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| Name: | How to Save the World |
| Description: | Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays. In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works. |
| Site URL: | http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/ |
| RSS feed URL: | http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/rss.xml |
| Syndic8 ID: | 23049 |
| Language: | en |
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25 most recent entries:
my advice to you (Nov 24 2008 16:39 GMT)
playinglearninglovingconversin (ideas, knowledge, competencies)self-managingbein presentwritingreflectingSense: Observe, listen, pay attention, focus, open up your senses, perceive everything that has a bearing on the issue at hand. Connect.Self-control:Don't prejudge or jump to conclusions.
Links of the Week -- November 23, 2008 [bonus edition] (Nov 23 2008 07:57 GMT)
Photo from a friend of Beth Patterson: Young bear swings his way over to suet pouch on a bird feeder.So many great articles this week they wouldn't all fit into Saturday's post. Here's the rest.Living a Simpler Life:
Links of the Week -- November 22, 2008 (Nov 23 2008 03:25 GMT)
Image from Ziggy Fresh shot at Dancing Rabbit Eco-Village. Thanks to Tree for the link.Enough Self-Change?: For the last couple of years I have been advocating "let-self-change" -- adapting yourself to the world, developing new capacities, making yourself healthy and happy and effective and authentically yourself in spite of the systems that don't work and are killing us all and are trying to make us everybody-else. Doug Rushkoff doesn't agree.
Pardon? (Nov 22 2008 02:03 GMT)
Image from Cute Overload. It's a baby 'roo. Cute Overload is campaigning against puppy mills. Please adopt a shelter cat/dog instead of buying from pet stores or breeders.Can someone explain to me why US presidents have the right to pardon anyone they want for any crime, without limit?
Dominant Cultures (Nov 20 2008 04:51 GMT)
BLOG Dominant Cultures
CCK08 Week 6-7: Complexity, Connection and Learning (Oct 24 2008 19:25 GMT)
I'm a week behind in my weekly Friday writing about the connectivism MOOC, but last week's subject was complexity, which is interesting, so I'll post about it now and then skip a week.I've written a lot about complexity here, so just to recap for the uninitiated:systems/processes/ tend to be simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, or some combination thereofsimple and complicated systems/processes/networks are 'ordered'; it is possible (and in simple systems/processes/networks, easy) to identify all the variables, do cause and effect analysis, and predict outcomes in such environments -- the process for making toast is simple, while the process for making a toaster is complicatedcomplex and chaotic systems/processes/networks are 'unordered'; it is not possible to identify all the variables, or determine cause and effect between them, or predict outcomes -- the process by which all people in your community decide what to have for breakfast (including perhaps toast) is complexwhile most human management methodologies (the way we parent, the way we teach/learn, the way we communicate information, the way we run organizations, etc.
This is Who I Am, Now (Oct 23 2008 03:10 GMT)
I confess that my rambling post on Monday was my way of thinking through what I wanted to say in this one. Over the past couple of years, after transforming the way I lived as a result of my serious illness, I have learned an enormous amount about myself, and in the process, about other people, about the way the world really works, and about how we might live and make a living better. As a consequence, this is who I am, now:I am, as I have become fond of saying, a space through which stuff passes. Like all animals, I am in substance a container, a water-filled bag of self-organizing, self-managing, interdependent creatures that have evolved this container as an effective means for their survival, health, mobility, and comfort.
Finding the Sweet Spot -- In Your Community (Oct 22 2008 02:25 GMT)
This is the third in a series of articles about my new book Finding the Sweet Spot. The book is available from most booksellers or online from the sites listed in the right sidebar. A synopsis of the book is here. A complete set of reviews of the book (thank you, reviewers!
What Makes Us "Us" (Oct 21 2008 03:58 GMT)
Last year I wrote a 2-part article on The Chemistry of Love. It describes (a) the four self-reinforcing chemicals that make us "fall in love" emotionally (phenylethylamine, dopamine, norepinephrine* and oxytocin), (b) the chemicals that produce erotic feelings (testosterone and estrogens), and (c) the "attachment" chemicals that keep us attracted to love partners after the "falling in love" chemicals wear off (endorphins).For most creatures, including humans, nature cycles us through these chemicals to encourage us to procreate regularly, responsibly, and (to encourage diversity of the gene pool) polyamorously. The cycle lasts approximately four years:the "falling in love" hormones are secreted at the start of this cycle, and they endure only long enough to maximize the probability of procreation (any longer than that and they would detract from our paying attention to the needs of the community)the erotic hormones are synchronized to the reproductive cycle of the lovers, to maximize the probability of conceptionas the effect of the "falling in love" hormones naturally wears off, endorphins (opiates) are produced to replace them, as the ecstasy of early love is replaced by the attachment drug, to encourage temporary pair-bonding for the benefit of the young offspringfor the normal four-year breast-feeding cycle of the young, the mother produces hormones that prevent pregnancy and increase attachment to the childat the end of the four-year cycle, as the young are weaned and able to walk on their own, the endorphins wear off, and the cycle begins again, with attraction to new and different lovers (this is probably why four years after marriage is when divorce peaks)In other words, we are "programmed" by our bodies to fall hopelessly in love approximately every four years, with multiple and diverse partners, and, if that falling in love produces offspring, to hone in on a partner-bond (not necessarily between the parents of the child, which indigenous humans would not be able to identify in any case) until the end of that four-year cycle, and then to break that partner-bond and start over again with a new round of falling in love.
Saturday Links for the Week: October 18, 2008 (Oct 19 2008 03:52 GMT)
Photo: Colleen's dog, just because just looking at him makes me smile.What Moves the Artist: Most of my circles, and my readers, are artists in one way or another, so I was intrigued by Malcolm Gladwell's portrait of two forms of artistic genius -- the conceptual prodigy (e.g.
Thoughts on Yesterday's Canadian Election: Harper Still Doesn't Speak for Canada (Oct 15 2008 19:41 GMT)
Tuesday's election -- prompted by the ambition of the right-wing Conservative party leader Harper to split the progressive vote sufficiently to convert his minority support into a majority government under Canada's antiquated first-past-the-post electoral system -- was bound to disappoint everyone. The Canadian electorate remains ornery and angry at the war-mongering Bush-adoring Harper, at the bumbling, scandal-tainted Liberal opposition, at our helplessness in the face of our Southern neighbour's government's arrogance, stupidity, self-loathing and thirst for blood, about our dependence on our natural resources and the environmental devastation their extraction wreaks, and about our failure to be the nation of the 21st century that many thought we might be. But so far we are not angry enough to vote into power a truly progressive government -- the three "third parties" (New Democrats, Greens and Bloc Québecois) are all well left-of-centre socially and economically but remain perpetually on the fringes of power, and so enamoured of their parochial interests that they are unable to get together and present a unified and unambiguous progressive voice.
Now What Should I Do? -- The Boomer's Dilemma (Oct 15 2008 02:03 GMT)
This is the second in a series of articles about my new book Finding the Sweet Spot. The book is available from most booksellers or online from the sites listed in the right sidebar. A synopsis of the book is here. A complete set of reviews of the book (thank you, reviewers!
Not Ready Yet to End Our Addiction to Growth (Oct 14 2008 01:35 GMT)
The value of public companies listed on stock markets has dropped by about a third in the past year. This means that shareholders believe that this group of companies, which are an important but not dominant factor in the global economy (the public sector, notably health and education, and privately-owned enterprises, are collectively much larger, both in what they contributed to productive output and in the number of people they employ) will generate 1/3 less future total profits than had previously been forecast.The response of governments to this assessment has been immediate and unanimous -- such a reassessment is unacceptable, so unacceptable that trillions of dollars of taxpayer money (money that governments cannot afford to spend) need to be spent immediately to "increase liquidity". By increasing liquidity they mean creating enough new cash for investors to need to park somewhere (i.e.
Saturday Links for the Week -- October 11, 2008 (Oct 12 2008 22:37 GMT)
photo by Maren YumiMindful Wandering: The coined term (by Barbara Ganley) is "slow blogging", but I much prefer the term my friend Chris Lott uses: "mindful wandering". The idea is to see blogging, which is really just a new way of recording your thoughts in a diary, as a meditative practice, taking the time to ponder the meaning of what you're reading, thinking and writing, letting your mind meander in thoughtful and creative ways to "make sense" of it. I find that some of my best blog posts are those I've stopped and restarted several times, allowing time for thoughts to percolate and new ideas to emerge.
CCK08 Week Five: Groups vs Networks vs Communities (Oct 11 2008 02:13 GMT)
Week 5 of the Connectivism MOOC is about the distinction between groups and networks. One of the key readings for the week was written by my friend Stephen Downes when he was obviously high on something (possibly New Zealand, which will do that to you). The point of the lesson is to distinguish groups, which are apparently inherently homogeneous and hierarchical, from networks, which are apparently neither. Members of both are connected to each other. George Siemens asserts that most organized collective activity (like education) fails to recognize the identity of the selves within the collective.
Six Steps to Natural Enterprise: A Synopsis of "Finding the Sweet Spot" (Oct 10 2008 01:27 GMT)
This will be the first of a series of 'teasers' on my new book Finding the Sweet Spot, available from most booksellers or online from the sites listed in the right sidebar. A complete set of reviews of the book (thank you, reviewers!) can be found on Beth Patterson's site here.I've spent most of my professional life helping entrepreneurs succeed. After I'd worked with over a hundred, I began to notice something special about a small number of them.
Play (Oct 08 2008 21:55 GMT)
Johan Huizinga, who wrote a book on the subject, defined play as follows: a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious’
Finding People to Live With and Make a Living With (Take Two) (Oct 07 2008 03:55 GMT)
My book Finding the Sweet Spot (see right sidebar for details) suggests a variety of approaches to finding people to partner with in Natural Enterprises. One of these is illustrated above. The idea is to approach a problem with an open mind and as much data as possible, and engage others to help solve it. Here's a brief walkthrough: Articulate Unmet Needs (That You Care About):
Saturday Links of the Week: October 4, 2008 (Oct 04 2008 21:02 GMT)
The always-brilliant Charles Barsotti in this week's New Yorker sums up the real problem behind the financial system collapseStill euphoric over the past week's retreat on Bowen Island BC, and the possibilities it has allowed me to imagine -- a whole world of informed people with the essential capacities, notably the capacities of collaboration, conversation, imagination and self-management, needed to thrive in the 21st century. More on this in coming days. Meanwhile, here's what made it though my filters this week:Extend Extend Extend Yourself: Communicatrix writes:
CCK08 Week Four: What 'Good' Is It? -- Putting Connectivism to Work (Oct 04 2008 03:53 GMT)
A remarkable synchronicity this week has me thinking about the Purpose of connectivism. I spent an extraordinary three days this past week with about thirty other facilitators from across North America at a retreat on Bowen Island BC, honing our craft. The work of these people is enabling meaningful conversations in the workplace and with customers and the public, directed to making work more effective and ultimately to making the world a better place.At the same time, at my own work I have been asked to identify the five most important, indispensable projects that my group is working on, in case the current recession and financial system meltdown require some austerity. Some of our projects are about connectivity and conversation, and all of them are about learning important new knowledge, ideas, insights and capacities.
An Art of Hosting Sketchbook (Oct 01 2008 15:57 GMT)
Saturday Links of the Week: September 27, 2008, and AFK Notice (Sep 28 2008 03:55 GMT)
Cartoon by Tab in the Calgary Sun, from the Cagle site. Thanks to Rob Paterson for the link.Project 10 to the 100th: Google is offering $10 million for the top ideas that help people help other people, in these categories:Community:
CCK08 Week Three: Eight Important Questions About Learning and Connection (Sep 27 2008 03:49 GMT)
Week 3 of the CCK08 Connectivism MOOC is principally about network theory. I've written a bit about this, notably about network analysis (Rob Cross) and network mapping (Valdis Krebs, who was this week's 'virtual guest lecturer').All week I've been reminded of how, especially once we reach age 50, we tend to rely more and more on our networks -- both human networks (communities) and knowledge networks (the places we store what we've learned). This is partly due to the fact that we have ever more knowledge to handle, and partly because as we age our short-term memory weakens. Someone once said, famously, when asked how he could command such an enormous store of knowledge, "I keep my knowledge in my networks".
Facilitation, Objectivity, Worldviews, Innovation and Coping with Complex Problems (Sep 26 2008 03:48 GMT)
I'm on my way from San Jose to Vancouver and thence to Bowen Island for a course on The Art of Hosting (a collection of event facilitation and problem-solving methodologies). Despite the fact that Open Space, one of those methodologies, makes enormous conceptual sense, and should work brilliantly as a means to help a large, diverse group of people address complex problems, I've been disappointed with the Open Space sessions I've participated in. They were full of optimism and possibility, but somehow the collective wisdom of these 'crowds' just never really emerged.It's tempting to blame this on the facilitators, but with a couple of exceptions the facilitation of these sessions was done brilliantly. It's equally tempting to blame it on the audience, saying they weren't the right people, or lacked some of the critical capacities needed by the collective group for breakthrough thinking, or fell victim to groupthink, or weren't engaged, or lacked energy.
KMW08 -- Greetings, Thanks, Request, and Animal Tales (Sep 25 2008 03:46 GMT)
Greetings to visitors to HtStW from KMWorld & Intranets 2008 in San Jose, where I presented yesterday on From Content to Context and From Collection to Connection, a discussion of how Knowledge Management is evolving with the astonishing help of Generation Millennium. I self-recorded the presentation, and may try to turn the Slideshare into my first Slidecast. The tag for the event is KMW08 and the event blog is here. The mood is upbeat, as many organizations seem to be discovering the power and low cost of open source social networking, and giving up on heavy, expensive, centralized, over-engineered content solutions like sharepoint.
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