• To be a responsible citizen of that society we need to know as much as possible. Crows have fairly sophisticated and interdependent social structures, with 'travellers' that move back and forth between different crow communities, carrying information about the location of food and predators with them, and they have developed appropriately sophisticated languages to convey that second-hand knowledge. In fact, they have developed 'body' languages and sounds that communicate the location of food to other species (notably wolves and indigenous humans) on which they depend (since their claws are not strong enough to tear flesh and kill, they locate food for other species that can, and then eat the leftovers).
  
• To be an intelligent consumer we need to know enough to evaluate our choices. In a society where you don't just eat what you kill and live where your ancestors did, there are often more choices than we can try out through direct personal experience.
• To understand our purpose we need to learn as much as possible about our physical world and the history of life in it. We have an instinctive desire to understand how and why things are, which serves an evolutionary purpose -- it helps us to survive. As we assimilate more and more knowledge we assemble patterns and theories about how and why things are. These are belief systems (fig. 3). When early man observed how nature automatically corrected population and resource imbalances quickly and painlessly, he began to believe in a higher power. When more recently he invented civilization, a 'man-made' way to live apart from nature, he developed new, anthropocentric belief systems to justify and explain this new 'separate' purpose for living. Belief systems so powerful that they allow us to tolerate, and even celebrate, incredible suffering, and to ignore and disregard our intuitive knowledge, which is inconsistent with these belief systems.
  

• Because we did not know the degree to which extreme and sustained suffering and outrage perverts the human mind, and the malleability of those minds, we allowed the slaughter of nearly a million innocent civilians in Rwanda in 1994, and of nearly 3000 in the US in 2001.
• Because we did not know the consequences of reliance on catastrophic agriculture, we allowed millions to die in the Irish potato famine, eighty million more to die of starvation in China during Mao's Great Leap Forward, and the horrendous threats posed today by BSE (Mad Cow), the Asian bird flu, and as-yet-unevolved diseases and pests that prey on massive concentrated quantities of astonishingly homogenous, vulnerable human foods.
• Because we did not know that nature uses diseases to winnow overcrowding, and that these diseases will always evolve faster than we can prevent or treat them, we allowed half the people of Europe to die in the Plague, and more than one billion to die of Smallpox, and despite 'clues' like AIDS of what is to come, future diseases we do not yet know, we still have not taken drastic steps to reduce human overcrowding on our planet.
• Because we did not know the impact of our wasteful and thoughtless burning of hydrocarbons and forests on our planet's climate, we now face cataclysmic global warming and the paradoxical early triggering of the next ice age.

1. We need to communicate to everyone on the planet, one person at a time, that there is a better way to live: happier, healthier, safer, more egalitarian, more harmonious, more responsible, and sustainable for future generations. We need to tell everyone a new story of our planet's destiny.
   
2. We need to achieve, by a great deal of open conversation, discussion, and sharing of knowledge, a huge consensus that there are two root causes underlying all the problems we face today and preventing us from achieving that better way to live: Overpopulation and overconsumption, and to set and agree upon deadlines and targets for solving these two problems. Just as in past we agreed that slavery and imperialism and suppression of women were our global enemies, we need to agree that overpopulation and overconsumption are our global enemies, a threat to everything we believe in and a threat to our future. With the right mix of empirical and intuitive knowledge, we can achieve this agreement.
   
3. We need to organize six billion people to use their collective wisdom to tell us how to meet these deadlines and targets, and then free them to work in their communities to make it happen.
4. We need to help each other clear away obstacles to success. That means a lot of humanitarian and peacemaking assistance, helping to build new infrastructure that will work in the new community-based world, redistributing resources from the rich to the poor, and disarming those that will try to establish new wealth and power hierarchies.
   

• Full House, by the late Stephen J. Gould. The presence of man on Earth was a random occurrence, and after the next Extinction Event life on the planet is likely to evolve differently. We are not the Crown of Creation.
• The Wealth of Man by Peter Jay. The life of pre-historic man was easy, idyllic, and very pleasant. Hunt big slow game an hour a day, relax and enjoy the rest.
• The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race, (online) essay by Jared Diamond Why the adoption of agriculture was 'a catastrophe from which we have never recovered'.
• Original Affluence, by Marshall Sahlins. If you wanted to defend a new society that featured rigid hierarchy, agonizingly hard work, suffering, frequent starvation and slavery, wouldn't you try to portray the alternative life as 'short, nasty and brutish'?
  
• Extinction, by Michael Boulter. Our planet's history is one of cycles punctuated by massive extinctions and new beginnings. Our only choice is whether to end this one sooner (a century) or later (several millennia).
  
• The Axemaker's Gift by Jame s Burke and Robert Ornstein. How innovativeness has been increasingly corrupted to concentrate and retain power, instead of making the world better.

• The Unconscious Civilization, by John Ralston Saul. How and why we've become helpless slaves of the political and economic system we built.
• Ockham's Razor, by Wade Rowland. What's wrong with our modern values, and where to look for new ones.
• People Before Profit, by Charles Derber -- How rampant corporatism ravaged the vast majority of people worldwide in the 1800s, and is doing so again.
• State of the World, by WorldWatch Institute, The 7 trends that most threaten eco-collapse: population growth, rising temperature, falling water tables, shrinking cropland per person, collapsing fisheries, shrinking forests, and the extinction of plant and animal species.
• World Scientists' Warning (online), by the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished. A great change in our stewardship of the Earth and life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated."
• Dream of the Earth by Thomas Berry. "We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story."
• The Future of Freedom, by Fareed Zakaria Why we can't change another country's culture from outside it.
• The New Rules of the World, by John Pilger An accurate, devastating portrait of the world in 2003.
• The Demon in the Freezer, by Richard Preston. How vulnerable we all are to individual acts of terror, chaos and sabotage.
• Against the Grain, by Richard Manning. How grain monoculture evolved, and how it's ruining the Earth.
  
• Population Projections, by US Census Bureau. They're no longer assuring us that US and Global Population will level out at 300 million and 9 billion. Would you believe 1 billion and 12 billion by the end of the century, and still rising?
  
• Global Warming, by NOAA. An online synopsis of US scientists' consensus on the causes and consequences of global warming.
• This Overheating World - Worried? Us? (online essay) by Bill McKibben. Article in the UK journal Granta explaining the psychology, and cynical political expediency, of denial.
  
• Are Cities Changing Local and Global Climates?, (online) by NASA. Studies of urban microclimates and how they contribute to local climate change and instability.
• Restoring Scientific Integrity (online) by Union of Concerned Scientists. The Bush regime's distortion of scientific research to forward its own political agenda.
• Climate Collapse, by David Stipp (online article) from Fortune Magazine. The possibility and chilling implications of global warming producing sudden drastic climate shifts.
  
• Conservative Myths on Global Warming (online) by Blogger Carpe Datum. A brief but thorough explanation of the science behind global warming, and the reasoning behind scientists' connecting it to human activity and worrying about the risks of resultant instability
• The Empire Strikes Out, by Kenny Ausubel. Corporatism and acquisitiveness run amok are ruining our world, but nature always bats last.
  
• The Tragedy of the Commons, by Garry Harding. The commons, that which belongs in common to all of us, is disappearing -- Why nobody really cares.
• Elizabeth Costello, by JM Coetzee. Why we tolerate a holocaust against our fellow creatures on Earth.
• The Machine in Our Heads, by Glenn Parton. How the ecological crisis is rooted in a human psychological crisis.

• When Elephants Weep, by Jeff Masson. Compelling scientific evidence that animals feel deep emotions.
• Mind of the Raven, by Bernd Heinrich. Compelling scientific evidence that animals are intelligent, complex, rational and communicative.
  
• The Sacred Balance by David Suzuki. A passionate explanation of James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis, the need to redesign how we live, and the importance of spending more time in nature.
  
• The Hidden Dimension, by Edward Hall. We need space and a natural environment to be healthy and human. When we're deprived of them, we get mentally ill.
  
• The Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abram. How to reconnect with nature, and rediscover wonder.
  

Radical Analysis, Radical Solutions (these are the most important readings, but you probably won't 'buy' their arguments unless you've first read much of the material above)

• Ishmael, The Story of B, and Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn. Also the IshCon discussion forum. The first two of these three books are fictionalized stories about human history from a different, anti-civilization perspective, with penetrating, astounding analysis and insight. Ishmael is more popular but I prefer The Story of B which recapitulates the entire theses in a series of 'lectures'. The two critical lectures are online here. Beyond Civilization is about what we should do about all this.
• A Language Older Than Words, by Derrick Jensen. A profound and disturbing argument for why moderate answers to our current predicament won't work.
• The World We Want, by Mark Kingwell. Why we are best served by trusting our instincts rather than what we are persuaded is moral or rational.

Toolkit for Change: Knowledge We Can Use to Save the World

• Freeman Dyson's Brain (online interview), in Wired Magazine. The twin keys to building a better world are (a) establishing viable self-sufficient local communities to replace big centralized states and governments, and (b) selective more-with-less technologies like solar/wind energy coops and biotech medicines.
• The Developing Ideas Interview (online) with economist Herman Daly. An economic and tax program that favours communities and commons instead of corporations, and a 'contract' to reduce our population and ecological footprint.
  
• The Unconquerable World, by Jon Schell. Why non-violence and consensus-building are the only viable way forward.
• The Support Economy, by Shoshana Zuboff A model for a post-capitalist economy.
• Unequal Protection, by Thom Hartmann. The case for denying 'personhood' to corporations.
• When Corporations Rule the World, by David Korten. The need to get corporations out of politics and create localized economies that empower communities within a system of global cooperation, overcoming the myths about economic growth and the sanctification of greed, and focusing instead on overconsumption, poverty, overpopulation, and reining in untrammelled corporate power.
• Radical Simplicity, by Jim Merkel. How to free yourself from possessions and wage slavery without sacrifice.
• The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. What makes things change.
• Ten Ways to Make a Difference, by Peter Singer. A pragmatic recipe for change.
  
• The Truth About Stories, by Thomas King. The truth about stories is that that's all we are. Want a new society? Write a new story.
  
• The Boycott List, by Responsible Shopper, and Good Stuff, by the WorldWatch Institute. What not to buy, and what to buy instead.
• The Corporation, by Joel Bakan. An action plan for undermining corporatism.
• Humans in the Wilderness, by Glenn Parton. How we might reintroduce humans, well-spaced-out, into a primarily wilderness Earth.
• At Home in the Universe, by S tuart Kauffman. How self-organizing, self-managing systems work.
• EarthDance (entire book online), by Elisabet Sahtouris. Eleven steps to cultural metamorphosis (my summary is here)
• eGaia (entire book online), by Gary Alexander. How to achieve of peace, cooperation and sustainability (replacing war, competition and growth, the fuels of our current culture) and a future state vision with vignettes from individuals' lives in a balanced and harmonious future world.

J

• The Table of Contents of Business Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Knowledge Management posts near the top of the left sidebar
• The links to my McMaster papers on the Future of KM and the Next Economy, in downloadable Word format, also found in the left sidebar (my regular blog readers will have already read versions of these in my daily posts), and
• The section entitled Business/KM Blogs under Blogs & Resources I Read, further down in the left sidebar, containing links to the weblogs of about 40 leading thinkers on Business, Social Networking, Innovation and Knowledge Management. Happy reading and congratulations on a great event.
  

A

• The Consequences of Failure: What Eco-Collapse Will Look Like (coming up later today)
• Book Review - The Wisdom of Crowds
• Why We Should Set Higher Standards for Everything
• How to Save the World Reading List - Updated and Annotated
• Book Review - Bird by Bird
• Self-Selecting Communities: How We Might Build Some
• Are There Any Large Innovative Companies Left?
• How Can We Reconnect Children to Nature?
• Natural Enterprise Chapter 7: Organic Financing
• My Favourite Canadian Francophone Blogs / Mes Blogs Canadiens-Francais Favoris
• Critical Thinking: More Than Just Adjusting for Spin
• The Story-Maker as Cultural Anthropologist

1. Collapse of the offending country's currency. This has already begun, and the only reason it hasn't been more precipitous is that so many countries are owed so much by the US, repayable in US dollars, that these other countries will do everything they can to mitigate the decline until they can be repaid.
2. Inability of the offending country to borrow in domestic currency. Lenders, burned or threatened by the currency collapse, insist that future and replacement debt be denominated in a more stable, reliable currency. The obvious choice would be the Euro. When (not if) lenders insist on being repaid in Euros, they no longer have any reason to prop up the US dollar, which will then fall to a level commensurate with the near-bankrupt status of the US economy.
3. Ballooning cost of borrowing for everyone. When a country tries to borrow more money than it can comfortably repay, the risk to the lender soars, and the interest rate jumps quickly to double digits. This flows through the domestic economy, since banks and investors aren't going to loan money to American companies and individuals at a lower rate than they can get loaning money to the US government. Mortgage and corporate and consumer loan interest rates therefore jump to double digits too. Foreclosures and bankruptcies soar.
   
4. The domestic stock and bond markets crash. As bond yields soar to reflect higher cost of borrowing, bond prices fall to the floor. The cost of borrowing to American companies soars, wiping out margins. Profits disappear. Stock prices fall. And since P/E ratios reflect the opportunity cost of lower-risk debt investments, stock prices fall much faster than earnings. Layoffs soar. Savings and pensions are wiped out.
   
5. Cutoff of credit by the IMF. The IMF under its charter is charged with regulating international borrowings to ensure stability of global financial markets. They did this to the UK during the Suez Crisis -- basically telling the UK that they could not borrow any more money abroad until the economic fundamentals improved to the point repayment was reasonably assured. They've done it to many African and Latin American countries since then, and few of the countries affected have yet recovered.
6. With no ability to borrow abroad and domestic lenders tapped out, there is no alternative but to radically slash government spending. There is no money available for even basic programs. Tax cuts are history, and steep tax increases are imposed to get the money to pay back the crushing, now high-interest debt. Financing of foreign wars is out of the question.

1. Simplicity -- I don't want to have a degree to learn the rules, and I like games that children can play on an equal footing with adults.
2. Speed -- A game should keep moving, and have a natural flow to it.
   
3. Strategy -- I like to think, and a good game should provide some exercise for the mind.
   
4. Sociability -- A good game deepens relationships and allows social discourse, and laughter, as it proceeds.
5. Artistry -- Aesthetics, elegance, good design, all add a dimension to a game.

• Dealer's Choice Poker -- Not that silly game they play in casinos where you only get two cards every hand, but the social Friday Night neighbourhood game where stakes are low, bluffing is key, and someone introduces a new variation every time you get together. Favourite variations: Pass the Trash and Do Ya.
  
• Chase the Ace -- An elegantly simple game that children as young as five can play, and win, but which also enthrals the most demanding adults.
  
• Connect / Rivers Roads & Rails / Metro -- These are the simplest tile-playing games, essentially extensions of dominoes. Easy to learn, elegant, and often producing a work of art in the final tableau. Our kids and grandkids love these games, and even many of our adult friends like them. I've been told I should try a more sophisticated tile-playing game called Carcassonne, and after looking at these lovely tiles I'm inclined to try it.
  
• Beach Volleyball -- The world's simplest ball game, one of the few where physical strength, size and finesse are only a minor advantage. Fun for all ages, relatively safe, and good exercise. I prefer the 6-players-per-side game.
  
• Personal Preference -- An innocuous commercial game that rewards you for knowing what your partner's personal preferences are. A great game for couples getting to know each other couples, and a great conversation starter.
  
• Acquire -- One of the most popular and enduring commercial games, this one about building and investing in hotel chains. Educational, elegant, hard to master, and still easy to learn. Kids figure out the strategy of this game maddeningly quickly.
  
• Joker Rummy -- The Joker variant of Rummy requires collection of runs and sets totalling at least 40 points before laying down. Until you have laid down, you cannot pick up the previous player's discard, and a joker (which carries a 100 point penalty if not laid down) cannot be used as part of the initial lay-down. For that reason, this two-deck Dutch variant is sometimes called Aggravation Rummy. Still, it's a great, easy to learn game. If anyone can find the rules online (maybe in Dutch?) please let me know. Contract Rummy isn't a bad alternative.
  
• Balderdash -- The only word game on my list, simply because it's really a bluffing game, not a word game. Since I'm a serious cruciverbalist, no one in my local social circles will play word games with me. But any serious bullshitter can win at Balderdash.
  
• Nine-Ball -- My favourite pool game. Also elegantly simple, it uses only the first 9 numbered balls, which must be struck (but not necessarily sunk) in order. But the twist is that only the nine-ball counts -- and wins the entire game. That means that defensive play can trump aggressive play, and strategy can trump skill.
  
• Curling -- The token Canadian entry on the list. It's the consummate game of strategy, and old geezers like me can beat young athletes. When I was a kid we used to play on outdoor rinks with 'jam-pails' -- one gallon cans filled with cement with a coloured plastic handle on top. With properly pebbled indoor ice and smooth stones you need the 'free guard zone' rule to keep the game interesting.