Welcome Home!
Nadia McLaren's Page
Nadia McLaren's discussions
Announcements
Replied May 7
Announcements
Replied May 7
Announcements
Replied Apr 23
Latest Activity
David Sunfellow and Nadia McLaren commented on the video Michel Bauwens P2P Lecture In Australia Apr 30
Apr 25
Apr 21
Apr 21
Apr 21
Apr 21
Apr 21
Nadia McLaren commented on the video Elephant Painting Apr 5
Nadia McLaren commented on the photo Kitten meets Deer Feb 25
Profile
- Hometown:
- Adelaide
- Relationship Status:
- Single
- About Me:
- Formally educated as a natural scientist. Self-educated in alternatives, particularly health, spirituality, experiential learning. Live alone but not solitary, and known to be quite sociable. Plants are my best friends, though more complicated beings figure prominently also. Been around for over five decades and still don't know what I'm meant to be doing with my life, but enjoying the journey immensely. Lived (for some years) in four countries: UK, Australia, Norway and Belgium.
- Website 1:
- http://www.uia.org/guests/nmclaren/
- Favorite Music:
- Folk
Classical
actually most everything EXCEPT VERY LOUD
- What do you do to make a living?
- Independent consultant for thirty years (environment / sustainable devevelopment and international associations). Project coordination and research. Currently Executive Officer for EcoIntegrity, a not-for-profit supporting businesses and households to be more sustainable.
- What kind of hobbies do you have?
- Life and work intermix. I guess "hobbies" means things like gardening, bushwalking, dancing, singing, yoga. Since September 2001, I also mail "alternative news" to a "friends list".
- In a world where you were pursuing your deepest, most heartfelt callings, what would you be doing?
- Communicating deeply
- What is the most important thing you have learned in your life?
- When you think you know, delve deeper
- Describe a belief that you previously held and then subsequently changed. What caused you to change your mind?
- I believed in God. Now I consider a religious God to be a construct. Now I describe myself as a agnostic; it's more honest label for me than athiest. But none of those words really have much communicable meaning any more. I started exploring religion in my teenage years and was confirmed into the Anglican Church. The local rector regretted when I left my country home to do a science degree in the city. On hearing the news though a chance encounter with my mother in the street, he predicted "the church will lose her". It did, but not in the way I suspect he meant. After a decade or so I understood better that my curiosity in religion was part of my search for "the mystery". So was science. My perspective has enlarged beyond both and become quite individual and indefinable. I'm now suspicious of belief and, graciously, more comfortable with uncertainty.
- Who do you admire most in the world (past and/or present) and why?
- David Bohm, a gentle and humble man who had the courage to risk ridicule by his academic peers in proposing a conflation between quantum physics, inuitive knowing (gnosis) and spiritual experience.
- At this turbulent moment in history, what do you think is the most important thing a person can do to help humankind (and the rest of the planet) survive the many dangers that confront us?
- Live as an example to others, and learn from their example.
Learn how to be still.
Discover what matters.
Speak freely, without blame, and listen well.
Judge deeds not words.
Be active in the world.
Be present in the still place between doubt and hope.
- What are your answers to the big questions: Who are we? Where are we from? Why are we here? Where are we headed?
- We (humanity) is an evolutionary front of planetary beingness, or becomingness.
We are the part that is self-reflexive.
I don't know where we are from or why we are here, except that we are hastening the resolution of the movement producing entropy (Second Law of Thermodynamics), otherwise familiar as "consuming resources and running down the system". Entropy is inevitable, but we are speeding things up exponentially.
We are headed (in our lifetimes) towards "crises" and "chaos" (ie things not predictable or scientifically explicable).
Is it our intention, our purpose, to be the generation that (in the words of Herman Daly) finally disposes of the planet as a "Business in Liquidation"?
We may experience the Singularity (when biological and informational intelligence cross-over).
We will move into a new stage of knowing.
I hope that plants make it through (and the rest of what essentially matters).
- Why did you decide to join this community?
- Good feeling.
Greater than average overlap of personal interests.
Mutual recognition and support.
Curiosity about where it will go.
Comment Wall (4 comments)
You need to be a member of NHNE Community to add comments!
Join this network
Welcome!
I spend a lot of time with plants myself -- though I have to say I'm ready by this time of the season for a good frost! But not for two weeks, till the vegetable deliveries are over. ;) My fall project is redesigning a 100x15ish-foot (undulating) perennial flower bed to incorporate more edibles -- elderberries, blueberries, nanking cherries, and the like. Kind of a permaculture concept, informally.
Glad to meet you!
Maybe we'll find time for some interesting conversations eventually. I plan to resume blogging on my new Ning page.
See you around!