 from Melisa Christensen – safe travel, Melisa! Models Not Leaders: WNYC has a great archive of the NPR RadioLab program. Listen to Season One’s program on Emergence — about how self-managed groups do very, very well without leaders. Instead, they self-adopt models, consensually. Order materializing out of disorder, chaos. This is our job: To allow to emerge collective models of better ways to live and make a living, working collaboratively with those we love in conversation and community, and then allow them to be adopted. Thanks to Craig De Ruisseau for the link. The Environmental Cause of Cancers: The World Cancer Research Fund has made the scientific link between toxins (and lack of micronutrients and diversity) in our food supply, and the prevalence of many cancers. A very early and tentative step towards showing that the world megapolluting corporations and governments are causing much, most of the disease that is killing and sickening billions. If the political and legal system will ever be of any value whatsoever (other than to the elite it slavishly serves), it will be in its eventual capacity to sue, dismantle and stop the people behind these mass murdering organizations. Thanks to Prad for the link. Feminist Blogs: My favourite critic flickrdiner provides this excellent list of blogs by women who are, like me, angry and fed up with patriarchy:
More on Polyamorism: Another great resource explaining what poly is and what it isn’t, from Xeromag. Thanks to an anonymous reader. A Blog on Love, Conversation and Community!: This is an incredible find. “If humanity is to thrive into the next millennium, it will be because we who live have found our own ways that work, not because some scientist(s) found the magic formula”. The author of this blog figured it all out way before I did. Sustainability. The different forms of love. Polyamorism. All thoughtfully considered. Brilliant. I’ve been soaking up every word. Why We Mostly End Up Being ‘Everybody Else”: Reader/blogger Jeremy at 6th Density beat me to the punch with a review of Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker article on IQ as a measure of modern social conditioning. Excerpt from Gladwell: “Two institutions at present control our children’Äôs lives: television and schooling, in that order. Both of these reduce the real world of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice to a never-ending, nonstop abstraction. In centuries past, the time of childhood and adolescence would have been occupied in real work, real charity, real adventures, and the realistic search for mentors who might teach what you really wanted to learn. A great deal of time was spent in community pursuits, practicing affection, meeting and studying every level of the community, learning how to make a home, and dozens of other tasks necessary to becoming a whole man or woman.” The way we equate conformity to ‘modern’ cognition with intelligence is entirely consistent with how we equate obedience with intelligence in animals. China’s Toxic Fish Products: Consistent with everything else they produce, fish and seafood from China is toxic poison, the inevitable product of a society that cannot afford to care a whit about human health, dignity, well-being or the environment, or anything beyond the grim and endless struggle just to stay alive at any cost. Best Business Books of 2007: Not a bad list from S+B this year, except ignore the whole category of books on entrepreneurship, which are all crappy. Canadian Bill Buxton’s Sketching, which I reviewed recently, was justifiably best book on innovation.Next year’s best business book of the year will be mine, of course. |
December 15, 2007
Saturday Links for the Week – December 15, 2007
December 13, 2007
Love and Synaesthesia
 As I drove into work very early this morning, it was as if I was seeing everything for the first time. It was a crisp clear winter morning, with a fresh dusting of soft snow on everything except the roads. The streetlights made the snowflakes sparkle like diamonds on the medians, the lawns, the country boulevards. The traffic at 6am is quiet, even on the major routes, and it almost felt as if everyone was paying extra attention, unhurried. The moon was still out and painted everything with a soft blue-white glaze. You could hear the music playing in a few cars, mostly latin and classical. The sounds of tires on the wet roads filled the spaces with a tranquil hiss. Getting closer to the city you could smell the bakeries, already in full gear, and the strange soft ‘blue-green’ smell of freshly-fallen snow. As the wind picked up, it blew the snow from the leaves of branches, with a faint hushing, moaning sound. The traffic lights seemed somehow brighter than usual, their colours more remarkable, moist, smiling. I could smell and taste jasmine, vanilla on my lips, and from my just-washed hair. I absentmindedly caressed the leather and steel of the car’s interior, feeling the grooves in the fabric, the cold of the metal. My head was full of fresh memories of other scents, smells, feelings, surfaces and textures, real and imagined, blurred together. It was intoxicating. It was as if time had stopped. The experience is called synaesthesia. It is an integration of sensory/sensual, aesthetic experiences drawn from two or more of our senses into one combined experience, with the integrated whole being greater than the sum of the parts. It is an experience I have had rarely in my life, and when it has occurred it has often been the aftermath of an especially moving, stirring emotional experience, such as falling in love or discovering a great work of art. It is as if something asleep in you has been woken up by this ‘stirring together’ of your senses. The word often used to describe the sensation of synaesthesia is rhapsody, which literally means ‘sewed together song’. The way in which our emotions sew or weave together rich, complex experiences is, indeed, similar to how an orchestra creates a rhapsodic experience by weaving together different melodies, and the different tones of the four sections of instruments:
Ever since high school I have thought of love as having these four forms, tones. And in my recent article on the chemistry of love I summarized the five groups of hormones that provoke and reinforce different forms of love. The hormones don’t map exactly to the forms of love, though the phenylethylamine-provoked euphoria, the dopamine- and neopinephrine-provoked feeling of blissful well-being and the oxytocin-provoked urge to embrace and protect (which are replaced after the first blush of intense love with the endorphin-provoked feelings of contentment and attachment) are all associated with the intellectual, emotional and sensory/aesthetic forms of love. Meanwhile the androgen-provoked feelings of desire and arousal are more clearly associated with erotic love. Women seem to appreciate, intuitively, or because they are more grounded, connected to the Earth, the difference between the sensual, and the erotic and emotional forms of love. The photos above represent the sensual form of love, not the erotic or emotional. Men seem to muddle them together — for them, the strings and the percussion are constantly drowning out the woodwinds. So for me, a synaesthetic experience like the one I had this morning comes as a revelation, a reawakening to another dimension of experience and another nuance of love. This morning my senses were alive, acute. The women I met were creatures of light, sound, smell, taste and touch. I could smell their longing, their anger, their despair, their desire. I could sense what they meant to convey from the dilation of their pupils, the way they brushed my hand or touched my arm when they were talking with me. The catch or edge of their voice, rich as bird-song with a subtlety, another track of conversation beyond the words, the melody of meaning. I wanted to touch them, hold them, protect them, reassure them. I wanted to show them that I understood, appreciated, loved them, sensed them, wanted to help them fuck their pain away. I wanted to speak with them in their astonishing foreign language, the language of love, conversation and community that I am just beginning to learn. A caress so soft and gentle that it aches, quivers, screams. If this is a dream I never want to awaken. Category: Being Human
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December 11, 2007
The Man Who Loved Women
 I am madly in love with womankind, and I’ve been spending all my spare time learning a staggering amount from some very special women, one-on-one. Trying to understand how they know so much better than men what can be done, what must be done, to make the world a better place. Appreciating their grounded knowledge, Earth-bound, connected to all life. Trying, too, to love each of these women in a unique way that is helpful, supportive, empathetic to her. Trying to be for each woman what she wants me to be to her. Trying to be generous. Polyamorously. I am dizzy with my love for these women. Reciprocally, we each give each other attention and appreciation, joyfully, genuinely, playfully, lovingly. We converse, in different ways, about things that matter to us, in a shared language that I am only just beginning to learn. I have discovered that the work I was meant to do is to enable people to Let-Themselves-Change, through love, conversation and community, through ideas and models and imagination and laughter and provocation and being intentionally thoughtful and helpful. By being there when I am needed or useful. By giving a damn. That’s why I’m here. That’s my Gift, my Passion, my Purpose. It’s immensely satisfying, rewarding work. Somehow it’s much easier to do with women than with men. I’m still trying to figure out why. But in the course of this remarkable learning, discovery, this loving exploration, I’ve observed something that really disturbs me. I’ve observed it in First Life and in Second Life and virtually and face-to-face. While it’s not a universal attribute of the women I love, it’s alarmingly prevalent. It’s her propensity to compromise her beliefs, ideals, just to keep a man, the man she loves happy. To idealize him, make him larger than life, heroic. To apologize for and to be blind to his outrageous character flaws. To misread his behaviors, actions, assertions in absurdly hopeful ways. To forgive in him what is obscenely unforgivable. To put up with his arrogance, deceit, aggressiveness, selfishness, bullying, jealousy, cruelty, possessiveness, abusiveness, lies, imposed limits. “It’s understandable”, she says. “That’s just how he is. He’s just being protective, attentive, appreciative, loving, in his own way”. And I just shake my head and try to understand. Why would any woman put up with this? Why would any woman become what she is not, just to please a man who cannot or will not accept her for who she is? What is worth the inevitable unhappiness of this hopeful charade? Are women just too generous for their own good, and, if so, what makes them this way? Are they just being realistic about what they have to put up with if they want an enduring relationship with a man, and going into this with their eyes wide open, prepared for a little disappointment, foolishly hoping against hope and common sense and knowledge of human nature that they can somehow mold him into something a little closer to what they know he could be? Are women socially conditioned for self-sacrifice? Do many settle for less, out of cynical despair, or low self-esteem? It has been a bad day for women around the world. In Canada, a 16-year-old girl was strangled to death by her father because she refused to wear a hijab. In Australia, a woman judge suspended sentences for a group of nine men and boys convicted of gang-raping a 10-year-old girl because the judge believed “she consented”. The girl had been repeatedly raped by and in the presence of her substance-addicted parents since she was six. This outrage against women goes on every day. Is this background of violence and oppression part of the conditioning of women that leads them to believe they must take what they can get, and be grateful? Maybe I just don’t get it. Maybe I’m naive. Maybe I’m just a fool in love. This terrible world needs women to be all they can be, to create better models for living and for making a living, lessons of how to love in conversation in community, understanding of how the world is today, and personal ideas and actions to make it better. They can’t do that if they let men drag them down, hold them back, belittle them, subvertthem, compel them to settle. What can we do about this? What can I do? How can I be of use helping women to discover how to free themselves, to be themselves? Category: Being Human
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December 10, 2007
The Political and Economic Principles of Natural Intentional Community
 Regular readers know that I intend to (co-)create, through experimentation, intentional (natural) communities, to serve as models for those in our current society seeking a better way to live, and for those who survive our civilization’s collapse later in this century to consider as they search for new ways to live in a world without social, political or economic structure. I have given up on reform of the existing systems and structures, and believe that Bucky Fuller was right when he said that “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” I remain convinced that
So in a recent post on this subject, I wrote about the social aspects (capacities and principles) of intentional (natural) communities. of which the most controversial was polyamorism (the principle of operation, and the capacity, to love everyone else in the community, exhibiting compersion, the antithesis of jealousy). My research suggests that most intentional communities succeed or fail for social reasons — their members either have the social skills and wisdom to make the community flourish, or they don’t. But I think intentional communities, if they are to truly be models of how to live, should also be governed by certain political and economic principles. Here is a list of some of those principles:
What’s missing? If you were to set up a Natural (intentional) Community, would this (along with the social principles from the earlier article) giveyou enough guidance to know what to do? Category: Natural Intentional Community
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December 8, 2007
Saturday Links of the Week and Sunday Open Thread – December 8 & 9, 2007
 Now that’s a treehouse. Built to straddle four trees, for $250k, in Muskoka Ontario by architect Lukasz Kos. What’s new and important this week: A Plea for the Protection of Wilderness: Rick Bass in Orion writes a moving and poetic argument for wilderness protection, but also for responsible consumption: It’Äôs okay to be an environmentalist and use wood; it’Äôs okay to consume oil, but to be humble in one’Äôs consumption, and to remember to seek out, and demand’Äîand use, whenever possible’Äîalternatives. It’Äôs okay to eat food, seeking out and choosing the healthiest meat, healthiest vegetables. It’Äôs okay to be alive.
The Story of Stuff: A brilliant little video explains how our economy really works, and why most of what we’re taught about our economy is a lie. How Should a Responsible Male Behave?: Just when I’d kind of written off the whole male gender, one of my readers writes a fascinating article on how the 21st century male (the ‘alpha male’) should behave. His list has a decidedly male skew and point of view to it, and it uses a different vocabulary from the feminine love/conversation/community language that has recently become my preferred means of expression, but it’s pretty impressive. What do you think? Love the One You’re With (Even at Work): Perhaps it’s telling that my favourite reading in Salon.com has shifted from Andrew Leonard’s How the World Works (the excellent business/economics column I cite in these pages so often) to the feminist column Broadsheet. This week Katharine Mieszkowski explains why office romances are an enduring phenomenon of our times, and why they’re more hazardous for women. US Chamber of Commerce Disgraces Itself: HTWW explains they’ve fallen under the control of the right-wing corporatist oligopolies, and are running ads opposed to carbon emission taxes. James Kunstler Explains the Disaster of Suburbia: Dave Smith let me know that Jim’s 2004 TED talk is now online. Theory of Community-Based Generosity Economy: Interesting summary of why community-based economies are healthier than import/export based economies, from Regenerosity. Taking Water from the Air: Reader Craig De Ruisseau points out a new invention that, at least at the community level, could help us cope more sustainably with drought. Another great example of Biomimicry. A Writer’s Writer Shows Us How to Blog: Freelance writer Liz Seymour is one of the finest storytellers on the planet. From the first sentence of every blog post you’re hooked. While I’d love to believe that blogs are conversations, Liz shows us that they are, most effectively, fireside chats in which we each take turns telling a story, lovingly, that conveys something of who we are, and something else important. Thought for the week, from Rick Bass in Orion: I believe intuitively’Äîand the more I learn, the more I believe scientifically’Äîthat any creative solution to the tasks and challenges presented to us in this century must have as one of its components the permanent protection of Earth’s last wild places.
Love, Conversation and Community: I remain convinced that Whether you want to change the political or economic system, save the whales, stop global warming, reform education, spark innovation or anything else, the answer is in how meaning, and understanding of what needs to be done, emerges from conversation in community with people you love, people who care.
So if it seems as if, these days, I don’t write about anything else, that’s why. This week I’m going to write about the essential aspects of intentional community other than the social aspects (capacities and principles) I wrote about earlier. One of these aspects, I think, is the intention to live a life of Radical Simplicity. Vignette #8 Blog-Hosted Conversation #4: I’m going to interview one of the women who’s lived in a polyamorous relationship or circle, and who believes that such communities can work and are the natural way to live, and love. Possible open thread conversation: If you’re still working within the political, economic or educational system in the hope that you can bring about meaningful change to those systems, if you think it really matters who wins the next election, no matter where you live, why is that? Why haven’t you given up on thosesystems? |
December 6, 2007
KM 0.0 – Simply Enabling Trusted Context-Rich Conversations Among Communities That Care
In a recent post where I waxed rhapsodic about how the best approach to everything could be reduced to three magic words (love, conversation, community), I presented this one-sentence summary of how this might apply to knowledge management (KM): KM is simply the art enabling trusted, context-rich conversations among the appropriate members of communities about things these communities are passionate about.
In another recent post I laid out how the work of information professionals is now being done in (what I consider) leading organizations, around five key types of deliverables: awareness products, research products, guidance products, self-assessment and connectivity tools, and facilitated events. At the request of several readers, I’ve pulled this all together in the table above into a framework for what some have called KM 2.0, but which I prefer to call KM 0.0, because it’s getting back to the roots of why and how people share what they know. It could also be called PKM — Personal Knowledge Management — because it’s about self-managed content and peer-to-peer connectivity. I think the yellow column above — the well-worn and failed traditional approach to KM that many of us tried to institute in the 1990s, based on content and collection — is pretty self-explanatory, and depressing as a legacy. The green column above is slowly evolving in many organizations, but not because knowledge ‘leaders’ and managers have realized its potential. Rather, the emerging KM 0.0 is being instituted by people on the front lines and at the edges of organizations — working around the established systems and security standards of the organization. Most of this KM 0.0 stuff is inexpensive and ubiquitous, so enterprising information and IT professionals can introduce it without having to get permission and resources from management. Here’s a walk-through of what it comprises:
These eight components of KM 0.0 / PKM are the antithesis of what most large organizations provide as Knowledge Management resources. Most of them are quite simple and inexpensive to implement. They simply enable trusted, context-rich conversations among communities that care.Imagine that. Category: Personal Knowledge Management
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December 4, 2007
Vignette #7: Hexagon
 This is a story of six lovers in a polyamorous circle. Not work-friendly. It’s fiction, just to give you an idea of how a love-positive communitymight work: Read the story. Image: A yurt in Big Sur California.. Category: Short Stories
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December 3, 2007
Gangs and the Malleability of Human Ethics
(posted from Vancouver) Observers of the now decade-long intractable genocides and civil wars in Darfur, Somalia, Chad, Zaire and other African nations describe the same gang phenomena repeated endlessly: Men horrifically tortured and slaughtered, women systematically and repeatedly raped, children kidnapped and forced into slavery and military duty, animals and other resources stolen, and villages burned to the ground. What is it about human nature that so many can perpetrate such atrocities for so long without remorse? Why does this happen? If you read Lakoff, you probably appreciate that there are two sets of answers to this question, depending on whether you subscribe to a conservative or progressive worldview. The conservative worldview would, I suspect, hold that the answer to this question is:
The progressive worldview, I think, would proffer these three answers to this question:
What do you think is the main reason for what goes on in so many struggling nations, and behind closed doors in 10% or more of the homes in every nation, and in the factory farms and prisons and Guantanamos and old age homes and orphanages and so many other places in the world where cameras never go? What makes ‘ordinary’ people become gangsters, abusers, monsters? What else? My sense is that your answer to “what can we do” depends on which of the five “because” causes you think is behind these horrific crimes. But we have to do something, so I want to hear what you think. I am coming to believe conversation is our best tool for emerging the kind of understanding we need to decide what we need to do. So I’m listening –what do you think? Category: Why Civilization is Unsustainable
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December 2, 2007
Sunday Open Thread — December 2, 2007
 What I’m Thinking of Writing (and Podcasting) About Soon:
Love, Conversation and Community: I remain convinced that Whether you want to change the political or economic system, save the whales, stop global warming, reform education, spark innovation or anything else, the answer is in how meaning, and understanding of what needs to be done, emerges from conversation in community with people you love, people who care.
So if it seems as if, these days, I don’t write about anything else, that’s why. The Evolving Role of the Information Professional: Since I listed the five major ‘products’ of my new employer, some people have suggested that this list might define the new role of the information professional in all sorts of organizations. Gangs and the Malleability of Human Ethics: Observers of the now decade-long intractable genocides and civil wars in Darfur, Somalia, Chad, Zaire and other African nations describe the same gang phenomena repeated endlessly: Men horrifically tortured and slaughtered, women systematically and repeatedly raped, children kidnapped and forced into slavery and military duty, animals and other resources stolen, and villages burned to the ground. What is it about human nature that so many can perpetrate such atrocities for so long without remorse? Vignettes #7 and #8 Blog-Hosted Conversation #4: I’m going to interview one of the women who’s lived in a polyamorous relationship or circle, and who believes that such communities can work and are the natural way to live, and love. Now the revisions to my book on Natural Enterprise are finally in to the publisher, I should have more time for blogging, and answering e-mails and comments. Thanks for bearing with me. Possible Open Thread Question: What is it about the female psyche that so many women are willing to sacrifice themselves just toplease selfish thoughtless arrogant men? Image: Remember Next Winter, by prismes, from deviantart. |
December 1, 2007
Saturday Links of the Week — December 1, 2007
 All About Polyamory: The website of Anita Wagner, with a ton of very useful and wise information about how to make polyamorous relationships, circles and communities work.
A Little Bit of Politics: While I’ve been preoccupied with love, conversation and community, a few important things are still happening in the political world:
Classical Music on YouTube: Thanks to my new friend CleverClogs for putting me on to these amazing recordings. Finally, the chance to compare different performers’ versions of my favourite classical music. Here are some of my favourites:
Thought for the Week: My recent twitter rant:
What is it about the female psyche that so many women are willing to sacrifice themselves just toplease selfish thoughtless arrogant men? I think I’m becoming a radical feminist. Even progressive men don’t seem to have a clue what’s going on and what is needed.
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