stargeek
Conservation economyConservation economyConservation economy 12/07/2003 08:39 PM A pattern map for a conservation economy [Flash.] "The pattern map offers a visual guide to the sustainability patterns that provide a framework for developing a conservation economy." [Via WorldChanging.] This is a GrokNews Entry: (what is grok?)Conservation economyGrok Headline matches for Conservation economy"from the Sea Shepherd Conservation
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 In yesterday's post, I quoted Stan Goff as saying that conservation is the only solution to the coming energy crisis. The word 'conservation' is an ambiguous one, which is one reason why politicians can get away with saying they support it without doing anything. At its root, 'not doing anything' is, after all, what the word implies. Until about a century ago, it referred to protection of artworks and other cultural artefacts. More recently it has come to refer to protection of nature, in four senses:
A more generous definition of conservation is used by most environmental organizations, a definition which includes conservation of land as wilderness, where other creatures are relatively free from human interference, and recognizes that heavy human activity, even in the interests of recreation, degrades the land. But even these defenders of conservation are utilitarian, and carefully couch their defense of wilderness as necessary for "human self-discovery" and, again ambiguously, for "posterity". And then there are those, like David Suzuki for instance, who value wilderness and biodiversity for its own sake, who see nature as sacred and believe that as much of the Earth as possible should remain in ecological balance, with a human footprint so light (e.g. eco-tourism) that it does not upset that balance. With most of the temperate and arable land of Earth already developed for human uses, there are now four types of wilderness that could still be protected:
Humans aren't the only adaptable creatures on Earth, and most 'wildlife' (non-agricultural, non-domesticated plants and animals) now lives in areas that have been moderately or heavily encroached upon by human activity, areas where the natural balance is constantly disrupted but wildlife makes do. So anti-wilderness forces can argue that wilderness isn't necessary to protect wildlife -- it can go on living on the margins of human development, and provide entertainment for humans in the process ("Look, Mom, a fox!", or, more likely, "What's that squished on the road, Mom?") This leaves conservation organizations in a bit of a quandary. They want donations from those with a George Bush definition of conservation (like the Ducks Unlimited folks) and also from those with a David Suzuki definition of conservation (like the Green Party). Beggars can't be choosers, and the former group of donors are, on the whole, much wealthier than the latter. So policies must be designed to waffle as much as possible, so as not to alienate either gun-lovers or tree-huggers. Occasionally, as in the recent Sierra Club blow-up, one faction or another insists that the organization take a stand that would clearly define what 'conservation' means to them. In that case, tree-hugger conservationists ran a slate of candidates calling for zero population growth and immigration curbs to achieve that end, on the basis that conservation (in the wilderness protection sense) is impossible with a population that will more than double or triple in this century. The gun-lover conservationists cried foul, accused the opposing faction of racism, and orchestrated a successful campaign to discredit and defeat the tree-huggers, using tactics so outrageous the result of the vote is now in the courts. But ultimately they can't have it both ways. Organizations with such utterly irreconcilable factions are as anachronistic as the old racist Southern 'Democrats' who opposed everything in their party's platform. Eventually, the Sierra Club and other conservationist organizations will split into two groups -- gun-lover conservationists, who want animals to kill for amusement and well-groomed trails for their power vehicles, and tree-hugger conservationists, who want wilderness and biodiversity preserved. The latter group will be the losers, financially, but there will then, finally, be some candid, honest discussion and advocacy for wilderness and biodiversity. And maybe then, there will be some non-hysterical, non-xenophobic discussion of population 'stabilization', or even population reduction, in North America, and of the need for drastic conservation of natural resources (commercial and non-commercial), the former because current consumption is unsustainable and destroying the atmosphere, the environment and the third world, and the latter because, just like peace and democracy and human rights, the protection of wilderness and biodiversity is to some of us also a moral imperative. Not only is this different from the 'conservation' represented by the atrocious private fenced hunting preserves that Dick Cheney and his psychopathic cronies so enjoy, it is their absolute antithesis. So now we get into the Lakoffian issue of how to 'frame' conservation in a way that the vast majority of first-world people, inculcated with the 'value' system of Christian religious orthodoxy, consumerism and 'regulation is bad' untrammelled corporatism, can appreciate and even support. Lakoff suggests that progressives need to stress 'policy directions' such as "Let's have a sustainable environment" and "Working people shouldn't be living in poverty" and "Everybody should have health care and a good education." These statements of principle appeal to basic American, and global, human values. The only way you can argue with them is to change the frame ("People who are poor are just not working hard enough") and progressives are finally learning not to allow conservatives to frame everything in these manipulative, demeaning, elitist terms. But it's a long way from progressive anthropocentric principles like "Let's have a sustainable environment" to ecocentric principles like "Let's protect wilderness and biodiversity". I've even heard neocons quite sincerely accuse radical environmentalists (when they're not calling them "eco-terrorists") of religious, pantheistic zealotry, saying that wilderness protection laws are as much violations of the separation of church and state as anti-abortion or sharia laws. I've also heard labour leaders say that wilderness protection laws are un-progressive, because by restricting human activity they reduce jobs. Is there some way to frame the need for conservation (in the 'protection of wilderness and biodiversity' sense) in secular, non-anthropocentric terms, or is this oxymoronic? After all, Suzuki himself describes the ethos of wilderness conservation as preserving "a sacred balance". And if we cannot frame this conservation in secular terms. must we acknowledge, as Peter Singer has said, that politics and law are inherently and irretrievably anthropocentric, and that protection of animal rights and wilderness and biodiversity and all other things non-human are outside their jurisdiction? Does that mean that, exactly as devout anti-abortionists can only shake their heads and fists as they pass by abortion clinics, conservationists of the tree-hugger variety can only stand by helplessly as the last wilderness areas, and the last wild animals on earth, are destroyed, as animals are carelessly and indifferently run down on the roads, and as truckloads of helpless animals are driven from horrendous factory-farm prisons to their ghastly death in slaughterhouses? There are two arguments advanced by wilderness conservationists and animal rights activists for saying their cause is different from religious causes, and hence deserve legal protection rather than just hands-off treatment. The first is that man, under most anthropocentric worldviews, both progressive and conservative, is the 'steward' of the Earth, and therefore has a responsibility for its welfare. That's a nice principle, but one that doesn't stand up to much challenge: "When we have to choose between human needs and wilderness needs, there's not really a choice, is there?" The second argument is that humans are part of nature, and therefore the welfare of man depends on the welfare of the natural world, so the natural world needs legal protection. This, too, is a nice principle, but its application to law runs immediately into semantic minefields: Who's to say cities and golf courses and all other human uses of the land aren't 'natural'? What's the line between a bird's nest and a condominium? This argument at its heart is anthropocentric, since only when it can be demonstrated that some 'unnatural' activity actually hurts human welfare can it then be made illegal. That's no change from the law as it stands now. So the wilderness conservationists and animal rights activists and anti-vivisectionists (those opposed to animal torture for science or commercial research) are backed into a corner: Their cause, like the cause of anti-abortionists and those that abhor the eating of certain meats, is deemed ultimately one of personal faith, and, while each of us has the right to exercise his or her personal faith, we will find the law unwilling to impose it on the rest of humanity. Even practitioners of religions that entail bloodthirsty religious animal sacrifices now have the right to practice their personal faith, so long as it does not overtly harm other humans. There is a crack in this legal armour, and that is the existing animal cruelty laws in many (but not all) nations. Weak as they are, they represent important anomalies in our legal and political codes. Agribusiness, more than aware of the horrendous cruelty that occurs behind the walls of factory farms, have effectively exempted farmed animals from such laws, and religions whose 'purification' rites require torture of animals at the point of slaughter are also exempted. Ambiguous animal rights laws are furiously opposed by hunters, laboratories, factory farmers and other 'users' of animals. Yet some of these laws remain, carefully couched as laws governing human 'property'. Why have these not been struck down as ultra vires, outside the law's jurisdiction? Probably for the same reasons that laws prohibiting suicide, or the taking of unauthorized drugs, remain on the books: The law has no compunction about passing laws that support a prevailing moral view when they do not 'unduly' interfere with human freedoms, including commercial freedoms. Here's where it gets dicey: A law prohibiting suicide, or a law prohibiting the mainlining of heroin, is not substantively different from a law prohibiting abortion, or a law prohibiting all forms of animal cruelty by anyone, or a law prohibiting any further development of wilderness areas. All five are strictly moral issues, issues of personal faith, in which the law has, by action or inaction, taken a stand. Suicide and heroin use are illegal, with severe fines, abortion is illegal in some countries and under some circumstances but legal in others, while animal cruelty is mostly legal, and wilderness development is (except in a few small areas temporarily afforded legal protection) completely legal. Why do we make these distinctions? Let's take a look at a couple of areas where we have made an about face on the law in the last two centuries: Slavery and Corporate Personhood. At one time slavery was legal in much of the world, and defended as essential to commercial success. And at one time corporations had no rights whatsoever except for the shareholders' right to limited liability in the case of financial demise or legal wrongdoing arising from circumstances over which they had no control. Today slavery is mostly illegal, and corporations have substantially the same rights as humans, and in some cases even more rights than humans. And cigarette smoking remains legal and highly commercial, though it is increasingly restricted -- largely on the dubious arguments about the health effects of second-hand smoke -- and viewed as morally and socially repugnant. And the emission of dioxins into the atmosphere, horrendous toxins with major, known health consequences, while restricted, is also legal and highly commercial.  Here's a table that shows, then,
that, contrary to prevailing wisdom, anthropocentrism is not
a central determinant of the domain of law. I've added in a few more
illegal things to complete the chart: Wiretapping (without reasonable
cause), polygamy, and dangerous driving. Things that are (mostly)
illegal are shown in red, and those that are (mostly) legal are shown
in green. If you believe the domain of law is restricted to issues of
human rights and responsibilities, then there should be no laws
against
suicide or heroin, and corporations should never have been granted
'personhood'. And if you believe the domain of law, under the
principle
of separation of church and state, does not concern itself with issues
of personal faith, then there should be no laws against suicide or
polygamy. The chart shows a very different hypothesis about the law: That it concerns itself with non-commercial issues, and refuses to pass laws banning or significantly restricting commercial activities. Why, then, is heroin illegal, when it could be a huge commercial success? Because it interferes with the commercial productivity (labour and consumption) of workers, with a higher commercial cost than the benefits of commercial heroin production would produce. Why isn't abortion, which is not a lucrative commercial business, illegal? In much of the world it is, and if Bush is re-elected and continues to stack the Supreme Court, it probably will be in the US soon as well. And what about slavery -- doesn't its illegality mean that human rights trump commercial interests? I would argue that while physical slavery is finally illegal in much of the world, economic slavery is rife and growing. More than half of first-world workers believe they are significantly under-employed, have wages that in real terms have been dropping for over two decades and a debt load that yokes them to the corporate machine most of them are part of. And don't even get me started on working conditions in the third world. So, despite all the historic protestations that the law doesn't get into wilderness or biodiversity conservation or animal rights issues in any serious way because these are personal, moral issues not connected with human rights, the reality is that the law is heavily into such issues -- banning suicide, polygamy, and heroin use, for example -- and its criteria for refusing to get involved are strictly commercial, which is why tobacco production, manufacture and sale of semi-automatic weapons, and release of toxic poisons into our air and water, are all legal, why corporations today have more rights than people (and keep most of us as wage slaves), and why laws to conserve wilderness and biodiversity, or to protect animals from cruelty, don't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever being passed. It's even worse than that: Bush is busy selling off the people's lands to private commercial interests (mostly his campaign financiers) so that, not only will there be no wilderness or endangered species left, there will soon be no recreation land or non-renewable resources left either. Recreation is almost never the most lucrative commercial use (called "the highest and best use" by economists) of land, so Bush is freeing it for more intensive purposes: logging, mining, dam reservoirs, high-density residential and commercial development. Only then will it have value. And the natural resources on these lands only have commercial value when they're consumed. Conservation, like long-term planning, is an absurd concept in the acquisitive capitalist economy: By using up what you have quickly, you create scarcity, which increases the value of what is left and motivates commercial interests to dig even deeper (like burning tons of coal, and building hundreds of new nuclear reactors) to capitalize on that scarcity. So no matter which of the four definitions of conservation listed at the start of this article you adhere to, it just ain't going to happen in this economic system, in this political system, in this legal system. Adam Smith said, famously, "the real purpose of government is to protect those who run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens", and the law is their principal tool for doing so. Back to Lakoff: Now we have a much greater, and more important challenge, in framing our message to the people. Our message must be ecocentric rather than anthropocentric, but "Let's protect wilderness and biodiversity" won't do the job. Most progressives don't even think in that frame-set. We need to create an entirely new frame-set that engages universal human values at a much more fundamental, less selfish, more instinctive way. A third way, different from both the anthropocentric 'manifest destiny' moralizing of conservatives and the anthropocentric 'sustainable growth' rationalizing of progressives. Or, putting it another way, as Thomas King and Thomas Berry have said, we need to invent a new story about ourselves and our role on Earth. This is what the Green Party has tried to do, but, as you can tell from the opinion polls, it isn't catching on very quickly. Part of the reason for this is that, in their endeavour to win converts and be inclusive, they have tried to explain their position using conservative moral frames and progressive rational frames. Lakoff would tell them this is futile. You can't get there from here. As Einstein put it, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking that created them." What would an ecocentric values frame-set look like? What would some of its principles and 'policy directions' be? We should probably start by listening to the stories and lessons of Earth's last remaining tribal peoples. And listening to the land, the wilderness itself. Perhaps my novel, if I'm truly imaginative enough, and listen carefully enough, will be the new story. But that won't be enough. We need the new ecocentric frame-set as well. We need to show people, billions of us, the third way. |
What is a bubble? Will we blog it?
David Hornik is defining a bubble as an environment where lots of stupid decisions were made. But he's pointing out that companies nowadays actually have value - a resurgence of a tech economy.
Katerina has vowed that the NEXT person who asks her if they're being sold to Yahoo - will get their ass kicked.
David has also pointed out that it's perfectly reaonsable - to not take VC money and grow it organically.
Dick Costolo - had a great line (when Hornik reffered to Mark
Fletcher's 'self' funding of Bloglines): "One man's self funding is
another man's well funded Venture Round."
Ubiquitous technology creates new industry of accessories and add-ons. By Gillian Shaw, Vancouver Sun
 The Idea: The
Gift Economy offers us a means to learn, to understand, to take
charge,
and to change our world. It is a natural economy, steeped in millions
of years of pre-civilization human culture and the culture of all life
on Earth. If enough of us embraced it, the modern 'market' economy,
built on the faulty and inhuman foundations of inequality, scarcity,
false quantification of value, and acquisition, could not
survive.Several of the comments I have received about AHA! The Discovery & Learning Centre have been about the idea of reciprocality(my preferred word: the more common word 'reciprocity' now has an unfortunate connotation of negotiated market exchange rather than the simpler idea of sharing without obligation). I've explained that AHA! will have the effect of forcing down the 'price' of transfer of knowledge and ideas, and of leveling the value we put on every individual's contribution to discovery and learning conversations, so that there is no 'premium' on the contribution of an 'expert', and so that great ideas and important knowledge are affordable to everyone. The end result could be, if we had the collective will to bring it about, a world in which everything is free, and everything has inestimable value. All of this is consistent, I think, with the (suddenly very popular) concept of the Gift Economy, which is not at all the same as an 'exchange' or even a barter economy. What is the Gift Economy? A seminal work on the subject was written over 20 years ago by Lewis Hyde, a book called The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. Hyde wrote: I speak of the inner gift that
we
accept as the object of our labor, and the outer gift that has become
a
vehicle of culture. I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or
fear, nor those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my
concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks
commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us.
In her review of the book (which I have not yet read), JoAnn Schwartz writes: Hyde is interested in examining
the effect our current immersion in the market economy and the myth of
the free market has both on our view of gifts and on our ability to
give and receive them. The market economy is deliberately impersonal,
but the whole purpose of the 'gift economy' is to establish and
strengthen the relationships between us, to connect us one to the
other. It is this element of relationship which leads Hyde to speak of
gift exchange as 'erotic' commerce, opposing eros (the principle of
attraction, union, involvement which binds together) to logos (reason
and logic in general, the principle of differentiation in particular).
A market economy is an emanation of logos.
Here's an explanation by
Genevieve Vaughan of the fundamental difference between an 'exchange'
or 'market' economy and a Gift Economy:In a market economy, one can hoard one's goods without losing wealth. Indeed, wealth is increased by hoarding--- although we generally call it 'saving'. In contrast, in a gift economy, wealth is decreased by hoarding, for it is the circulation of the gift(s) within the community that leads to increase--- increase in connections, increase in relationship strength. Through this book, Hyde helps us focus on the importance of gifts, their flow and movement and the impact that the modern market place has had on the circulation of gifts. The present economic system is
based upon exchange, giving
in order to receive. The motivation is self-oriented
since what is given returns under a different form to the giver to
satisfy her or his need. The satisfaction of the need of the other
person is a means to the satisfaction of one's own need. Exchange
requires identification of the things exchanged, as well as their
measurement and an assertion of
their equivalence
to the satisfaction of the exchangers that neither is giving more than
she or he is receiving. It therefore requires visibility, attracting
attention even though it is done so often that the visibility is
commonplace. Money enters the exchange, taking the place of products
reflecting their quantitative evaluation.
The very visibility of exchange is self-confirming, while other kinds of interaction -- nurturing, unselfish and other-oriented gifts -- are rendered invisible or inferior by contrast or negative description. What is invisible seems to be valueless, while what is visible is identified with exchange, which is concerned with a certain kind of quantitative value. Besides, since there is an equivalence asserted between what we give and what we receive, it seems that whoever has a lot has produced a lot or given a lot, and is, therefore, somehow 'more' than whoever has less. Exchange puts the ego first and allows it to grow and develop in ways that emphasize me-first competitive and hierarchical behavior patterns. This ego is not an intrinsic part of the human being, but is a social product coming from the kinds of human interaction it is involved in. So the exchange or 'market' economy is entrenched in the concepts of inequality, scarcity, quantifiable equivalence of value, and acquisition, while the Gift Economy is rooted in the concepts of parity, abundance, unquantifiability, generosity and connection. As Eric Raymond pu ts it: Gift cultures are adaptations
not
to scarcity but to abundance. They arise in populations that do not
have significant material-scarcity problems with survival goods. We
can
observe gift cultures in action among aboriginal cultures living in
ecozones with mild climates and abundant food. We can also observe
them
in certain strata of our own society, especially in show business,
science, Open Source and among the very wealthy.
In a 'market' economy, says Hyde, the highest status belongs to those who have acquired the most. In a Gift Economy, the highest status belongs to those who have given the most. But what is most important, he says, is that the gift must always move. This idea was recently popularized by the terrific little movie called Pay it Forward. Every gift is its own reward, but that reward is multiplied, without limit, when the gift, or any gift, is passed along to others. A story is a gift. Blogs are gifts. Ideas and insights and teaching and counsel are gifts. Conversations are gifts. Here is a gift from Chris Corrigan, Jack Ricchiuto and George Nemeth, a wonderful 45-minute Skypecast conversation (with George's contribution unfortunately inaudible). I am paying it forward by linking to it and by summarizing below some excerpts I have taken from it, much of which are about the Gift Economy. Until
you put something in front of people that they are hungry for, you
can't bring out the best in them. We all have a hunger for connection,
for "mates" who understand our frames, our terms of reference.
Weblogs can create powerful virtual relationships. After reading them for awhile you come to "know" the author and when you then "meet" them you can then go to work with them right away. The media have stripped us of direct emotional connection to our world. We now look at the news anchor for clues on how to respond to the news. The media 'mediate' our emotional response to the outside world. When tribal elders witness Open Space they say "This is exactly how we used to meet". Open Space is an indigenous technology, a technology of connection, allowing rapid emergence of understanding. When something is given, something is always inherently given back in exchange. But gifts work best when you pay them forward. You must find another place to use your learnings acquired from others -- it's this passing along that creates the Gift Economy. Scientists have long understood the Gift Economy, the networked way of giving their thinking to each other and relating with one another. This is where the real science happens. The Internet serves a similar purpose, as those who have tried unsuccessfully to make money or bottle up knowledge on the Internet have discovered. The Gift Economy is about 'agency' -- you can't be a passive consumer of gifts. Everyone has within them the capacity to contribute, and the network will only grow if everyone turns the gifts they have received to others. We need to learn to become aware of our own agency. A friend of [Chris'], a Lakota doctor, speaks of the 'circle of courage', and describes the way giving builds self-esteem and hence spirit. Everyone, he says, must build four 'capacities':
Good technologies provide 'back porch aesthetics' that enable natural conversation, comfort and connection. If we accept that we do not have all the answers then we acknowledge that each one of us has a crucial piece of the answer, and what is important is the aggregation and emergence of the pieces of truth each one of us carries. Here is a great gift from Yes! magazine by Beverly Feldman and Charles Gray: 37 ways you can participate in the Gift Economy. What else can we each do to bring about a Gift Economy? The most important things we can do are internal -- transformation of the way we look at our world and its economic principles and the way we act towards others and the world in which we live. Chris calls it "passion bounded by responsibility". Responsibility simply accepted, not thrust upon us. Passion that comes from understanding and the sense of personal capacity. We need to constantly engage ourselves and others in communication and connection, and fight furiously the media paradigm of passive consumption and the market-economy paradigm of only giving when we receive measurable fair value in return. We need to constantly invite each other to address the all-important question What do you really care about? When we engage each other in conversations about this question, we open up possibilities, we begin to feel and realize our own power, capacity, and mastery, we recognize that generosity has nothing to do with charity, and we sense the movement and strength of collective understanding, will and passion. We realize that together, collectively, collaboratively, we know more, and know better, than leaders, presidents, executives, economists, experts, and others who exploit our passivity to tell us what we should do and believe, and engender in us feelings of helplessness, dependence, and addiction. We have more capacity and power to act than all the multinational corporations and the tyrants and the state apparatus of control and repression. Perhaps AHA! will begin its mandate not only exemplifying the attributes and capacity of the Gift Economy but collaboratively helping to encourage and broaden that economy, enabling it to undermine the old economy and replace it with one of parity, abundance, generosity and connection, helping us to imagine and realize a world without money, without personal property, without poverty, without 'economic diseases' (those that kill thousands each week simply because the inexpensive and ubiquitous cures are unaffordable to half the world's people). A world where the very idea that pollution, ecological destruction, loss of biodiversity, slavery and exploitation of humans and other animals could be 'economic', becomes simply absurd. As Chris says, "When each of us does something that is more true to who we really are, the collective impact of all these actions can have profound implications for the direction of our world." |
iPod is
great for playback, but it's not much use when it comes to recording.
Try Edirol's R-1
instead: palm-sized, integrated stereo microphone, and recording to
CompactFlash. With 1GB of CF running about $70 (the R-1 costs under
$400), removable media is the way to go. And as opposed to cheap
consumer audio gadgets, this box records absolutely clean; even the
built-in stereo mic sounds terrific (check out the audio samples).
The extras are just as impressive: there's a built-in metronome and
tuner for practicing, plus built-in digital effects for EQ, noise
reduction, and reverb, and even software simulation of different
microphone types -- you can even fake a vintage mic. When you're ready
to off-load your recordings, you can plug into your computer via USB
2.0 (or use onboard digital out or analog in/out). See CDM for more details and discussion. If
you're a video/audio pro, check out the hard drive-based 4-track R-4.
Peter Kirn, editor of createdigitalmusic, checks in regularly with gear too cool for only musicians to be in the know.
Apple could jus tshoot itself in the foot, again. By John Koetsier, gilgamesh.ca
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: