How the Wisdom of Love Transforms Gaia: Modeling Choice for Children and Grandchildren

In talking about poly lovestyles, the question of 'children' often comes up. "It's ok as long as only adults are involved, but what about children? Can they be 'exposed' to such things and still grow up to be sane and happy people?" Find out all about this and more in this clip. Hear the wisdom of poly grandmothers with two generations of descendants who are happy to have them be part of the family and respect them for who they are!

Here's another clip from the Double Book Launch on 6/22.  Enjoy and let us know what you think.  And for more info on it all, don't forget to order your copy of Gaia and the New Politics of Love!

How the Wisdom of Love Transforms Gaia: Inventing the Families We Need

What is a nuclear family?  How did this type of family come into being?  Whose interests does this invention serve?  When did it become prevalent and why?  What is 'nuclear' about it?  Why do some people think it's the only possible type of family and/or the most advanced one?  What are new ways to think about 'family' that better serve the future of our species?

All of this stuff came up when Taj and yours truly were reading at Open Secret Bookstore, at the Double Book Launch we held on June 22.  We promised more details about it, and here we are!

People often ask me about families, and how they became nuclear.  In fact, many even seem to think that families have always been nuclear, that there's never been another model for what a family is supposed to look like, or even that there is something inherently 'natural' to families being of this kind. 

But what is 'nuclear' about families, really? Are these kinds of families supposed to explode, like atoms? Are they an invention of the nuclear age? Do they look like atoms, and if so, which ones? Carbon? Oxygen? Hydrogen? Uranium? Perhaps they've got some nuclear energy inside, in which case they should be handled carefully, right?  If they are enriched, they can become even more unstable, and that can start the process of atomic fission, where they splinter into little particles.  In this case, they fall under George W's special category, 'nukular,' remember? The famous word that egregious president could not pronounce? 

In any event, and jokes aside, the nuclear family, explosive or not, is a very recent invention.  If we consider the infinite ways in which life has become organized in order to nurture itself through time on the face of our multifarious hostess Gaia, including all of human cultures and the cultures of other species, we find out that in the history of what we may call 'family,' the nuclear family is really a split second. Just a blink of the eye. And not the happiest or most interesting one.

The clip explains when and why the nuclear family became prevalent. What kind of paradigm it is part of, and why this paradigm no longer serves life in general, or human life in particular.  Nothing wrong with nuclear families. They serve a purpose. But to move into a Gaian future, the whole idea of what constitutes family must be placed in a much wider horizon.

Check it out!

Yours truly hopes you enjoy the video. Please help us imagine what the video does not say. What families can we invent to met our needs? Suggestions are welcome!

Families are about love, right? So a new politics of love is also a new politics about families, right?  If you're not sure what's political about families, find out all about it in Gaia and the New Politics of Love.  

Namaste,

Gaia

a.k.a. Serena Anderlini

Creating Poly Bestsellers: Reclaiming Book Sales Engineering for our Communities

Hi there again!

This announcement applies to action to be taken the day after tomorrow, July 25th.  It is related to Polyamory in the 21st Century, a book yours truly has read very carefully and recommends with high marks!  Here's why everyone who reads should get their online order in come Sunday!

For a number of years now bestsellers have been engineered by the book industry.  Lots of books get published every year: in fact it has never been easier to become an 'author.'  However, which books get into whose hands, who has access to them, who thinks they should, and who, eventually, get the wisdom of these books is another story.  With big conglomerates controlling a great deal of the book production and distribution, the public is often the very last entity to decide what's worth reading.  That's why the vast majority of people still believe many very natural ideas to be quite esoteric and radical and eccentric.  Like the idea that we humans can love more than one person at once and can do so in integrity!  Which is of course the very essence of polyamory and also a nugget of very ancient wisdom that has helped people whose love is abundant get by under all kinds of different circumstances.  

The so called 'social media' offer tools that help reclaim the ability to create bestsellers.  We don't have to do it the way the book industry does it, namely by investing big six-digit figures in expensive bill boards that use a lot of paper and destroy a lot of trees and induce false desire to consume what others consume too. No. We can do it digitally and communally, by focusing efforts on ordering online a certain book on a specified date.  The multiple sales made in close proximity send a signal to the digital system that a certain title is highly requested.  This gets attention to the title and author, who then get the advantage of being billed as 'best sellers' for the day!

That way the very notion of bestseller (that which sells best) gets redefined as something that certain groups of people prefer for reasons that are close to their hart, that reflect their genuine inclinations and commitments, their thirst for out-of-the-box knowledge, rather than corporate interests. This type of community action helps the book industry realize that all kinds of books generate interest among readers, even books on topics many big publishers would consider too 'niche,' radical, or marginal to invest in.  So all in all this reclaiming is a way to favor the general public with a book industry that offers a wider variety of products that respond to a wider range of interests and that presume a higher level of intelligence and decision-making abilities among book buyers and consumers.  

The time has come to activate this best-seller reclaiming system for poly books.  Deborah Taj Anapol's Polyamory in the 21st Century is coming up for its special day on Sunday, July 25th, which is also a day of very momentous astral coincidences.  So, let's all coalesce and buy our own copy from Amazon.com on that very day!

Reclaiming bestsellers for our communities is a bit like reclaiming land for sustainable agriculture from agribusiness.  Monoculture is a state of mind, as yours truly learns from Vandana Shiva, author of Monocultures of the Mind, among other amazing books.  It's a way to colonize our minds with ideas that serve interests foreign to our inherent needs.  In the mind, monocultures are just as pernicious as they can be in the fields.  Think of creating 'polycultures of the mind' as you place your order on the 25th.  You can do it directly from this website.    

Thanks for takign action.

Namaste from yours truly, Gaia

a.k.a. Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio

How the Wisdom of Love Transforms Gaia: On Being the Resources We Share

Friends keep telling me that people don't understand what I mean.  "She uses strange words," they say, or at least, "she uses words in a strange way.  Why does she do that? What does she really mean?"

"That's the point," I think to myself, very shy, very humbled, very timid, "making up new words, new phrases, using words that are unfamiliar, making familiar words sound new."

That's the power of words, the power of literature, if you will.  What I was trained in.  (Arhhhhhg, what a mistake to presume one can relinquish some ignorance!)

"These people," I think, "they really want it easy.  Not only I learned their language so I can speak to them.  But then if I use words of their language that for one reason or another sound queasy, they become suspicious of me.  There's no way to do right by them!"

"What's this fear?"  Fear of words.  One cannot be afraid of words.  Words are NOT things.  They only represent things.  Or do they?  Can words also MAKE things?  Can they CHANGE things?  Can they affect, transform, reinterpret, create REALITY?

Of course they can. All poets are keenly aware of this. Otherwise why would they spend time playing with words? 

So, a case in point is this video clip.  From The Wisdom of Love, a double book launch Deborah Taj Anapol and me held at Open Secret Bookstore on June 22, 2010.  It's a bit late to post.  I know.  Took a long time to figure, with us being a team of wise, wise, wise people.  So ancient is our wisdom that we're not all that familiar with latest tech stuff for social media. But we get it eventually.  And for this clip, we owe courtesy to Steve Hoffman of Oakaland, California, who shot, cut, and reduced for us.

So, what's the fun with words here?  Well, "RESOURCES."  People in ecology, in environmental science talk about 'resources,' right?  "Limited resources."  "Sources of energy that are 'renewable'," as in wind, solar, hydro: ways to create power that generate themselves again every day, that are commonly owned/shared.  That don't involve pollution or extinction of the source when it's most needed.  See what's happening with the oil spill.  Easy oil is almost gone now.  And we're ever more dependent on it.  While it's also turning our amiable hostess Gaia into an oven.  Ouch! I'm cooking! I'm being cooked!

So then, resources is the issue, right?  Why can't we BE the resources we seek?  Sounds Oedipal?  It is!  What happens if we begin to think of ourselves as the resources we need?  What if we begin to practice BEING resources for each other?

A whole lot!  Big shift in thinking.  Now we don't need a lot of resources.  We need to interpret each other AS resources.  And what can we trade that is, as Stan Dale would say, "free"?  We can trade LOVE, or 'amor,' or 'amore,' or 'amour' as those hopelessly Romantic, romance language people would say. 

Then we see that being POLYAMOROUS, being capable, by nurture, by nature (who knows?) of trading these AMOROUS RESOURCES with a whole bunch of people is NOT a dangerous perversion, is NOT a problem, is NOT a liability, is NOT a sign of being promiscuous or a misfit.  IT IS ACTUALLY A VIRTUE!!!

Yes, you heard me.  BEING POLY IS ACTUALLY A VIRTUE!  It should be rewarded as a free recycling system, as a national forest deep-ecology biodiversity sustaining nurturing ecosystem. It should be cause for being nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace!

"But wait a minute," you must be saying, "is this for real?"  "Sounds like a trick to justify some wicked perversion."

Well, I leave the final judgment to you.  It's on the video.  Somebody in the audience at Open Secret asked "what's the connection between Gaia the living planet and open love, open relating?"

That's how I explained it!

Go ahead and listen . . . .

Then, if you like what you hear, you can get more info from the source of my wisdom, Gaia and the New Politics of Love.  This book was inspired by one who IS the pleasure he seeks.  Watch out for the book's new digital edition, coming soon.  Meanwhile, get your paper version and start practicing love's wisdom.

There will be more posts and clips.  The momentous series of events we held in Norther California in June-early July will be unfolding digitally as we post clips and snippets, with comments.

We look forward to YOUR comments too!

Namaste,

Gaia

a.k.a. Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio

What's This New Politics of Love That People Wonder About?

Could it be as simple as an ecosexual politics of love where Eros makes peace with Gaia? 

These wise women have it all figured out.  Find out from what they write and then lobby for their ideas with Obama!

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, Deborah Taj Anapol, and Dossie Easton at Open Secret Bookstore in San Rafael, Ca, on July 3rd celebrating Interdependence Day as they outline the future of love on Planet Earth.

We will be back with more about this historic event where the future of love on the planet was outlines.  Meanwhile, please send us your thoughts, ideas, comments, poems, rants, plans, critiques, strategies.  What's a new politics of love that would serve Gaia and us?  What does it look, feel, smell, taste like to you?  tell us and we will publish it on Poly Planet GAIA!

do you call yourself 'ecosexual'?  would you date someone who does?  if yes, or no, why?

'Ecosexual,' the new 'sexual orientation people use in personal ads, we learn from Annie Sprinkle, 'sybaritic cougar,' and participant extraordinaire.  Do you call yourself 'ecosexual'? Would you date someone who does? If yes, or no, why?

Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens, Cunning Minx: more love, more wisdom! 

We will be back with more about this historic event where the future of love on the planet was outlines.  Meanwhile, please send us your thoughts, ideas, comments, poems, rants, plans, critiques, strategies.  What's a new politics of love that would serve Gaia and us?  What does it look, feel, smell, taste like to you?  Tell us and we will publish it on Poly Planet GAIA!

And, don't forget to look up for 'ecosexual' dates next time you go out!

Namaste,

Wise Woman Extraordinaire, Serena