Again, big HT to Titus Levy for this interesting piece. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/second-opinion/these-nine-artists-will-help-you-understand-future-planet-180963576/#mBT2Bo3J7ibEu9VD.99

Oddly enough of course, it is under one of the pretenses (There are two main ones, Art and Sea) that I am asked to contribute to projects.

At Blue Mind Block Island I was to present after Dr Helen Reiss gave an emotionally stirring talk on the value of Compassion. In it she used a film about plastic pollution and the albatross on Midway Island. The film stated basically that the Albatross were under threat from plastic pollution.

As one of three Artists presenting at the Summit, it wound up being that I would address how a room full of research Scientists whose areas of specialization were related to Neuroscience, through emotion and the power of the Art of Cinema, were led to forsake their training and buy into the premise of a film.

I explained the history of Midway, the level of species vitality over that time, and what exactly the Artist had been doing.

Then I showed them this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdH87IqKSLY

Then I led them in a spiritual connection exercise. Something I learned to do both in my study of Hawaiian cultural tenets and Missionary work

Then people began to cry. We in that room drew closer. Community, not solely individuals expounding on various disciplines.

As I got back to the table my group was seated at, one of the Harvard guys who tells people he is a cook (Not what his Doctorate is in) high fives me with tears in his eyes, and tells me that the experience had changed him.

Then it was his turn. And in the course of his presentation, my little art-ocean mind was blown by the scale and scope of his understanding, on how through the food chain, we could improve health and happiness, radically increasing the level of sustainability in this world.

I think that when we learn to listen to our own hearts and understand, I mean really deeply get, why we think and feel as we do, that it becomes our mission in life to draw Humanity closer. We all need to be able to touch an individual and help them to understand what they are, and why they matter so much. In that is healing, reconciliation and power. It helps the species to thrive,