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.
12
THINGS YOU CAN DO TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE
It's
been awhile since I updated my article on "What You Can Do (to
Save the World)". The revisions depicted in the chart above reflect my
recent disenchantment with idealism (which too often makes us
inconsolable, inflexible, inattentive and intolerant), my realization
that the world can't be saved, only made better than what it is, and my
recently-acquired preference for collective action over personal
self-change. On this final point, I'm beginning to believe that we
cannot
be, or become, what we are not, but that, particularly if we organize
with others, we can bring about significant change through collective,
effective, considered and focused action, even without changing
anyone's mind, values or beliefs. So here's a brief summary of the 12
things you can do to make a difference, to make the world a better
place:
Knowing
and Learning:
Understand What's
Happening: Before you can
engage
others and act purposefully and effectively you need to understand how
the world really works (not what they tell you in school or in the
media about how it works). The world is complex, and understanding and
embracing complexity is a challenge to our culture's predilection for
oversimplification and dichotomy.
Imagine What's Possible:
Next, you need to be
able to imagine a better world, one that is not addicted to growth and
consumption. If you can't imagine it, you will never be able to decide
how to achieve it.
Be Pragmatic and
Realistic:
There are many things
you can do, and many wonderful-sounding but unenforced, unenforceable
and/or ineffective regulations and actions, so you need to learn what
actions actually work. This takes a lot of time and energy, and to do
it you need to stop doing some other things you are doing that are
distracting you from learning these important truths.
Know Yourself:
Then, to assess what
you can do about all this, you need to know yourself, which means
giving yourself the time and space to discover who you really are, what
your true gifts, passions and purpose are, and therefore what you're
meant to do (see graphic above).
Build Personal Capacity:
And finally, once
you've learned all this, you need to discover and acquire the
additional capacities you need to be effective at bringing about change
in the world. This doesn't entail changing yourself to be what you're
not, but just learning some new skills and abilities that will equip
you to accomplish more with less effort.
Most of us never have the opportunity to do any of this, so we end up
doing ill-informed, half-hearted, non-time-consuming, and largely
ineffective things. We complain, we sign a few petitions, we feel
guilty, but none of that gets us anywhere. We say we're doing our best
given the other commitments on our time, resources and energies, but
are we? Until we have done these five knowing and learning steps, we
can't possibly know.
Teaching
and Sharing:
Converse and Tell Stories:
Once we have learned
these things, we can start to engage others. Conversation, discussion,
talking, explaining, showing -- these aren't 'doing' actions, but they
are essential. Until we engage others in meaningful dialogue, our
efforts are atomized, fragmented, isolated. The purpose of conversation
is not to persuade, but to inform. And people will only listen to you
if you are knowledgable, articulate, reasonable, fearless (not afraid
to bring up prickly, complex, messy, controversial subjects in any
social environment), authentic, enthusiastic (energy and passion are
contagious and without them we have limited credibility) and
persistent. As I have explained elsewhere (and others have explained
better than I can), stories are usually the most effective way to
convey information, ideas, and perspectives. They are subversive in
their power.
Engage Obstructionists:
There is little point
arguing with people who are not yet ready to listen to you (as Daniel
Quinn has explained). If you are talking with politicians or business
people, you will often find that the best way to engage them is to show
you care, but not get carried away by your emotions. In my experience,
these people appreciate and relate to discussions that present them
with new, objective information, framed in the context of
sustainability (in the broader sense of ability to continue to exist
without the need for constant effort to prop it up) and risk (what
could go wrong). Proffering positive ideas to make our whole society
more sustainable and to assess and address risks, will general garner
attention and careful consideration by most people in the political and
business arena, because this approach appeals to their self-interest
and areas of competency, responsibility and authority. Trying to appeal
to their moral sense is, in most cases, an unnecessarily more difficult
tack.
Doing:
Be an Activist or Pioneer:
Once the knowing and
talking is done, it's time for action. I recently wrote
about what activism entails and why it's important. Activism is
intentional action designed to bring about political, social, economic,
health care or educational reform. It generally entails confronting
people (usually people with power) with information, ideas, proposals,
challenges and/or demands. It is often a tactic when conversation and
information-sharing (step 7 above) has proved fruitless. It is an
expression of political power in the face of power, and hence almost
always requires organization and force of numbers, though in some cases
an individual or small group confrontation can actually galvanize
others and produce the organization and numbers needed to demonstrate
that the confrontation has popular support. Such individual or small
group activism is a form of pioneering -- showing people the way by
experimentation and example.
Create Responsible,
Sustainable Enterprises: Most
of us spend a
large part of our waking hours working, and one of the most effective
ways we can bring about change is in the decision about what work we
choose to do. Years of experience and work have convinced me that
rather than trying to make existing organizations more responsible or
sustainable, it is more effective to create new 'natural' enterprises
that allow us to do the work we are meant to do, and at the same time
to stop supporting, with our labour and our tax dollars, unsustainable
organizations and organizational practices.
Be a Model:
Ghandi famously said
that we should be the change we want to see in the world, to model that
behaviour. Good models for a better world are sufficient (they live
comfortably but not extravagantly or wastefully), loving, tolerant,
attentive (they listen more than they talk), responsible (no
complaining, just doing), and sustainable. These models also recognize
that having more than one child in this dreadfully overcrowded world is
an irresponsible, unsustainable act.
Create a Model Community:
Likewise, we need to
create collaborative communities that are models for others,
alternatives to the wasteful, ineffective, alienating, isolating
'neighbourhoods' of wary strangers living near each other solely
because of a mutual proximity to their place of work. The 'development'
industry treats our communities' land as an asset that has value only
when it is razed, overbuilt and then liquidated. We must find better
models of community, where people choose to live and work together and
exercise collective stewardship of their land on behalf of all life on
it and the future generations that will live there.
Be Good to Yourself:
Finally, it is
essentially that we be good to ourselves and those we love. We cannot
be effective if we allow ourselves to be consumed by guilt, or despair,
or grief, or neglect our health and well-being. An essential element of
making the world a better place is celebrating our achievements, our
efforts, and the astonishing joy of life itself. We have to pace
ourselves and look after ourselves, and each other, if we hope to
continue to make a difference.
So, you say, all well and good. But how do we actually get started
on these 12 steps? We're sold -- the current way we live is not
sustainable, and has horrific consequences for many people and other
creatures suffering because of it. But we're still not doing
anything, or, at least, not enough. There are all kinds of reasons for
this: We have no time. We have obligations to family that take
priority. We're already exhausted by the end of the work-day, and we
have to give ourselves some
time to relax and recover. We may know what to
do, in general terms, but we really have no idea how
to do it. We elected our government to do these things -- it's their
job, or at least it's their job to show leadership and tell us
specifically what we should do. Or we're waiting for a better
government, and focused on getting rid of this ineffective one.
Excuses, excuses. I'm not saying they aren't good
excuses. But how do we get past them? How do we just start?
As a terrible procrastinator myself, I have been giving this a lot of
thought, and I've discovered that I can get some real answers to this
'how do we start' question by asking some underlying, positive,
affirmational, excuse-challenging questions. I credit Patti Digh and
David Robinson, who are currently offering a course
on getting past the 'blocks' in our lives,
for some of the impetus behind these questions.
Here are the four questions I asked myself:
1. Learning Action Challenge:
What
one
additional capacity or skill,
more than any other, do you
think you need to acquire or learn, to equip yourself to make the world
a better place, and why?
What is the single best way for you
to acquire or learn (or
motivate yourself to learn) that additional capacity or skill?
What's
really holding you back from doing so? What can you do to get past
this block?
2. Personal Action Challenge:
What
one additional
action, more than any other, do you think you
can take, personally, to make
the world a better place, and why?
What's really holding you back? What can you do to get past this block?
3. Community Action Challenge:
What
one additional
action, more than any other, do you think you can take, in your
community, to make the
world a better place, and why?
What's really holding you back? What can you do to get past this block?
4. Workplace Action Challenge:
What
one additional
action, more than any other, do you think you can take, in your job or
enterprise, to make the
world a better place, and why?
What's really holding you back? What can you do to get past this block?
Here are my answers. I am embarrased by them, frightened by them,
ashamed of them, annoyed by them. But they are having an effect: I am
edging closer to the edge of the ledge of inaction on which I sit, no
longer satisfied pontificating about what I or others should
do. Yikes. This is pretty raw, almost too honest to admit:
1. Learning Action Challenge:
What
one
additional capacity or skill,
more than any other, do I
think I need to acquire or learn, to equip myself to make the world
a better place, and why?
Love
(compassion, empathy, genuine caring) for all-life-on-Earth, to the
point I can no longer bear the thought of the massive suffering that
goes on, every day, needlessly, unchallenged, so that I have to do
something.
What
is the single
best way for me to acquire
or learn (or
motivate myself to learn) that additional capacity or skill?
Witness
the suffering that goes on in
the world, in struggling nations, in hospitals and old age homes, in
factory farms, in barbaric workplaces, in the homes of abused children
and spouses, and in a thousand other places where, to conserve my
sanity, I have largely choosen not to go.
What's
really holding me back?
I'm
afraid to do this, not sure I
have the heart or stamina to deal with it.
What
can I do to get past this block?
I just have to go, do it,
face it, witness it, confront that unspeakable horror and grief. And of
course write about it. Into the buzzsaw.
2. Personal Action Challenge:
What
one additional
action, more than any other, do I think I
can take, personally, to make
the world a better place, and why?
Help the world imagine a
better way to live, by
writing about the world after the collapse of civilization late in this
century.
What's
really holding me back?
Fear of failure.
I've started writing this book so many times, and it's just not
anywhere good enough.
What
can I do to get past this block?
Write the damn book.
Just start. Decide on something I'm not going to do, and spend that
time, every day, writing, one page at a time.
3. Community Action Challenge:
What
one additional
action, more than any other, do I think I can take, in my
community, to make the
world a better place, and why?
Organize.
Anything I can do as an individual is multiplied when we can do it
collaboratively, drawing on our numbers, diverse skills and
self-support.
What's
really holding me back?
I haven't really found my
community yet, a community that is
informed and committed to take radical actions.
What
can I do to get past this block?
I have to get out and meet more
people and invite them to
commit to joining me in real
community. If I remain selfish, I'm no model for anything.
4. Workplace Action Challenge:
What
one additional
action, more than any other, do I think I can take, in my job or
enterprise, to make the
world a better place, and why?
Quit, and create my own
community-based cooperative,
a small, autonomous, sustainable, responsible, connected, resilient,
egalitarian enterprise that fills a real unmet need I care
about.
What's
really holding me back?
I'm
too lazy to make the jump,
and also somewhat committed to my current employer, who took a big
chance with me.
What
can I do to get past this block?
I'm seriously thinking about what
that enterprise will
be, and about
transitional arrangements at my workplace. So much for just retiring
and writing.
Whew. Deep breath. This is heavy stuff. I'm looking myself right in the
face
and recognizing that my excuses for inaction are pretty feeble. Do I
really want to make the world a better place? Unquestionably. Is there
any logical reason I can't and shouldn't take the 'What can I do to get
past
this block' steps, right now? Uh, no. OK, then. Put it in your
calendar, Dave. Make it happen. What's really scary is that I can see,
for each of these questions, the next thing
I can do that would make a difference to the world, and what's holding
me back from doing each of those
things, and the equally startling things I could and should do to get
past those
blocks. And so on.
OK, now it's your turn, dear reader. Time to face what's really holding
you back, and what you can do about these blocks.
Here's a blank form for you to fill in:
1. Learning Action Challenge:
What
one
additional capacity or skill,
more than any other, do you
think you need to acquire or learn, to equip yourself to make the world
a better place, and why?
What
is the single
best way for you to acquire
or learn (or
motivate yourself to learn) that additional capacity or skill?
What's
really holding you back?
What
can you do to get past this block?
2. Personal Action Challenge:
What
one additional
action, more than any other, do you think you
can take, personally, to make
the world a better place, and why?
What's
really holding you back?
What
can you do to get past this block?
3. Community Action Challenge:
What
one additional
action, more than any other, do you think you can take, in your
community, to make the
world a better place, and why?
What's
really holding you back?
What
can you do to get past this block?
4. Workplace Action Challenge:
What
one additional
action, more than any other, do you think you can take, in your job or
enterprise, to make the
world a better place, and why?
conception
of post-civilization all-weather wear by mary
mattingly
My
regular readers know that I don't expect we will be able to resolve the
combination of cascading crises -- led by climate change, the end of
oil, and the collapse of the unsustainable and debt-laden industrial
growth economy -- that will
face us in the coming decades. While I don't advocate doing nothing to
mitigate the damage we are doing now, just because it won't be enough,
I also think it would be useful, for our descendents who survive the
end of our civilization, to imagine how they might live, with much
smaller numbers and at a subsistence level, sustainably, responsibly,
comfortably and joyfully. I think the crash of our culture will be
ghastly, but I see no reason why life for those after the crash should
not be delightful.
So here is a dispatch from the future, a report from a member of one of
many diverse post-civilization communities, telling us how they measure
'success':
conception
of art after the collapse of civilization culture by afterculture
June 28, 2110:
A letter to my great-great-grandfather, who died 100 years ago today:
It's funny: By the measures
of humans from civilization culture, our
community would be described as migratory, but we think of it as just
the opposite. Yes we migrate around a territory that provides us with
all the food and resources we need, in a twenty-year cycle, but the
whole territory is our community. We share it with many other
creatures, some of which also migrate, but we do not go beyond it --
our community is defined by this territory, this land that we belong to
and are a part of. By contrast, civilization culture humans could never
sit still, they had to travel all over the world, to places not even
suited to human habitation, and then create artificial environments to
allow them to live in those hostile places. To us, they were the
migrants and we are the settled ones.
Our community's culture is very different from those of our
neighbouring communities, even though the natural environment is not
dissimilar. That's a mark, I think, of the fact that after
civilization's fall we self-selected into new communities, and as we
formed the differences between these communities were immediately
pronounced, because of our different interests, beliefs and strengths,
and as time has passed the isolation of our communities, which we have
negotiated deliberately to limit our vulnerability to the plagues that
wracked our species in the final years of civilization culture, has
entrenched and enhanced the differences between communities. While all
six of the communities in our tribal federation use sign language for
oral and visual communication, we are the only one of the six to use
English as our written language. The clothing, body decoration,
festivals, entertainments and art of these six communities are also
very different, and while we study the others, the divergence and
uniqueness of how we communicate, live and interact becomes ever larger
with the passage of time. We understand that this was also true among
pre-civilization and non-civilization indigenous cultures in the
millennia before the crash.
What is also interesting, in terms of cultural diversity, is how each
community here chooses to measure its 'success', or what might better
be called its 'fitness', its ability to adapt to changes in the
environment of which we are a part, and to co-evolve that environment
in ways that work for us and delight us. We began with a 'scorecard'
that was developed by an Internet philosopher (of all the things we
lost in the crash, the Internet is what I mourn most) almost a century
ago. We found this scorecard well-suited to us and we have not
changed it very much since.
The purpose of our community self-assessment is to set the agenda for
our community meetings. While we have learned to adapt and co-evolve
well as a community, and we take pride in the fact that
we assess
ourselves generally as very 'fit', there are always some areas where
our self-assessment is low enough for us to discuss and achieve
consensus on some options and possibilities for action. In accordance
with the wisdom of our aboriginal ancestors, those who were wiser than
the civilization culture leaders, we do not make decisions on what
individuals should or must do. Our meetings are focused on the areas
where we have assessed ourselves as not very fit, and at those meetings
we tell stories that suggest why that is the case. There is no group
decision coming out of the stories. The decision on what to do is left
to the individual members to make; it is their responsibility. We do
not tell people what to do or criticize them for what they choose to
do, or not do.
Our self-assessment has three sections: Individual Self-Sufficiency and
Well-Being, Community Self-Sufficiency and Well-Being, and Community
Sustainability. Here are the elements of each of the self-assessments,
as they have evolved to date:
Individuals'
Self-Sufficiency and Well-Being:
Attainment and learning
of valued personal capacities
-- is each individual in the community acquiring the capacities s/he
thinks are important?
Self-knowledge
-- does each individual understand what drives him/her?
Personal health and
comfort -- is each individual
physically and emotionally healthy and content?
Freedom from need,
stress, and anxiety
-- is each individual free from unmet needs, stresses (including those
caused by conflict, coercion and restriction), and physical and
emotional anxieties?
Freedom of choice
-- is each individual free and unconstrained in being able to think,
believe, do, and not do, whatever s/he chooses, provided that does not
cause unreasonable harm to others?
Realization of, and time
and space for,
personal gifts, passions, and purpose --
does each individual appreciate what s/he is uniquely good at doing,
enjoys doing, and what is needed in the community that s/he cares about
and the exercise of which gives his/her life meaning?
Connection with others
-- does each individual have deep and meaningful relationships with
others in the community?
Community's
Self-Sufficiency and Well-Being:
Freedom from reliance on
other communities for essential
products and services -- is
the community self-sufficient such that if other communities failed,
its well-being would not suffer?
Quality and sufficiency
of our food, clothing, recreation,
security and collective capacities
-- does the community live well and get what it needs, without
extravagance or waste?
Innovation and diversity
-- does the community collectively surface, evolve and institute new
ideas, and encourage and embrace diverse ideas and ways of being and
doing?
Egalitarianism and
generosity -- is the
community free from bias, discrimination, inequitable distribution of
resources and wealth, and are all members of the community naturally
generous and accorded equal consideration, respect and authority?
Peace
-- is the community at peace with and respectful of all life within its
territory, and its neighbours'?
Self-management
-- collectively is the community competent at running its affairs and
dealing with conflicts and challenges that may arise?
Leisure
-- does the work of the community allow generous time for pursuit of
artistic, philosophical, non-essential learning and other leisure
activities?
Community's
Sustainability:
Freedom from debt
-- does the community live within its means, never borrowing or taking
from the land or others what cannot be immediately repaid or, within
one migration cycle, replenished naturally?
Permaculture
-- do all gardens planted by the community consist solely of native or
otherwise non-invasive species, and do they reflect permaculture
principles of natural succession, variety and viability without the
need for artificial fertilization, poisons or irrigation?
Freedom from illness
-- do the community's practices help to prevent, quickly diagnose and
effectively treat physical and emotional illnesses?
Simplicity
-- does the community live lightly on the land, such that no other life
forms or future generations are adversely affected by its presence and
activities?
Zero growth
-- is the community's aggregate human population and use of resources
substantially unchanged from year to year?
Adaptability and balance
-- does the community collectively know how to cope, and practice
coping, with environmental changes and events, and work to stay in
balance with all other life that shares the land to which it belongs?
At
each of our meetings there is something to discuss, something that does
not fit well. Usually it is some unhappiness of an individual member,
which we address by listening, empathizing, acknowledging, and telling
stories that might be helpful. We generally do not proffer advice
unless it is specifically requested. Sometimes the issue is a dispute
or conflict between members of the community. We use the same approach,
encouraging each member to hear, acknowledge and appreciate the
position of the others. Usually that understanding is sufficient that
the conflicted members resolve the issue themselves. In rare situations
where there is no resolution, one or more members will elect to leave
the community. This is a time of sadness for us, but we respect and
honour the decision. Likewise, we will occasionally welcome to our
community someone who has elected to leave another community in our
tribal treaty area.
Perhaps because of our strong focus on learning and practicing
capacities, we have been much more successful at this than many other
communities. These less competent communities seem to have more
conflict, more anger, more dysfunction than ours, and this causes us
great concern. Our study of civilization culture suggests it was this
lack of individual capacity, and the related lack of community cohesion
and competency, that led to the massive centralization of authority,
the dysfunctional hierarchies of large, rigid and unsustainable
systems, and the atomization of community.
Without the strength of community, it is hard for us to even imagine
how civilization culture lasted as long as it did.
BLOG Links (and Best
Tweets) of the Week: June 27, 2009
An
example of snow
sculpture and sand
sculpture (from a competition on
PEI) by Delayne Corbett. Here are more
of the PEI entries (thanks to Tree
for the link). What motivates an artist to create something that will
last for a shorter time than the time it took to create it?
The
Psychology of Consumption:
From The Oil Drum, this study by Nate Hagens is a must-read. It
examines the theory of natural selection and how humans
have evolved to be addicted to
certain behaviours that enhance survival. Our economy has likewise
evolved to exploit these addictions. The problem is that all these
addictions are driving us to short-term behaviours that are totally at
odds with our long-term sustainability. In other words, we want to
believe that climate change and the end of oil will not happen, to the
extent that we embrace denial (it won't happen) and technophilia (we'll
fix it before it happens), and do essentially nothing to address these
increasingly likely (but not certain) outcomes. So "we all have to
start to change now" is an impossible, hopeless admonition: It is not
ever in our nature to "all start to change now".
Gladwell
on Why Awareness Doesn't Change Behaviour:
In the first 17 minutes of a TVO program taped last November, Malcolm
Gladwell uses examples like US seat belt laws (when government raised
awareness of dangers of not using seat belts, behaviour didn't change,
but when they made them mandatory for children, adult use rose from 15%
to 75%) to argue that we
need to make knowing subservient to doing.
We have done the 'awareness' thing on climate change and peak oil, he
says, but behaviour change has been negligible. Yet we forgave Al Gore
for doing nothing as US VP for eight years but gave him a Nobel and
film awards for raising awareness after he'd lost the power to do
anything.
Roger
Ebert on Food
Inc:
The famous film critic, suffering from diseases
caused by our dangerous food production system,
lashes out at that system in a review of a new documentary about it,
which is based on Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Thanks to Tree
for the link.
Part
of a collection of very cute animal photos going around. More here.
Thanks to Tiffany for the link.
It's
not easy being Canadian. You get ignored by most of the world, and
never taken seriously (Ambrose Bierce's definition of humanity: "An
animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to
overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is
extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however,
multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole
habitable earth, and Canada.") You are expected to understand both
Americans and Europeans, and sometimes help mediate between them.
Outside your own country, you are generally taken to be an American,
which is rarely good. There are enormously high expectations of you,
based on the country's natural wealth, education and proximity to world
markets. Everything is miles (kilometres) from everything else, which
is tough when transportation gets expensive, or if you don't like
driving in snow. The weather is, in most places, brutal -- as Bierce
implies, not really meant for human habitation at all.
And we have royally screwed up. Our treatment of aboriginal peoples --
whose land we stole, and who we slaughtered without a thought -- has
always been and continues to be abominable. In the Alberta bitumen
sludge mines ("tar sands") we have created the greatest single
ecological disaster in the history of civilization, and in the face of
all the evidence about climate change, this disaster grows worse daily.
Our treatment of animals, wild and domesticated, is appalling. We have
squandered our natural resources -- fish and forests especially -- and
now they are mostly gone forever. We have sold most of our land,
resource ownership, and industry to foreigners who don't give a damn
about this country, and who don't live here, and we sold it for an
absurdly
low price. Most of Canada's large private employers are
foreign-owned, which means that a large proportion of us work for
foreigners, selling our labour, our resources and our intellectual
capital, and getting very little in return. We have emulated, at one
time or another, all the worst rules, behaviours and beliefs of both
Americans and Europeans, and few of their best. We have a federal
government run by an arrogant ideological extremist supported by only
30% of us, yet we are not outraged when he asserts that his government,
and not the 70% supported by the opposition, represents the Canadian
people.
Yet this country could be great, and its people could be models for the
rest of the world at a time when sustainable, responsible,
humble models are so desperately needed.
Author (and spouse of the former governer-general) John Ralston Saul
explained in a TVO
podcast last month why our
legacy offers us
some clues of how we could be great. Highlights:
[Citing First Nations
playwright Tomson Highway] "Language is given form by mythology."
Highway believes English is the language of the head, French the
language of the heart, and indigenous languages are those of the body,
the instinct and the senses. Today 45 of 53 indigenous languages spoken
in Canada are disappearing, taking with them the original, and in
Saul's view the authentic mythology of this country. In the absence of
an authentic mythology and native language we are not a nation, and we
cannot address the unique problems and imaginative possibilities this
land presents.
We are, in fact, one
of the few affluent countries in the world that are not monolithic,
rational nation-states. By default, we are therefore a civilization of
minorities (he did not use the word 'tribes' but that's what came to my
mind as I listened). That is not a bad thing, but it requires us to
stop following the US/European models and create our own. To create
that model, we need to stop wasting the time of the leaders of Canada's
1.2 million aboriginal people in land claim disputes and allow them to
guide us. The shared collective
unconscious of our land is
buried in their languages and we need them to interpret it for us.
Despite ruthless and
persistent efforts to get Canadians to embrace Anglo-American myths and
values, many of the indigenous values remain strong in Canada, for
pragmatic and physical reasons. They comprise the unconscious Canadian
mythology, which is very different from that of the US and UK (and
often really annoys Americans and British people who do not understand
or appreciate its subtleties). Elements include:
an appreciation and
respect for complexity and ambiguity
a patience to
discuss, debate and negotiate as often and as long as it takes
a willingness to
allow truth and knowledge and consensus to emerge
an aversion to
cultural coercion and monoculture (the melting pot)
recognition of the
importance of striking the balance between individual and collective
rights and interests
a preference for
adaptation over imposing will, as a strategy for dealing with change
a preference for
egalitarian, flat structures over hierarchy and rank
What would a nation that accepted this as its authentic mythology be
like?
A few years ago I wrote about Hugh Brody's book, The Other Side of Eden,
an anthropological study of indigenous peoples, and it contained some
clues. If our nation adopted an authentic indigenous mythology, and
accepted this as our innate culture, in addition to entrenching the
seven elements Saul notes above, we would:
learn by doing, by
experimenting, by practice, not by being told what to do by bosses,
experts, 'leaders' or parents
abhor dishonesty and
revere candid and complete sharing of knowledge
adapt to the land and
physical reality of living here, rather than changing it
appreciate that we
belong to the land, not the other way around, and conserve it and
steward it for future generations and all-life-on-Earth
learn and adopt useful
terms from all native languages
embrace an oral
culture, including learning when to speak, when and how to listen
become master
story-tellers
learn the arts of
analogy and inductive reasoning
respect all forms of
life as sacred
appreciate the value
of facilitation, consensus and conflict resolution
leave it up to
individuals to act responsibly after a discussion (rather than setting
out an explicit 'who will do what by when' follow-up action list) --
this would revolutionize how meetings occur
listen to experts'
stories, but discourage them from proffering unsolicited instruction,
advice or opinions -- let the story convey the wisdom
trust our instincts
and our subconscious to guide us as much as our intellects
be generous with our
possessions, to encourage reciprocality and engender trust
respect women as full
equals
acknowledge and
respect uncertainty, unpredictability, qualification, nuance and
imprecision, and resist oversimplification, false certainty and false
dichotomy
encourage and enable
the development of self-esteem, self-confidence and self-sufficiency
stress the importance
of strong, autonomous communities
These 25 qualities are already somewhat recognizable in the national character of
Canadians. It's almost as if we can't help ourselves, as if this is
just part of the way we are. For nearly two centuries we have
sublimated and denied these characteristics, but they are still part of
us, instinctive, coded somehow in our DNA. While a minority of my
readers are Canadian, I find that when I talk about these qualities
they seem to resonate much more strongly with Canadian readers than
most others.
I am no longer idealistic enough to advocate the systematic breaking up
of Canada into small self-selected communities; in a globalized world
that's no longer feasible. But there are ways in which this national
character, this authentic mythology of our nation might be
institutionalized:
We could teach it in
schools, as an integral part of Canadian history: This is who we are and
what makes us different from people of other nations.
We could celebrate it
during Canada Day, since right now what we celebrate on that day is
dubious (the confederation of our country according to Anglo-American
principles, ignoring the legitimacy and primacy of the First Nations
who already lived here)
We could legitimize
Canada's indigenous languages and work to protect and extend them
We could abolish the
useless Canadian Senate and replace it with a self-selected council of
aboriginal leaders whose views on all matters of public policy and
cultural development would be actively sought and listened to
We could strive in all
our activities to become and be seen as the world's most accomplished
and articulate story-tellers
We could teach and
encourage entrepreneurial business skills and formation, to make our
society and economy more resilient and less dependent
We could devolve power
and authority as much as practical, not to massive provincial, regional
and city governments, but to local self-governing communities, and give
these communities as much autonomy as they can reasonably handle
Instead of dysfunctionally trying to make our country in the image of
others, we could just allow our nation to evolve to be what it is
intended to be. And we could stop pretending to be what we are not, and
instead become models for the rest of the world: masters of complexity,
subtlety, adaptation, story and attentiveness to what we know, without
the need for laws, governments or rhetoric, to be right.
BLOG Google Wave: The
Wikification of Conversation
At
a meeting of Canadian IT leaders today, I was charged with explaining
Google
Wave to them. The objective was
for them to appreciate how GWave
will change the way people in business communicate.
I've viewed the videos and some online
explanations of the product,
which is due for public release in the fall. But none of these really
gives the end-user a sense of what GWave is, or does. So I decided to
tell a story instead. Here's the story I told them:
One
of our tasks is to provide guidance on how the transition of Canadian
companies to IFRS (the new global accounting standards) will affect IT
departments, and specifically how financial and reporting systems will
have to change to accommodate these new standards. We've prepared an
online training program (a webcast), a recorded interview with some IT
experts who have implemented IFRS in Europe (a podcast), and an article
in our association magazine. These three resources have been posted to
our
website, but we're struggling to get the intended IT audience to visit
the site, because they're not aware of it. Marketing is, alas, not our
strong
suit.
Suppose we had done all of this in 2010 instead of 2009. In 2010 we
will have access to Google Wave, a new tool that integrates the
functionality of e-mail, IM, wikis, blogs, Twitter, and other social
networking tools. Here's what we would do instead of our 'IFRS for IT'
web page, and what might happen as a result:
We set up a 'wave' (a
container for a conversation) entitled 'IFRS for IT'.
We post a text summary
of the webcast, podcast and article to the wave. We embed the webcast,
podcast and article (not just links to them) below the text summaries.
One of the audience
members of the webcast and podcast, who has put these two recordings
through a voice recognition software tool, posts a text transcription
of them underneath the embedded casts. The built-in Google Wave
semantic spell-checker auto-corrects spelling and homonym ("there" vs.
"their") errors.
We use the built-in
Google Wave translation tool to simultaneously post a French language
translation of the transcriptions.
The twelve of us (the
'core group') involved in the project each independently "subscribe"
people and groups we think might be interested to the wave. They
receive the entire 'conversation' to date (the content and messages in
the above steps). They can, if they wish, 'rewind' it and see each step
as it was added in turn.
Several of the
invitees post IMs right in the text of the articles and transcriptions
-- comments, clarifications, suggestions, and questions. The entire
wave is a wiki -- people have full 'author' privileges to make changes
(which are ascribed to them, and which can be reversed or amended,
wikipedia-style, by a member of the core group if necessary).
Other invitees, and
core group members, join in the conversation, adding replies to the
questions and to the suggestions. A whole new section of the article,
dealing with specific IFRS IT issues for the banking industry, is
contributed by one invitee, who invites other bank IT executives to
contribute to this 'wavelet'.
One banker embeds a
YouTube video in the wavelet, a transcription for it is added, and
several discussions about it ensue.
One invitee solicits
'best practices' in transitioning IT departments to IFRS, and posts a
'form' (essentially a database) for replies, using the built-in Google
Wave form generator. Within days, fifty practices have been posted to
the database. Some people begin and reply to conversations about some
of the specific practices in the database.
Someone starts a
Twitter tag called #IFRSIT and, using the Twave widget of Google Wave,
embeds a real-time feed of tweets containing this tag into the wave.
One of the bankers
wants a conference call on IFRS IT implications for that industry. He
posts a form soliciting participants for the call. Several people
enrol, the call is scheduled and held, and a recording and
transcription of it are immediately posted to the banking industry
wavelet.
Some remarkable things have happened here. There is no marketing
involved. People invite people who invite others, and all are
immediately included and engaged in the conversation. They can
subscribe to the whole wave or just wavelets. They can have sidebar
conversations, with full discretion over whether they are public or
private. There is a complete, organized transcription of the entire
'conversation'. The conversation is collectively managed and
collectively edited and formatted to suit the needs of the
self-selecting participants, and it's easy to follow the threads.
Updates and notifications occur in real time, and several people can be
changing any part of the wave at the same time. With Google
Voice (also
new from Google), voice conversations can be recorded and transcribed
and fed into the wave as well.
Inventing the story above (based on the features described in the
Google Wave publicity materials) led me to an Aha! moment:
Google Wave is the
wikification of conversation
You read it here first. I predict this will be the tagline of this new
tool, and that GWave will render e-mail largely obsolete. And why would
you send an IM or a tweet when it's just as easy to start a
wave, and capture and archive the entire multimedia 'conversation', and
when waves can be linked together (a tsunami?)
Here's another story, this one about (perhaps) the future of this blog:
It's May 2010, and
I've just agreed to do a conference presentation on Transitioning to a
Steady-State Economy and what it means for producers and
consumers.
I go for a walk in the
forest, with my iPhone and sketch pad in hand. I take some video of the
forest, with the voice track of my preliminary thoughts on both the
subject of my presentation (what I will say) and the format (I want to
make it interactive, conversational). I stop to rest, and sketch out
some graphics I'd like to show, and take a camera shot of them. I also
retrieve some useful graphics and links from the Web.
I set up a Wave
entitled 'Mindful Wandering - Thoughts on a Seminar on the Steady-State
Economy'. It contains the video of the forest (just because it's
beautiful), a GWave-produced, auto-corrected transcription of my spoken
thoughts, my sketches, and the graphics and links I've retrieved from
the Web. I post the Wave to my blog (this is how I do all my blogging
these days).
My readers edit,
comment on, provide suggestions to, add to, and ask questions about,
the transcription of my conference outline, key messages, and graphics.
This is interactive -- I'm online the whole time, replying immediately
by text or recorded voice, and all the discussions get added to the
Wave. Someone contributes a video by Herman Daly, and someone else
attaches extensive, highlighted extracts from one of Richard
Douthwaite's online e-books.
I casually mention I'd
love to be able to talk with these two ecological economists. Someone
who knows Herman Daly arranges an introduction and time for a phone
conversation. I come up with and post the questions I'd like to ask
him. Readers suggest additional questions and refinements. I edit them
into a final question list. We have the conversation, and it's recorded
and transcribed, and posted to the Wave.
Now I'm ready to
finalize the presentation content. I create a mindmap of the
presentation, and link it to various parts of the Wave. Then I
reorganize and clean up the Wave to mirror the mindmap. All of the
changes in the above steps show up immediately on my blog, since by now
blog 'posts' have been replaced by blog 'waves'.
I 'perform' (using my
webcam) my presentation, and produce a simultaneous transcription of my
talk. I post it, in pieces, to the Wave, so that it's sync'd to the
graphics. Now anyone who can't attend the presentation can see/hear it
all, and those who prefer the text over the spoken version can opt for
that instead, or in addition.
I muse with my readers
about the format for the presentation. Should participants be expected
to watch/read the Wave version of the presentation in its entirety
before the conference, so that we can spend the whole session just
talking and answering questions? Should I just 'play' the presentation,
in sections, on the big conference screen, and then entertain questions
and conversations during the breaks between sections? Should I
're-enact' the presentation, live, at the conference, a kind of
lip-sync'd version so people get to look at me and not just the
screen?
There's lots of
discussion, but the conclusion is that, since it's a live conference
and since the audience can't be expected to view the Wave in advance,
I'll have to 're-enact' what's already on the Wave. I feel like Vanilla
Ice but that's what I do, and thanks to all the input from my readers,
it's a big hit. The live conference session is recorded, but
the only part of the live session that actually makes it into the Wave
is a transcript of the Q&A.
We all wonder how long
it will be before such conference sessions are replaced entirely by
'live Waves', where 'pre-recorded' wavelets are posted in real time on
a 'conference Wave Site', with real-time questions submitted by the
virtual 'attendees' queued and answered in real time at designated
points in the 'presentation' (or answered after the session if there
are more questions than can be answered in the time allotted). We
conclude that, precluding $200 a barrel oil, this will not happen soon,
because the real value of these conferences, as has always been the
case, is the networking that occurs in the corridors between and around
the actual presentations.
If you're sufficiently familiar with Google Wave, I'd love your
thoughts on how fanciful the above story is -- it sounds as if GWave
should be able to deliver all this functionality, but perhaps my
expectations are too high.
On the way home from the meeting I listened to a great David Weinbergerpodcast
from TVO, dating back to
February. It just reinforced my sense that GWave, by adding context to
conversations, will revolutionize the way we communicate. Highlights
from David's presentation:
We worry too much
about the 'echo chamber' danger of the Internet. There is no evidence
that we ever sought out people with conflicting views before the
Internet came along, nor that we change our minds once we've made them
up. Conversation is essential to how we self-identify.
Machines and digital
computers may be useful metaphors for how our DNA and brains work, but
they are not how our DNA and brains work.
The Internet has
altered long-held views that knowledge is orderly, order-able, the same
as 'content', more than mere 'opinion' or 'belief', or that any bit of
knowledge fits in one best 'place' (under a specific 'topic' in a
taxonomy or in a specific location). "Philosophy is not a topic".
It's easier and
preferable to filter stuff on the way out (user discretion) than on the
way in (provider discretion).
"Expertise doesn't
scale." Mailing lists (the wisdom and conversation of a group) are
inherently smarter than experts.
Broadcasting, politics
and advertising all oversimplify (dumb down) complex subjects to
"maximize information ROI". Conversations and blogs add back the
complexity, and in so doing add context and meaning.
Our modern perception
that we (can) live inside our heads is "psychotic metaphysics".
"Knowledge is never
done....We never get anything right, and then we die....[so]
transparency is the new objectivity."
Knowledge by itself,
without context, is worthless. Its value is as a means to understanding.
MY GRAVITATIONAL COMMUNITY People
who have inspired or informed me frequently over the past few months.
For my full blogroll/online reference library, see
here. [* indicates
people I connect with in real time, f2f, via IM, Skype or SL chat.]
The thoughts expressed herein are strictly those of the blogger.
I'm listening to:
WHAT
THE BLOGOSPHERE WANTS MORE OF
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want to
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