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 30 Dec 2004
Worldchanging.org's "Beyond Relief" article is extremely good stuff.
I've offered my two cents by giving a few links about solaroof, oneVillage, solarcooking, simputer, and other things.
This is overwhelming. It's difficult to get past the shock (even denial) phase.
The people at worldchanging.org are doing a formidable job!
I think it's best to:
- jot down five things I could do today.
- do the two that take the shortest time.
More >
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25 Dec 2004
Krystle of sustainableways.com replied to an idea of mine which in turn had been sparked off by her latest (monthly) newsletter ... which sort of compells me to develop it further.
In her analysis, if we want to change things in the environmentalist direction, we might take the integrationist approach (changing the system from within, primarily through political means) [...], the separationist approach (do our own thing. [...] start taking care of ourselves and stop waiting for them to come around.), and the transformationist approach (What if instead of doing the above, environmentalists focused instead on [gasp] getting rich?)
She does a good job of explaining the three aproaches, what she likes about each, and what she sees as not working too well.
It's quite clear that each bad point of each approach can be used as a starting point to improve it - right? Yeah, doing that means work but it may be useful, so let's try it ...
The "transformationist" approach may be a bit slow, most of us will not make it, and the system may change us before we can get to do anything useful. So we might focus on existing rich people and try to help them change their minds a bit. We may even have to marry them!
So what Krystle suggests is we could make a movie with that plot: an environmental good-looking person who believes that's a way to change things and ... develop the plot here. Any takers? Credit her for the idea, please! And make the movie real FAST! :-)
So let's see if it could be done ... There's this Daniel Quinn story about the effect of changing ONE mind. I don't know about Ray Anderson's marital status, but apparently he didn't have to marry Daniel Quinn at all: it took only a couple of books (one of them by DQ) to shift into doing things quite differently.
Notice I write "shift into". It's not a complete change of mind, I guess. There has to be some level of predisposition. Then that person "shifts gear" and all of a sudden starts moving really fast in some hopefully better direction.
Now, how do we "measure" that predisposition? We should focus on someone we know, or someone who is only a few "degrees of separation" away from us. We would then learn what their motivation is, really listen to what they don't say, and suggest better ways.
Mind you, it's not necessary that we approach VERY rich people. It may be our local shoe-shop owner. If many of us do it, tell each other, and learn from the action ... who knows?
Michael Moore would probably say "adopt a Republican". Where I live labels are different and I don't really know about politics or it's more like I don't believe it would take us extremely far, but, hey, let's "adopt an enterpreuner". Any links of someone who is close to this idea? More >
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27 Nov 2004
Here it is! Now, I wonder if there's a translation of the lyrics ... It looks like the words go with the whole idea.
... "to be able to leave behind a whole dictionary of 'compasses' for you" ...
... "more than six million virtual samba schools" ...
The "countercover" is a JPG file with things like "how do we manage abundance"? More >
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23 Nov 2004
Krystle writes a monthly newsletter. It's a good format for reflection: not too frequent and keeps me waiting for it.
The current issue has to do with the sources of energy. My summary: It looks like oil is doomed and alternative sources are not enough and corporations are not interested in creating a varied diet - they'd rather keep the "one size fits all".
I'm not sure if my summary is correct. Or rather, I'm quite sure it is not correct. :-)
But I'm deeply interested in travelling "beyond civilization" (as Daniel Quinn of Ishmael fame puts it). That place beyond civilization would need to be something like this:
- low energy
- varied
- fun
I guess I'll have to dig deeper in this! More >
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21 Nov 2004
Edward Cherlin describes himself as a "simputer evangelist".
We can get computers and communications into 2 million villages and a number of other places, such as refugee camps, and use them to create sustainable economic growth. It will take years to get even one computer into each community that needs it, years more to put in lots of computers everywhere, and decades to go through the development process. So of course we need to start today.
Here's the plan.
He writes about the low requirements of energy for the simputer - not taking building it into account!
Sounds nice, and also links to Erradicating poverty through profit. He says something to the effect of "when corporations see the market, they'll come in a rush".
All of this sounds to me, increasingly, like "the firefox way". I.e.: there's a need, an alternative product is grown, an escape-path is offered ... and taken!
Usually people only see the "taken!" part.
A few are at the "an alternative product is grown" part.
We bloggers are at the "we told you first" and at the "you should know each other" part. Enzymes, anyone?
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11 Nov 2004
I translated it.
We do need ways to have cooperative translation. Maybe wikis with purple numbers (for paragraphs) so that people can claim ownership of just one paragraph and translate that while others work in parallel - and perhaps a slow pseudo-irc channel so we can ask for help or solve coherence issues.
Ideally, the system should be independent of the webpage we're translating - of course, that webpage can just be copied to the "original" window in the translation wiki. The result (the translation itself) would be ready to paste in whatever place it will finally go.
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9 Nov 2004
Peggy Holman tells the (recent) story in OSLIST.
I find it simply amazing, truly inspiring, even lots-of-fun.
Just imagine you could do it in your backyard ... maybe even more than once ... More >
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