stargeek
WINTER WORLDWINTER
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 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. |
 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. |
 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. |
 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
|
 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:
|
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.
|
 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. |
 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. |
 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:
|
 Things are usually the way they are for a reason.
But there are few situations in the world that appear, from a
distance,
as unreasonable as the war between Israel and Palestine, a war that
has
been going on, in essence, without let-up for more than half a
century.
At one point the efforts to reach a peace settlement got so close to
success that the negotiators on each side received Nobel Peace prizes
for their efforts. But the dream didn't last, and for reasons we
couldn't fathom, the cycle of bloodshed, escalation and retaliation
cranked up again and is now at firestorm levels, threatening to push
the entire Mideast into even more cataclysmic violence.The reason we couldn't fathom this, is because we've never lived there, never walked a mile in their shoes. In The New Yorker this week, Jeffrey Goldberg provides us with an excellent proxy for such an experience, as he crisscrosses the area, from Israel's "ideologues of aggressive settlement" to Palestinian mothers teaching their children the honour of death in the holy war against the Jews, describing what he sees and what he hears from those in power, and from those who have nothing. It is a gut-wrenching, depressing journey. You'll need to buy the May 31 edition to read it, and I would recommend it highly. Alternatively, you can listen to Goldberg summarize his findings, along with a slide show of photos by Gilles Peress, here. One of those photos, of a Palestinian woman peering through a temporary gap in the new Israeli Separation Wall, is reproduced above. Goldberg makes no secret of his personal view of all this: The
leaders of the Jewish national-religious camp do not adhere to
observable reality, They exist in the glorious Jewish past and in the
messianic future but not in the reality of today, in which Jewish
soldiers give their lives to protect settlements; in which
Palestinians
live and die at checkpoints; in which Israel is becoming a pariah
among
the nations; and in which Israel may one day cease to exist as a
democratic Jewish state.
[Michael Tarazi, legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team says] "Settlements are the vanguard of binationalism" -- a single state that would soon have an Arab majority. "I don't care if they build more. The longer they stay out there, the more Israel will appear to the world to be essentially an apartheid state."... "We have to look at the way the South Africans did it. The world is increasingly intolerant of the Zionist idea. We have to capture the imagination of the world. We have to make this an argument about apartheid." The view of the moderate majority on both sides is that the best of a sorry lot of options is to have Israel dismantle the settlements and withdraw from the pathetic Gaza Strip and the volatile West Bank, to the so-called Green Line, the UN-brokered treaty line after the last "official" war. But that majority view is very fragile, and violently opposed by a significant minority on both sides. The settlements in the occupied territories are the flash-point, where hugely outnumbered Jews, many of them vehemently anti-Arab, provocative, and uncompromising, are surrounded by largely militant Palestinians ready to lay down their lives to reclaim "their homeland", and protected by an Israeli army that has ceased being protectors and become an army of occupation, many of whom are all too willing to demonstrate violently which side they support, as Goldberg reports. There are no good guys and bad guys in this war, and every confrontation, of which there are thousands, at every checkpoint, every attack by Arab militants (many of them children), every razing of Palestinian homes to make way for more Iraqi settlements, every suicide bombing, radicalizes both sides and renders the position of the moderate majority untenable. The extremists on both sides, outnumbered though they may be, are firmly in control of the political agenda, and their every provocative act strengthens their position rather than ostracizing them. The "ideologues of aggressive settlement" on the Israeli side, and especially in the settlements, largely believe that all of the occupied territories are theirs by divine right, and that it is the will of God that all Arabs be expelled from their holy land in its entirety -- that, as their website says, "There is no Palestine". And the militants and zealots on the Palestinian side, among the poorest and most destitute people on the face of the Earth, and with one of the highest birth rates, state categorically that they would not stop fighting if Israel withdrew from Gaza and the West Bank, but would merely be encouraged to continue the war until all Jews were extinguished from their holy land. The rabidly intolerant have the will and the ready means to scuttle every attempt at compromise, to embarrass moderates, to incite violence and then say "I told you so." There is nothing particularly unique in this, of course. Many of the tribal wars in Africa, the ethnic wars in the Balkan states, and the insane religious war in Northern Ireland, exhibit the same shameful, and shameless, pattern of violence and intransigence. The next, inevitable attack by Islamic fundamentalists on US soil will surely produce the same knee-jerk result in the US, and launch another war to treat the symptoms and exacerbate the disease. Ariel Sharon, less moderate than most but less extreme than the extremists, has taken an impossible 'middle' course sure to satisfy no one: Withdraw from Gaza, kind of (there are a host of conditions that render the withdrawal largely a joke to Palestinians), and bulldoze Palestinian homes to build a mammoth wall, not along the Green Line but deep inside the West Bank to "protect" the Jewish settlements, which are everywhere, not just in the border areas. The partisan, bipartisan support he has received in the US shows how little America's leaders understand the realities of the area's politics. As I've said before, the only answer, and it will take decades, perhaps centuries to achieve, is to deal with the underlying humanitarian issues, to give Palestinians a reason to value peace, "something to lose", and help them build infrastructure and educational institutions, and a future to believe in. Poverty, ignorance and inequality, not religious and ethnic hatred, are the real enemies of peace. It doesn't matter whether the area is partitioned into two states, fairly or unfairly, or made into a single apartheid state. Things are the way they are for a reason, and in Israel-Palestine the reason is entrenched, and there is no short-term answer. No matter who represents the two sides, there will be decades of violence, war, and bloodshed to come, and it is inexcusable and ignorant of those of us who don't live there to take sides for cynical political gain. Let us instead -- as we should be doing in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all the other areas we have recklessly meddled in, in the absurd and arrogant belief that we understand the problems and have all the answers -- let us instead invest in infrastructure, in education, in building a better world even as the zealous minorities try to tear it apart. The founders of the religions we all claim to believe in would surely understand, and nod in assent. |
 A few interesting articles on innovation, knowledge and the future of business - worth a read:
|
 A
new Dutch government program called SeniorStart
"aims at stimulating successful entrepreneurship by older (45+) people
who have lost or left their jobs or are re-entering the workforce
after
an extended period, by
creating a dedicated (virtual) professionally-staffed National Service
Centre and supporting the
sharing of knowledge and experience between experienced senior
entrepreneurs and new startups through regional networks".The National Service Centre offers the following services.
The project is financed by the Taskforce on Older People and Employment, the GAK (Industrial Insurance Administration Office), the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the WISE (Working Network and Information Centre for Senior Entrepreneurs) Foundation. It was co-developed by WISE and MKB, an umbrella group of over 500 trade organizations and business associations. This is a wonderful initiative, one that deserves to be studied and emulated in other countries. Now, what I'd really like to see is a network that connects these older, experienced aspiring entrepreneurs with the other group that desperately needs advice on how to set up a new business -- young people just graduating from school and unwilling to enter into a lifelong contract of wage slavery as menial employees to pay off their student loans -- and then advises both groups on how to set up and operate a successful entrepreneurial business. |
 I've written twice before about suicide, and a new 'advice column' in Salon.com has provoked me to write about it again. The gist of my earlier articles:
Sentimentalizing
suicide only encourages others who, weak-minded, pained, lacking the
ability to see how foolish and wrong it is, might succeed all too well
in their feeble attempts. What fucking gall, Mr. Tennis -- and
such cruel and inflammatory language. Those who commit suicide are not
weak-minded, and if this 'advice columnist' had the faintest inkling
what it is like to live with suicidal depression he would know better.
And who the hell does he think he is to judge the actions of someone
he
has never met as 'foolish and wrong'? When they go by suicide, they leave us in an insult of dust. Mr. Tennis should also know that suicide is almost never an 'insult' to anyone. It is an act of desperation, usually after years of unimaginable suffering, to escape a living hell that the victim -- yes, victim -- can no longer bear. It usually has nothing to do with anyone else, so the last thing it is is an insult to others. To counsel people, especially people in pain after an unexpected and shocking loss, to hate and blame the deceased is an affront to human dignity, an abuse of trust, and an offense to the memory of someone who was a victim, not a 'murderer'. There is a perverse character flaw in some people to always assuage grief by transferring it to anger and blame. Grief is internal, and it can eat you alive. Anger and blame are externally focused. They are much easier emotions to handle. And in some cases -- like rechanneling the grief over 9/11 into anger at Osama bin Ladin -- such transferance is quite rational. But although the exploitative 'vengeance' religions would have you believe otherwise, when people suffer and die there is often no one to blame, no one to get angry at. And reaching closure, like dealing with grief, is an internal process. It is about personally coming to grips with loss, with the realization that the toxic 'what might have been' is irrelevant, a fiction, closed. It is a slow, painful healing process. And it is a process best undertaken honestly. Using some cheap trick like transferring the pain to anger and blame of a phony straw man merely perverts and delays the process, and stirs up inappropriate emotions that can only confuse and inflame, not heal. Some advice, we're better off without. |
 Time
for another of life's imponderables. Both in Canada and the US, family
farmers and small business people have, in recent years, consistently
voted conservative, and show every intention of doing so again this
year. This makes absolutely no sense: Most farm states and provinces
are net recipients of government largesse (i.e. they receive in
equalization payments and services more than they pay for, subsidized
by the more urban and more liberal states and provinces). And even
though in the past 20 years conservative governments have spent more
than liberal governments, that money has largely gone to tax cuts for
the very rich and defense spending, creating huge deficits that small
farmers and small business people have to repay in taxes, and receive
almost no benefit from.I talked to a few local farmers and small business people to try to find out why they vote conservative. This small sample may not be representative, but what they told me was:
In Canada, which has five parties to choose from, the 'first past the post' electoral system undoes the benefits of party pluralism. With the three small parties all socially liberal, Canadian liberals are forced to 'vote strategically', which means voting for the Liberal Party instead of their real choice, the NDP or the Green Party, to prevent the 30% of Canadian conservatives, who have only one voting choice, from stealing the election. We'll find out in ten days whether they did so or not. Alas, both the US Republican and the Canadian Conservative parties are consistently and heavily propped up by small farmers and small businesspeople. Without that support, these parties would be history. It doesn't make any sense, but it's the reality that both right-wing parties are counting on for election success this year. It's a brilliant con. |
 My daughter spends much
of her workday at the computer, but has no interest in blogging. Her
hobby is scrapbooking,
a hobby that now supports a $2.5 billion industry. A scrapbook is
essentially a photo album on steroids, replete with souvenirs,
commentary, and now, special thematic papers to make your collage a
work of art. Special scissors are involved, as are many art media
(paint, chalk, etc.). Stores catering to the hobby are springing up
everywhere. People belong to scrapbooking circles (where you share
your
technical skills in scrapbooking, more than the actual scrapbooking
content, with others), and are signing up for classes in scrapbooking
and attending scrapbookng conferences. There is a Scrapbooking for Dummies book. Last week, during a delightful dinner with fellow Canadian bloggers Seb Paquet and Gary Lawrence Murphy, we talked a little about this, and my dinner companions defined the hobby as Blogging + Permanence. Where a blog consists of nothing but bits and is totally etherial, a scrapbook is tangible. It has heft. It has presence. It is also a social hobby, far less solitary than blogging. Mothers and daughters work on their scrapbooks together. And the subject matter is much more personal than most bloggers' writings and photos (livejournal bloggers excepted). This is perhaps because the privacy of scrapbooks allows this intimacy -- no fear of stalkers stumbling on your scrapbook the way they can on your blog. And scrapbookers are overwhelmingly female. They are also, photobloggers aside, of a more artistic bent than the vast majority of bloggers. The whole point of blogs was to make website composition simpler, so the writer could concentrate on the words. Scrapbooks are all about composition, and that composition is getting more sophisticated all the time. Some scrapbookers are even taking art classes so they can supplement their photos with portraits and other works of art. The hobby is even encroaching on genealogy, with much richer stories about, and embellished with artefacts of, one's ancestors than one finds on the usual 'bare' family tree. I keep thinking there should be more overlap between the two hobbies, but while there are lots of websites on how to scrapbook, there are very few blogs devoted to scrapbooking (and those that are seem to have mostly been abandoned, presumably so their writers can pursue their favoured hobby instead). There is certainly a ready opportunity to bring the hobbies together: Scanning the pages of a scrapbook into a blog would not be difficult, and would create a backup copy of the scrapbook that could be given to others or shared with those far away. And if the blogging tools weren't so clumsy, they could allow us to print out our blogs and preserve them, with some of the related real-life scraps, the comments threads etc., in a hard copy archive that those (like my father) who say they find reading online too hard on the eyes could browse. Why doesn't this happen? Probably because the content is different, and the intended audience is different. The audience for your scrapbook (besides yourself) is the person sitting beside you, commenting on each page, sharing your art in a very tactile way. The audience for your blog (besides yourself) is the vast, mostly unknown horde of readers who find your ideas interesting, your compositions provocative or inspiring, your information useful, but who, for the most part, won't miss what you've written next week when it disappears into the impenetrable blog archives. Blog posts are ephemeral, quick flashes, fireworks, left brain stuff. Scrapbook pages are memories, permanent vehicles to recall, richly, again and again, treasured memories. Drawing on the right side of the brain. |
 I've written recently about the future state of business, a world incorporating powerful, versatile social networking tools. And I've played with most of the first-generation social software and read volumes about how it will, or won't, work in business and ultimately affect our daily lives. The concept is wonderful, and the technology is fun, but the tools developed so far suffer from three fatal flaws:
In an earlier post I stressed the importance of allowing each individual to maintain and organize their own content and their own networks their own way. At that time I said: "When you force people to adapt their mental models to a standard model (inevitably a complex one to accommodate a variety of specifications), a standard model that is dictated by the technology and its designers, you will get no usage, or at best reluctant, inefficient usage." If I were start all over again, to design the second generation of social software, it would be transparent to the user, wouldn't require any submissions, wouldn't keep any content in any central location, and would be so simple to use that even people without computers would use it.  That
may sound like a tall order, but it really isn't. It would be like
building a house. Let's start with content, the foundation of the
house. Rather than getting people to sub |