It's been 2 weeks since my last post? Errant me!
Here's an interesting article on the Creative Economy, but with relevance to developing nations. Rather long, but interesting, of course.

"The Creative Economy Report 2008 of UNCTAD

The emerging "creative economy" has become a leading component of economic growth, employment, trade and innovation, and social cohesion in most advanced economies. Unfortunately, however, the large majority of developing countries are not yet able to harness their creative capacity for development. The creative economy offers to developing countries a feasible option and new opportunities to leapfrog into emerging high-growth areas of the world economy." Read more

"The human stress response has been characterized, both physiologically and behaviorally, as “fight-or-flight.” Although fight-or-flight may characterize the primary physiological responses to stress for both males and females, we propose that, behaviorally, females’ responses to stress are more marked by a pattern of “tend and befriend.” Tending involves nurturant activities designed to protect the self and offspring that promote safety and reduce distress; befriending is the creation and maintenance of social networks that may aid in this process. The biobehavioral mechanism that underlies the tend and befriend pattern appears to draw heavily on the attachment/caregiving system, and considerable neuroendocrine evidence from animal and human studies suggests that oxytocin, in conjunction with female reproductive hormones and endogenous opioid peptide mechanisms, may be at its core. This previously unexplored stress regulatory system has manifold implications for the study of stress." Read more

The other day a concept took root in me- A Goodwill Economy. When I find myself doing work where there is no direct monetary returns, yet I simply want to, and enjoy doing it, I realize that it a form for me to express myself. And there is returns of another sort- goodwill. If goodwill is our global currency, what would the world be like? A lot of times goodwill can be 'exchanged' for other needs to be fulfilled. We're all basically self-sufficient economies of one. Don't let industrial or money economics make you believe otherwise.

"By what name will future generations know our time? Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great Unraveling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth's capacity to sustain and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remained of the planet's resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population? Or will they look back in joyful celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when their forebears embraced the higher-order potential of their human nature, turned crisis into opportunity, and learned to live in creative partnership with one another and Earth?"

Read more...

“Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.”

See: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

Many have asked me if I sell coffee, actually run a cafe, is it a virtual cafe...etc.

The cafe is a wonderful place where people come and do their own thing, or come together for conversation and to connect. Sometimes these connections last for a lifetime, sometimes they last for a season. But nevertheless the connections have happened, and it adds to our repetoire of experiences in life. Many a world was saved over a cup of coffee, many a relationship strengthened. It is lovely informal learning that takes place from conversations that matter. Not because they conform to the social currency of the day necessarily, but because they come from the vibrations of the soul. Sharing a warm, comforting drink together and conversing can bring about new ways of being in peace.

Let's make this metaphor for learning through conversations that is the cafe be one of the ways we, as individuals independent of any organizing principle other than God, consciously manifest peace in the world.