Stony Brook Southampton Continues its Sustainability Speaker Series

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y., November 13, 2009 – Stony Brook Southampton continues its Sustainability Speaker Series with professor, shaman and environmental activist Peter Maniscalco and environmental educator Scott Carlin.

Maniscalco performing shamnic drumming during his previous presentation last Spring.

They will discuss “Science and Spirituality: Exploring New Pathways to Sustainability,” addressing the separation of human nature and Mother Nature and the effect on climate change, starting at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, December 1, in the Stony Brook Southampton Library. The presentation will also consist of a “shamanic drumming” experience outside the Library, weather permitting, along with a "Labyrinth Walk." The event is free and open to the public.

“Our local and national environmental problems – air pollution, beach erosion, climate change – are symptoms of a far deeper issue: the separation of our human nature from the rest of nature,” Maniscalco said. “We must reconnect science to spirituality to solve these problems.”

Peter Maniscalco taught “Spirituality of the Environment” at Southampton College.  He has 27 years of shamanic experience in the US, Mexico, and the Amazon Jungles of Ecuador and Peru.  Peter is a long-time environmental advocate using shamanic methods.  His shamanic experiences have been reported in The New York Times, Newsday, and on TV and radio.

Scott Carlin is a geographer at Long Island University.  His research focuses on our cultural shift from individualism (and the ego) to interdependence (and the ecological) as both a material and spiritual path to sustainability.