How to Save the World

Four World-Changing Questions

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:51:31 GMT

BLOG World-Changing Questions

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?
What's really holding you back?
What can you do to get past this block?

Tell me how this works for you. Go. Just start.

Category: Activism: What You Can Do

2110: A Dispatch From the Future

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:57:10 GMT

BLOG 2110: A Dispatch From the Future

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.

Category: Creating a Community-Based Society

Links (and Best Tweets) of the Week: June 27, 2009

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:53:55 GMT

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".

The Downside of Hubbert's Peak: Also from the Oil Drum, David Murphy argues that the back end of the oil peak curve will be more like the blade of a shark's fin, because of the ever-increasing input energy cost that will be needed from now on to extract each barrel of oil.

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.

Conformity as the Enemy of Resilience: A new study of civilizations suggests that cultural homogeneity breeds conformity which in turn reduces innovation and resilience of those civilizations, in the face of change or limits to growth. Thanks to David P for the link.

Ending Mountaintop Coal Mining: A plea from NASA climate scientist (and now arrested protestor) Jim Hansen to end a devastating process. Thanks to Graham Clark (who also points us to a new online carbon counter) for the link. If you're a subscriber, the June 29 New Yorker has a great profile of Hansen by Elizabeth Kolbert (summary here).

Can Stories Change the World?: Dave Eggars argues that teaching the poor and disenfranchised how to become good story-tellers, and then providing time and space for their stories, is essential to their emancipation. Thanks to Jerry Michalski for the link.

Canada's Environmental Backwardness: The right-wing Harper minority government is exempting 14,000 projects from environmental assessments, another gift to their funders in Big Oil and Big Construction. This is a classic Bush technique: don't bother changing the law to favour polluter friends, just don't let anyone enforce it. Meanwhile, environmentalists are pleading to Hilary Clinton not to permit Canada's incredibly dirty tar sands oil into their country.

A Peer-to-Peer Virtual Support Network for Women: An intriguing application of the Gift Economy that draws on the mutual trust of women and reciprocality of needs to ensure fairness. Started by my friend Indigo.

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.

Just for Fun: A hilarious list of 10 reasons not to buy a firefly cell-phone for your 4-year-old. Thanks to Dermot Casey for the link.

Thought for the Week: From Paul Hawken (thanks to Samuel Richard for the link): "We are the only species on the planet without full employment."

What Canada Could Be

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:55:44 GMT

BLOG What Canada Could Be

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.

Category: Our Culture

Google Wave: The Wikification of Conversation

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:21:16 GMT

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 Weinberger podcast 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.

Category: Communication Technology