” emergence beginning about 300,000 years ago we brought this fundamental drive to survive and desire to flourish with us – something genetically inherited and behaviorally learned from all other life forms that preceded and nourished us. What Old World primate has not encountered a tre...

  Image: Francks Deceus, Arco Gallery   To understand culture and any particular culture one must first examine how culture content accommodates the needs of mainstream society and its individuals, because the fit and rules of culture are meant to best accommodate the mainstream. One must also look at how a society’s culture is responded to by groups and persons  not  in the mainstream. It is here that the authenticity of the beliefs, values, and norms of a given time are often questioned and challenged. Does the culture content remain suitable for enough people for the society’s survival and possible flourishing? Sometimes efforts, informal or formal, are undertaken to change the content and power of a culture to better suit the times and needs of more or fewer members of a society. Democratic societies seek to make their respective cultures more inclusive; autocracies favor less inclusion. When minority persons join the mainstream, they expand the inclusivity of so...