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The University of Earth is a collective initiative based
on a profound shift in understanding of the process of lifelong education
and the environments that sustain it. It is a symbiotic combination of
the following emphases:
A university about the
Earth and the Land
(academic study, resource management -- as with a rural university)
A university for People
of the Land
(reflecting concerns of indigenous people, wilderness people,
deep ecologists -- as with an ecostery)
A university of planet
Earth as a whole
(reflecting the diversity of the globe, symbolizing the Earth
as a whole)
A university made of earth
(constructed with earth, using local skills, and blending
with the local environment as a grounding of understanding)
The Earth as a university
of life and learning
(the Earth as curriculum, living as learning, embodying knowledge
of the Earth, as partially exemplified by biomimicry)
An emerging image of a potential university
(an emerging archetype; an implicit, potential framework;
embodying the future; enriching the present with the future)
A framework for the diversity
of present dreams
(enabling a holistic conceptual framework; interrelating conflicting
dreams; recognizing mutually irrelevant concerns; discovering richer
frameworks; embodying polarities and paradoxes)
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A Meaningfully Imaginative Pattern
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This initiative is consistent with the need to explore subtler
and more dynamic approaches
to organization, beyond the unfocused "vision" of "networking" or "knowledge
management". The issues
are articulated in Consciously
Self-reflexive Global Initiatives: Renaissance zones, complex adaptive
systems, and third order organizations. The initiative is complementary
to three others --
each accessible via the logo above -- mutually counter-balancing echoes
of a central process in the moment and beyond time. Together these form
an emerging, overarching union of interweaving processes: a potential "pattern
that connects". The challenge to comprehension is discussed elsewhere
(Dynamic
Reframing of "Union": implications for the coherence of knowledge,
social organization and personal identity).
These issues are further clarified in a table interrelating
the four initiatives (In
Quest of "Meta-Union"?). The nature of
any union of significance is therefore not predefined by any form of understanding
but is progressively and continually (re)discovered in time. Indeed,
since "yoga" signifies "union" (in Sanskrit), the corollary
may be that the challenge of any "union" of significance implies
some form of "yoga".
Frequently asked questions about this initiative are addressed
in a FAQ. The
web address of this site (www.un-terra.org)
also offers a caution against overly hasty assumptions
-- as discussed separately. | 
