 It is hard to imagine that the US doesn’t have a plan to annex Canada. A nation that has no hesitation in trumping up charges against a country half a world away when it is perceived to threaten its energy security, and then bombing the hell out of it, killing and injuring hundreds of thousands of civilians and utterly destroying its infrastructure and social fabric, would not think twice about seizing control of a nation that offers it even more (and whose animosity would severely threaten its national interest).
There was a plan, in the years between the two world wars, to do just that. It was declassified decades ago and now makes rather quaint reading. But there is no question that there is an American “contingency plan” to annex Canada if need be, just as surely as there is one to bomb Iran as the next stage to secure the oil on which the entire American economy utterly depends. There are reasons to believe that the US doesn’t expect it will have to do this. More than half of all Canadian business, by revenue, is foreign-owned, and the vast majority of that is American. The employment picture is probably comparable, although it’s hard to compute when franchisees of foreign companies are considered Canadian companies. Likewise, there are no records of citizenship or residence of land-holders in Canada, so determining how much land is in foreign hands is impossible to determine. But it is pretty evident that the Canadian economy is substantially foreign-owned and foreign-controlled. If we did something to displease our American owners, they could shut down our economy pretty effectively. This sell-out has occurred over decades, with both Liberal and Conservative regimes dismantling Canadian ownership regulations consistently. Then we signed NAFTA, effectively ceding authority to write social or environmental laws any stronger than those of the weakest laws anywhere in the three countries. When you can’t write laws to protect your own people, you really have no sovereignty left. The right-wing Harper minority government has made no secret of its desire for full political and economic integration with the US, and the reaction of the Canadian people has been astonishingly blasÈ. Our economy is so dependent on the US already that the value of the Canadian dollar relative to the US dollar moves in lockstep with the Dow. There is reason to believe that this control will not be enough to placate those in the US concerned with trying to sustain that country’s unsustainable economy, however:
None of this bodes well for the future of Canada-US relations, and as the US starts to run out of land, the hunger for more land will make the situation even more volatile. This could all come to a head if Canada were to do (or try to do) any of the following:
These are not especially grievous things for a country to do — most countries believe it is their right to do these things in areas of their own jurisdiction. But not Canada. If we were to try to do any of these things, the US would simply say “no”. They would start by protesting, and suing us under NAFTA and other extraterritorial laws. And if that wasn’t enough they would do whatever it took to get the restrictions on their untrammeled access to our resources, land and waters removed. Whatever it took. Harper rolled over on NAFTA already, settling for a fraction (still unpaid) of what the NAFTA courts said the US stole from us illegally. He has no intention of doing anything to impede Canada-US integration. But at some point Canadians will have had enough of Harper’s arrogance, just as they did with the previous Conservative administration of Mulroney, and turf him out of office. He is in power now only because his right-wing party competes with four left-of-centre parties who split the vote in our absurd first-past-the-post voting system. Most Canadians would be glad to see the end of him, and sooner or later they will get their way, and a party or coalition amenable to the majority will be elected. And that new government will almost certainly do one or more of the four things above. The US will then say “no” and do whatever it takes to have the restrictions blocked or removed. What will we do then? I suspect we will do nothing. Four in ten Americans want to annex Canada anyway, according to a recent poll. In another poll, only 57% of British citizens would support action to defend Canada from US annexation. Canadians are pacifists at heart. Most of us no longer believe the war in Afghanistan is worth continuing, and most of us always opposed the war in Iraq. We have among the most liberal immigration laws in the world, taking in far more than our share of refugees and immigrants (though now, under Harper, American war objectors are no longer accepted, but that will be a short-lived anomaly). We acknowledge, I guess, that our natural wealth was a fortune of birth, not something we really earned. It belongs to the world, to all of us, and if someone wants to steal it from us, we’ll just shrug and say “too bad, it was nice while it lasted”. Americans, believers in manifest destiny, the private ownership of everything, might makes right, and the end justifies the means, can’t really understand this. They see it as cowardice, or complacency, tacit approval for their takeover of everything Canadian, and for their American worldview. They will turn the rest of Western Canada into a deforested and toxic wasteland, and Northern Canada into a melting, oil-slicked military stronghold. And we will let them, while convincing ourselves that It’s not really that bad, There is no other real choice, I don’tknow anything about that, or There’s nothing we can do about that. That’s what empires do to colonies. And that’s what colonies do when they do it. Category: Canadian Politics
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August 19, 2008
What Will Canada Do When the US Tells Us “No”?
August 18, 2008
Where Do You See Your Future Beginning?: U Journaling Practice
 The first section of my book Finding the Sweet Spot is about discovering where what you’re good at, what you love doing, and what is needed in the world (that you care about) intersect. The book describes a number of exercises you can use to help hone in on this ‘sweet spot’. Over our lives, as we learn more (including more about ourselves) and change, this sweet spot will change, too. The search for the sweet spot is a lifelong, evolving one. On the weekend I pointed you to an approach my friend Jean-SÈbastien has successfully used to help a group of people find their collective sweet spot — the work they as a group are ‘meant’ to do. Today I want to bring to your attention an approach you can use personally if you really haven’t a clue what you are meant to do — if you don’t even know where to start. It’s an exercise in acquiring self-knowledge, designed by Otto Scharmer’s Presencing Institute. The exercise entails answering the following 17 questions, a process that Scharmer says should take you a couple of hours. It’s called the U Journaling Practice, and the questions are as follows:
The purpose of this exercise is not, as it might first appear, to create a roadmap of your future life and career. The real purpose is to get important insights about yourself. If you’ve never thought about your Gifts or your Passions, these insights are likely to come from questions 2, 3, 5, and 7 — but only if you give a lot of thought to them, and if you have either the experience or imagination to really know what the answers to these questions are or might be. If you can’t answer these questions easily, you may have to try some new things to discover what you really love, and what you really do well. You may also find that some of the things you’ve idealized, that you think you would love doing, you’d actually not like at all. For others, more knowledgeable about their Gifts and Passions, the insights may well come from the “What’s holding you back?” questions 1, 4, 6 and 13. Questions 8-11 are about perspective. In my book I suggest as an exercise writing your own obituary, assuming you’ve accomplished everything you hoped to in your life, to gain that perspective. Insights from these questions are likely for those who are so bogged down in their day-to-day existence they can’t see any way out, or forward. If (or once) you have that perspective, the insights are likely to come from the “First next steps” questions 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17. If the first 11 questions have forced you onto the high-diving platform, these last questions are the ones that will push you to jump. You may get cold feet and be tempted to go back and modify your answers to the earlier questions, and make those intentions and dreams more modest. I hope you can resist this temptation. Better to sit down on that high lonely perch and think awhile, than to make the humiliating climb back down the ladder. I confess the last four questions are the ones that I found the hardest, and my tentative answers to them brought me the most startling insight. I’m a lifelong procrastinator, and even in my Last 37 Days exercise (another exercise I’d highly recommend for gaining self-knowledge) I was pretty damned complacent — saying it wouldn’t give me enough time to do anything new and important, so I’d just spend it in reflection, alone. So my answer to question 14 was: My future begins with meeting a lot of new people, people I’ve intended or always wanted to meet, and inviting them to co-invent our future together. That will take a lot of courage, perhaps more than I have, yet. It will also require me to keep an open mind about the new people I meet, to love them more easily, and to see the opportunity to live and make a living with them, even if it may not be obvious at first. I think I know what I am intended to do, and to be, but perhaps this answer will change as I explore, collectively in conversation in community with people I love, our collective intention. And my answer to question 15 was: It would be the first collective design of an (intentional) Natural Community with three or four Natural Enterprises operating within it. The very concept of a genuine collective design, of trusting other people enough to have them co-design your future, is very frightening. But I don’t think working models are likely to come from anyone’s individual genius — not social or ecological models anyway, since they are inherently complex. Individual genius is useful only for the merely complicated designs — technologies. And technologies aren’t going to fix what’s broken. My answer to question 16 was: I haven’t the faintest idea. My initial answer was the people in my blogroll, and specifically that subset in my Gravitational Community shown in the right sidebar of this blog. But I don’t even know most of these people, not really. Somehow, however, I think we’ll awkwardly find each other. With lots of practice inviting others to explore these important questions with us, we might finally learn who we’re meant to live and make a living with. I am completely convinced it is not one person, not a nuclear family. In community is the future of the world, even though almost none of us remembers or knows what real community is about. And my answer to question 17 was: Keep on being myself, and doing what I do, specifically: to play, to love, to learn, to converse, to give (ideas, energy, knowledge, capacities), to be self-disciplined in maintaining my health and expanding my personal capacity, to write, to reflect, and to be attentive. Some may say that is not ‘intentional’ enough, that it is not a clear vector towards my intentions in questions 14 and 15. But we can only control so much of our own lives, and we have to learn to trust that, by being the best we can be, and by being open, the paths we must follow, together, will emerge from our collective wisdom, and these paths will realize our collective intention. We must not procrastinate, but we must be patient. What insights did you get from answering these questions? What did you learn about yourself? Where do you see your future beginning? Categories: Natural Enterprise, Intentional Community
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August 17, 2008
Saturday (Sunday) Links of the Week — August 16 (17), 2008
 That’s the head of an exhausted, wet chipmunk peeking out of the towel, after I rescued him from our pool today. Our man-made world poses such strange perils for wild creatures! A couple of minutes after I took this shot, he jumped up and scampered away. Birth of a Natural Enterprise: My friend Jean-SÈbastien Bouchard relates the story of how he put together his new enterprise Grisvert — for those who read French this is an inspiring and instructive story. He formed the business using a practice called the Five Breaths of [Collective] Design, which looks like a great methodology to assist in Finding the Sweet Spot. Being Ready for the Crises Ahead: Chris Corrigan makes a list of what you can do to mitigate, adapt to and prepare for coming catastrophes, which is pretty close to my list. No Simple Answers: Jon Husband reproduces an excerpt from a Thomas de Zengotita’s book that decries our insistence that every article, every exposition, every critical analysis, to be worth anything, must provide a solution. This is interesting to me, because I have often complained that reading news that is not actionable is a waste of time. But that is not what de Zengotita is arguing with — all he’s saying is that it is not up to the author to provide the action — and that in our modern complex world no one is (or can be) in control. What Do We Want to Get Out of Blogging?: Cassandra laments the growing introspection and decline in community and interconnectedness she sees in the blogosphere, and then asks readers What do we want to get out of this activity? I confess I’ve been a bit discouraged that my blog’s popularity has flattened out, but I don’t think popularity is the main reason I blog. I tend to comment rarely on others’ blogs, as I prefer to write something here and trackback to them. Mostly I still think out loud on these pages, which is useful to me and apparently to others, and I love the fact that my readers point me to stuff I should read (which makes my online time much more productive). And that you keep me honest, telling me, usually gently, when my writing is not up to par, and why. I still think blogs are awkward conversational media, so I’m spending more and more of my online time in IM and v2v, but these media, at least the ones worth keeping, will eventually merge into one ‘voice’, Friendfeed plus a lot more all in one box. The Death of the Oceans: Fertilizers and smog deposits running off into our oceans have created massive dead zones on coasts all over the planet, as the runoff creates algae blooms that suck oxygen out of the water, killing all marine animal life. Since most marine animals live near the coasts, our farms and cars are essentially killing our oceans. Thanks to Craig De Ruisseau for the link. And Arctic Melting Faster Than Scientists’ Worst Fears: “The trouble is that sea ice is now disappearing from the Arctic faster than our ability to develop new computer models and to understand what is happening there. We always knew it would be the first region on Earth to feel the impact of climate change, but not at anything like this speed. What is happening now indicates that global warming is occurring far earlier than any of us expected.” Misplaced Euphoria as the US Dollar Rises and Oil Price Falls: James Kunstler explains how the rising dollar and falling oil price are just pre-crash symptoms. Thanks to Bruce Stewart for the link and the three that follow. The Future is Frugality: Mike Shedlock contemplates what a future after 2 trillion dollars in mortgage losses have been written off will look like. It’s a future without credit. And with no credit, our economy will grind to a halt. (The NYT chimes in with another in its excellent series on consumer debt, saying many consumers are paying an average of over 20% in interest and fees on their soaring debts, while the assets that secure them are in free fall — thanks to reader EJ for this link). Advice for Graduates: Don’t Get Caught in the Corporatist Trap: George Monbiot suggests that young people starting work for a large corporation “leave the moment youíve learnt what you need to learn (usually after just a few months) and the firm starts taking more from you than you are taking from it.” It’s advice meant for aspiring journalists, but it applies equally to any career. Lenders’ Troubles Worsening Fast: Karl Denninger looks at the fundamentals of the entire credit market, not just the sub-prime loans, and finds it hemorrhaging. (And it hasn’t helped that, on top of the $3 trillion and soaring US credit card debt, another $1.2 trillion was shifted from cards to home equity loans before the housing crash). (And Rob Paterson shows a scary chart comparing consumer debt/GDP in 1929 and now). The Ball Is All That Matters: Several of my favourite bloggers are mourning the recent loss of beloved companion animals. Beth Patterson writes a lovely eulogy for Ling. Barbara Klaser writes about her dear Independence. And Sharon Brogan fondly remembers Spike. Why People Commit Atrocities: Psychologist TherapyDoc asks how ordinary, sane people can commit horrific atrocities, as happened in Nazi death camps, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Darfur, and is happening still all over the world, including in US-funded torture prisons, and in homes where people are abused, and in thousands of factory farms that most of us rely on for our food. I answered this question two years ago: It’s because we let them, encourage them even by our inaction or worse, when we say: It’s not really that bad, There is no other real choice, I don’tknow about that, or There’s nothing we can do about that. Without our complicity it cannot go on.
Thought for the Week, from Sharon Brogan:
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August 15, 2008
More Than Just a Friday Flashback: Presencing and Theory U
 Three years ago I reviewed, in glowing terms, and excerpted parts from, a book called Presence with four authors, one of whom is MIT lecturer Otto Scharmer, creator of Theory U, illustrated above, which is the backbone of the concept called Presencing, and of the book. In light of yesterday’s post, in which I explained what “presence” has recently come to mean to me (a combination of self-awareness of which one of several dozen types of activities I am doing at any point in my day, and employment of the appropriate process for that activity, a process that has been allowed to emerge and continuously improve through practice), I thought it might be worth taking another look at my earlier review. At the time, as excited as I was about the concept, I described the book and its ideas as flawed and tentative. Since then I have found the book really difficult to act upon. More and more I’ve come to realize that it was Scharmer’s Theory U that I liked, and that the rest of the book (notably Peter Senge’s apparent insistence on putting “institutionalization” at the end — top upper right — of the U, presumably to make it more appealing to business executives who want theory to be actionable in traditional command-and-control measurable-results terms) actually detracted from Scharmer’s theory. I’m pleased to see that Scharmer’s latest version, above, has eliminated the hierarchical junk from the model and made it more personal, where the assessment of learning and responsibility for action are left to individual team members, as they should be. Theory U is now more consistent with Open Space type methodologies that are trusting of individuals but allow the insights and actions to emerge from collaborative effort. In fact, his latest 2-page summary of the theory contains an even better, clearer graphic of the process:
Theory U is in essence a problem-solving (or more accurately perhaps a problem-addressing) process. Scharmer proposes this process to optimize both collaboration and innovation, and as a guide for coaches to use to enable collaborative and innovative capacity in individuals and teams working on (especially intractable) problems.
Those of you who’ve read the proofs of my new book Finding the Sweet Spot will probably recognize, as I did, that Scharmer’s U is a very similar process to the one I recommend for creating Natural Enterprises. These Natural Enterprises I’ve so long admired, places where work is responsible, sustainable, joyful, meaningful and natural, are theorganizational embodiment of Theory U. And he says this about what happens to teams that have been through the U process together: “Often they begin to function as an intentional Maybe I should get our mutual friend Andrew Campbell to introduce me to Otto. |
August 14, 2008
Presence: The Practice of Self-Awareness and Self-Management
 Of late I have been practicing meditation, and it is finally starting to bear fruit. What I have realized is that I (and perhaps most people) have always lived life automatously: Reactive, un-self-aware of what I am doing, and why. Mechanically. Now that I am starting to learn to pay attention to these things, I’ve surprised myself: I’ve caught myself on some occasions acutely aware of what I’m doing, the process I’m following, and why, and on (too many) other occasions, operating completely dysfunctionally, embarrassing myself. The difference, I’ve concluded, is that in the former cases I’m present, and in the latter cases, absent. I have no idea who this mindless idiot is that operates my body most of the time, but it can’t possibly be me. There are two parts to this presence: The first part is this self-awareness — knowing and noticing and paying attention to what you’re doing. It is hard to both do something and to pay attention to yourself doing it, but it is not impossible. The second part is following a process, one that you’re comfortable with, but not so much that it’s subconscious. I think the key to both is practice. We can learn to be both active, engaged, in the moment, and aware that that’s what we are. Being and observing ourselves being. And we can learn to use a process diligently, consciously — a process that we’ve found to work, and that we’re so comfortable with we can adapt it to suit each different circumstance. We’re so comfortable with it that we don’t have to think about it — but we do. These things take a great deal of practice. I don’t like practicing. Perhaps it’s a vestige of being forced to practice things when I was younger. Perhaps it’s impatience, inattention, lack of self-discipline. Perhaps it’s that often what I have practiced (e.g. four-finger typing, bad musical instrument playing) have been poor habits, such that practice actually made me worse at it. Here are just some of the things that I do all the time that I have started to become aware of my process for doing them (two of which are illustrated above):
For a few of these things, I have evolved a very good process, and do tend to follow it. But for most of these things, I have no process. I have no clue. Some of these processes are linear. Others are iterative, or interactive, or improvisational. In some of them I adapt the process to suit others, and to suit their processes for doing these things. In others, I confess, I’m still far too dogmatic, still too fervent in the belief that my way is the best, or nearly so. In some cases my collaborators use different processes than I do, so everything in the collaboration becomes a building of bridges, a translation of frames, an adaptation and co-production. A dance. I think it makes sense to develop (and evolve) a process for doing each of these things, and then practice using it until you become very competent (but not dogmatic) at it. And then, each day, each moment, as you begin to do things, be aware consciously of the various activities you do, and the process you use, deliberately, to do each. That doesn’t mean designing new processes for everything you do. It means simply being aware of what process you do use, and letting it evolve to become better. And also being aware of being aware, self-aware, present, deliberate. Chop wood, carry water, as my friend Rob Paterson reminds me. Do each task, mindfully, until you understand exactly what you are doing and why you’re doing it precisely that way. Practice, consciously, getting better, improving the process and the execution of the process, refining, getting faster, more skilled and competent, presently aware, managing, adapting oneself. At last I understand when meditators speak of mindfulness, what they are referring to. Simply being aware of what you are and what precisely you are doing, and how, and why. The word attention is from the Latin “to stretch to”. Such folly to be constantly stretching, in all directions,without knowing, being aware of where or how or why you are stretching. Aha. Category: Let-Self-Change
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August 13, 2008
Dominoes
 Last year I described thirteen economic, political and environmental crises that are long overdue, and which will almost certainly occur at some point in this century. These crises will be the result of our generation’s short-term thinking, greed, and mismanagement of the the economy, of power and of the Earth’s resources. Our actions, throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first century and to some extent even before, have been irresponsible, shortsighted, selfish and unsustainable. What’s worse, rather than accept responsibility for this behaviour, we have mortgaged the future to try to sustain our unsustainable lifestyle and actions just a little longer, in the misguided belief that technology or innovation will find some way to solve them, and allow rampant population growth and consumption growth to continue indefinitely. The generations that will inherit the mess we have created over the next three generations should rightly be furious at us for doing so, but unlike the boomer generation, who rioted in the streets in the 1960s and swore to “never trust anyone over 30″, our successors have been sanguine, pragmatic, even timid about the challenges we have foisted upon them. Recently, I was asked which of the thirteen interrelated looming crises I thought would be the first to occur, the first domino to fall, and when. In answering this, I would offer a few caveats:
Because they’re interrelated, some of these crises will precipitate others, and our ability for forestall some of them will delay the occurrence of others. And the timing of some of them, like pandemics, is largely unpredictable — if they occur soon, they might cause some of these other crises to occur sooner than I’d expect, and if they occur later, they might delay the onset of others. Having said that, here is my wild guess about when these crises will occur. I’d welcome your “second guesses”: First Wave: Approximately 2010 to 2030
Second Wave: Approximately 2030 to 2050: Continuation/recurrence of the above crises plus:
Third Wave: Approximately 2050 to 2070: Continuation/recurrence and worsening of the above crises plus:
Not a particularly bright picture, I admit, and more than any species can possibly hope to overcome. All civilizations end, and so will ours. It won’t be pleasant, or sudden, but this is how I see if unfolding, based on a combination of a lot of study of history, anthropology, economics and current events, and a bit of intuition. If you think I’m missing something from this list, or if you think my timing is off, or that something else will be the first domino to fall, please jump in. If you think that technology, or ingenuity, or leadership, or spirituality, or some great collective consciousness and global collaboration, is going to rescue us, there are lots of other sites with readers anxious for your reassurance, but I’ve heard it all, and I’m past such wishful thinking. In the meantime, this world is still a wonderful place, and it needs our attention to the issues at hand, and to the creation of models of a better way to live for the survivors of the sorry mess we’ve (with the best of intentions) created. Let’s have fun, fill the world with love, conversation and community, do what we can to make things better, or at least no worse, and let the future unfold as it will. Fare forward, o brave fellow passengers on this lovely fragilelittle spaceship. Category: Why Our Civilization is Unsustainable
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August 11, 2008
Working Smarter
 Last week in Quebec City I had the pleasure of meeting with about 20 senior librarians and information directors at a workshop to discuss the trends in and future of Knowledge Management and research, and the evolving role of Information Professionals.This included an interesting debate on the different “information behaviours” of most members of Gen Millennium, such as:
Over the past year I’ve been writing about KM 2.0 (I’ve given up calling it KM 0.0 — a little too cute I think), and last week’s discussion refined my thinking somewhat about what this will entail. I’m now convinced that “knowledge workers” in the 21st century (i.e. anyone who spends a significant portion of their time processing information, which these days is most of us) need skills (S), tools (T) and processes (P) in six areas, none of which they currently possess:
I see the role of Knowledge Management and of Information Professionals in the 21st century as facilitating the development of these skills and introduction of these processes and tools in their organizations. I’m not sure what we call it. Probably not KM. I’ve referred to it as Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), Work Effectiveness Improvement, Personal Productivity Improvement (PPI) but none of these accurately encompasses the six enabling roles above. Maybe we should call it Working Smarter, and staff it with a cross-functional project team with a five year mandate to measurably improve these six capacities in organizations. A couple of years ago I wrote about creating a magazine called Working Smarter that would address this capacities; perhaps it’s time to resurrect this idea, and not fuss about whose function it is. This would be a big undertaking in most organizations. In order to free up resources for it, many organizations would have to face the distasteful prospect of admitting that their KM 1.0 investments and infrastructure, including intranets and websites, are ineffective and could be substantially dismantled at a considerable saving and without significant consequence to the organization. I don’t expect to see this happen overnight. Many organizations are quite wedded to their existing websites, groupware and centralized repositories, and have employees whose full-time job is just indexing, maintaining and creating search tools for all this content. But in order to rise to what Peter Drucker identified as the greatest business challenge of the 21st century — improving the productivity of “knowledge workers” — we will have to make the transition from content to context, and from collection to connection.
Category: Personal Productivity Improvement
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August 9, 2008
Saturday Links for the Week: August 9, 2008
 The ultimate test of your rock-balancing finesse, via Forum Ouvert (Open Space) practitioner JS Bouchard, who, with his family, were such wonderful hosts to me during my visit yesterday to QuÈbec. Mainstream Media Finally Pick Up on Ivins-Squalene Connection: The motive of Bruce Ivins to send the anthrax-tainted letters to media and politicians — to get the US to attack Iraq so that his vaccine, with the unauthorized and dangerous additive squalene, could be quickly fast tracked and tested on a guinea pig military — has finally been discovered by the NYT, more than a week after I wrote about it. Squalene puts the immune system into overdrive, by generating what has been called a “cytokine storm“, but can also lead as a result to permanent autoimmune hyperactivity diseases when the immune system never reverts to normal function. The result is severe inflammation and irreparable damage to critical healthy cells and tissue, which can be crippling, agonizing, or fatal, as in arthritis or diabetes or lupus or endometriosis or MS or chronic fatigue syndrome or asthma or allergies or inflammatory bowel disease or any of the dozens of other chronic immune system hyperactivity diseases. Hey, but what’s a few lifelong disabilities and deaths when it comes to testing out a wacky vaccine against bioterror? What’s more interesting is that the people who had the most to gain from provoking an unjustified war against Iraq so they could test this vaccine, were the senior Homeland Security and Bush administration officials desperate to develop such a vaccine. Of course the FBI has its patsy now, and dead men tell no tales, so we’re never likely to find out who really sent the anthrax letters. Now the mainstream media have made the Ivins-Squalene connection, will one of them connect Squalene to the companies and higher-ups who wanted it tested despite its monstrous side-effects? For example Glenn Greenwald points us to a NYT article (by Judith Miller) written a week before 9/11 on the Pentagon program to develop a vaccine-resistant anthrax for its own biowarfare program. Guess they’d need their own ‘special’ vaccine for that, huh? The Coffee Shop as Social Gathering-Place: Chris Corrigan picks up on an idea in Architect Magazine on how coffee shops might morph into the business and community gathering places of the future. I recently predicted the end of offices, and with their demise will come a need for such f2f gathering spots, equipped with videoconferencing and screensharing and other social tools to allow others who can’t attend to be part of the conversation. Building in Space for Nuance: Amy Lenzo points out Seth Godin’s suggestion that, while design solutions/ideas should be intuitive, they also need to create space so that those who don’t intuitively ‘get’ the solution/idea (or some subtle and ingenious facet of it) can ask questions without feeling foolish or critical. This perhaps ties into the approach of Back of the Napkin, which basically lets you recreate how you came up with a solution/idea by telling an illustrated story, one step at a time, with the opportunity for Q&A and collaborative conversation. The Disconnect Between the US Election Campaign and the Life of Americans: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has been inviting real American voters to tell them about the economic problems they’re having. The letters are heart-wrenching and show just how irrelevant the election campaign and the media coverage of “the issues” is to them. Matt Taibbi, writing in Rolling Stone about this, tells some of the stories and concludes (thanks to Jon Husband for the link): Our economic reality is as brutal as it is for a simple reason: whether we like it or not, we are in the midst of revolutionary economic changes. In the kind of breathtakingly ironic development that only real life can imagine, the collapse of the Soviet Union has allowed global capitalism to get into the political unfreedom business, turning China and the various impoverished dictatorships and semi-dictatorships of the third world into the sweatshop of the earth. This development has cut the balls out of American civil society by forcing the export abroad of our manufacturing economy, leaving us with a service/managerial economy that simply cannot support the vast, healthy middle class our government used to work very hard to both foster and protect. The Democratic party that was once the impetus behind much of these changes, that argued so eloquently in the New Deal era that our society would be richer and more powerful overall if the spoils were split up enough to create a strong base of middle class consumers — that party panicked in the years since Nixon and elected to pay for its continued relevance with corporate money. As a result the entire debate between the two major political parties in our country has devolved into an argument over just how quickly to dismantle the few remaining benefits of American middle-class existence — immediately, if you ask the Republicans, and only slightly less than immediately, if you ask the Democrats.
The Virtue of Beauty: A lovely piece of contemplation by Pohangina Pete on our obsession with the utility of things with poetic interjections like this: The sun comes and goes, and a cold wind with it. A woman carrying a surfboard returns from the beach, wringing water from her hair with one hand, the board clutched under the other arm. She slides it into her BMW and drives off, leaving the winter beach empty except for the roar of the surf, the scurrying wind, the arcs and jinks of swallows. Something splashes in the creek, down among the dry dead raupo, and a duck calls. Then the rain arrives, drizzle at first then heavier, then the sun follows, shining through the haze of rain and out at sea a rainbow forms. Tell me what this is useful for.
The Climate Change Paradox: In the last few months I’ve met several climate scientists, and they’re scared. Changes are occurring much faster than they predicted even a couple of years ago, and accelerating. There’s increasing evidence that some of these changes are self-reinforcing, and pushing past tipping points that will careen us into out-of-control climate changes. They’re now working to try to recommend steps that will reduce global warming by 2 degrees celsius this century, while forecasting and trying to develop adaptation plans for 4 degree changes, because they know the politicians’ plans to keep it to 2 degrees have no chance of working. The problem is, a 4 degree change would be catastrophic. So if they’re honest, and admit what is likely to happen and what it will mean, they’ll be ridiculed by the climate change deniers, and people will just stop trying to deal with the issue. But if they lie and say that fixing the problem is possible, and if people do what they suggest and it’s still not enough, they’ll be accused to saying too little too late. They can’t win. And alas, neither can we. Why McCain Will Win: I’ve been predicting a McCain win since I spoke with Joe Bageant and read his book. Now the polls are tipping his way, and others are trying to explain it by blaming the media. But people don’t believe the media much — they believe their friends, and the people they see and hear. The 40% who are uneducated, white, working-class Americans therefore believe McCain when he says the Iraq war is winnable, and that he cares about their values. That’s all they need to hear. To win, Obama needs 84% of the remainder of voters, an impossible stretch. And as Elizabeth Kolbert reports, McCain has thrown away all his previous principles and jumped on the pro-big-business, anti-environment bandwagon to line up the big right-wing corporatist campaign donors. On top of all that, says Sara Robinson, Obama supporters are from the Quaker/Puritan cultural heritage who don’t fight back, giving advantage to the muckraking and mudslinging McCain supporters from the Scots/Irish/Cavalier heritage. Thanks to Dale Asberry for the Robinson link. …and Bush Steps Up Iran Invasion Plans to Help Him Win: Sy Hersh has the latest startling news about the Bush regime’s covert war on Iran, and plans to provoke violence to justify another all-out war. Debunking the Hydrogen Economy…Again: European Tribune debunks the irrational hysteria surrounding the MIT announcement of a more efficient way to produce hydrogen. Once more, for those who missed it: Hydrogen is not a fuel source, merely a (not very efficient, yet) way to store the fuel once it’s produced. Borrowings From the Fed, since 1910: A scary curve of desperate borrowings to cover reckless loans. Thanks to Dale Asberry for the link.
Permaculture Building: A Model for Intentional Community?: The 500sf home above was built using local, healthy, natural materials into a woodland hill in Wales, is sustainable and energy-efficient, and cost about 1500 hours plus £3000 ($6000). They’re planning on creating whole communities of similar homes, but are, of course, having problems with zoning authorities. Imagine a whole Intentional Community of such buildings, blended together into the natural landscape! Some good links on this website, BTW. Thanks to Mattbg [OOPS CORRECTION: Thanks to Matthew Jewkes] for the link. Quotes for the Week: In response to a question I asked at the IFLA conference in QuÈbec City yesterday What is the essence of good research?, David Stern of Brown University replied: “Asking the right questions”. And from Justin Kownacki in a Twitter comment: “Social media is populated largely by people who are not good at being social in real life”. Thought for the Week: Looking Away from Beauty: From Orion Magazine, by Rebecca Solnit, to think about if you’re watch the tainted Olympics: Bodies in peak condition performing with everything theyíve got are an image of freedom, as are pristine landscapes like Yosemite and the Tetons. But the reality of freedom only exists when these phenomena arenít deployed to cover up other bodies that are cringing, starving, bleeding, or dying, other places that are clearcut, strip-mined, and contaminated. Television coverage of the summer Olympics probably wonít cut away from those sleek athletes to the charred bodies of massacred villagers and the anguished faces of young gang-rape victims in Darfur, or the bloodied heads of young monks and uncounted corpses and prisoners in Burma and Tibet. But the associations between the two are crucial to our sense of compassion, and of what it means to be a partof a global community.
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August 8, 2008
Friday Flashback: Population: A Systems Approach
Four years ago I reproduced a synopsis of two of the critical arguments from Daniel Quinn’s book Story of B, written by David Sheen, along with my own narrative. The first argument, The Boiling Frog, is that the population explosion depicted in the curve below is creeping up on us so slowly (and we have been lulled by dubious arguments that it will peak at ‘only’ 9-11 billion) that we won’t be able to cope with it until it overwhelms us. The second argument, Population: A Systems Approach, is that, contrary to conventional wisdom and intuition, the most humane and effective way to bring this explosion under control is to cut food production. (And yes, I know that a frog heated slowly in water is actually smart enough to jump out before it boils, but that doesn’t invalidate Quinn’s argument.) I think it’s worth re-reading, since four years later nothing has changed. Red lines indicate sustainable population and sustainable footprint at forecast levels of consumption and allowing for improvements in food technology, but with no provision for non-human species on the planet. Green lines include a provision for non-humans to inhabit half the world’s habitable area. Of all the radical ideas I have espoused in How to Save the World, none has proven to be as controversial as my belief that substantial human population reduction is a necessary condition (I am not sure whether it is a sufficient condition) to prevent ecological catastrophe in this century. The chart above, which I explained in this post, shows the impact of our continued population explosion, far beyond the levels of sustainability represented by the green and red lines on the chart (the green line allows for coexistence with other creatures, the red line hogs all resources on earth for humans). The chart below right shows the vicious cycle that Daniel Quinn argues, in The Story of B, has led us to this point. The argument is that (a) the exponential curve shown above is creeping up on us so quietly and quickly that if we wait for the first undeniable evidence of cataclysm, it will be too late, and (b) the root cause of the population explosion is excessive and ever-increasing food production, and the paradoxical and counter-intuitive solution to human misery caused by overpopulation and starvation is to cut food production. |
August 6, 2008
Cohousing, Housing Cooperatives, and Intentional Communities
 Perhaps because of the ponderous nature of the term “Intentional Community”, many such communities are called cohousing neighbourhoods. Other terms like ecovillages, communes and housing cooperatives are also used. Since even wikipedia mis-defines some of them, it may be worthwhile defining what we mean by all these terms. The original meaning of “community” is a place shared equally. The term has been debased to mean just about any agglomeration of people with something “in common”, but for purposes of defining Intentional Community the original definition is useful. “Shared equally” doesn’t mean all under one roof, or identical accommodation for everyone, or even equal investment. It does mean that the “place” is jointly owned by its members, not “privately” owned. You may pay a lump sum for the use of a unit for your private enjoyment, but you do not “own” it — the payment is really a prepayment of rent to the community members collectively, and it is the collective, not you personally, who can transfer that right of private enjoyment to someone else when you leave, charging them a prepayment of rent and reimbursing yours at some pre-agreed “price”. This might seem to be a big deal to a society that is obsessed and paranoid about “private property”, and accustomed to considering their “home” as their most important asset and investment. But the reality is that most people really rent their property from the mortgage company, and hope to reap a speculative gain on the change in value when they cease doing so and rent someplace else. The big difference is that, just like a renter, in an Intentional Community you can’t do whatever you want with “your” unit because it isn’t “yours”. In a regular neighbourhood of isolated strangers, you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t reduce the resale value below the mortgage, or defy local neighbourhood ordinances mainly designed to ensure you don’t reduce others’ resale value. As long as you can get your head around the fact that your “asset” in an IC is a prepaid expense and a share in a collective place, rather than a piece of property, an IC may be for you. Alas, most financial institutions can’t get their head around this difference. They effectively own the property that you secure your mortgage with, and they can repossess it and do what they want with it whenever they are so inclined. When they’re asked to finance a prepaid expense and a share in a not-for-profit entity, they tend to get skittish. There are some places that call themselves ICs (especially in struggling nations) that are not. Buying your own private property in a condominium development that throws in a “share” of an adjacent golf course or other “common” facility (and may even throw in maid and chef services) does not constitute being a member of a community — a “place shared equally” — let alone an IC. Real estate developers are a sleazy bunch, though, and they like to pass off timeshares and resorts as “communities”. A “place shared equally” means a place where decisions are made collectively by members, and not outsourced to or initiated by political or economic agents (agents, what’s more, who are generally acting in their own interests). An Intentional Community is one that has an intention — literally a “stretching toward”. That means something they are striving together to do or to be together. That can be a set of beliefs, or shared goals, or a way of living. In an ecovillage that may be something to do with environmental sustainability, food self-sufficiency, organic and/or vegetarian diet, and living lightly on the land. For a commune it might be shared spiritual practices.
An Intentional Community could inhabit urban, village, rural or even virtual space. It could be designed by the future members collectively, or retrofitted by self-selecting members already living there or in close proximity. What about co-housing and housing cooperatives? While the term “co-housing”, like “community”, could be taken to include commercial condominium, strata title and resort developments, true co-housing communities grew out of the Danish model and are real housing cooperatives (a cooperative is identical to an IC, as defined by the three criteria above, except what they share equally is an enterprise, not a place, and instead of sharing a way of living they share a way of making a living). Although true co-housing is a form of Intentional Community, the shared set of beliefs, goals and/or way of living are often more limited and pragmatic than they are in “deeper” ICs. Take for example the 29-unit Nubanusit Cohousing Community in Peterborough, New Hampshire (pictured above). It calls itself a condominium, and you buy your unit outright, and have, presumably, the right to resell it to anyone you want. But in many respects it does look like true cohousing:
The private ownership of units can help placate both members and mortgagors worried about exactly what they own (and fussy local zoning authorities wedded to the anti-communitarian definition of “single family dwelling”), but in this respect Nubanusit is not true cohousing and not really an IC. The issue is, How much difference does this really make? Is insisting on collective ownership of all the land and buildings of the community a form of ideological purism, that could be holding us back from creating and retrofitting thousands of such developments as a model of a better, more environmentally sustainable and socially responsible way to live, a stepping stone to help our whole society rediscover the value of self-sufficient community and take back decision-making from remote and powerful political and economic interests? Or will communities like Nabanusit, as they’re resold again and again over time to strangers who had no part in their design and rationale and are indifferent to their Core Values, end up looking like every other exurban community on the planet? It really all comes down to the ownership of private property and decisions on who can and cannot become a member of the community. Without collective ownership and collective decisions on membership, what may start as a true community with shared intention could easily end up as just another neighbourhood of convenience, with residents dictated solely by proximity to their places of work. And while this particular community claims to pursue ideals of sustainability, responsibility and diversity, might the next community, perhaps right next door, bring together a racist criminal gang whose shared goal is to launder money through its community, or a wingnut cult, or an elitist group of rich executive profligates whose shared goal is to fence themselves off from everyone else, entertain politicians extravagantly and lobby for the deregulation and privatization of everything? Could gang headquarters and militia camps and gated neighbourhoods meet the above criteria of an IC? You can see how tricky this can all get. Mashing us all together in lonely, socially indifferent, ecologically destructive subdivisions sprawling indistinguishably out from all our cities does have the advantage of keeping us from self-organizing in antisocial ways, not just social ones. Just take a look at some of the popular websites that attract “communities” that advocate the murder of those who disagree with their ideology, or revel in videos that depict torture and humiliation, or hate-monger, or enable sex slavery or wage slavery or the abuse of women and children, and you can see that the power of community cuts both ways. Nevertheless, we need some working models. So if you’ve ever thought about creating or joining an Intentional Community, here are some questions I’d like your thoughts on. Imagine you’ve found a great bunch of people and a great site for such a community:
Category: Intentional Community
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