Humanity:Desmond_Green

Desmond Green is the founder of Organization:Reverence_For_Life

Obviously Desmond is more than what he has done, but I will share a bit of this information to provide context for the talent and skills he brings to our collaboration. Adding his and Dawn Vaz Green (page Humanity: Dawn_Vaz_Green) ingredient has inspired a collaboration on BreathFusion, sharing The Practice and Reverence for Life as an action philosophy.

About Desmond's work leading him to Affirmational Psychology and Reverence for Life

• Special Studies while enrolled at Goddard College with the late Dr. Ross L. Mooney of the Ohio State University Perception Laboratory, exploring modes of perception and motivation (1966 until his death).
• During this period interacted with Professor Abraham Maslow of Brandeis University.
• Zen Philosophy at Goddard College under Paul Reptz, noted American Zen Philosopher
• Existential Philosophy under Jacob Amstutz, visiting Professor at Goddard College 1968 /69.
• Awarded fellowship to Harvard University in 2002 as a follow up to the Reverence For Life} initiative in the Jamaican prison system.

This excerpt is from a case study at Harvard Law-Cyberstrategy 

Prescod had been put in charge of Jamaica’s prison system in 1993. A military man, by background, he was appalled by what he saw in the prisons. He set out to change the culture of the prisons from penal to rehabilitative. To try to accomplish this he enlisted the assistance of a philosopher/preacher named Desmond Green, who accepted the assignment of going into the prisons to promote Reverence for Life among the inmates. Desmond Green preaches self-control and self-development through simple steps: Get in touch with yourself. Attend to your breathing, attend to what you eat, to how you exercise, how you speak, how you relate to others. Have reverence for life. He encouraged the formation of singing groups, and built trust by persuading Prescod to allow the temporary release of these groups to accept invitations from churches in Jamaica to sing on weekends, with minimal supervision. In fact, this program operated with minimal supervision. A test of trust was the inmates’ willingness to return at the end of the weekend furlough. The program flourished for several years without a single escape. Reverence for Life built a band room in the General Penitentiary, obtained musical instruments, and brought music to the prison.

 

Our initial approach was to capitalize on the inmates’ interest in music by using music as a means of teaching digital skills. We sought to develop a program in which computer labs in the prisons would serve as recording and production studios in which inmates would learn a range of useful (and employable) digital skills. This was a fine idea for an inmate skill-training program as far as it went, but it failed to take into account the opposition of the guards. Prescod had developed great antagonism for the warders, and they for him. From the warder viewpoint Prescod had taken the inmate side in a social environment in which the warders are powerful stakeholders with lives at risk. They felt he humiliated them. His rehabilitation program was in many ways an affront to their authority. In January 2000, when Prescod announced that he would extend his stay as commissioner for two more years, 800 guards went out on strike. Some say they expected the prisons would erupt in riot and Prescod would be forced to resign. But there was no riot. Prescod and Green had sufficiently established a trust environment sufficient to permit him to run the prisons for the next eighteen months with a skeleton crew of warders and a population of inmates who were largely controlling themselves and who were trusted to leave the prison in large numbers on weekend furloughs. This was the scene we’d come to observe and to document.

Cultural Fusion- Active SoulFood Ingredients

Dawn and Desmond together provide internal-female/external-male perspectives of BreathFusion and Reverence for Life. This is less an issue of gender than it is the yin and yang of energy whole-ly expressed and perceived, it will present this bilocality consistently.

[ These notes will be moved but for now I make them here until such time as I am inspired to relocate it to its proper place.

These are among the sign post it seems that show up to indicate right direction move forward as inspired. A key part of what has been illuminated is the creation process and why art and virtual reality have signficant metaphyisal implications, in addition to exploring alternatives for social organization around for example learning in freedom. The collaborations with the Greens have helped the vision of content to make our HI the destination I envisioned in terms of creative internal and purpose. This collaboration is an example of the founding concepts behind this series, so that puts me sqarely on track with realizing the coordinated launch of Cultural Fusion Experience of Art as Philosophy.

The heart of Desmond's and Dawn's contribution is their lessons and insights in having applied the idea of paying attention to your attention,, in their language expressed through your breath as the basis of all currencies and things of value. What value is there in a business without the commitment of breath from those working for it? Can you trade gold or platinimum before breath has been applied to locate and retrieve it? Without the faith of the indivudals who exchange paper for goods and services, does that paper even exist without the investment of breath to produce it?

I will add links to this later...Of primary interest to me in Cultural Fusion was this issue of convergence between the game of business and art (which are bilocalities) and an economy that recognizes the value of intangible assess expressed through quality of attention applied to creative endeavors that leverage social capital to achieve solutions that automate global social responsibility. The result being increase prosperity based on this more enlightened paradigm. Enlightened based on its attention to the intention of being a solution expressed creatively to emobdy high quality attention and love as ingredients.

This line of understanding has inspired the Universal Breathing Bank which I did little blogging about but that is working nicely with the development of hotel infinity. I am working with fellow members in the Association for Virtual Worlds to do both a browser accessible version and a metaverse version that is linked ti Second Life via the Research Center we are building on the sandbox island Organization:iFOSSF provides for Cultural Fusion Research & Development.

In addition to the just the Organization:FootstepsForLife Gift Shop there is now more substanitive content to anchor the concept for an eventual real world version. World Reverence for Life University has moved into active development and two Jamaican colleges and elementary schools have indicated their intention to participate and award credit to teachers and students.

External Links:

• Gaia webpage
• The Moods Channel
• Reverence for Life

Project collaborations:

• Breathing
• Breath

Category: Humanity