Podcast – Gaia Science: Path to Human Love, Health, Relatedness

Listen to Podcast 03/24/10 – Start Serena’s Segment at 44th Minute HERE

Now the story!
PRN, or Progressive Radio Network, describes itself as “The # 1 Radio Station for Progressive Minds.”  It’s also known as “the thinking person’s forum.”  I found out I was invited as a guest to talk about how Gaia science impacts human emotions.  “Wooow!” I thought, “your first time live on a radio show, Serena. You better make sure you know what’s you’re saying as your voice goes on the air.”

I looked up my hosts.  PRN does indeed live up to its descriptions as far as I know.  On the Progressive Radio Network archives page I saw a whole range of interesting radio shows, with topics including energy, news, community, politics, writing, women, consumers, animals, health, and more, all in the context of critical thinking and presented in the form of debates.  “Great!” I thought, “this seems like the kind of place where one finds like minded people who have not stopped asking questions, regardless of how out of fashion critical thinking might be at the moment.  How refreshing!” 
One is Gary Null, who describes himself as the radio host who “takes on the real issues that the mainstream media is afraid to tackle.”  His show covers a wide range of topics, including local and global ecology, the environment, science, religion, spirituality, nutrition, health, and human relationships.  He welcomes a stream of interesting guests, including scholars, professors, reporters, and other kinds of experts.  He heard of my new book, Gaia and the New Politics of Love, and invited me to speak of the Gaia Hypothesis and what it means for relationships among humans and those with other species.  “How wonderful,” I thought, “I can’t wait!”

“You studied the Gaia Hypothesis” Gary said, “Can you tell us what it is and how can it help us better understand human relationships? Relationships with other species?” he asked.
“The Gaia Hypothesis is the most important scientific hypothesis of our time,” I explained, “because it is the foundation for the paradigm shift toward the new system of knowledge that will enable humanity to make peace with Gaia, the third planet, rather than commit suicide on it.”  I gave the references to James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, on whose science the hypothesis is based.  “If this hypothesis is true, then all of the biota, including atmosphere, biosphere, and, of course, ourselves, is a body of interconnected life made of symbiotic elements.  This means that we are all already always related.  So developing healthy relationships is simply allowing this relatedness to actualize its potential in the most authentic form.” 

Gary asked me about dissident science, including AIDS science.  “I have the highest respect for science that differs from commonly accepted knowledge because without these differences knowledge cannot evolve.  For example, Gaia science is still a form of ‘dissident’ science, since the Gaia Hypothesis is not the prevalent paradigm upon which today’s accepted knowledge is based.”
I then proceeded to explain how for myself I have chosen a vegetarian path to health and a holistic one as well.  In a Gaian context, one’s health is a result of the health of the symbiotic elements with which one chooses to surround oneself.  For me, time-tested indigenous remedies make more sense than recently invented pharmaceutical drugs, especially when used regularly.  When something has been used from generation to generation, its impact on the body’s balance is known.
It was a pleasure to be a guest on this program.  There were many more questions I would have been happy to address, and I would welcome another invitation.  It was great to have my work recognized by a host of Gary’s experience and courage.  I hope more listeners become aware of how Gaia and the New Politics of Love can be a resource for them.

Listen to Podcast 03/24/10 – Start Serena’s Segment at 44th Minute HERE 

Stay tuned for more PODCASTS featuring Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

Shutter Island and The Shock Doctrine: Connecting the Dots

I saw Shutter Island yesterday with a friend, and at the end we were sorting out the various parts of the plot to make sure that both versions were equally plausible, as in good Scorsese fashion, where by tradition fiction and reality, subconscious and performance inevitably blur.  The two stories being that Edward is either really the US Marshall with the mission to investigate the criminal asylum where Lewaddis, the man who set his house and wife on fire is held, or that he is a fool in denial of the fact that Lewaddis and himself are actually the same person.
As I saw the film I kept thinking of Naomi Klein’s political theory book, The Shock Doctrine, which claims that the project of wrecking an economy as motive to activate a politics of privatization and wholesale of public assets, is actually a practice that started in psychiatric hospitals, when electroshock and lobotomies were common medical practices in mental hospitals.  The famous ‘Chicago Boys,’ the Milton Freedman acolytes who engineered the various economic crises in question in the subsequent decades, learned their trade from psychiatry.  They succeeded, according to Klein, in generating the kind of panic and terror that broke people resistance and gave political advocates of privatization a blank slate.
It is interesting to me that a director like Scorsese would pick up Klein’s message in some roundabout way and create the concrete images that bring the message home for the next generation, which visually oriented and whose collective consciousness responds to cinema that way.
My friend and I enjoyed the movie even though we realize that the ambivalence of the plot might baffle some spectators.  To us, that ambivalence is a bonus not just because it is the hallmark of Scorsese, but rather because it reflects the confusion present in reality itself, the fact that if human experiments intended to control your brain are happening next door, it could very well be that will never, for sure, know. 
Leonardo di Caprio, whom I hadn’t seen since Titanic (I miss a lot of movies), was in the part, I felt, his rugged charm improved with maturity.
I am a writer and an activist and a professor, and I blog about movies and other topics at
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

Serena’s comment to Oregon Post’s Review of Brent Leung’s House of Numbers

Read review and comments to this brave documentary about the importance of dissidence in the production of scientific knowledge

http://www.oregonlive.com/movies/index.ssf/2010/01/review_house_of_numbers_blurs/2835/comments-newest.html

Posted by Serena
 

March 14, 2010, 10:33PM
Brent’s work is very important as it alerts an entire new generation to the scientific problems research on AIDS has not resolved yet, with the first voice admitting this the French scientist who discovered HIV back in the 1980s, Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier. I am a university professor and educator and I have researched and written extensively about the AIDS controversies, analyzing the cultural/political context in which official AIDS science was produced, and the likely effects that this context had on the results. Science happens in culture and is affected by it, it is not neutral or universal, never has been, if we think of how hard it was for Galileo to affirm something simple like the concept that the Earth moves back then when the powers that be had an investment in the opposite theory. The problem with AIDS science is that people get upset about it because it affects them intimately, having to do with what they do, or think they can do, in bed. What about separating the two problems? Asking the government to mandate that scientists officially run again the laboratory experiments said to prove that HIV causes AIDS, and in the meanwhile continuing to use condoms when doing something that would otherwise result in the exchange of deep fluids when unknown risk factors are involved? This is what I propose in my latest book, Gaia and the New Politics of Love (2009). See also my blog, http://drserenagaia.wpengine.com/
I plan to organize a screening of Leung’s documentary on my campus, so students learn more about the importance of maintaining the space open for free speech and knowledge that represents dissenting viewpoints.
With much respect and admiration for Leung’s brave work. 
Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD
author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love: Notes for a Poly Planet (2009)
and of Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves (2007)

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

English Translation – Serena’s Interview on Italian TV – Tatami

Talk Show – Tatami – RaiTre  – Italian Public TV
Script of Interview with Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, 2/15/2009, Minutes: 20-30
Hostess Camilla Raznovich; Guests: Serena Anderlini, Author, Theorist; Michela Marzano, Philosopher; Ricky Tognazzi, Actor
Camilla Raznovich:  Good evening, Serena Anderlini, theorist and practitioner of polyamory, a topic about which she has written many books.  So, I’d like to understand how you figured out that you had a tendency to love more than one partner at the same time.
Serena Anderlini:  I figured it out because I loved the people with whom my partners fell in love.  If they fell in love with them, I fell in love with them too, and so I wanted to transform the negative energies of hatred, envy, jealousy, into a positive energy in which I was able to share this love.  It was a rather long path because one cannot easily transform a negative sentiment into a positive one, one has to go though a whole process of inner transformation, a spiritual process that makes one capable of embracing a type of love that is not possessive.  For me this is comparable to a father, or a mother, who have twelve children.  Will the twelve children be less loved?  No.  At times in these big families people love each other a lot, so why can’t this multiplicity also happen also in the area of partners, why?  Why is love for our children supposed to be altruistic and love for one’s partners egotistic?  Why?
CR: And at this time, how many partners do you have?
SA: I didn’t come here to tell you that. It’s none of your business.  (Applause.)
CR: But you have more than one at the same time?
SA: Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.
CR: Ok. But actually I’m sure you realize that if you don’t, then there is no reason for you to be on the show.  That is, you either are willing to share from your experience or, to put it quite bluntly, I don’t know what to tell you.
SA: Well, yes, you see, in polyamory one gives time to each partner, which is to say that one emphasizes the relationship, and not “recreational sex.”  I’m not opposed to recreational sex per se, but in polyamory the relationship is emphasized so that each partner becomes a person with whom there is an amorous relationship, an emotional relationship.  And so to every relationship one has to devote a certain time.  Then comes the time when one can be together with all of one’s partners, or the time when they are together among themselves, for example, when I’m not around.  But there always has to be balance.
CR: The new thing then is the simultaneity of these relationships?
SA: Yes. And also, how can I put, it’s a bit like when one is cooking, if one puts too many pots on the fire at the same time, then something gets burned.  So one only manages as many relationships as one can afford to invest in.
CR: I know you are a mother.  How do you tell about this lifestyle to your daughter?
SA: Well, through my books, for example.  In my biological family, my daughter has been the person who has read my books most carefully.  We have talked about them together, I have seen her intelligence, I have seen the way she has approached a world that she does not know very well because we live quite far away from each other.  And I dare say that I believe that for her it must be a source of pride to have a mother who experiments with her own life.  She has also made her own choices in her own life, and no one has disapproved of them.  If she had grown up in a family where there is only one way to do things right, her choices too would have been  . .
CR: And beyond your daughter, is there anyone in your family who has criticized you, who has been opposed to your choices?
SA: I dare say that since my family of origin was atheist, we’ve never suffered from a Catholic monopoly over spirituality.  So since there wasn’t a prescribed style of spirituality, everyone has found his or her own way toward it.  And so we have not been in the way of each other in these matters.  Not the slightest bit.   I dare say that when for the first time I found out about the bisexual aspect of myself, and I talked about it with my father, who was still alive then, that was the time when we became friends again, friends like when I was a little girl.  It was the time when he found his daughter again.
CR: Michela Marzano, we’ve heard that even though sexual promiscuity has happened historically, now one can have also relationships, and so in the case of polyamory, several loves coexist without promiscuity.  These loves are experienced with much courage, in the light of day, and simultaneously.
MM: Yes.  Well, I must admit that I am, I wouldn’t say perplexed, since, naturally, I listen, I’ve listened with much attention.  Let’s say I’m almost in admiration of the energy that manifests, because I know that to manage a relationship with only one person absorbs a whole lot of energy.  One has to give a lot of oneself to get to establish a connection.  At the same time, it appears to me that the vision here is a bit idealized.  It appears as if everything is good, the relationship with the father, with the daughter, with society.  Now, it’s extremely difficult to be able to satisfy all of one’s exigencies, all of one’s needs, and love several persons at the same time without having someone suffer.  This is what strikes me.  What is the effect, what is the impact of this will to go beyond the egotism of possession, what’s the impact on others.  Because jealousy can certainly be pathological, but at the same time jealousy is sometimes the sign of attachment, of the fact that I love the other person, and I don’t want this person to be simply the object of attention of a whole bunch of other persons.
CR: Marzano, hold on till we get Anderlini to respond.
MM: Just one more point.  Because in relation to the interview with Jacques Attali, there is one thing that I found interesting, and that is the fact of making a parallel between affective and economic relationships.  In economic relationships, there actually is an exchange, as when I buy or sell something.  In emotional relationships, to be able to build something, one gives something of oneself, something deeper that cannot simply be sold or exchanged.  In my view, there is a difference in quality between the simple exchange of merchandises, and in the fact of putting oneself at stake in the relationship with another.
CR: Anderlini?
SA: It is the transformation of one’s inner landscape, the transformation of emotions, and this is something that is done via spirituality, via meditation, some do it via prayer, there are many ways to do it.  In any event, it is an effect of the inner landscape, and it is something that happens gradually, also in poly communities.  For example, if a person is new, it is understood that this person will have a process of transformation.  If then at some point the person decides that polyamory is not for him or her, the person can pick another lifestyle.
Ricky Tognazzi: In Italy, people simply say that “two is company, three is war,” guerra,” or “guera” as they pronounce it here in Rome.  You know what I mean.  In particular, I am the child of the sessantottino generation, the generation that powered the revolution of 1968.  Free love, stuff . . . it was a massacre, something scary, we hurt each other a lot.  But I’m not talking about liberated sex, because that was actually quite amusing.  I’m talking about the implications of faithfulness, not only a faithfulness not practiced, but also expressed as such, a declared non-exclusivity.  The great sincerity of couples: “we have to tell each other everything, but on the other hand, if we cannot be together all the time, each should be free to make his or her experiences as long as than . . . “  To make a long story short, something terrifying, we hurt ourselves and each other, so, I mean, how do we get past this point?
SA: It depends on how you do it.  For example in the polyamorist communities that I know there are people our age, but also older, people there are admitted at any age, even eighty, and such senior participants actually exist.
RT: So, I’m still on time there . . .
SA: Yeah, you’re still on time (giggles).
RT: I cannot participate with the people of the Castle Party (only under 40), but I can . . .
SA: Yeah, and it’s not so expensive.  What happened is that at the time you’re talking about, these experiments where done brutally, people did not know the arts of loving.  And what I claim is that, in our culture, love has become a pathology or an instinct.  We have forgotten that in many cultures love has been an art, an art that can be learned.  As I learn how to paint, so I learn how to love.  And I learn how to love also the love of the other.  I learn to respect the feelings of these other persons.
MM: I would like to interject because I feel there is another important point.  I perfectly understand that we need to get out of the myth according to which the “other” person can stand for the totality.  The other is never the totality.  In order to affirm myself in life I need a series of different spheres because there is a difference between the love we bring to our children and to our lovers/companions.  Love for our children has a tender core, a softness.  We project toward our children a whole series of expectations, therefore we operate in a gift mode.  In a couple’s relationship, there is something that is rather related to reciprocity: I give and at the same time I expect.  And to be able to give there is the precondition of being available to give, that energy has to be present.  What really strikes me in what we’ve heard so far is that it is as if we were in a dream of omnipotence.  I can love everyone and I can love them at the same time.
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com