stargeek
HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD READING LISTHOW TO
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 In Beyond Civilization, Daniel Quinn
says:People will listen
when
they're ready to listen and not before. Probably, once upon a
time,
you weren't ready
to listen to an idea than now seems to you obvious, even urgent. Let
people
come to it in their own time. Nagging or bullying will only alienate
them.
Don't preach. Don't waste time with people who want to argue. They'll
keep
you immobilized forever. Look for people who are already open to
something
new.
When presenting a new
idea, you don't have to have all the answers. It's better to say 'I
don't know' than to fake it. Make people formulate their own
questions.
Don't take on the responsibility of figuring out what their difficulty
is. We each internalize information differently. If you don't
understand
a question, keep insisting they explain it until it's clear. Nine
times
out
of ten they'll supply the answer themselves.
Above all, listen.
Your close attention is sometimes more important than your
articulateness in winning converts. And learning is always a good
thing.
When I've talked to people about the ideas I've presented in this blog, I get the sense that maybe 10% really understand and appreciate what I'm saying. Perhaps another 40% are ready to listen and want to believe, but either my inarticulateness or their internalization mechanism garbles the message. After all, saving the world (or, as one recent commenter 'geo' put it more accurately "changing how humans live so we as a species can continue to survive") is not easy or obvious, or we'd all be busy doing it. This reading list is for that 40%, in the hope that better writers than I can convey more clearly and compellingly what we need to do and why. The remaining 50%, I suspect, are not ready. Five years ago someone gave me The Spell of the Sensuous and I gave up after five pages -- I just wasn't ready. Here's the list -- 56 books and articles that forever changed my worldview, and my purpose for living:: What Life was Really Like Before Civilization: Revisionist History
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)
Toolkit for Change: Knowledge We Can Use to Save the World
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 During
my ten years as a Chief Knowledge Officer, I spent a lot of time
trying
to figure out how people should use knowledge, and to some extent how
people learn, but it never occurred to me to develop an overarching
'theory of knowledge' until I decided to write a book called The Cost of Not Knowing. This
article summarizes that theory.This is not a new epistemology. I am disinterested in academic arguments that use language, a clumsy and artificial abstraction, to try to justify theories that to me are needlessly complex, counter-intuitive and of no practical use. For students of philosophy, and I'm sure this will come as no surprise to my regular readers, my theory is consistent with Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological view of epistemology. For those interested in the philosophical basis for this theory, I would recommend David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous, much of which is devoted to explaining Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. I'm merely interested in its practical implications, in work and in life. My theory starts with learning. Learning is the process of direct and indirect experience and observation, and knowledge is simply the personal, collected, internalized result of learning. We learn in different ways (fig.1): The best way is through active participation, which engages all our senses in the learning experience. Next best is observation, where we see or hear but where some of our senses are not engaged. The least effective way is second-hand, through communication of reports from someone else. When a squirrel learns, by personal trial and error, how to defeat a baffle on a bird feeder, this is powerful knowledge, well retained and employed. When that squirrel instead watches another squirrel show how to do it, the knowledge is less valuable, less credible. The observing squirrel may not be able to replicate the other squirrel's moves, and the method may not be the best one for the observing squirrel, which may have a different body-weight or dexterity than the demonstrating squirrel's. And if one squirrel merely tells another, unfamiliar squirrel of the presence of food in a bird-feeder 'over there' that can be accessed by navigating around the baffle, that knowledge is even less valuable. The squirrel listening may doubt whether the baffle was or even can be overcome -- perhaps this second-hand report is merely bragging or a ruse on the part of the reporting squirrel. In human activities, we now get almost all of our knowledge second-hand, through books, newspapers, television and online, and its relative lack of credibility causes us to develop and assign a trust 'rating' to different sources, based on how often, in our experience and that of others we trust, that report has turned out to be accurate or useful. A blogroll is one manifestation of that need to rate the trust-worthiness of second-hand sources of knowledge. Schools, unfortunately, now provide almost all learning second-hand, and it is not surprising that 'field trips' are so loved by students -- an experience to learn something first-hand. It is also not surprising that the most effective and credible form of second-hand report is the story, which conveys knowledge in a way highly analogous to the way we might have experienced it personally. Why do we learn? The squirrel learns in order to survive -- by direct participation at first in play and then, often by observing its parents, in gathering food, building a nest etc. The squirrel draws as well on instinctive knowledge, which is coded in its DNA as an evolutionary advantage, which 'teaches' it the knowledge of its ancestors, for example to 'freeze' when it senses a predator species, which is often more effective than fleeing predators whose eyesight is attuned to motion, more than shape. That instinctive knowledge also tells it at what point, as the predator approaches, to flee, based on its ancestors' cumulative learnings of that point at which the probability of evasion through flight begins to exceed the probability of non-detection by the predator. Instinctive knowledge doesn't need to be learned, so it doesn't appear on fig.1 above. We're born with it. In natural systems, where the community, the physical area in which animals spend their entire lives, is small and almost completely 'knowable', we learn only to survive and make a living, and because nature has evolved us, as an adaptive mechanism, to find learning fun (fig.2). In such closed systems, we can get almost all the knowledge we need from direct experience and observation, and from our instincts -- there is little need to rely on second-hand reports as a source of learning. As that physical area that we need to know to survive increases, we can no longer get by with direct experience and observation, so we need to evolve languages to convey more and more knowledge second-hand. Our society becomes inevitably more interdependent, and in addition to survival there are now three more reasons to learn:
I had dinner last evening with some of our neighbours, and we were talking about some of these immense problems, and one of my neighbours, a student of history, said that no problem in history has ever been solved until it got so bad for so many that there was a spontaneous revolution. What would it take, he asked, before these problems -- overpopulation, famine, oppression, violence, disease, resource scarcity, pollution, war, suffering, cruelty, misery -- got bad enough that people would rise up and demand immediate resolution? I think the massive unrest and strife we see everywhere in the world indicates that we have already passed that point. However, in order to have a revolution there must be (a) consensus on the need for change, (b) consensus on the change that is needed, and (c) a simple process to bring about that change. Historically, the solution has been political -- to oust, violently if necessary, an identifiable oppressor, the cause of the problem, and replace him (or them) with new leaders committed to the consensus solution. And although billions have shown that they see Bush's corporatist imperialism, and the oligopolists' 'free' trade and globalization, to be causes of some of the major problems we face, once we get rid of these scourges, most of the biggest problems will remain. These more intractable problems have no identifiable enemy and, as yet, no consensus solution. They are systemic problems that can only be changed by a radical change to our entire global economic and political systems. And changes to these massive, entrenched and leaderless systems have historically almost never come about by political means, but rather by introduction of disruptive technology innovations that undermine the existing system, as the agricultural and scientific and industrial revolutions did. It is tempting to believe that scientists, not collective human energy and collaboration, are the only hope we have for saving us from ourselves, of rescuing us from our colossal ignorance. What is the cost of not knowing when, even if we could communicate enough knowledge to achieve global consensus on the need for change and the change that is needed, there is still no simple process to bring about that change? If we were to magically and suddenly be able to bring knowledge to bear that would persuade the vast majority of people on the planet that unless we quickly reduce human population below one billion and reduce each human ecological footprint to no more than one eighth of the current Western footprint, would that be enough to precipitate a combination of voluntary abstinence, intense social pressures, and (over the objections of the very powerful elite) laws and taxes and sanctions, to ensure that these targets were met? We did bring about the end of slavery this way, and the end of the Vietnam War, and in much of the world women's suffrage. Is the intractability of our greatest problems really the lack of a simple, known solution, or is it rather the lack of consensus on the problem, and of its severity and urgency and what needs to be done to find a solution? -- The cost of not knowing. Until the reactionary cult of leadership took over business thinking a few short years ago, there was a consensus that the best way to run a business was to agree on and articulate the business' objectives, get each employee to define their role in achieving those objectives, remove the obstacles that prevented them from fulfilling those roles effectively, and otherwise stay out of the way and trust the Wisdom of Crowds to produce better results than the arrogance of a few. Could the same principle, applied to the world's most challenging and threatening problems, work in society as a whole? And if not, why not? It is the examples of slavery and the 60s peace movement and women's suffrage that have caused me, insufferable optimist that I am, to think that there is hope. The solution of reducing human population by 90% and ecological footprint by 10% (in the third world) to 90% (in the West) is daunting, but it's also a simple, clear, measurable objective. And if we have six billion people working on it, convinced that this is what must be done to save the world, there's no reason why it shouldn't be achievable. Women choose not to have babies if they know pregnancy would put their lives in danger, why wouldn't they choose likewise if they knew it put their world in danger? Would knowledgeable people agree to participate in an annual lottery for the right to have a baby, and live with the results, as they now compromise so many of their 'rights' for the greater good? Would they agree to a 100% tax on all wealth beyond sustainable consumption levels, to be distributed to the poor? Would they shut down permanently businesses that knowingly damage the environment? Would they abandon urban sprawl and big centralized governments in favour of self-managed, self-selected, self-sufficient communities if it could be shown that these are more socially and environmentally responsive, and responsible, political units? Would they wrench power, by citizen and consumer action, from unrepentant corporatists who refused to give up their excessive wealth and influence? It is hard to give up old paradigms. I know a lot of people that see the salvation of the world in global government, to which all states will cede authority. I see no reason to believe that bigger more powerful governments, which largely got us into this mess, and which are more removed from the people they supposedly represent, would do anything but make the problems worse. But as the Internet has shown, the real power in any system remains at the ends: The front lines, the communities, where people learn by direct experience what works and what does not, what makes sense and what does not. It is as individuals and as members of small communities that we define ourselves and establish our belief systems and commit ourselves to action and to change. As citizens and consumers and members of communities, if we only knew, we could accomplish what needs to be done. It is time for a bloodless coup, the taking back of power and authority from central corporatist political and economic institutions and its reinstatement in local communities and in individuals. To bring it about, we need only accomplish these four daunting tasks:
The cost of not knowing is the end of our world. It's too great a cost to pay, and the answer, if we use the power of knowledge, is within our collective reach. |
Apologies for my unannounced silence since
last Saturday. The power supply on my Dell failed, draining the
battery
so I couldn't even back up my files to another computer. I just got it
back now. More on this spectacular failure next week. This week has
given me the chance to work on my novel, The
Only Life We Know, and my book Natural Enterprise, as well as a chance to catch
my breath and think about (a) what to blog about next, and (b) what to
do with myself once the three books are finished.Here are some of the things I'm planning on blogging about in the next few weeks. If there's anything else you'd like me to write about, let me know.
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 Last week I listed
forty actions
-- technological, social, entrepreneurial, political -- that could
create a new
'tipping point' to restore our planet's, and our, health, and replace
the thirty thousand year old, well-intentioned but fatally flawed and
unsustainable culture called
civilization. These forty actions would undermine civilization and
render it obsolete, not by taking us back to hunter-gatherer culture, but by taking us
forward to a
post-civilization culture in balance and harmony with nature. This transition to a new culture --which I have called Relater-Sha rer culture -- could, I argued yesterday, take decades or even centuries to accomplish. It will start slowly, as more and more of us abandon the existing political, educational, economic, business, religious and media systems and institutions, and build a new culture with the building blocks shown in blue in the chart above. Increasing natural scarcities, pressures and disasters (factors shown in green above) -- all consequences of civilization's excesses and failures -- will begin to dissuade adherants of civilization's perpetual growth mantra, and create a further sense of urgency for a sustainable, Relater-Sharer culture, as the established institutions of civilization continue to prove themselves unable to adapt. I also made the point yesterday that the mechanisms by which we usually try to bring about change -- politics, law, economics, and formal education -- really aren't up to the job this time, and although sympathetic changes to these systems won't hurt, ultimately they're neither sufficient nor necessary to take us forward out of the mess we have created for ourselves and our world. For that reason, they're not represented in the building blocks of Relater-Sharer culture shown above. And although these artefacts of wealth and power will be wielded, as always, by those most determined to maintain the status quo, they ultimately won't be effective against builders of the new culture who will simply opt out of these bankrupt systems, which are as unnecessary in a Relater-Sharer world as they were in the Hunter-Gatherer culture that preceded civilization. Several readers have said this analysis is informative but not helpful -- it doesn't indicate what each of us, as individuals, can do that will at least not make things worse, and which could make the transition a little less painful and a little quicker, perhaps, for our descendants. Here is such a list, a combination of the forty actions in last week's post and the Save the World Roadmap I published last year, but taken down to the personal, practical, present-day level. Answers to the question: What Can I Do Now?  Trust your instincts:
Reconnect with them, listen to them, and don't let other people tell
you you're stupid, crazy, irrational, or immoral. If you're unhappy
it's for a reason. Your gut
feeling, your intuition, is written in your DNA, and it's the source
of
knowledge that allows every living creature to know
what to do. And it worked for man for the first three million years of
his life on Earth as well -- before language, before laws, before
codes
of right and wrong -- and these were arguably the most successful,
leisurely, and happy years of man's existence. Listen to them, and
they'll tell you what to do. Listen, Learn, and Teach
Others:
Spend time both in nature, away from civilization, and with people,
listening and talking about things that matter. In nature, reawaken
and
reconnect with your senses, focus each sense until you really see,
hear, smell, taste, feel, connect with the rest of the living organism
called Earth. Open yourself up to the joy, and learning of nature. Pay
attention. Re-learn to wonder. Then, 'back' in civilization, have the
courage to talk openly to people about things that really matter to
you. Ignore the raised eyebrows and comments about your seriousness
and
intensity -- you'll find most people care, too. Then listen, don't
preach. Leave behind one
practiced, important (to you), articulate idea or thought with the
other person, like planting a seed. Learn to tell stories -- it's the
only effective way to teach. But share what you know. When you're
talking to someone who strongly disagrees with you, listen, don't try
to convert them. There's a reason
why they feel so differently from you -- ferret out and really
understand what that reason is (don't assume they're ignorant or
stupid). Then sow a single seed of doubt. And read quickly and
selectively, but don't let it keep you indoors, or away from people.
The real learning is outside. So travel when you can, but forget the
hotel chains and chain restaurants. Live with the locals, talk to
them,
try different things, listen and learn. Learn and Practice Critical
Thinking:
Challenge 'established wisdom', especially your instincts tell you
it's
dubious. Learn your vulnerability to spin, and how to recognize and
discount it. Learn to avoid the intellectual fallacies of groupthink
and arrogance, but also avoid black hat thinking.
Develop emotional
intelligence, but never
use it to manipulate. Re-Learn How to Imagine:
The school system and most business environments drive it out of us,
and it's easy to get caught up in your own left brain. It can also be
frightening: imagining literally means putting your thoughts into
images. But it's powerful, motivating, educational, and creative.
Imagine -- picture it -- what
it happening in Sudan where genocide is happening right now. Imagine
what is happening in the factory farms before you decide what to make
for dinner. Imagine what you could be doing if it wasn't for your
boring, meaningless job. Imagine a better way of doing something, a
better way to live. Imagine what could be. Your instincts will tell you what to do
next. If we can't imagine, we can do anything. That's what got us into this mess. Use Less Stuff:
Consumerism is doubly addictive -- you get the fleeting pleasure of
acquiring something, and then you have to work harder and earn more
money for The Man so you can pay off the debt you incurred to buy it.
Learn to live a Radically
Simple
life -- buy better quality stuff that lasts longer, make your own
meals
instead of using processed foods, think before you buy, don't get into
debt (only buy when you have the cash in your account), buy local
rather than imported goods (especially stuff from countries that have
poor social and environmental standards), complain about excessive
packaging, recycle, reuse, buy used, share tools with neighbours, turn
off the lights, cover the pool, use energy-efficient lighting, keep
your tires inflated, carpool, walk or bike instead of driving -- you know what to do. Make a list,
draw up a schedule, and do it. Stop at One:
Consider the virtues of a single-child family. Learn why children in
such families are the happiest and most successful. Better yet,
adopt. Become Less Dependent:
Learn how to fix things and make things instead of always having to
buy
replacements. Cut your own lawn, and perform other services yourself,
even if you can afford someone else to do it. Self-sufficiency is good
for your self-esteem, reduces consumption and waste, helps the
environment, and is good exercise. Become an Activist: Pick a
cause you care about, research what needs to be done, use the Internet
to organize, and do it. But follow Peter
Singer's advice
to make sure your time is well-spent. Especially the parts about not
getting caught up in administration, and not trying to change, or
enforce, laws. The most fruitful activism is all about informing and
educating people, making them aware of their options, and their power
as citizens and consumers, often one person at a time, until enough
people have changed their minds or their behaviours to change the
system. Volunteer:
Rather than sending guilt money, go out and spend time helping those
suffering or in need. Pick a charity that you really care about -- the
soup kitchen, the animal shelter, whatever. Get involved, and talk to
the people you're helping. Don't get talked into fundraising
activities
-- really get out there and do something with your own two hands.
You'll learn a lot, you'll feel better, you'll make a difference, and
you just might find out something important about yourself. Be a Role Model: Talk to
others about, and show others, what you're doing,
not just what you're thinking. People are far more inspired by a good
role model than a good speech. And if people tell you you're a good
role model, get out there and flaunt it in the right places -- if
you're a woman engineer, go out to the schools and tell girls what a
great career it is. If you're doing half the things on this list, you're a great role model -- inspire others
to follow your example. Be a Pioneer:
If you have the time and the passion for it, pick a new cause, use the
Internet to find like minds, do your homework, organize, and do
something completely new. Start a community energy co-op. Set up a
'virtual' market for local crafts, organic or free-range foods, or
whatever needs better local distribution. Establish a community-based
business. Or create a whole community, self-selected, self-organized,
self-sufficient, with people you love, and show the world how much
more
sense this makes than living in a community of strangers and driving
long distances to work for someone you dislike so you can buy stuff
you
don't need made by other strangers even unhappier with their lives
than
you are. The new culture will be built bottom-up, one community at a
time, and the sooner we start finding a community model that works
well
in a post-civilization society, the better. Find or Create a Meaningful
Job:
Each of us has talents, interests, and time. It's amazing how many of
us spend all our time doing work that we find uninteresting, and which
doesn't effectively use our talents. We become wage slaves,
underemployed and bored because we're convinced or afraid that a
better
job doesn't exist. And we work so hard at it we have no time left to
challenge that conviction or fear. That's what the corporatists are
counting on. Don't give them the satisfaction. Find the time to figure
out what you really would like to do with your life, how you'd really
like to make a living. Then research the possibilities, talk to people
who are doing it, find out what's possible, learn what's involved in
creating your own business (and don't listen to accountants or MBAs).
If we were all doing jobs we loved, with people we love, and in charge
of our own careers, the corporatists would have no staff, and their
environmentally devastating empires would crumble. Share Your Expertise:
If you have talents, specialized know-how, or technical or scientific
skills and knowledge that could be useful in solving birth control,
clean energy, disease prevention, conservation, animal cruelty,
pollution and waste, local self-sufficiency, non-animal foods,
'more-with-less' product streamlining, self-organization,
collaboration, consumer and citizen awareness and activism, animal
communication, conflict resolution, mental illness, and other issues
contributing to environmental deterioration, create 'open source'
spaces where others can access what you know, contact you, and
collaborate with you and with others to solve these problems. Be Good to Yourself:
You're not going to be any use saving the world if you're depressed,
unfit or stressed out. Don't take the problems of the world
personally,
or blame yourself for them. If news or failure to accomplish something
gets you down, go out and do something you enjoy. Eat healthy and stay
fit, but don't make a religion of it -- indulge yourself from time to
time. Learn how to prevent illnesses instead of waiting for them to
occur. Spend time with people who like you, and accept their
compliments warmly. Love yourself, realize that you can do anything
you
want to do. Appreciate that you're part of the solution, and that
makes
you extraordinary. Infect Others With Your Spirit and
Passion:
Love openly, completely, as many people as you can. Be emotional,
except in those very rare occasions when dispassion is needed. Smile
excessively. But refuse to tolerate cruelty, suffering, unfairness,
bullying, jealousy, apathy, despair, cynicism or hate, in yourself or
others -- alleviate it, disarm it, discharge it, whatever it takes to
stop these negative emotions and activities, and appreciate that
they're signs of sickness, not evil. A period of great change is always turbulent and unsettling, and the transformation to a Relater-Sharer culture won't be achieved in our lifetime. So we will need to be, like all pioneers, patient, indefatiguable, and aware that the beneficiaries of what we do starting now will be our descendents, future generations who will only know us from stories. As human beings, and as the species that created this mess in the first place, we owe them no less. We know, instinctively, that that is why we're here. |
 If
you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that I'm
opposed to unregulated 'free' trade, very worried about the
extraterritoriality of the WTO, NAFTA, Davos and other corporatist
captives, strongly opposed to domestic corporations 'offshoring' jobs,
using influence with the Bush regime and other right-wing governments
to circumvent social and environmental laws and responsibilities, and
a
great believer in taking the pledge to buy local, and in community
self-sufficiency.At the same time, I'm a strong supporter of the UN and other multi-lateral NGOs, and I believe that we each have a responsibility for the well-being of all the people and creatures of this world. Some readers have said this view is inconsistent, and I wasn't quite sure how to respond to such charges. Fortunately, Peter Singer, in his recent book on global ethics, I'll have more to say next week about Bush's fraudulent and despicable Earth Day media blitz, and the major media's shameless lack of critical evaluation of the utter nonsense that his propaganda machine has been churning out this week on the environment -- newspeak of Orwellian proportions. The first part of Singer's book deals with environmental responsibility, and his prescription for increasing it -- immediate ratification of Kyoto by the US and other holdout countries, and introduction of an emissions trading mechanism to make the realization of Kyoto feasible (subject to the need for some oversight on the disposition of the proceeds of such trading when it involves autocratic governments). The second part of the book deals with the global economy, and Singer adroitly tears apart the Economist's (and other neocons') naive assertion that economic globalization somehow benefits both rich and poor countries. He then goes on to prescribe a substantial reform of the WTO and the GATT, which could actually lead to more equitable distribution of wealth and more efficient production of economic goods, while safeguarding human rights, labour and the environment. Unfortunately, the multi-national corporations and corporatists who hold sway in the WTO would never tolerate Singer's prescription, since it would entirely divert the benefits of economic globalization from their pockets to those of the world's poor. The third part of the book deals with international law, and Singer lashes out at Bush for his unconscionable refusal to ratify the International Court of Justice, and for the UN's continued hesitancy to accept a duty (not a right) to intervene in situations of genocide and other humanitarian crises, even within a single nation. Singer is sanguine about the limitations and dangers of 'global government', but supports strengthening the UN to enable it to act as a 'protector of last resort', and including in its mandate the responsibility to supervise elections in all member nations. The fourth and final part goes back to ethical principles and proposes that countries must, in this world where national boundaries no longer have any logistic meaning, set aside national interest and embrace, once and for all, global interest, impartially. That does not mean cultural homogenization, but imposes a responsibility for the reduction of inequality, both of economic resources and personal rights and freedoms. Always the pragmatist, Singer concludes by worrying out loud about how the responsibility for a global ethic could be managed: It
is widely believed that a world government would be, at best, an
unchecked bureaucratic behemoth that would make the bureaucracy of the
EU look lean and efficient. At worst, it would become a global
tyranny,
unchecked and unchallengeable. These thoughts have to be taken
seriously. How to prevent global bodies becoming either dangerous
tyrannies or self-aggrandizing bureaucracies, and instead make them
effective and responsive to the people whose lives they affect? It is
a
challenge that should not be beyond the best minds in the fields of
political science and public administration.
I'd like to believe that this was possible, because if it isn't, we're in serious trouble. We cannot expect national governments to set aside parochial interests, especially when this entails accepting a responsibility that would, for the richer nations, inevitably lead to a drastic redistribution of wealth to poorer nations and hence a sudden and sharp reduction in, at least, economic living standards (if not necessarily well-being). But as John Ralston Saul has so eloquently argued, larger organizations and institutions, whether public or private, are almost always, and inherently, less efficient, less agile, more resistant to change, more hierarchic, and less transparent than smaller organizations. So the challenge is to achieve the best of both worlds, having organizations of global scope and authority and responsibility, but broken up into sufficiently small, autonomous and dynamic units that they are sensitive, resilient, responsible and responsive to the people and communities they serve. We can only hope that "the best minds in the fields of political science and public administration", wherever they are, are up to the task. |
 Here are five amazing
articles, all from great writers and/or great investigative
reporters:George Soros on The Bubble of American Supremacy -- Soros argues that "the supremacist ideology of the Bush Administration stands in opposition to the principles of an open society" and is hence doomed to spectacular and devastating failure. Thanks to Gary Lawrence Murphy for the link. Teaser: The Bush doctrine, first enunciated in a
presidential speech at West Point in June of 2002, and incorporated
into the National Security Strategy three months later, is built on
two
pillars: the United States will do everything in its power to maintain
its unquestioned military supremacy; and the United States arrogates
the right to pre-emptive action. In effect, the doctrine establishes
two classes of sovereignty: the sovereignty of the United States,
which
takes precedence over international treaties and obligations; and the
sovereignty of all other states, which is subject to the will of the
United States. This is reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm: all
animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
To be sure, the Bush doctrine is not stated so starkly; it is shrouded in doublespeak. The doublespeak is needed because of the contradiction between the Bush Administration's concept of freedom and democracy and the actual principles and requirements of freedom and democracy. Talk of spreading democracy looms large in the National Security Strategy. But when President Bush says, as he does frequently, that freedom will prevail, he means that America will prevail. In a free and open society, people are supposed to decide for themselves what they mean by freedom and democracy, and not simply follow America's lead...It is ironic that the government of the most successful open society in the world should have fallen into the hands of people who ignore the first principles of open society. Kurt Vonnegut on Cold Turkey -- The guy who declared Bush II certifiably psychopathic a year ago (and no one refuted his argument) is frothing over America's addiction to oil, and to power. Thanks to Gary for this link too. Teaser: Power corrupts us, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk
on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I
in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in
the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to
pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid
got for Christmas.
[Bush] and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven't noticed, they've already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you'll be asked to repay. Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, has forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People. Seymour Hersh on The Gray Zone -- The much-cited article that clearly links Rumsfeld, and hence Bush, to direction and foreknowledge of the torture and atrocities at Abu Ghraib. This guy has done as much to show the dangers, lies and fraud of the Bush Regime as Daniel Ellsberg revealed in the Pentagon Papers, which led to the end of Richard Nixon, the last American Tyrant President. My bet is that Hersh will be either arrested or assassinated before November. James Grant on Low Rates, High Expectations -- An explanation of why low interest rates suck for all but the very rich, and how they seduce us even more into the dangerous spiral of greater and greater consumption, greater and greater debt. Teaser: The Fed will raise its rate,
though grudgingly and gradually. It will act in this fashion not only
out of conviction but also, perhaps, out of a guilty conscience. It
knows that its 1 percent rate drove many risk-averse people into
stocks
and bonds because they could no longer afford to live on the meager
returns of their savings. That is at one pole of the spectrum of
financial sophistication. At the other, hedge funds borrowed at
ultra-low rates to speculate in everything from gold to lead. Just the
prospect of a slightly higher borrowing rate has brought about
disturbances in the temples of high finance. Brian Bergstein and Randy Herschaft on Seisint's 'Matrix' Terrorism Quotient
Database
-- This duo did some digging into the abominable and unethical tactics
that Seisint, a company founded by a reputed millionaire drug
smuggler,
used to arbitrarily and libellously finger 120,000 people as 'possible
terrorists', some of whom were arrested as a result, and which gave
the
corporation an exclusive bid on a $12 million defense department
contract -- even though the database methodology was shown to be bogus
and the database was ordered scrapped (the ACLU says there is no
evidence it has in fact been scrapped). Teaser:The Fed has another reason to be conscience-stricken. It knows, or should know, that by trying to make the dollar cheaper, it has precipitated even more borrowing in an economy heavily encumbered. The greater the debt, the more deflation-prone the economy. And the more deflation-prone the economy, the more the Fed is apt to try to cheapen the dollar. The truth is that the central bank of the United States is chasing its tail. A
records request by the AP in Florida turned up "briefing points,"
dated
January 2003, for a presentation on Matrix to Vice President Dick
Cheney and other top federal officials delivered jointly by Seisint,
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida's top police official. One of the
items on Seisint's agenda: "Demonstrate HTF with mapping." Matrix
meeting minutes from February 2003 say Cheney was briefed along with
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert
Mueller.
In May 2003, the Justice Department approved Seisint as sole data contractor on the project, citing the company's "technical qualifications," including software "applying the 'terrorism quotient' in all cases." "The quotient identifies a set of criteria which accurately singled out characteristics related to the perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks and other terrorist events," said a memo from an Office of Justice Programs policy adviser, Bruce Edwards. "This process produced a scoring mechanism (that), when applied to the general criminal population, yields other people that may have similar motives." |
| 11. |
A simple way to
simultaneously send new blog articles, as they are posted, to any
number of user-maintained, editable e-mail lists (from which people
could easily unsubscribe, of course). |
| 10. |
An
automatically maintained Table of Contents with one-sentence abstracts
for each of your blog posts, editable by you and sortable by your
readers by title, date, and category/sub-category. |
| 9. |
A
simple, meaningful measure of total readership, that weighs blog hits,
visits, average duration of stay, RSS subscriptions, inbound blogs,
e-mail subscriptions, and visits to copies of your posts on
aggregators. |
| 8. |
An
ability to create standing-order 'profiles' for all blogs, as you now
can for newsfeeds, so that you can receive a single daily e-mail or
web
page that aggregates everything posted that day, anywhere in the
blogosphere, on a specific topic or containing specific keywords or
phrases. |
| 7. |
A
gigabyte or two of free storage on the hosted blog server, so you can
keep a copy of your entire My Documents folder on the server, link to
anything in it from your blog without having to FTP a copy, and be
able
to access your entire 'e-filing cabinet' from any computer anywhere
anytime. |
| 6. |
An
easy migration path from the asynchronous, polished
anonymity of the blog to the real-time, one-to-one, face-to-face or
voice-to-voice, halting interactive iterative intimacy of other media,
media
that
move you from talk to action. |
| 5. |
Inclusion of our posts,
if we want them to be, in Google News. |
| 4. |
More first-person accounts, first-hand news, live photos and reports, and investigative reporting in the blogosphere. |
| 3. |
A blogging tool so simple even our parents can maintain one. |
| 2. |
No more fear of your blog or your computer crashing and irretrievably losing everything you've written on your blog. |
| 1. |
The end of the terms 'weblog', 'blog' and 'blogger', and to be simply called An Online Journalist. |
 I've updated the Dire
ctory
of Active Salon Blogs. Please send
me details on any missing and new Salon Blogs, and errors in the
Directory. I promise to post any updates I receive at
least once a week.There are now 159 active (updated in the last month, or officially on vacation but returning) Salon Blogs. Comings & Goings this past month:
Some stats for this past month:
P.S. I've also updated my Tables of Contents (see top left of my blog). Since Google has, for some reason, stopped crawling How to Save the World, Google is no longer a reliable way to find things in my archives. I'm going to test some other search engines and change my search bar accordingly. |
 My Salon Blog colleague Ted Ritzer keeps a list
of Useful
Web Sites (for all web users, not just bloggers) originally
compiled by Kevin Kelly, of Wired,
The Well, and Whole Earth Catalog fame. Kevin no
longer maintains his list, and instead has an intriguing Cool Tools site, but it's only
for the rich -- virtually everything on the site costs money, often a
lot of it. So Ted and I agreed it's time to update the Useful Web
Sites
list, and we need your help. What links and free
downloads should every self-respecting Internet user have on their
desktop?The list should not include pay sites, nor should it include news sites, blogs or other sites that appear on blogrolls (too many, and too subjective). Nor should it include highly specialized sites (I have a personal list of favourite genealogy sites, but I realize that few people would consider these 'essential'). To make the list manageable, I've identified 21 categories for the essential links (let me know if you think I've missed an entire category). If I get enough response, I'll publish a list of the Top 3 in each category and keep it on my sidebar or Spurl it (Spurl lets you keep your web bookmarks online and share them with others). The examples shown for each category are my personal favourites and some of them are eccentric, so they may not make the Top 3 list. Quite a few of them come from the excellent Jason Lefkowitz' Quality Software list (thanks to Internet Time for the link):
|
 Just
got back from the McMaster World Congress on Intellectual Capital and
Innovation, where I made two presentations. I'll have more to say
about
the Congress in a few days. In the meantime, I welcome any Congress
attendees that have found their way to How to Save the World. I'd like to direct them to:
|
 The N
YT reports:
"With its rising budget deficit and ballooning trade imbalance, the
United States is running up a foreign debt of such record-breaking
proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global
economy, according to a report made public today by the International
Monetary Fund. In nearly 60 pages of carefully worded analysis, the
report sounded a loud alarm about the shaky fiscal foundation of the
United States, questioning the wisdom of the Bush administration's tax
cuts and warning that large budget deficits posed significant risks
not
just for the United States but for the rest of the world."I told you so. Historically, this kind of fiscal mismanagement, and the commensurate warnings from the IMF if ignored (and the Bush administration has already said it will ignore them), trigger the following consequences:
This is not an exaggeration. Ask anyone in a country that has faced it. And while no one in the world wants to see this happen in the US (because it will have a domino effect, pushing the whole world into a depression), the world cannot afford to allow any country to borrow wildly beyond its means. Bush is playing brinkmanship here, rolling the dice and hoping that the economy will somehow recover and achieve unprecedented and sustained record prosperity for at least a generation to repay his staggering debt, before global investors lose their nerve and stop lending to the US, and the IMF is left with no alternative but to step in. The Times reports: "Though the International Monetary Fund has repeatedly criticized the United States on its budget and trade deficits in the last few years, this report was unusually lengthy and pointed...Fund officials warned that the long-term fiscal outlook was far grimmer, predicting that underfinancing of Social Security and Medicare would lead to shortages as high as $47 trillion over the next several decades, or nearly 500 percent of the current gross domestic product in the coming decades." This is the first warning from the IMF. It will be ignored, as it was in Argentina. The consequences, for all of us, will be devastating. You know who to thank. |
 Virginia
reader Myke Myers kindly
brought to my attention the work of his fellow Virginian William
McDonough.
McDonough is an architect and designer who has garnered a lot of press
for his bold yet pragmatic view of design. In a recent interview with
New Scientist he says:Consider this: all the ants on
the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of
humans.
Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years, yet their
productiveness nourishes plants, animals and soil. Human industry has
been in full swing for little more than a century, yet it has brought
about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature
doesn't
have a design problem. People do... McDonough maintains four websites: His firm's, his partnership's, his own, and his intelligent design
site. The sites are as effectively designed as his buildings -- easy
to
browse, productive, engaging, and advancing the cause (the media are
invited to select from ready-to-plagiarize materials that simplify
writing about McDonough or his businesses). He's won awards as a
visionary and environmentalist, and his firm's designs have won awards
for eco-efficiency. And he's written a book, Cradle to Cradle
(itself made of recyclable polypropylene, not paper), with colleague
Michael Braungart, that explains the vision that underlies all his
work. It is, simply: Learn from, and
imitate, nature -- nature knows how to design and build things right,
everything recycled, zero waste.The Earth's natural systems can probably support a few hundred million of our species, but soon there could be 10 billion of us... Eco-efficiency, where you try to reduce everything to zero, is not much fun. And nature itself is not that efficient. It's effective. Take a cherry tree in the spring. It's not efficient - how many blossoms does it need to regenerate? But it is effective: it makes cherries. We celebrate the cherry tree not for its efficiency, but for its effectiveness - and for its beauty. Its materials are in constant flow, and all those thousands of useless cherry blossoms look gorgeous. Then they fall to the ground and become soil again, so there's no problem. We can celebrate abundance where it is ecologically intelligent. From my designer's perspective, I ask: why can't I design a building like a tree? A building that makes oxygen, fixes nitrogen, sequesters carbon, distils water, builds soil, accrues solar energy as fuel, makes complex sugars and food, creates microclimates, changes colours with the seasons and self-replicates. This is using nature as a model and a mentor, not an inconvenience. It's a delightful prospect. When I'm working with business people I talk business. We talk about how much money can be made or saved, because that gets their attention. We never try to convert someone who is calcified: we never try to teach mules to play the violin. It sounds terrible and the mules don't like it. This is the kind of thinking we need -- assuming we can somehow solve the fact that there are at least ten times as many people on the planet as it can healthily support, and that our culture, and its political, legal and economic systems are utterly dependent on an unsustainable concentration of wealth, abuse of power, ever-accelerating growth in consumption of resources, and subjugation of human will and dignity. McDonough calls himself an optimist, and thinks we can turn everything around by just redesigning our world. But I think sooner or later in this century, whether we solve the population and culture problems quickly and intelligently, or go crashing into the wall of eco-catastrophe, we are going to need to radically redesign and rebuild our culture, our economy, and our social systems. We can only hope that with guidance from people like William McDonough -- and also listening to nature and our own instincts -- we will design and build the next human culture more responsibly and intelligently than we did the current one. So that those of us lucky enough to live in that brave new world will know only balance, beauty, harmony, abundance and peace. Just as our ancestors lived for three million years before we invented civilization, and just as every other species on our world has always done. Imagine. |
 Winter World, the latest book by Bernd Heinrich, whose books Mind of the Raven and Why We Run I've reviewed before, is not as ambitious nor as eye-opening as his previous works, which focused on animal intelligence, endurance and sensitivity. It's more laid back, and that's perhaps fitting for this time of the year when the deep freeze here in Ontario seems to be interminable. Heinrich's lovely illustrations, like the one above, instil in the reader profound respect and love for the book's subjects -- the many animals who winter outdoors in the Great White North. The book is mainly about adaptability. It explains how birds, mammals, amphibians and insects are able to survive and even thrive in relentlessly cold and snow-covered lands. The chipmunk above, for example, builds a 12-foot burrow system that includes a nest chamber three feet underground, several food storage chambers, and escape tunnels as well as the main channel. They hibernate, not when it's cold, necessarily, but when there's a low food supply. Hibernating mammals like the arctic squirrel awaken and warm themselves up to their usual 37º body temperature periodically during the winter, for no apparent reason except to get REM sleep. My friend the beaver, creator of the fine work next door to us (a bog), builds a conical lodge that looks much like a tepee and functions similarly. Up to ten feet high, in three feet of water, it freezes solid in winter, protecting the beavers from the elements and predators, with a small air vent at the top. Entrance is only from under the ice, which is why beavers cut trees and drag them to the pond so they are accessible from under the ice all winter long (beavers don't hibernate, and eat up to 50lbs of wood per day each). Wren males build the nest framework, and in some cases build multiple nest frameworks. Then the females choose their mates, and do the interior lining and finishing on one selected nest, to seal the marriage. The book is an engaging read with some amazing stories. At its heart it is also a mystery. There are many methods that Northern animals use to conserve energy, and science is able to show how in combination they allow so many species to live comfortable lives in what we would consider inhospitable surroundings. Heinrich's mystery is the golden-crowned kinglet, a tiny (not much more than 1" long with feathers, weighing 4-6 grams), energetic bird that is seen periodically in small groups in Northern winters. These birds defy Heinrich's scientific explanations and investigations -- with such tiny weight and size and such huge energy use they should simply not be able to survive in cold climates. The mystery remains unsolved -- at least until Heinrich's next book. |
 I've
always been a game player -- cards, pool, board games, and outdoor
games and sports. For me, it's not about competition, or winning. It's
about playing. The attributes
of the best games are:
|
 The Linus
Pauling Institute at Oregon State University has a site with
useful information about 'micronutrients': vitamins, minerals, other
nutrients (like Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Co-enzyme Q10),
phytochemicals (trace chemicals in various plants), and the foods that
contain all these nutrients. For each nutrient, you can learn its
impact on the body, diseases it can help prevent or treat, where you
can get it, and interactions with other nutrients, foods and drugs.
The
entire database can also be sorted by disease instead of by nutrient.
Pauling was known, of course, for his controversial claim that large
doses of vitamins can prevent the common cold and other diseases. The site is very thorough, quite technical (but still comprehensible), and makes fascinating reading. Thanks to tudogs.com for the link. Speaking of health information, Health Central (the Dr. Dean Edell site) hosts the full (from what I can ascertain) contents of one of my favourite books, The People's Pharmacy. Learn how to make safe, effective treatments from natural, common ingredients that work better than most over-the-counter remedies. Find out which alternative remedies work, which are placebos and which are downright dangerous. |
 I have very limited patience with those who deny human responsibility for upper-atmosphere pollution and ozone depletion, or deny their impact on the geothermal dynamics of our planet, or the potentially disastrous consequences of the resultant climate instability on Earth's ecosystems. To me there is no intellectual difference between the Lomborgians who steadfastly refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence of human-caused global warming from scientists of unquestioned reputation, and the neo-Nazi holocaust denyers of Ernst Zundel's ilk. Unfortunately, the Lomborgians are heavily financed in their campaign of misinformation by Big Oil and other corporate oligopolies, who bear a disproportionate responsibility for global warming. Sooner or later they will, like Big Tobacco, be called to account financially and criminally for their negligent actions and fraudulent misrepresentations. In the meantime it has been expedient for George Bush, who received a huge proportion of his campaign moneys from these liars, to reward their thinly-disguised bribes by undoing almost all of the US environmental regulations and enforcement instituted by previous governments to try to limit atmospheric damage, and to exercise political muscle to prevent the ratification of the Kyoto Accord. By the time these regulatory reversals and delays are rectified, it may be too late for our planet.    Should you have to deal with these dangerous idiots, here is a short list of resources that you can call upon to understand and/or dispense with their ludicrous arguments quickly: US NOAA synopsis of US scientists' consensus on the causes and consequences of global warming Bill McKibben's article in the UK journal Granta explaining the psychology, and cynical political expediency, of denial NASA's studies of urban microclimates and how they contribute to local climate change and instability Union of Concerned Scientists' consensus on global warming and warning< /a> on the Bush regime's distortion of scientific research to forward its own political agenda Fortune Magazine's article on the possibility and chilling implications of global warming producing sudden drastic climate shifts Blogger Carpe Datum's 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 (it includes the charts above) Each of the above sources have links and references to further studies. |