Sunday Open Thread – March 18, 2007

photo: Lagos Nigeria squatter community, from the Nov. 13, 2006 New Yorker by Samantha Appleton

What I’m planning on writing about soon:

The E-Myth: The good, the bad and the ugly about this decade-old bestseller on entrepreneurship.
Increasing Our Resilience and Energy Level: Perhaps we’d save the world if we weren’t so tired, busy and distracted, which is probably related to…
Finding & Working With Others: Instead of working alone, connecting and collaborating with others, on our own terms, in our own context, developing our own plan of action. A billion diverse people doing our own thing but in sync, in community.
The Fourth Turning: The coming era of repression and violent reactionary tyranny? (I gave away my copy of the book, so this one will have to wait until I pick up a new copy).
The ‘M’ word: One of the last taboos to talk or write about.
Do our frames enable independent thinking or preclude us from thinking objectively?
Communication Just-in-Time: Finding an easy way to ‘walk down the hall and chat briefly’ with people who aren’t down the hall.
A short story or poem, possibly instead of an essay on one of the above.

What I’m thinking about:

Yesterday’s post about the 1.5 billion living in squatter communities, Shadow Cities. What do we need to learn from these people about intentional community? And a scary thought: the UN population projections project population leveling off at 9-12 billion, predicated on the assumption that as struggling nations achieve education and some of the trappings of affluent nations, their birth rates will tumble to be in line with ours. But what if the opposite happens: What happens if a second Great Depression, or The End of Oil, or a Disease Pandemic, or any combination of these and other crises befall us so that, instead, the affluent nations begin to resemble the struggling nations? As we fall into panic, infrastructure collapses, and the sense of hopelessness that people of struggling nations live with today becomes pervasive here, will our population growth rates start to resemble theirs again?And then what?

Over to you. What are you thinking about these days?

2 Responses to Sunday Open Thread – March 18, 2007

Steve Bean says:

March 18, 2007 at 20:17

“Finding & Working With Others: Instead of working alone, connecting and collaborating with others, on our own terms, in our own context, developing our own plan of action. A billion diverse people doing our own thing but in sync, in community.”I’m working on establishing a local nonprofit (in Ann Arbor, MI) to facilitate just this (web site and blog not yet in place–I’ll notify you when they are.) You may have noticed that Bill McKibben and David Morris (of ILSR) are on the same page. I believe that direction holds much promise for us all.Steve
Jessica Doyle says:

March 23, 2007 at 07:02

Dave one thing that would enable womyn to have control over their fertility is an IUD. That is something i have been thinking about lately. In Canada womyn are not really told of this choice at all. We are fed pills instead. I think our borth rates would go up but not back to times when families had 9 to 10 children. Birth control options will indeed advance as fast as Peak Oil and all other technologies. Hopefully, human educational systems will overpower the desparate need of mass media in cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, and take over financial control of global healthcare, giving these rights back to the each and every community on earth humans exist in.