This graph, presents a poem, which been shared plenty of times in the blogosphere. Please, allow me the opportunity to present it again.
I want to apply it to our present time.
I’ve seen it many times.
Every time it makes me think.
More so now, in view of the ugly turn in the road where American politics seem to be headed.
To me, the bottom line is that if you don’t speak up for others who are somehow persecuted, eventually your turn will come and there will be no one to stand up for your when you are persecuted.
It’s time to stand up and hold your ground.
~MARTIN NIEMOLLER~
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.
The quotation stems from Niemöller’s lectures during the early postwar period. Different versions of the quotation exist. These can be attributed to the fact that Niemöller spoke extemporaneously and in a number of settings.
Much controversy surrounds the content of the poem as it has been printed in varying forms, referring to diverse groups such as Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, Trade Unionists, or Communists depending upon the version. Nonetheless his point was that Germans – in particular, he believed, the leaders of the Protestant churches – had been complicit through their silence in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people.
First he came for the Mexicans, then he came for the war heroes, then he came for African Americans, then he came for the immigrants, then he came for the Jews, then he came for the “gays” …. now he’s coming for the Muslims. Maybe you can add someone else or he will continue adding groups.
I am a citizen of the world
and my home is my abode:
Rivers, lakes and valleys
are my sources of life;
Trees, birds and mountains
are my pride!
I am a citizen of the world
and my home is my abode:
Seas, fishes and oceans
are my sources of hope;
Shorelines, rocks and beaches
are my cliches!
I am a citizen of the world
and my peace is your company:
My children, relatives and friends
are my sources of strength;
Their love, care and tender touch
are my tabernacles.
I am a citizen of mankind
and the whole world is my abode.
I am a 22 year old illustrator specializing in photorealistic colored pencil and graphite drawings.
You can check out my drawing videos on YouTube!
Hello!
My name is Heather Rooney.
I am an illustrator specializing in photorealistic colored pencil and graphite drawings.
Since finding my passion for portrait and figure drawing in high school, I have developed a technique focusing on high attention to detail. I draw my inspiration from a broad range of cultural figures, such as sport athletes, media personalities and entertainment professionals.
With each illustration requiring many hours of work, ranging from 30 hours to 100+ hours, I share my process through time-lapse videos on my YouTube channel, which has generated over 60 million views from a global audience.
I received my B.A. in Studio Art at Emmanuel College, in the vibrant city of Boston, Massachusetts. I am now pursuing a career in illustration.
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest.
But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience.
~~GRAPHICS SOURCE~~
Google Images
Facebook Timeline
~~GALLERY~~
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There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.
To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Carl Sagan gives the best speech ever about humanity and how foolish we behave. Pale Blue Dot is one of the most important and reflective speeches about the human condition and our place in the Universe. The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 space probe from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers from Earth, as part of the solar system Family Portrait series of images.
Music
“The Earth Prelude” by Ludovico Einaudi, Antonio Leofreddi, Laura Riccardi & Marco Decimo
In his latest video, “Man vs. Earth” spoken word artist Prince Ea opens by saying,
“Fun fact:
In “Man vs. Earth,” spoken word artist Prince Ea opens by saying, “Fun fact: Planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old, mankind, about 140,000 years old. Let me put that in perspective. If you condense the Earth’s lifespan into 24 hours—that’s one full day—then we have been here for, drum roll please, three seconds.” Only by coming together, he says, can we make it to the proverbial fourth second.
Prince Ea objects to us calling ourselves homo sapiens, or “wise man” because, though we may be intelligent, we lack wisdom. “While intelligence speaks, wisdom listens,” he says. “And we willingly covered our ears to Mother Nature’s screams and closed our eyes to all of her help wanted signs.
Let me put that in perspective. If you condense the Earth’s lifespan into 24 hours – that’s one full day – then we have been here for, drum roll please, three seconds.” Only by coming together, he says, can we make it to the proverbial fourth second.”
Prince Ea objects to us calling ourselves homo sapiens, or “wise man” because, though we may be intelligent, we lack wisdom.
“While intelligence speaks, wisdom listens,” he says. “And we willingly covered our ears to Mother Nature’s screams and closed our eyes to all of her help wanted signs.
New Prince Ea video: Man vs Earth
Natalie Prolman on Nov. 24, 2015
Last Earth Day, activist and spoken word artist Prince Ea brought us the powerful and thought-provoking video Dear Future Generations:Sorry. With over 96 million views on Facebook to date, Prince Ea achieved something pretty incredible for the environmental community.
He clearly communicated the urgency of protecting our planet and inspired millions to understand the importance of mitigating climate change and taking action to stop deforestation.
He was able to reach the hearts of the generation to whom this issue matters to most: young people. And reminded us all that the power of change is in OUR hands!
I had the honor of sitting down with Prince Ea in London last week to discuss his newest video in support of the Stand For Trees campaign.
Natalie
“What was your inspiration for doing a second Stand For Trees video?”
Prince Ea
“I felt like there was more to say. The story was unfinished, I had more to get out there and in a different way. When I was brainstorming the original concept of writing a letter to future generations I came up with other dynamic ideas which I thought could be just as compelling. One of which was the 3 seconds theme, which I use in this one. This particular video is coming from an anthropological perspective (what I studied in school), looking at us as a species and the ramifications of our existence.”
Natalie
“What is the message you’re sending to the world?”
Prince Ea
“The message is: An inner revolution needs to take place. Global warming, climate change, animal agriculture, pollution, pesticides … all of these things are symptoms. They are byproducts of our inner reflection and how we see the world, how we see each other and how we see the environment. We’re very separated and divided, but that is not the truth about reality.
That is the truth about our socially constructed reality. The main message is to find the truth and see that we are connected to all beings both great and small. I always end with a message of hope, I believe that we can and will turn it all around. However, I don’t think the goal is to save the world, but to reshape it.
“Why do you think young people are such a critical audience for this message?”
Prince Ea
“I think because it’s really our future that’s at stake. We are the first generation to really see the impact of climate change and the last one who will be able to do something about it. So it’s definitely crucial that young people will become more aware. We have an opportunity to really evolve the human species into a new direction. A totally new direction from our past. One with mindfulness and love and care and understanding. No longer a business as usual approach.”
Guru Nanak (15 April 1469 – 22 September 1539) was the founder of Sikhism and the first of the Sikh Gurus.
His birth is celebrated world-wide as Guru Nanak Gurpurab on Kartik Poornima, the full-moon day which falls on different dates each year in the month of Katak, October–November.
Guru Nanak traveled far and wide teaching people the message of one God who dwells in every one of His creations and constitutes the eternal Truth. He set up a unique spiritual, social, and political platform based on equality, fraternal love, goodness, and virtue.
‘That what I want, basically, what I really want, is what you want. And I don’t know what you want. Surprise me’.
But that’s the kinship between “I” and “thou”. So when I ask, I go right down to the question, which we started with: “What do I want?”
The answer is “I don’t know”.
When Bodhidharma was asked, “Who are you?” which is another form of the same question, he said “I don’t know”. Planting flowers to which the butterflies come, Bodhidharma says “I know not”. I don’t know what I want.
And when you don’t know what you want, you reach the state of desirelessness. When you “really” don’t know … you see, there’s a beginning stage of not knowing, and there’s an ending stage of not knowing.
In the beginning stage, you don’t know what you want because you haven’t thought about it, or you’ve only thought superficially.
Then when somebody forces you to think about it and go through it, you say, “Yeah, I think I’d like this, I think I’d like that, I think I’d like the other”. That’s the middle stage.
Then you get beyond that, and say “Is that what I really want?” In the end you say, “No, I don’t think that’s it … I might be satisfied with it for a while, and I wouldn’t turn my nose up at it, but it’s not really what I want”.
Why don’t you really know what you want? Two reasons, that you don’t really know what you want.
Number one: You have it.
Number two: You don’t know yourself.
Because you never can. The godhead is never the object of its own knowledge, just as a knife doesn’t cut itself, fire doesn’t burn itself, life doesn’t illumine itself. It’s always an endless mystery to itself. “I don’t know”.
And this “I don’t know”, uttered in the infinite interior of the spirit, this “I don’t know”, is the same thing as “I love”, “I let go”, “I don’t try to force or control”. It’s the same thing as humility.
And so the Upanishads say, “If you think that you understand Brahman, you do not understand. You have yet to be instructed further. If you know that you do not understand, then you truly understand, for the Brahman is unknown to those who know it, and known to those who know it not’.
And the principle is that any time you, as it were, voluntarily let up control, in other words, cease to cling to yourself, you have an access to power. Because you’re wasting energy all the time in self-defense, trying to manage things, trying to force things to conform to your will.
The moment you stop doing that, that wasted energy is available. And therefore you are, in that sense, having that energy available, you are one with the divine principle. You have the energy! When you’re trying, however, to act as if you are god, that is to say, you don’t trust anybody and you’re the dictator and you have to keep everybody in line, you lose the divine energy, because what you’re doing is simply defending yourself.
So then the principle is: the more you give it away, the more it comes back. Now you say, ‘I don’t have the courage to give it away. I’m afraid’.
And you can only overcome that by realizing, you better give it away, because there’s no way of holding on to it. The meaning of the fact that everything is dissolving constantly, that we’re all falling apart, we’re all in the process of constant death, and that – ‘The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon/Turns Ashes – or it prospers; and/Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face/Lighting a little Hour or two – is gone all that Omar Khayyam jazz.
You know, ‘The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the great globe itself, I, all which it inherit — shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind.’ …
All falling apart. Everything is. That’s the great assistance to you. That fact that everything is in decay is your helper. That is allowing you that you don’t have to let go, because there’s nothing to hold on to.
It’s achieved for you, in other words, by the process of nature. So once you see that you just don’t have a prayer, and it’s all washed up, and that you will vanish and “leave not a rack behind”, and you really get with that, suddenly you find that you have the power, this enormous access of energy.
But it’s not power that came to you because you grabbed it; it came in entirely the opposite way. The power that comes to you in that opposite way is power with which you can be trusted.’
Firebending, one of the four elemental bending arts, is the pyrokinetic ability to control fire.
It is unique among the bending arts, as it is the only one in which the performer can spontaneously generate the element. The first human firebenders lived in a city atop a lion turtle during the era of Raava, and the art later spread to the Sun Warriors, the Fire Nation, and the United Republic of Nations.
Fire is the element of power, consisting of overpowering force tempered by the unflinching will to accomplish tasks and desires. However, during the Hundred Year War, a militaristic Fire Nation twisted this into firebending being fueled by rage, hatred, and anger. Firebending draws its power from the sun, and the first human firebenders derived their firebending techniques from the dragons.
Firebending is notable for its intense and aggressive attacking style and general lack of adequate defensive moves, although some notable firebenders utilize creative defensive techniques by creating large walls of fire, or shooting down incoming objects with precise attacks.
~~GALLERY~~
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Firebenders use their chi as a source for their bending.
This facet of firebending is a sharp contrast to the other bending arts, which manipulate already present sources of their element, though firebenders can also control or enhance flames nearby. Unlike other bending disciplines, firebending has few defensive moves aside from blocking and dodging, although master firebenders are able to create walls of fire to absorb incoming attacks or shoot down approaching projectiles.
Firebending uses concentrated barrages of fire to overwhelm opponents before striking a fatal blow. Swift, whirling kicks and punches generate diverse shapes for offensive attacks. This strategy is probably what makes firebending arguably the most suited to pro-bending out of all the bending arts.
Firebending tactics and forms have required little modification for use in pro-bending, the most noticeable difference in the restriction on the use of prolonged fire streams. Nevertheless, quick flurries of kicks and punches allow a pro-bending firebender to retain excellent mobility around the arena while simultaneously trying to push back the members of the opposing team.
It Is What It Is 