The Blue Rose

My study of the imagination began several years ago. The more I learn, the more mysterious this faculty becomes. I mean this in the original sense, from the ancient Greek mysterion for what is sacred and hidden. From the start, I’ve sought symbols to help convey what words alone cannot. One spring evening, as I lay half asleep, a blue rose came to mind out of nowhere. In the twelfth century Attar wrote the secret is hidden in the rose. Dante described it as the divine word made flesh. If the rose is queen of flowers, the blue rose is sublimity, for it lives only in the imagination.

The Blue Rose Society
The twentieth century dawned with a global revolution. Traditional order was overthrown and modernity emerged in the carnage. It wasn’t simply that empires collapsed. Explorations in science and the arts challenged every fundamental notion and belief. Powerful, invisible forces were brought to light such as microbes, X-rays, and the unconscious. Nowhere was this revolution felt more powerfully or violently than in Russia, straddling the great fault line between the West and Asia.

Against this tumultuous backdrop, a number of St. Petersburg artists and philosophers banded together in 1907. Guided by a radical political doctrine called Mystical Anarchism, their aim was to reconcile individual freedom with social harmony. They called themselves The Blue Rose Society. Nicholas Berdyaev, one of its illustrious members, later wrote Man is not a unit in the universe, forming part of an unrational machine, but a living member of an organic hierarchy, belonging to a real and living whole.

Nicholas Roerich was another prominent member. Among other achievements, this artist, explorer, diplomat, and mystic helped establish the first Tibetan Buddhist temple in Europe. Also located in St. Petersburg, it was dedicated to the ancient teachings of the Kalachakra Tantric School. In Sanskrit, Kalachakra means the Wheel of Time and Tantra means the everlasting thread. These teachings aver that the outer conditions of our world are the reflection of the inner condition of our state of mind collectively. Our goal is therefore to strive for enlightenment and to serve all who suffer. No doubt these teachings also profoundly influenced the society’s members.

Why they chose the blue rose for its symbol is unknown. There’s a possible clue in Slavic myth of Baba Yaga, the goddess of death and rebirth, which the members likely knew. Sometimes a friendly guide and sometimes inimical to humans, she was believed to live in the darkest, deepest forest, far removed from civilization. Baba Yaga could only be renewed drinking tea brewed from the blue rose. She’d also therefore grant the wishes of those few brave souls who brought her one.

This depiction of the sacred feminine in her light and dark aspects is primal. So is her association with the rose, with its own duality of beautiful fragrant bloom and painful bloody thorn. Indeed, its Sanskrit root wrdho means thorn, from which rose and red derive. A beloved teacher once said to me: The nightingale cannot sing until the thorn pierces its breast. And so, only the blue rose can renew Baba Yaga, goddess of death and rebirth. Curiously, two famed British authors of that era, Maurice Baring and Rudyard Kipling, each touch on this theme in their writings. Baring was actually a journalist in St. Petersburg when the Blue Rose Society was founded and likely knew its members. He penned a charming story about the daughter of an ancient Chinese emperor who desires a blue rose for a very clever reason. Kipling’s poem is about a silly love that dies seeking one with her last breath. Whatever the inspiration for choosing the blue rose as its symbol, the member’s intention is unmistakable. This is echoed in the society’s credo, coined by Viacheslav Ivanov another of its luminaries. De realibus a realora, meaning from the real to the more real.

The Scientists
The reason that blue roses don’t exist in the natural world is molecular. Simply put, roses don’t have the gene pigment needed to produce blue petals. Over the centuries, there’s been a sustained effort to grow one, without success. For the past several years, a flurry of costly scientific activity has been devoted to growing the worlds first blue rose. The first news story appeared 2002. -

Biotechnology aiding pursuit of blue rose... Breakthrough in research on plants, human liver provides clues. For the past several years, a biochemist by the name of Elizabeth Gillam has been working in the labs of Vanderbilt University's Medical School. Her research is focused on how drugs metabolize in the human liver. One day, during an otherwise routine experiment, a human liver enzyme she had inserted into a flask of bacteria unexpectedly turned the bacteria blue. Making an imaginative leap, she thought that perhaps this human enzyme might be similarly inserted into the genetic material of a rose to turn it blue too. Now she and fellow biochemist Peter Guengerich are talking to biotechnology companies to help them to do exactly this for commercial purposes. Guengerich in an interview with the Associated Press stated that: I would have called you crazy five years ago if you told me I would be pursuing a blue rose. [Associated Press, November 25, 2002]

This initiative appears to have ended without success. Then, in 2005, another news article appeared. Again it promised the creation of a blue rose, this time from a different company using different scientific methods.

Today A Lavender Rose, Tomorrow True Blue? A promising tactic in biotech called RNA interference may succeed where gardeners over the centuries have failed -- creating blue roses that grow "naturally" on the bush. Although more than 25,000 rose varieties exist, growers have never been able to create blue ones, other than by dying them, because rose petals lack the gene that codes for delphinidin, the enzyme that produces blue pigment in flowers. An Australian company, Florigene, says its RNA-i technique has produced lavender roses, and the company's bioengineers are closing in on blue ones. Florigene, which is 98.5% owned by Suntory of Japan, first tried splicing blue genes from petunias into roses, but powerful red and orange enzymes drowned out delphinidin. Florigene then used RNA interference to silence the enzymes that compete with delphinidin. Florigene says it could be selling blue roses within three years. [BusinessWeek July 18, 2005]

In fact, scientists have only produced a dark blue-violet bloom thus far. This perennial quest has aptly been compared to that for the Holy Grail. We have ever been driven from the beginning to materialize our dreams and deepest longings. Sometimes these are noble and sometimes base. Certainly the creation of a true blue rose would have enormous financial reward for the owners of the genetic code. Suntory’s sale of alcoholic beverages runs in the billions. Its management therefore understands how to cater profitably to our universal thirst for intoxication. The company’s success first began in 1907 when it produced the first Japanese red wine. In a strange synchrony, the Blue Rose Society was also founded the same year. Its members that the imaginal realm is well beyond the grasp and measure of the rational mind. So it is this sublime bloom. De realibus a realora

Appendix - Rosa Mundi

The domestic rose likely originated in Asia five thousand years ago. Its name derives from the Sanskrit for red. With their ineffable bloom, haunting perfume, and prickly thorns - roses have enchanted humans from the dawn of recorded time. And for as long, it has been used as a spiritual metaphor and sacred symbol. The rose has been especially associated with the feminine aspect of the divine. Ancient Hindus, for example, believed that the goddess Lakshmi, most beautiful in the pantheon, was born of a rose. Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of Heaven was also depicted with roses. The rose also prefigures in narratives about Aphrodite and Mary.

Rose wreaths have been found in Egyptian tombs dating back thousands of years. The first known painted roses appeared in Minoan wall frescos about1450 BCE. A seventh century Babylonian cuneiform tablet describes a wild rose. The Torah contains three notable references. In Ecclesiastes, it is written, "Wisdom grew up as a rosebush in Jericho" [24:14]. In the Song of Songs, Solomon rhapsodized, "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys" [2.1-17]. In Isaiah it is written "when the kingdom of righteousness shall be established on earth, the desert shall rejoice and blossom as a rose" [35.1]. There is also a Cabalistic legend that Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden to grow roses.

The rose also played a prominent role in ancient Grecian thought. It was believed, for example, that when Aphrodite sprang to life from the ocean, white roses grew wherever sea foam fell. Homer sang of its perfume in 800 BCE. In the Iliad, Aphrodite anoints Hector's body with rose oil. In another tale of Aphrodite, while helping her wounded lover Adonis, she is badly scratched by the thorns of white roses. The blood she sheds turns the roses red. The Greeks also believed that Cupid bribed the God of Silence with a rose. When they conducted a secret meeting, a rose was always suspended from the ceiling. The meeting was therefore called sub rosa, a term still in use today. The Greek philosopher Epicurus had his own private rose garden in Athens, where he taught students about the highest pleasure.

Grecian rose symbolism was transplanted to Rome. Major Roman military successes, for example, were celebrated by wearing rose wreaths. During a festival called the Rosalia, rose buds were left as offerings to the deceased. Many frescos have been discovered featuring roses including at Pompeii. The Romans were so avid for roses they developed hothouse technology that allowed them to speed up the blooming process. They also imported massive quantities of roses from Egypt. In the 1st century CE, Pliny the Elder recorded thirty-two different medicinal uses of the rose. Roses were used in official medicine well into the 1930s when a tincture of the Apothecary’s Rose was prescribed for sore throats. They were also widely used as mild astringents and to flavour other medicines. Their use in alternative and non-western healing has continued to this day.

Both Arab and Persian society cultivated roses with ardor. They also represented it in their literature and artwork with great sensitivity and subtlety. The Persians, for example, believed that when a nightingale sees a rose plucked it sings mournfully. In the twelfth century CE, Fariduddin Attar wrote that 'Mystery glows in the rose bed, the secret is hidden in the rose". Sa'adi of Shiraz wrote, "I shall pluck roses from the garden, but I am drunk with the scent of the rose bush." Shabistari wrote The Secret Rose Garden. Abdelkadir Gilani, yet another contemporary Sufi, was called the Light of the Rose. The rose also played a central role in the Tale Of The Genjii, a classic of Japanese literature from the 11th century.

Given such ancient roots, the domestic rose came relatively late to the West. During the middle ages, Christian knights brought home rose-cuttings they’d plundered in the Middle East. These violent and crude warriors, who had bathed the streets of Jerusalem in the innocent blood of Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike, could not help becoming enchanted. Roses were cultivated in secret sacred gardens called Hortus Conclusus designed to promote contemplation and prayer. These gardens also generally featured a small fountain, well, or spring. As the rose garden spread so did its influence. In the fourteenth century, Dante wrote that, the rose is “the divine word became flesh." This sensibility is perhaps best expressed in the exquisite stained-glass rose windows featured in Gothic cathedrals.

In the early 1400s, paintings began depicting the Annunciation in a new way. For the first time, this is shown occurring in the Hortus Conclusus. Some paintings also featured Mary in the act of fetching water. This image echoes ancient beliefs about the divine feminine as the source of all life. The Song of Songs, for example also uses images of an enclosed garden, a fountain, and roses, to celebrate the divine feminine, or Shekinah. With the rose’s advent in the West, men slowly started to become gentler and women accorded more respect. Courtly love, took the relation between men and women to a more idealized and symbolic level.

This symbolism was elaborated upon, century after century. In 1476, the artist Froment painted an ancient legend that God spoke to Moses through a burning rose bush. The 1500s saw the widespread introduction of the rosary, initially made from dried rosehips or carved from rose wood. In the 1600s, Rosicrucians circulated images of a rose at the center of a cross. This illustrated a then popular maxim, "as the rose blossoms under the sun, I shall blossom under the eyes of God". And, Shakespeare penned, “by any name a rose would smell as sweet.” No wonder that Christian theologians and mystics called it Rosa Mundi, or soul of the world.

Today hundreds of varieties of roses featuring thousands of colours are grown around the world. Moreover, horticulturalists are always growing new types. However, perhaps our greatest delight comes not from the rose but from its essence, called attar. To produce one pound of attar some four thousand roses must be distilled. One ounce of attar sells for $700 US. By comparison an ounce of gold sells for less than half. Adding to its rarity, practically all attar is produced in a very small region in Bulgaria.

Airbender: Elemental Truths

The new film Airbender, based on the popular animated TV series, is worth examining more closely. In the storyline, humanity “is divided into four nations: the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, the Air Nomads, and the Fire Nation. Each nation has its own natural element, on which it bases its society … Each country is also associated with a season: autumn for the Air Nomads, winter for the Water Tribe, spring for the Earth Kingdom and summer for the Fire Nation”. This idea of the world being made up of these four elements is shared by many ancient cultures and philosophies including Hindu, Taoist, Buddhist, and Greek. In the new film, the heroes must save the world, by defeating the Nazi-like industrial Fire Nation and its evil Fire Lord.

It’s interesting that of all the elements fire is the great problem. In fact, each element has a natural destructive capacity. Tornadoes from air, earthquakes from earth, floods from water. Fire in particular however is associated with industry. In 1804, William Blake wrote of the “dark Satanic mills’ in reference to the advent of the Industrial Revolution's destruction of nature and human relationships.

Airbender is an exteriorization of very deep subliminal archetypes. The Pythagoreans called the elements the “Fourfold Roots of Everything”. The ancients believed all was well when the elements were in harmony. This is mirrored in the enduring First Nations worldview here in North America. For example, the contemporary Cree Elder, Pauline Shirt Dodem Kanosha’ states: What we have to do is teach all the four colours so we can work together, all peoples, in a good way.

The influence of the four-fold model, or quaternary, is more present in our lives than we realize. The Western Age of Reason banished holism for centuries. However, the four-fold model resurfaced in the 19th and 20th centuries as a response to the increasing fragmentation of society and alienation from life. My initial research has identified over 35 distinct models introduced between the 1800s and 1990s. Perhaps the best-known example is the work of Carl Jung in the early 20th century. Trained as a psychiatrist he identified four basic psychological temperaments - Thinking, Feeling, Sensation, and Intuition. This pioneering spurred further research and development. Examples include the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter. Both psychometric instruments are used in over thirty countries by schools, business, hospitals, non-profits, and the military.

If there's any doubt how deep and pervasive these elemental dynamics are consider the following corporate logos. Hint - fire is red, water is blue, earth is green, and air is yellow [representing breath and spirit] --

Red Shift, Black Swan, & Blue Ocean

Each of the following colorful metaphors calls for a tremendous stretching of the imagination vis-a-vis the vastness of time/space, anticipating unforeseeable events, and ingeniously envisioning new enterprise.

Red Shift

Red Shift describes how we perceive the expanding universe relative to our position on earth. The light from stars we see is from the distant past. Light coming to us from great distance shifts into the red spectrum. The greater the distance is the greater the red shift. In April, astronomers received data from NASA’s space-based Swift satellite that shows the most distant, farthest object is 13.1 billion light-years away.

Black Swan

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the author of The Black Swan: The Impact Of The Highly Improbable. It explains how we deal with very hard to predict, very high impact events such as the plane attacks on the World Trade Centers on September 11 2001 in New York. In a nutshell, randomness occurs more than we believe. But we develop retroactive interpretations that provide a false sense of security and predictability after the fact. Taleb calls for a profound mind shift that accepts escalating unpredictability as the norm and not the other way around. The term Black Swan historically meant rarity in that only white swans were known in the West. This changed in 1697 when a Dutch expedition encountered the black swans of Australia for the first time. The meaning of Black Swan then evolved to signify not the impossible per se, but the impossible as possible. For Australians the Black Swan proudly symbolizes their antipodean culture as distinct from the white swan-ness of the northern hemisphere.

Blue Ocean

Blue Ocean Strategy is the title of a book by W. Chan Kin and R, Mauborgne from the institute of the same name at INSEAD. Essentially, this proven strategy promotes the idea that enterprise succeeds “by creating new demand in an uncontested market space, or a "Blue Ocean", than by competing head-to-head with other suppliers for known customers in an existing industry ... BOS frameworks and tools are designed to be visual in order to not only effectively build the collective wisdom of the company but also allow for effective strategy execution through easy communication.”

Blurring Boundaries, Quickening Magnitudes

In 1964, the philosopher Henri Corbin wrote, “The most astounding information of modern science regarding the physical universe remains inferior to [the imagination].” It appears that the more we learn, the subtler the line becomes between what is real and what is imaginary. This is not simple metaphor. Cosmologists and physicists are studying ever-larger vistas of space and ever-smaller units of matter. Just how fine is the line between mind and matter, imagination and reality? The answer is pithily summed up in a recent luxury car advert: “What if has become what is.” Or, as William Blake once noted, “What’s now proved was once only imagined.”

More On The EQ Gap

New York Times columnist David Brooks posed a question to his readers today. “Would you exchange a professional triumph for a personal blow?” This is problematic. One does not choose between these things. Worse, he gives this false choice more weight because he uses the example of a public figure. [The American actress Sandra Bullock recently won an Academy Award for Best Actress of the year. Shortly after, it was revealed in the public media that her husband, also a celebrity, was in an adulterous relation with yet another celebrity.]

Notwithstanding Brooks particular biases or agenda, he rightly acknowledges that “teams of researchers have been studying happiness ... [with] an impressive rigor”. He also states “Modern societies have developed vast institutions oriented around the things that are easy to count, not around the things that matter most. They have an affinity for material concerns and a primordial fear of moral and social ones”. If there was any doubt of this, consider the billions of dollars spent in education to test literacy and numeracy against the rising costs of school dropouts and bullying, also in the billions. We can teach people to count but teaching empathy is a different matter. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC News Chief Medical Editor, refers to this an ‘EQ Gap’.

Brooks “overall impression from this research’ is a bit muddled. He states for example “that economic and professional success exists on the surface of life, and that they emerge out of interpersonal relationships, which are much deeper and more important.” I’d state this somewhat differently. Economic and professional success is the result of mastery of one’s métier, hard work, good fortune, and strong interpersonal relationships.

The EQ Gap

The news media regularly report on yet another famous individual caught out in inappropriate, injudicious behaviours [often through arrogance and/or greed]. This includes leaders in industry and government as well as popular ‘stars’. Such individuals, despite their brilliance, talent, wealth, and power, are shown to have feet of clay. This metaphor is from the Book of Daniel, written over 2000 years ago. We’ve known about our self-delusional and self-destructive capacity for a long time indeed. As television night show host Jay Leno famously asked of the British actor Hugh Grant, “What were you thinking?” This “EQ Gap” plays out in our own lives at school, work, and the community. While it usually doesn’t become a news story, the consequences are just as dramatic and destructive. The term the EQ Gap is from in an article by Dr. N. Snyderman in which she decried the lack of emotional intelligence on the part of the automakers who flew to Washington in private jets to ask for financial aid.

EQ, also known as Emotional Intelligence, has four broad dimensions - self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. It’s a natural complement to Cognitive Intelligence, or IQ. Like IQ, EQ is also needed at all life stages. However, the development of EQ is largely ad hoc and informal. This is in stark contrast to the importance given to cognitive development within K-12 education. As a result, schools are seeing alarming rates of bullying and dropping out. Both are linked to poor EQ. These epidemics are costing society billions of dollars.

Problematically, this imbalance between cognitive and emotional intelligence continues into adulthood. The continuing EQ Gap is responsible for the same kinds of problems at work as at school. Except now the consequences and costs are even higher. Consider the following negative impacts, all of which are rising: Absenteeism & turnover, Presenteeism, Depression & anxiety, Declining morale, Declining work productivity & focus, Increasing conflict & bullying, Increased disability premiums, Rising health & benefits costs, Employment replacement costs. Bullying in particular is worth singling out. ABC News reported that over 54 million employees experience bullying, this is 37% of the US workforce [10/2009]. The good news is systemic EQ development is being introduced increasingly throughout education and industry. Good social and emotional skills are seen as a crucial prelude to learning academically as well as to workplace productivity and wellbeing. Even better news is that EQ is easy to cultivate and can be done at any age.

The Heliotropic Effect of Abundance

The following is an essay extract from a much larger symposium document Explaining Extraordinary Organizational Performance and Transformation: Lessons from Rocky Flats. The Heliotropic Effect of Abundance is by Dr. Kim Cameron a co-founder of The Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship. The Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship is a community of scholars devoted to energizing and transforming organizations through research on the theory and practice of positive organizing and leadership. It is located at The Ross School of Business. Not surprisingly, it’s consistently ranked as one of the top business schools in the world.

Positive Organizational Scholarship is a relatively new field of study. It looks at organizations in the way positive psychology looks at individuals. “Just as positive psychology focuses on exploring optimal individual psychological states rather than pathological ones, Positive Organizational Scholarship focuses attention on optimal organizational states—the dynamics in organizations that lead to the development of human strength, foster resiliency in employees, make healing, restoration, and reconciliation possible, and cultivate extraordinary individual and organizational performance”.

EXTRACT

To explain the heliotropic effect, let us pose the question: What happens over time when you put a plant in a window? The answer, of course, is that the plant begins to lean toward the light. That is, a natural tendency exists in every living system to be inclined toward positive energy—toward light—and away from negative energy or from the dark. The reason is that light is life giving and energy creating. All living systems are inclined toward that which gives life.

The heliotropic effect is evident in many ways within individuals and organizations—physiologically, psychologically, emotionally, visually, socially, and so forth (see Cooperrider, 1990; Cameron, 2003; Bright, Cameron, & Caza, 2006). At the individual level, the heliotropic effect may be manifest physiologically as the placebo effect. That is, if a person believes that a medication will be effective, it will, in fact, produce the desired effect about 60 percent of the time. Psychologically, the heliotropic effect is manifest as the Pygmalion effect. That is, not only does my system respond to my own positive expectations, but the expectations of others also can produce a heliotropic effect for me. The essence of this effect is that the perception of a teacher appears to affect the performance outcome of the class. If thinks that learners are bright, they are. Those expectations are more powerful than any other single factor, including actual IQ scores (Rosenthal & Jacobsen, 1968) on performance.

New Heliotrope Website Launch

Since the last blog post, Heliotrope has gone through an incredible growth period. As a result, we're about to launch a new, more interactive website on January 6. It will feature a Heliotrope blog as well. This will report on activities related to Prelude and the enterprise more generally. This also allowed us to re-imagine this blog's role in relationship. New Heliograph posts will therefore be more personal explorations of ideas, trends, and discoveries that relate to Heliotrope and Prelude but go beyond them as well.

Hopefully this new approach will also encourage more dialogue with visitors. Martin Buber wrote: “When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.” This brings to mind the late greatly esteemed Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat Khan. I can well imagine him saying this ‘divine electricity’ helps ‘fray new neural pathways for human connectivity and creativity'. Buber also wrote that “play is an exaltation of the possible”. All the research I’ve seen suggests that play is an ideal way to foster integral relationships and innovation. These ideas also reflect Daniel Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence and the power of the limbic lock: -

"In a neurological sense, laughing represents the shortest distance between two people because it instantly interlocks limbic systems. This immediate, involuntary reaction, as one researcher puts it, involves the most direct communication possible between people – brain to brain – with our intellect just going for the ride, in what might be called a 'limbic lock” [Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence; Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee; Harvard Business School Press].

The Dream Chrysalis

The protective outer covering of the pupa of a butterfly or moth is called a chrysalis. The term, of 17th century coinage, derives from the Greek root khrusos, for gold. This was inspired by the golden sheen on the pupa of several species.

“When [caterpillars] finally fall asleep and a chrysalis forms around them, tiny new imaginal cells, as biologists call them, begin to take form within their bodies.The caterpillar's immune system fights these new cells as though they were foreign intruders, and only when they crop up in greater numbers and link themselves together are they strong enough to survive. Then the caterpillar's immune system fails and its body dissolves into a nutritive soup" [Elisabet Sahtouris].

This imaginal cell soup coalesces into buds. These then constellate into a completely new creature. Emerging from the chrysalis, the butterfly flutters away. This natural metamorphosis has become a metaphor of the ages. Imaginal cells indeed.

Holistic Thinking, Innovative Marketing

Brock University in St. Catharines Ontario has 17,000 full-time students. “Brock champions smaller class sizes and - this is key - a whole brain approach to the students ... [This] means a student's social awareness, emotional development, connection to the community - artistic development.... [The marketing firm therefore] created a bold look that explores a whole-brain examination of students, faculty and alumni. And so we meet Rohan Kothari, majoring in biological sciences but working on mastering the sax, and MSc candidate Lisa Neville, a licensed gliding instructor who lauds Brock's dual major course offering (Earth sciences and biology). Each image is bifurcated: an oil painting substitutes for half of Mr. Kothari's face; a raptor for half of Ms. Neville's.” This novel university campaign literally illustrates the primal creative relation between self-identity, language, and image. "Both sides of the brain", as the campaign tag goes, indeed.

Globe & Mail Article - Brock offers a lesson in boldness
Brock University

More On Happiness

As a T-shirt design on zazzle.com archly proclaims, "Happiness is a fragment of your imagination!" Happiness today is defined as a “a state of well being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy" [http://wordnet.princeton.edu]. Our original understanding was more complex, nuanced, and pragmatic.


For example, ‘Hap’ in the Old English of the 1300s meant ‘fortune or chance’. This basic link between happiness and luck is found in most northern European languages of that time. Yet, happiness was also associated with two other related emotional states - beatitude and blitheness.

The first is defined as “perfect happiness and inner peace” and stems from the Latin beatus. The second term means, “having a casual and cheerful indifference to convention and rules”. Bliss is yet another related term. Over ensuing centuries, these associated meanings for happiness’ changed in keeping with the West’s overarching worldview and ethos.

For example, ‘silly’ originally meant ‘happy’. It stems from the Latin ‘solari’, meaning ‘to comfort’ and ‘salvus’ meaning ‘whole and safe’. Over the course of six hundred years its meaning devolved from: "blessed to pious,to innocent (1200), to harmless, to pitiable(c.1280), to weak (c.1300), to feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish (1576)" [www.etymonline.com].

It’s interesting to consider the continuum of emotional states associated with happiness. Of course, sheer good luck is a common factor. [Anthropological research indicates that the reason most of us can’t resist sweets is because of primal hardwiring. In the long millennia before civilization, our hardy nomadic ancestors rarely encountered sweets like honey. They therefore happily gorged on their good luck knowing it would be a long time until they discovered more.]

Yet our ancestors also cane to understand that the more enduring type of happiness doesn’t depend on blind luck but on an inner attitude. The ancient link between happiness, wholeness, and solace is especially resonant today given recent global events. Interestingly, contemporary happiness research bears out what past generations readily understood.

On Creating Happiness

Two centuries ago, the United States was founded on the ideal that the pursuit of happiness is a human right. The Statue of Liberty with its torch held high perhaps best symbolizes this enduring aspiration for those seeking the American Dream, even now during a global economic crisis. In The How of Happiness, Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky explores the relation between intentional activity and happiness. Research shows there are simple and proven ongoing ways to enhance happiness. These include counting one's blessings, performing kind acts, and seeing negative situations in a positive light. Circumstantial happiness in contrast is dependent on external factors, which often we have no direct control over as recent events sadly show.


The idea of intentional happiness is similar to the ‘broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions’ first formulated by Dr. Barbara Fredrickson in 1998. This holds that positive emotions and intentions help broaden awareness. And this helps encourage new exploration, creativity, and social bonds. Positive emotions are seen as expansive and inclusive. Negative emotions are linked directly to narrow survival-oriented behaviours such as flight or fight.

Although daunting, remaining positive within the midst of adversity has great benefit. Finding intrinsic meaning and value in such experiences helps transmute their painful impacts. It also provides a powerful basis for profound growth and transformation. This can hold true especially for the hundreds of thousands of people being laid off. often from long-held positions. Many will believe they have no other skills or are too old to learn new ones.


In her July/August 2003 article in American Scientific, The Value of Positive Emotions, Dr. Fredrickson writes -

It seems that positive emotions do more than simply feel good in the present. The undoing effect suggests that positive emotions can reduce the physiological "damage" on the cardiovascular system sustained by feeling negative emotions. But some other research suggests that there's more to it than that. It appears that experiencing positive emotions increases the likelihood that one will feel good in the future. Positive meaning can be obtained by finding benefits within adversity, by infusing ordinary events with meaning and by effective problem solving. You can find benefits in a grim world, for instance, by focusing on the new found strengths and resolve within yourself and others. You can infuse ordinary events with meaning by expressing appreciation, love and gratitude, even for simple things. And you can find positive meaning through problem solving by supporting compassionate acts toward people in need. So although the active ingredient within growth and resilience may be positive emotions, the leverage point for accessing these benefits is finding positive meaning.

21st Century Learning

Several initiatives are underway using the rubric of 21st Century Learning. They share similar perspectives about what additional skills are needed in today's global knowledge economy in addition to the 3Rs. -


Partnership for 21st Century for Learning
P21 is a US national advocacy group focused on infusing 21st-century skills into education. P21’s website states: It has identified several ‘soft’ skills crucial for success in the global knowledge economy. These include: problem solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. "It has become apparent that there isn't a lack of employees who are technically proficient, but a lack of employees who can adequately communicate and collaborate, innovate, and think critically," said Ken Kay, P21 president. However, in a P21 poll virtually unanimous 99% of US voters say teaching students these skills is important to our country’s future economic success.



The 21st Century Learning Initiative
This British-Canadian initiative is facilitating “the emergence of new approaches to learning that draw upon a range of insights into the human brain, the functioning of human societies, and learning as a community-wide activity”. It has just published Overschooled But Undereducated. This argues for the overhaul of the current education system and the reassessment of educational policy and attitudes towards learning and schooling.

The 21st Century Learning Alliance
The alliance “brings together industry, government and teachers to help to make 21st century learning a reality”. It was founded by key UK organizations involved in education including: Oracle, Cisco, Partnerships for Schools, Futurelab, & Northern Grid for Learning.

School of the Future
The School District of Philadelphia and Microsoft collaborated for several years on imagining and constructing a “School of the Future.” This was opened in 2006 to “create a living blueprint for learning environments in the 21st century”. It is part of Microsoft’s global Partners in Learning initiative.


Enquiring Minds
This UK initiative is involved in a comprehensive curriculum redesign that “takes students’ ideas, interests and experiences as its starting point, and provides them with more responsibility for the direction and content of their learning”.

Life Span Positive Development

A number of innovative initiatives are emerging focused on understanding and fostering emotional and social intelligence. These address all stages of life and learning. Each has its own conceptual framework, methodology, and ecosystem of institutions and practitioners. Seen together these initiatives have significant critical mass. They underscore how widely recognized the importance of soft skills are for individual and social well being globally.

Positive Youth Development

Overview
A new dynamic approach to learning in schools is emerging from chrysalis. And like a butterfly it has two wings carrying it aloft. I refer to the recognition that academic knowledge must be balanced with life knowledge, hard skills with soft skills, head with heart, and individual sensibility with that of the group.


Positive Youth Development is a helpful rubric for describing a wide range of initiatives designed to foster emotional and social intelligence along with more traditional education goals. These have emerged in response to a crucial gap perceived by practitioners in schools and youth agencies. Simply put, learning is a social process within which human emotions and relationships are powerful intrinsic influencers.

This is a relatively new field and highly interdisciplinary. Moreover, each of these initiatives has a distinct theoretical framework, methodology, and ecosystem of institutions and practitioners. The Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington has identified 161 PYD programs. Some 3 million young people have been involved in related research projects across North America [Search Institute].


PYD is part of an even broader shift in psychological theory, research, and praxis. Related developments include Positive Psychology, Positive Scholarship, and Appreciative Inquiry. These all share a common perspective. That is, that the positive images we create and share - of ourselves, of each other, and our futures - help drive their actualization.

"As you ramble through Life,
Whatever be your goal.
Keep your eye upon the doughnut,
And not upon the hole."

What Parents Are Saying
Teaching social skills has tremendous importance for the nearly 1,000 people surveyed by Hasbro. 90% of parents consider social skills to be vital to their children's happiness and confidence and nearly 80% consider these more important than academic skills when it comes to happiness.


Social and Emotional Learning
SEL is an umbrella term used to describe the skills needed “to recognize and manage emotions, develop care and concern for others, make responsible decisions, establish positive relationships, and handle challenging situations effectively" (CASEL) SEL has grown increasingly important within primary and secondary schools across Canada and the United States.

Developmental Asset Framework
This framework developed by the Search Institute outlines those ‘assets’, or ‘development building blocks’ essential to the health and well being of Middle and High School students. Young people draw on these assets to make positive choices, avoid high-risk behaviors, and thrive. Internal Assets include competencies and values that young people learn and internalize on their way to becoming responsible and healthy adults. External Assets consist of resources like friends, family, mentors, school, and community organizations.

Resilience Education
Resilience Education is concerned with how some youth, despite terribly challenging lives, are able to overcome adversity and thrive. Research has identified these core characteristics and strengths, which are key to healthy development and effective learning. “Changing the life trajectories of children and youth from risk to resilience starts with changing the beliefs of the adults in the families, schools, and communities”. [Benard, Bonnie 2004, Resiliency: What We Have Learned. San Francisco, CA: WestEd]

Character Education
Character Education is an umbrella-term used to describe the teaching of children in a manner that will help them to develop. Concepts that fall under this term include social and emotional learning, moral reasoning/cognitive development, life skills education, health education; violence prevention, critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and conflict resolution and mediation. This form of education involves teaching children and adolescents’ values including honesty, stewardship, kindness, generosity, courage, freedom, justice, equality, and respect.

Positive Behaviour Support
PBS is the application of evidence-based strategies and systems that work at an individual level and school wide level. This is designed to help establish a positive and safe environment, which in turn is conducive to increased academic performance.

“One of the wonderful features of a “PBS School” is that the ... selection of interventions and programs is often done collaboratively by a school team ... Positive Behavior Support is different from traditional behavior modification in three ways. First, it is focused on the use of positive intervention strategies that are respectful of the individual. Second, the interventions that are developed are individualized and are based on an understanding of the individual, the individual’s communication abilities, and the unique situations of the individual. Third, the intervention strategies that are developed are focused on helping the individual gain access to new environments, have positive social interactions, develop friendships, and learn new communication skills.”

School Climate
School Climate is another term with a fairly broad definition. In essence, school climate refers to the overall quality and feel of the attitudes, feelings, and behaviours of individuals - students, teachers, administrators, staff. School climate establishes the bounds of acceptable behaviour among all stakeholders, and all are deemed responsible for its maintenance. There are four overlapping relation fields.

• The relationship of a student to her or himself
• A student to her or his peers
• A student to her or his parents and community
• A student to her or his school workers, including teachers, administrators, and all staff