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Obligatory "Look, I actually did stuff today" post

April — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 02:55:01 +0000

Look! I actually did stuff today!

Crazy scheduling shenanigans went down over my Thanksgiving break. So I spent the first three days of break mostly sleeping and the first three hours of today frantically meeting people. Somewhere in there was also rehearsing with Maddie (and meeting yet more Halpert children) in preparation for a recording sesh today in Recital Hall! What! Sweet!

Also, yeah I said “sesh,” IT MEANS I’M AWESOME BECAUSE I USE HIP MONOSYLLABIC SLANG.

Anyway, consider this a blanket shout-out to all the fantastic Ithacans I intentionally or serendipitously encountered today. Blanket shout-outs are kind of lame. But blankets are warm and fuzzy and wonderful, so I figure that makes up for it.

Speaking of wonderful, the Commons. Is wonderful. The Autumn Leaves cafe has changed like nobody’s business, which should not be allowed without my consent because I am their Number One Fan. At least CTB is basically the same. The public library has a flat screen TV, which apparently is more important than buying more books, or something. There are lots of new hand sanitizer dispensers in the Whalen Center. Gun Hill still kicks Mission Hill’s ass several times over. There is still no snow on the ground and it’s after Thanksgiving, which is weird beyond belief. Jabberwocky still reeks of pot. Same old, same old.

ETA at Williams: sometime tomorrow afternoon-ish. That’s about as specific as I can be.

"Der Kampf um die Commons" im Freitag

Silke Helfrich — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:16:02 +0000

Kämpferischer Artikel von Stefan Vogel zur globalisierungskritischen Bewegung und den Commons. “Der Kampf um die Commons”, gestern im FREITAG.

Informativ und optimistisch, ohne Anflüge von Euphorie. Leider keine Bezüge zur Gemeingüterdiskussion in Deutschland und etwas “privatisierungsfixiert”. Ich hatte gerade am Donnerstag in München so eine Diskussion, in der es schließlich statt um die Commons, um das tausendfach wiederholte Für und Wider der Privatisierung ging. Natürlich ist das nach wie vor ein wichtiges Thema.

Aber Privatisierung ist eben nur eine Durchsetzungstrategie der Einhegung der Commons, wenngleich eine machtvolle. Ich halte es für mindestens ebenso wichtig, genau zu schauen, wie nationale und internationale Forschungspolitik betrieben und welche Stellschrauben zur Einhegung der Gemeingüter da bewegt werden. Zudem sollten wir unsere Energie darauf richten zu beschreiben, welches Potential in den Commons steckt.

Hier Auszüge aus dem Freitag und Neues vom Weltsozialforum. Hervorhebungen von mir:

“Unser aller Selbstbetrug, so Saramago…, bestehe darin, diese Gefährdung der Demokratie nicht sehen zu wollen. … Allzu oft versandet der Wunsch nach Mitsprache… in institutionellen Routinen oder prallt an die Mauern des Privateigentums. Und jede weitere Privatisierung raubt der Allgemeinheit eine Möglichkeit für Einspruch oder Gestaltung. …

Der gemeinsame Nenner der Globalisierungskritiker, schreibt die kanadische Aktivistin und Autorin Naomi Klein, liegt demgegenüber im Versuch, die „Commons“ zurück zu erobern. … Der Begriff erfreut sich insbesondere in der englischsprachigen Welt einiger Beliebtheit. … auch die diesjährige Wirtschaftsnobelpreisträgerin Elinor Ostrom ist mit einer entsprechenden Arbeit bekannt geworden. … Kurz gesagt, zeigen ihre Feldstudien: Weder Privatisierung, noch staatliche Lenkung erweisen sich als Königsweg. Oft verspricht die selbst organisierte Bewirtschaftung der Gemeingüter das beste Resultat. …

Bei diesem Gemeinsamen, argumentiert der Philosoph Slavoy Žižek in der New Left Review, handelt es sich um die „geteilte Substanz unseres sozialen Seins“.

Selbstredend wird auf das Weltsozialforum Bezug genommen, den Ort, an dem sich die Vitalität der globalen globalisierungskritischen Bewegung misst. Ende Januar 2010 findet nun nach 10 Jahren in Porto Alegre ein internationales Seminar zu der Frage statt: Weltsozialforum – Was war? Was wird? Wie weiter? Herausforderungen und Vorschläge der globalisierungskritischen Bewegung.

Eines der vier Schwerpunktthemen: die Commons. Ich freue mich sehr, das Thema dort im Plenum vorstellen zu dürfen. Selten hat man Gelegenheit,in solch’ illustrer Begleitung zu sprechen. Von Samir Amin bis Immanuel Wallerstein - alle da. Werde die Commons in ihrer Vielfalt präsentieren und sagen, warum ich glaube, dass die Commons die entscheidende strategische Brücke zwischen vielen sozialen Bewegungen, vielen ideengeschichtlichen Ansätzen und wichtigen politischen wie ökonomischen Akteuren bilden.

Recht hat Vogel, wenn er sagt:

“Eine Bewegung, die eine Vielfalt individueller wie sozialer Bedürfnisse respektieren will, kann folglich keine Pauschallösungen präsentieren, wenn es um die Commons geht. Genau das wirft sie dem Neoliberalismus schließlich vor…

Einig sind sich die Globalisierungskritiker im Anspruch, über das Gemeinsame auch gemeinsam zu entscheiden. Die Schritte dorthin können unterschiedlich sein….”

Sie müssen unterschiedlich sein. So unterschiedlich wie die Ressourcen, wie die communities, wie das institutionelle Umfeld und die Bedingungen unter denen Menschen miteinander kooperieren.

Hier noch zum Aufruf des Weltsozialforums zur Verteidigung der Gemeingüter, den wir auch ins Deutsche übersetzt haben. Unterzeichnung willkommen!

(vía)

Interview with Open University of Nigeria Vice Chancellor

openedblogger — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:08:34 +0000

Guardian Newspapers has posted an interview with Prof. Olugbemiro Jegede, Vice Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). From the post:

The social and economic dimensions of providing education for all, within the context of prevailing national circumstances of dwindling financial and other resources in the face of development needs, are heavy. The ever-continuing growth in Nigeria’s population, the attendant escalating demand for education at all levels, the difficulty of resourcing education through the traditional means of face-to-face classroom bound mode, and the compelling need to provide education for all irrespective of environmental, social or cultural circumstances, have meant that the country must, of necessity, find the appropriate and cost effective means to respond adequately to the huge unmet demand for education.

Der Kampf um die Commons

kosmopolitix — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:40:00 +0000

Eine neue Internationale haben die Globalisierungskritiker nicht gegründet, aber der Kultur der Linken demokratische Impulse gegeben

Die Demokratie ist bedroht, aber niemand will es wahrhaben, bemerkte der portugiesische Romancier José Saramago vor einigen Jahren bitter. Wir würden von der Demokratie sprechen „wie von etwas, was existiert und funktioniert“, als ob wir einer unausgesprochenen Konvention genügen wollten. Dabei sei uns „nichts von ihr geblieben als ein Arsenal ritualisierter Prozeduren, harmlose Wortgefechte und Gesten wie in einer Art weltlichem Gottesdienst“.

Unsere demokratischen Möglichkeiten beginnen und enden an der Wahlurne. In ökonomischen Fragen besitzen wir kein Mitspracherecht, und unsere gewählten Regierungen verhalten sich zunehmend, als seien sie „Politkommissare“ der Wirtschaft. Unser aller Selbstbetrug, so Saramago weiter, bestehe darin, diese Gefährdung der Demokratie nicht sehen zu wollen.

Nicht zufällig wandte sich der Schriftsteller damit an eine Versammlung von Globalisierungskritikern in Paris. Das Anliegen dieser Bewegung ist seit ihrem ersten Auftritt in Seattle am 30. November vor zehn Jahren ein urdemokratisches: Sie fordert, dass in Angelegenheiten von allgemeinem Interesse tatsächlich die Allgemeinheit entscheiden soll.

Weiter beim Freitag

Weiteres zu den Commons bei kosmopolitix findet sich hier.

Commons

annmcferron — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:59:17 +0000

The term “commons” is new to me. The commons is what we share together. From parks and c

le Tropenmuseum rend 35.000 images disponibles pour commons

DarkoNeko — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:50:24 +0000

Suite à une réunion avec plusieurs Wikimédiens, le Tropenmuseum (un musée ethnographique d’Amsterdam) à rendu disponibles à l’upload sur Commons environ 35.000 images d’indonésie.

Cette collaboration entre le Tropenmuseum et Wikimedia Netherlands est la 2eme en date, une mise à disposition similaire de 2.100 images du Suriname ayant eu lieu en août 2009.

Il y a fort à parier que ça n’est que le début d’une longue série

(source)

OER, Trademarks and CC BY

openedblogger — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:55:09 +0000

Jane Park is announcing the first in a series of “advanced topics” relating to Creative Commons. The document explains the relationship between rights, trademark and OER. From the post:

For OER organizations with a strong trademark, or with the plans and capacity to build and sustain one, this primer is a guide to understanding the relationship between your organization’s rights as a copyright owner using CC licenses (particularly CC BY) and your organization’s trademark rights within the context of open educational resources (OER). This primer is not relevant for OER creators generally, as trademark law only pertains to those entities with the capacity to build and sustain a brand.

OUR CULTURAL COMMONS

chrismaser — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:27:12 +0000

OUR CULTURAL COMMONS

Chris Maser

Language is perhaps the first cultural commons, the greater part of which is the eternal silence out of which sound comes and into which it returns. Without silence, no sound is possible. Conversely, without sound, silence could not be recognized for itself. Without sound, words could not exist. Without worlds, abstract thought could not exist. Without abstract thought, meaning and experience in the form of knowledge could not exist. Without knowledge, an idea could not exist. Without an idea, humanity could not so drastically alter the Earth. Without knowledge, humanity could neither understand what is nor create that which is unreal.

I have experienced the eternal silence while camping in the deep snows of winter high in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, while rescuing cattle stuck in deep snow high in a Rocky-Mountain winter of northwestern Colorado, and while conducting research in the Nubian Desert of Egypt. Silence on a still day in deep winter in the high country is so profound that, as a young man, I not only could “hear” it but also could hear the “swishing” sound snowflakes made as they felling through it. In the Nubian Desert, on the other hand, there was nothing on a still day to rupture the silence—not the slightest sound could I detect.

Had I not experienced the eternal silence, would it exist for me? Would I recognize it in our increasingly noisy world? Hence the age-old question: If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound? Of course it does because mice hear it, and squirrels hear it, as do the creatures living in the tree and below ground, where they feel the vibrations it sends through the soil as it strikes the Earth. I would therefore rephrase that question: If a tree falls in the forest and there is nothing to hear it or feel the impact of its falling, does it make a sound? Vibrations are, after all, the essence of sound. This being the case, one might ask: What is the essence of silence, if not inaudible vibrations in eternal emptiness?

As I mull over the probable events that led to our modern, human languages, it occurs to me that all words are the names of things, be it a touchable entity (a flower, animal, or tool—each a noun); a definition of quantifiably time (a second, an hour, today, yesterday, tomorrow, next year—each a noun); an action (do, run, sit, speak—each a verb); or something that qualities something else (pretty, ugly, hairy, large, small, fast, slow—each an adjective), in time (now, earlier, later—each an adverb), and as a degree (very, exceedingly, little, much—each an adverb or an adjective). Put differently, words define the mental boundaries of our perceptions. A child points to something, hears the utterance of sound from an adult in response to the gesture, and lo, the rudiments of meaning are born. In fact, parents who simultaneously point to something and verbalize its name have children who not only gesture by the age of 14 months but also develop larger vocabularies by the time they are 54 months old than do children whose parents fail to gesture.¹ With repetition, a boundary of meaning (a definition) is established.

With the invention of each new word (each new name), we humans are doing our best to simultaneously explore, define, and refine the boundaries of meaning attached to our perceptions of the world around us—boundaries encompassed in the names by which we recognize what we see. When we speak, therefore, we are attempting to transfer boundaries of meaning attached to names of things, time, actions, and qualifiers, which is like trying to fence a portion of the sky to own the stars.²

Language is not just about naming things, like objectified islands in a sea of eternal silence. It’s also about stringing those names together in a specific order, a verbal archipelago, as it were, to express a “thought.” But can a thought exist without expression. In other words, can a thought exist in eternal silence? For instance, can a solitary earthworm, deep within the soil, have a thought? If not, how does it function? If so, are an earthworm’s thoughts and an idea synonymous?

This raises the question: Can an idea exist without a thought? Put differently, can either exist without some kind of expression to embody them? But what is an idea?

According to the 1999 Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, an “idea” is: any conception existing in the mind as a result of mental understanding, awareness, or activity.³ But what does this definition really say? Not much.

To me, an idea is a mural of the evolution of human consciousness through time. An idea, like everything else humanity has given a name to, seems to arise in the universal ethers and infiltrates the mind as an insight, a flash of intuitive understanding, a cosmic recognition—but of what? It’s precisely what that’s the problem with language. Words, those structured sounds we utter in our need to share our search for meaning in life, are merely symbols, metaphors whereby we approach, but never touch or capture, the object we attempt to convey with the words we use.

Therefore, as with the falling tree, one might ask: If a word cannot directly touch the object it is meant to define, does the object exist? By the same token, one might ask: Do I exist, if I do not have a personal name, the sound of which I can hear and recognize? Do I exist, if I cannot write my name and see it as a concrete mark made by my own hand?

If we don’t know where ideas come from or why one person is granted a specific idea and not another, how can any one person “own” an idea—patented an idea and claim it as theirs? As such, ideas seem to be part of the global, etheric commons, or perhaps of the “collective unconscious,” as Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung termed it. By that I mean, to be alone with an idea is to visit in silence with every human who in any way helped to shape the precursor of the idea though the collective thought that, in time, led to an expression through language. Without the expression of thought, the world would be devoid of even a single idea. And yet, when I allow things to be what they are without attempting to confine them within the intellectual fence of language, I see them most clearly because there is no preconceived structure through which to filter my relationship with them. They simply are, as silence simply is.

Where could a thought come from except out of eternal silence? Was it necessary to break the silence in order to consummate a thought? Probably not, because the first thought was most likely an unconscious act based on an intuitive impulse that produced a pleasing or perhaps decidedly unpleasing result.

The first time an unconscious act produced a conscious recognition of an outcome, a thought forever left the eternal silence to reside in the human psyche. In that instant, an apparently random act became the building block of an idea, most likely in the form of a question of whether repeating the act would produce the same result. And so a happenstance became an a conscious process of investigation to satisfy curiosity, which led to a thought, which morphed into an idea, even though the idea’s entire existence was confined within the mind of a single individual who possessed no recognizable name or verbal means with which to either examine the idea within or convey it without to another individual.

The first idea was the beginning of a never-ending story—albeit one without title, plot, or final outcome. As such, the simplest embryonic idea began in the silent language of a physical demonstration, which was enough to convey it from one person to another through demonstration. As the first idea gathered unto itself other intuitive gifts from the eternal silence, the ensuing complications became so great there arose the need for some kind of formal communication, of a verbal language, and so began humanity’s search for meaning, with its simultaneous fragmentation of the eternal silence.

Because ideas evolved over millennia with thought and language, it seems to me, they belong to everyone and thus are meant to be free—part of the global commons, a point well made by author Daniel Boorstin, “Languages would become pathways through space and time. While nations would be held together by their new vernaculars, lone readers could seek remote continents and voyage into the faraway past.”⁴ To this notion, the German poet Johann von Goethe would likely add, “All truly wise thoughts [ideas] have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.”⁵

But now, as I enter my seventies, I find ideas take on a reflective glow, and yet, like the oceanic depths, ideas seem fathomless. They appear in one instant to be amorphous, well shaped in another, and diffuse in yet another. In a manner similar to an amoeba, an idea grows here and there, only to withdraw its boundaries somewhere else. I therefore find ideas to be living gifts, the embodiment of the Eternal Mystery from which all things arise, into which all things disappear, only to arise again in some other form.

Like the water of a mountain lake, ideas are an abiding mystery. Precipitation falls into the lake as rain, snow, or hail. It remains awhile as a liquid or a solid. It leaves as a gas to travel the currents of air that circumnavigate the globe. From the salty water of the sea to the fresh water of the lake, the continuous cycle of water has traveled the world throughout the eons, just as ideas traverse the cosmic realm. As the lake could not exist without water, could language exist without ideas? By the same token, could ideas exist without language and a mind to midwife their transformation from the eternal silence into sound as the utterance of expression? Whether a bridge, a building, a medicine, or a musical note, each is the embodiment of an idea. To be honored by—entrusted with—an idea is, indeed, a magnificent gift, one that often leads to knowledge.

Every human language—the master tool representing its own culture—has its unique construct, which determines both its limitations and its possibilities in expressing myth, emotion, ideas, and logic. One of the greatest feats of humanity is the evolution written language—those silent, ritualistic marks with their encoded meaning that not only made culture possible but also archive its history as part of the cultural commons, which is everyone’s birthright.

The relative independence with which cultures evolve creates their uniqueness both within themselves and within the reciprocity they experience with one another and their immediate environments. Each culture, and each community within that culture, affects its environment in a specific way and is accordingly affected by the environment in a particular way. So it is that distinct cultures in their living create culturally designed landscapes, which in some measure are reflected in the myths they hold and the languages they speak. As such, language is the medium with which the condition of the human soul is painted.

The artist, using words to convey the colors of meaning by mixing them on a palette of syntax, composes the broad shapes of a cultural story line. Then, by matching the colors of words to give expression to ideas, the artist adds verbal structure, texture, and shades of meaning, to the story. In doing so, the verbal artist paints a picture or portrait as fine as any accomplished with brush, paint, palette, and canvas; with camera and film; or musical instruments and mute notes on paper. In addition, a verbal picture often outlasts the ravages of time that claim those of paint on canvas, imprints of light on photographic paper, or musical instruments that give “voice” to mute shapes.

So what does it say about Western industrialized society when the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary has omitted words of historical significance pertaining to Nature and culture to make way for greater modernity, including such “technobabble” such as: BlackBerry, blog, voicemail, and broadband? Yet, according to Vineeta Gupta, head of the children’s dictionaries at Oxford University Press, changes in the world are responsible for these alterations. “When you look back at older versions of dictionaries, there were lots of examples of flowers for instance,” she said. “That was because many children lived in semi-rural environments and saw the seasons. Nowadays, the environment has changed.” Several criteria were used to select the 10,000 words and phrases in the junior dictionary, including how often words would be used by young children.⁶ However, as Elaine Brooks points out, “Humans seldom value what they cannot name.”⁷

Nature words deleted from the Oxford Junior Dictionary include: Acorn, adder, almond, apricot, ash, ass, beaver, beech, beetroot, blackberry, bloom, bluebell, boar, bramble, bran, bray, brook, budgerigar, bullock, buttercup, canary, canter, carnation, catkin, cauliflower, cheetah, chestnut, clover, colt, conker, corgi, cowslip, crocus, cygnet, dandelion, doe, drake, fern, ferret, fungus, gerbil, goldfish, gooseberry, gorse, guinea pig, hamster, hazel, hazelnut, heather, heron, herring, holly, horse chestnut, ivy, kingfisher, lark, lavender, leek, leopard, liquorice, lobster, magpie, melon, minnow, mint, mistletoe, mussel, nectar, nectarine, newt, oats, otter, ox, oyster, panther, pansy, parsnip, pasture, pelican, piglet, plaice, poodle, poppy, porcupine, porpoise, poultry, primrose, prune, radish, raven, rhubarb, spaniel, spinach, starling, stoat, stork, sycamore, terrapin, thrush, tulip, turnip, vine, violet, walnut, weasel, willow, and wren.

Cultural words taken out of the dictionary: Abbey, aisle, allotment, altar, bacon, bishop, blacksmith, bridle, carol, chapel, christen, coronation, county, cracker, decade, devil, diesel, disciple, duchess, duke, dwarf, elf, emperor, empire, goblin, manger, marzipan, monarch, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, porridge, psalm, pulpit, saint, sheaf, sin, vicar.

Words put in: Allergic, alliteration, analogue, apparatus, attachment, bilingual, biodegradable, block graph, blog, boisterous, brainy, broadband, bullet point, bungee jumping, cautionary tale, celebrity, chatroom, childhood, chronological, citizenship, classify, colloquial, committee, common sense, compulsory, conflict, cope, creep, curriculum, cut and paste, database, debate, democratic, donate, drought, dyslexic, emotion, endangered, EU, Euro, export, food chain, idiom, incisor, interdependent, MP3 player, negotiate, square number, tolerant, trapezium, vandalism, voicemail.⁸

Some languages, as exemplified above, are simply being eroded through the conscious substitutions of words, whereas others cease to exist altogether. Although language is not something we generally think of as becoming extinct, languages are disappearing all over the world, especially the spoken-only languages of indigenous peoples. As languages vanish, so too do the cultural variations of the landscape they allowed, even fostered, because a unique culture cannot exist without the uniqueness of its language to protect its history and guide its evolution.

While it probably took thousands of years for the different human languages to evolve, it can take less than a century for some of them to disappear. As languages become extinct, we lose their cultural knowledge along with their perceptions and modes of expression. Because language is the fabric of culture and the living trust of our identity, when a language dies, the demise of the culture that gave it birth is imminent.

What is lost when a language becomes extinct? How many potential answers to contemporary problems, how much ancient wisdom, will be lost because we are losing languages to so-called “progress,” especially obscure, indigenous ones?

With the loss of each language, we also lose the evolution of its logic and its cultural myths and rituals—those metaphors that give the people a sense of place within the greater context of the universe, because language represents unity within and through time. Temporal unity is the language of memory, those images of experience stored in the human psyche and passed forward from generation to generation in the form of stories, myths, and rituals. Therefore, each time we allow a human language to become extinct, we are losing a facet of understanding, a facet of ourselves—the collective memory of a people archived in their language, a memory that is part of the human hologram, our collective commons of the human experience. As a global society, we are slowly making ourselves blind to our relationships one another, the universe, and ourselves.

I have thought much about the loss of languages as I have traveled and worked abroad over the years. And it seems to me, that languages are in many ways the reflective surface of the human psyche—the living trust of our cultural commons. Therefore, to lose a language is to fracture the mirror and thus progressively distort the image of humanity as pieces of the broken mirror fall into oblivion. What a tragic loss of such a great gift.

Our growing blindness through the extinction of languages is exacerbated by the global spread of such languages as English, which limits the imagination and understanding within the rigid confines of its own intellectual fence. The logic of which each language is born and of which it is the caretaker can be likened to a one-way window through which a person can see the world without from a singular point of view but cannot see themselves within the cage of their own thoughts. Thus it is that the hologram of the human family requires people representing many systems of logic all peering at one another simultaneously in order to see the wholeness of the creature we have dubbed Homo sapiens.

In this sense, a few dominant languages are replacing relatively obscure ones at a tremendous cost of lost cultural identity, history, myths, stories, and human dignity. And to lose one’s cultural myths, which only one’s own language can adequately portray, is to lose one’s sense of place and identity in the human family and in the Universe—one’s temporal unity with every human thought ever formed, every question ever asked, every imagining unveiled, and every spiritual impulse born in that sacred land of the psyche we variously call “innocence” or “ignorance.”

I say this because each language in its own way is a living trust of the cultural commons that reflects the myths by which a people have learned how to cope with life. As we lose languages, we simplify the instructional reflection of humanity’s mythology and so destabilize human society as a whole. We are, in the name of modernity, destroying humanity’s collective, spiritual vitality by relegating to the scrap heap of “useless, obsolete” information of so many of its cultural myths and the rituals that express their essence, the archived lessons they teach about living a humane life, and the transcendent ideas upon which the myths, rituals, and lessons are founded—all of which are part of our cultural commons as a living trust.⁹

Precisely because it is a living trust in both the legal and cultural sense, the commons in all its myriad forms is an open system of biophysical evolution interwoven with cultural mythology. Although people speak today of “closed-loop technology,” there neither is nor can there be a truly closed system of any kind. The closest thing to a closed system is the fossilization of invertebrates in amber, albeit the system in still open in the technical sense because light and the ambient temperature can penetrate the amber.

Insects in amber are an example of true preservation in Nature. Amberization, the process whereby fresh resin is transformed into amber, is so gentle that it forms the most complete type of fossilization known for small, delicate, soft-bodied organisms, such as insects. In fact, a small piece of amber found along the south coast of England in 2006 contained a 140-million-year old spider web constructed in the same orb configuration as that of today’s garden spiders. This is 30 million years older than a previous spider web found encased in Spanish amber.¹⁰

The web demonstrates that spiders have been ensnaring their prey since the time of the dinosaurs. And because amber is three-dimensional in form, it preserves color patterns and minute details of the organism’s exoskeleton, and so allows the study of micro-evolution, biogeography, mimicry, behavior, reconstruction of the environmental characteristics, the chronology of extinctions, paleo-symbiosis,¹¹ and molecular phylogeny.¹² But the same dynamic cannot be employed outside of an airtight container, such as a drop of amber or canning jar. In other words, whether natural or artificial, all functional systems are open because they all require—and respond to—the input of energy in order to function; conversely, a totally closed system is a physical impossibility, which makes governing the commons a difficult task at best.

ENDNOTES

Meredith L. Rowe and Susan Goldin-Meadow. Differences in Early Gesture Explain SES [SocioEconomic Status] Disparities in Child Vocabulary Size at School Entry. Science, 323. (2009):951-953.

The foregoing is based in part on: Chris Maser. Earth in Our Care: Ecology, Economy, and Sustainability. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ. (2009) 276 pp.

Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. Random House, New York, NY. (1999) 2230 pp.

Daniel J. Boorstin. The Discoverers. Vintage Books, New York, NY. (1983) 745 pp.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. http://www.great-inspirational-quotes.com/thought-quotes.html (accessed on April 6, 2009).

Children’s Dictionary Dumps “Nature” Words. http://www.nextnature.net/?p=3110 (accessed on May 29, 2009).

Elaine Brooks. Eco Child’s Play. http://ecochildsplay.com/2009/02/02/nature-words-dropped-from-childrens-dictionary/ (accessed on May 29, 2009).

The foregoing three paragraphs on the words deleted and added to the Oxford Junior Dictionary is from: Children’s Dictionary Dumps “Nature” Words. http://www.nextnature.net/?p=3110 (accessed on May 29, 2009).

The foregoing is based in part on: Of Ditches And Ponds: A Journey Through The Metaphors Of Childhood And Maturity. 2006. Woven Strings Publishing, Amarillo, TX. 282 pp. E-Book. 2505KB

G.O. Poinar, A.E. Treat, and R.V. Southeott. Mite Parasitism of Moths: Examples of Paleosymbiosis in Dominican Amber. Experientia, 47 (1991):210-212.

Ibid.

The general discussion of amberization is based on: (1) George O Poinar, Jr. Insects in Amber. Annual Review of Entomology, 46 (1993):145-159; (2) Enrique Peñalver, David. A. Grimaldi, and Xavier Delclòs. Early Cretaceous Spider Web with Its Prey. Science, 312 (2006):1761; (3) G. O. Poinar, Jr. and B. N. Danforth. A Fossil Bee from Early Cretaceous Burmese Amber. Science, 314 (2006):614; and (4) Anonymous. Scientist: Earth’s Oldest Spider Web Discovered. London. In: Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, OR. December 16, 2008.

I spent over 25 years as an active research scientist in natural history and ecology in forest, shrub steppe, subarctic, desert, coastal, and agricultural settings. Today I am an independent author as well as an international lecturer, facilitator in resolving environmental conflicts, vision statements, and sustainable community development. I am also an international consultant in forest ecology and sustainable forestry practices.

I Have Lived, Worked, Consulted, And/Or Lectured In: Austria • Canada • Chile • Egypt • France • Germany • Japan • Malaysia • Mexico • Nepal • Slovakia • Switzerland • and various settings in the United States.

If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also listen to me give a presentation.

OUR CULTURAL COMMONS (PART 2): GOVERNING THE COMMONS

chrismaser — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:42:40 +0000

GOVERNING THE COMMONS

Chris Maser

Despite how human institutions and their respective activities are organized, carried out, and affect the resilience of the environment, dividing our global ecosystem into human and natural realms serves no purpose since the never-ending consequences of our presence are as ancient as they are pervasive.¹ Accordingly, our social-environmental reciprocity is determined by: (1) cyclical dynamics (although most academic research is linear) with cumulative effects, lag periods, and outcome thresholds—both in time and space; (2) self-reinforcing feedback loops; (3) degrees of resilience to disturbance, (4) variability among the dimensions of time, space, and in cultural myths and perceptions, and (5) unintended outcomes due to the unpredictable novelty of change—legacies we pass forward to those who follow.²

Moreover, governing the commons becomes evermore difficult as the usufruct notion of sharing gives way increasingly to the claim of private ownership and exclusive use of real estate, which includes land and all the natural resources and permanent buildings on it. For example, a 2009 court battle over protecting wild populations of ocean-going Coho salmon (part of Nature’s commons) in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, as listed in the Endangered Species Act, included a series of lawsuit on behalf of a coalition of builders, farmers, and property-rights advocates to remove restrictions on development and agriculture that protect the salmon from extinction.³

Whereas the above paragraph deals with commercial attempts to manipulate the environment in a way that is harmful to a widely used component of the commons (Coho salmon) for personal profit, what happens when it is poor subsistence fishers who are depleting their own source of food and revenue? As it turns out, a study of Kenyan fishers suggests three basic outcomes: First, the number of fishers leaving the fishery as an occupation would increase as the magnitude of the decline in their catch increased. Second, fishers would be more likely to abandon fishing as a livelihood if they were from families with relatively abundant material means and a variety of occupations among family members—in other words, occupational diversification. And third, fishers from poor households would be less likely to give up fishing because they were unable to mobilize the necessary resources to overcome either disruptions to their lifestyle or chronic, low-income situations. Consequently, they would most likely remain in poverty.⁴ Either way, the commons is ecologically degraded. To me, this poses the question: Are we effectively making the commons more finite?

In The Tragedy of the Commons, Garrett Hardin writes: “Population, as Malthus said, naturally tends to grow ‘geometrically,’ or, as we would now say, exponentially. In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world’s goods must steadily decrease. Is ours a finite world? “⁵ I would answer “yes.” Our world is functionally finite as far as we humans are concerned for five reasons: (1) the money chase, (2) uncontrolled growth in the human population, (3) the transient nature of today’s human population, (4) urban sprawl, (5) pollution, and (6) gobal climate change.

THE MONEY CHASE

The competitive money chase is wreaking havoc with many of the Earth’s ecosystems. To illustrate, when I am unconscious of a material value, I am free of its psychological grip. But the instant I perceive a material value and anticipate possible material gain, I also perceive the psychological pain of potential loss.

The larger and more immediate the prospects for material gain, the greater the political power used to ensure and expedite exploitation, because not to exploit is perceived as losing an opportunity to someone else. And it is this notion of loss that I fight so hard to avoid. In this sense, it is more appropriate to think of resources as managing humans than of humans as managing resources.

Historically, then, any newly identified resource is inevitably overexploited, often to the point of collapse or extinction. Its overexploitation is based, first, on the perceived rights or entitlement of the discoverer to get their share before someone else does and, second, on the right or entitlement of the investor(s) to protect their economic investment. There is more to it than this, however, because the concept of a healthy capitalistic system is one that is ever growing, ever expanding, but such a system is not biologically sustainable. With renewable natural resources, such non-sustainable exploitation is a “ratchet effect,” where to ratchet means to constantly, albeit unevenly, increase the rate of exploitation of a resource.

The ratchet effect works as follows: During periods of relative economic stability, the rate of harvest of a given renewable resource, say timber or salmon, tends to stabilize at a level that economic theory predicts can be sustained through some scale of time. Such levels, however, are almost always excessive, because economists take existing unknown and unpredictable ecological variables and convert them, in theory at least, into known and predictable economic constants in order to better calculate the expected return on a given investment from a sustained harvest. Moreover, this economic maneuver requires the actual existence of an independent variable—a physical impossibility in any functional system.

Then comes a sequence of good years in the market, or in the availability of the resource, or both, and additional capital investments are encouraged in harvesting and processing because competitive economic growth is the root of capitalism. When conditions return to normal or even below normal, however, the industry, having over-invested, appeals to the government for help because substantial economic capital, and often jobs, are at stake. The government typically responds with direct or indirect subsidies, which only encourage continual over-harvesting.

The ratchet effect is thus caused by unrestrained economic investment to increase short-term yields in good times and strong opposition to losing those yields in bad times. This opposition to losing yields means there is great resistance to using a resource in a biologically sustainable manner because there is no predictability in yields and no guarantee of yield increases in the foreseeable future. In addition, our linear economic models of ever-increasing yield are built on the assumption that we can in fact have an economically sustained yield. This contrived concept fails in the face of the biological sustainability of a yield.

Then, because there is no mechanism in our linear economic models of ever-increasing yield that allows for the uncertainties of ecological cycles and variability or for the inevitable decreases in yield during bad times, the long-term outcome is a heavily subsidized industry. Such an industry continually over-harvests the resource on an artificially created, sustained-yield basis that is not biologically sustainable.

When the notion of sustainability arises in a resource conflict, the parties marshal all scientific data favorable to their respective positions as “good” science and discount all unfavorable data as “bad” or “flawed” science. These kinds of conflicts are thus the stage on which science is politicized, largely obfuscating its service to society.

Because the availability of choices dictates the amount of control we feel we have with respect to our sense of security, a potential loss of money is the breeding ground for environmental injustice. This is the kind of environmental injustice in which the present generation steals from all future generations by over-exploiting the commons rather than facing the uncertainty of giving up potential income.

There are important lessons in all of this. First, history indicates that a biologically sustainable use of any resource has never been achieved without first over-exploiting it, despite historical warnings and contemporary data. If history is correct, resource problems are not environmental problems but rather human ones that we have created many times, in many places, under a wide variety of social, political, and economic systems.

Second, the fundamental issues involving resources, the environment, and people are complex and process driven. The integrated knowledge of multiple disciplines is required to understand them. These underlying complexities of the physical and biological systems preclude a simplistic approach, such as that attempted through resource management—which in reality is attempted product management. In addition, the wide natural variability and the compounding, cumulative influence of continual human activity initially masks the long-term results of over-exploitation.

Third, as long as the uncertainty of continual change engenders fear and thus is viewed as a condition to be avoided, nothing will be resolved. However, once the novelty of change is accepted as an inevitable, open-ended, creative life process, most decision-making is simply common sense. For example, common sense dictates that one would favor actions having the greatest potential for long-term sustainability, as opposed to those with little or none.

Fourth, I believe that the seed of all destructive conflict is a perceived loss of choice over our own individual destinies, which we interpret as a threat to our personal survival. The sense of loss, which usually translates into a life-long fear of loss in some degree, originates in childhood as lessons from parents.⁶

UNCONTROLLED GROWTH IN THE HUMAN POPULATION

There are several factors that contribute to the burgeoning growth of our human population: (1) high birth rates among those segments of humanity in which male-dominated religions enslave women by denying them the right of reproductive choice, (2) the unmitigated abuse of women—such as the sex-slave trade throughout the world (including in the United States) and the violence of rape used in some countries (like Zimbabwe) as a weapon of political intimidation, (3) a higher survival rate among infants than in decades past, and (4) people in general live longer today than at any time in history. Granted, these factors are partly—but not wholly—responsible the growing per-capita demand for Earth’s natural resources. The increasing severity the situation is continually compounded by the wanton destruction of those same resources through the armed conflicts encircling the globe, as well as the emerging effects of climate change.⁷ If, therefore, humanity does not control its own population, Nature will—in ways most unpleasant, if what happens to other species that overpopulate their environment is any indication.

THE TRANSIENT NATURE OF TODAY’S HUMAN POPULATION

There are many reasons for the transient nature of today’s global population—everything from war-created refugees to job insecurity, illegal immigration from poor countries into wealthy ones, and, in times of prosperity, people working in one place but retiring to another, the super wealthy moving into favored places, thereby driving up the costs, which displaces the original residents, and finally, governments and corporations displacing indigenous people in order to exploit coved resources. What does this mean for the commons? It means chronically uneven exploitation of local resources, seasonal over-exploitation of local resources, or both.

Here it is instructive to consider communities of birds in a given area as ornithologists think of them. First, there is the resident community, which is that group of birds inhabiting the area to which they have a strong sense of fidelity all year. In order to stay throughout the year, year after year, they must be able to meet all of their ongoing requirements for food, shelter, water, space, and privacy. These requirements become most acutely focused during the time of nesting, when young are reared, and during harsh winter weather.

Then there are the summer visitors, which overwinter in the southern latitudes and fly north to rear their young. They arrive in time to build their nests, and in so doing must fit in with the yearlong residents without competing severely for food, shelter, water, and space—especially space and privacy for nesting. If competition were too severe, the resident community would decline and perhaps perish through over-exploitation of the habitat by summer visitors, which have no lasting commitment to a particular habitat.

There are also winter visitors that spend the summer in northern latitudes, where they rear their young, and fly south in the autumn to overwinter in the same area as the yearlong residents, but after the summer visitors have left. They too must fit in with the yearlong residents without severely competing with them for food, water, shelter, space, and privacy during times of harsh weather and periodic scarcities of food. Here, too, the resident community would decline and perhaps perish if over-exploitation of the habitat through competition were too severe. And like the summer visitors, winter visitors are not committed to a particular habitat but use the best of two different habitats (summer and winter).

On top of all this are the migrants that come through in spring and autumn on their way to and from their summer-nesting grounds and winter-feeding grounds. They pause just long enough to rest and replenish their dwindling reserves of body fat by using local resources of food, water, shelter, and space, to which they have only the passing fidelity necessary to sustain them on their long journey.

The crux of the issue is the carrying capacity of the habitat for the yearlong resident community. If the resources of food, water, shelter, space, and privacy are sufficient to accommodate the yearlong resident community as well as the seasonal visitors and migrants, then all is well. If not, then each bird in addition to the yearlong residents in effect causes the area of land and its resources to shrink per resident bird. This, in turn, stimulates competition, which under circumstances of plenty would not exist. If, however, such competition causes the habitat to be overused and decline in quality, the ones who suffer the most are the yearlong residents for whom the habitat is their sole means of livelihood.

Here I might anticipate your question concerning what a resident bird community has to do with a resident human community. It has to do with a statement made by Wendell Berry, that a true community can extend itself beyond the local, but only if it does so metaphorically.⁸ This means that if the resident community is rendered non-sustainable by outside influences, such as people from other areas over-harvesting local crops of mushrooms or large absentee corporations clear-cutting forests to the detriment of local water catchments, then the trust embodied in the continuity of a community’s history is shattered, as is the self-reinforcing feedback loop of mutual well-being between the land and the people.

Another, subtler way outside influence can destroy community is transients in its population, where transient means “passing with time.” In a small town in Idaho, where I asked people how they felt about the fairly large number of employees of the U.S. Forest Service living in their community, they replied that they tried not to get to know them.

When asked if they avoided getting to know the folks from the Forest Service because they were transients who felt no sense of place within the community, the answer was only partly in the affirmative. They said it was mainly because it was just too painful to become friends with Forest Service employees and learn to trust them, only to have them leave in two or three years. That kind of continual loss was too much like perpetual grieving for the death of friends and was more than the community could abide.⁹ (Las Vegas, Nevada, had such a transient population in the two years I lived there that the phone company printed a huge, entirely new phone book every six months.)

URBAN SPRAWL

When a community loses (for whatever reason) the cohesive glue of trust embedded in its fundamental values, it loses its identity and is set adrift on the ever-increasing sea of visionless competition both within and without, where “growth or die” becomes the economic motto driving the cultural system.

Such visionless competition inevitably rings the death knell of community and its sense of being a “cultural commons,” and is an open door to absentee developers, who further destroy the once-held sense of being a cultural commons. Developers come in three basic categories: local residents, immigrant residents, and absentee. Nevertheless, developers—and especially absentee developers—work very hard to disallow people’s “emotions” to count as a reason to prevent a coveted piece of land from becoming a housing development or a shopping mall.

The consequences I have observed when long-time residents are forbidden to express their emotions concerning the aesthetics and “feel” of their community and its surroundings are: (1) stealing choice and self-determining government from the people who live in the area of the proposed development; (2) giving preference to residential developers, an increasing number of whom are absentee, even from out of state; (3) forcing local people to accept absentee interests; (4) limiting—even undermining—the scope of a local people’s potential self-determined vision for sustainable community development within the context of their own landscape, especially for the desired future condition of their landscape; and (5) curtailing—or even eliminating—the ability of local people to actively mourn for the continuing loss of their quality of life and their sense of place as outside choices are forced upon them, often by people who will not have to live with the consequences of their imposed actions.

The whole purpose of choice is for local people to guide the sustainable development of their own community within the mutually sustainable context of their landscape by collectively selecting the self-imposed social constraints necessary to fulfill their vision. After all, the local people and their children must reap the consequences of any decisions that are made. To limit their choices is to force someone else’s consequences upon them, often at a great and increasingly negative long-term cost, first socially and then environmentally.

When preferential treatment is given to residential developers, including absentee developers, local people are at a serious disadvantage when it comes to planning for long-term community sustainability within the context of a finite landscape. While the focus of sustainable community development is long term, the interests of residential developers are strictly short term, which usually counteracts long-term planning based on long-term environmental consequences. Furthermore, it is exceedingly unlikely that absentee residential developers are going to have a vested interest in the long-term welfare of the community once they have made their money. So, long after the residential developer has gone, the community is left to deal with the environmental errors, which effectively slaughters the quality of human relationships for the benefit of developers. But emotions, the force behind relationships, are based on personal and collective values, which are the heart and soul of a community as a cultural commons.¹⁰

The above circumstances call to mind a quote by the British historian Arnold Toynbee, “The history of almost every civilization furnishes examples of geographical expansion coinciding with deterioration in quality.”¹¹ I can vouch for the accuracy of Toynbee’s observation—having watched it played out unabated in my own hometown from the end of World War II until the present day.

The landscape around my hometown was friendly when I was a little boy in the early 1940s. Fields and forest surrounded the town, and swift forest streams that fed meandering valley rivers. I was free in those early days to wander over hill and dale without running into a no-trespassing sign on every gate and seemingly every other fence post.

The code of the day was to leave open any gate that was open and to close any gate after passing through it that was closed. It was also understood that one was free to cross a farmer’s property as long as one respected the property by walking around planted fields rather than through them. If I asked permission, I could wander, hunt, fish, and trap almost anywhere I wished.

Much of the Coast Range and most of the Cascade Range of Oregon that I knew as a youth were covered with unbroken, ancient forest and clear, cold streams from which it was safe to drink. Although the streams were still filled with trout and salmon, the forests and mountain meadows were already devoid of wolf and grizzly bear.

In the valley that embraced my hometown, the farmers’ fields were small and friendly, surrounded by fencerows sporting shrubs and trees, including apples and pears that proffered delicious fruit, each in its season. In spring, summer, and autumn, the fencerows were alive with the colors of flowers and butterflies and the songs of birds. They harbored woodrats and rabbits, pheasants and deer, squirrels and red valley foxes. The air was clean, the sunshine bright and safe, and the drinking water among the sweetest and purest in the world.

When World War II came along, the seeds of change were sown with respect to community. The war effort pushed mass production to new levels and brought the impersonalization of humans killing humans to the fore with such labeling on cartons containing weapons as “mine, one, anti-personnel,” which indicated that the person the weapon was meant to kill was simply a military abstraction.

Although World War II eventually drew to a close, the impersonalization of mass production carried over into the postwar boom years. Gone was the simple wisdom of building communities and neighborhoods within communities for people within landscapes of natural beauty. The simple wisdom that had worked so well in the past was replaced by the strategies of massive wartime production developed in defense factories.

Towns, including mine, started to sprawl rapidly in largely unplanned ways. Cookie-cutter houses were concentrated in developments that were isolated from everything else dealing with community.

Speed rather, than care, began creeping into the building trade, and I watched as houses sprang up in blocks and lines and circles, built for speculation. As speculation crept into the housing market, speed, sameness, and clustering became marks of efficiency and greater profit, setting the tone for the future—a tone reflected in the night sky as the once brilliant stars of the Milky Way disappeared into a seemingly eternal mask of light pollution.

With the stage set by the postwar housing industry, things began to change noticeably as corporate depersonalization commenced its insidious growth into the heart of community. Shopping malls were connected by roads, which became bigger, straighter, faster, and increasingly went through prime agricultural land. Then came larger and larger subdivisions with cheaper and cheaper ticky-tacky tract housing, some of which was constructed in floodplains or on unstable soils.

Centralization had arrived on the landscape as it had earlier in corporations. Driving on superhighways became a necessity, and with it came pollution of air and water, which increased with every extra mile that had to be driven and every additional automobile on the road. The gentle motion and relaxed pace of the traditional street gave way to ever-increasing speed. As author Jean Chesneaux observed: “The street as an art of life is disappearing in favour of traffic arteries. People drive through them on the way to somewhere else.” There is no word in the English language with a positive connotation for going slowly or lingering on streets as a way to participate in community.

People started losing their sense of connection with one another in a familiar face-to-face community as hubs of centralized activity within the growing urban sprawl increasingly altered the landscape within and surrounding my hometown. And so, the sense of community I grew up with in the 1940s and early 1950s began falling apart. A sense of place—of a familiar, friendly community, where everyone left their homes and cars unlocked—gave way to a sense of location, as more and more people became transients, who arrived to chase the dollar and who disappeared when a bigger dollar loomed elsewhere on the horizon.

By the time I was a teenager, it had become necessary to lock the doors to our house and car, and no trespassing signs proliferated across the landscape. A sense of distrust had begun its insidious invasion throughout the once-closely knit human bonds of mutual caring that in days gone by had characterized my hometown.

Outside of town, the forests were being cut at an exponential rate, including the town’s water catchment, endangering such species as the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet. The forested streams, where as a lad I drank of their sweet water and caught native cutthroat trout, now have waters unsafe to drink. Clear-cut hillsides began eroding as forests were converted to economic tree farms. Gone are most of the great native trout and the wild salmon that graced the streams from which I drank. Gone are the great flocks of band-tailed pigeons that once greeted me in forest and fen. Gone are the elk and bear that I used to see within ten miles of my house. Gone is the forest of centuries. In its place are acres of comparatively lifeless, economic tree farms, some of which may live but a little longer than I.

At the same time, I watched helplessly as the small, protected fields of the personable family farms increasingly gave way to larger and larger naked, homogeneous fields of corporate-style farms, where fence rows were cleared to maximize the amount of tillable soil, to squeeze the last penny from every field. With the loss of habitat along each fencerow, the bird song of the valley was diminished in like measure, as was the habitat for other creatures wild and free.

Gone are the fencerows with their rich, fallow strips of grasses and herbs, of shrubs and trees, which interlaced the valley in such beautiful patterns of flower and leaf with the changing seasons—the nectar corridors for native pollinators. Gone are the burrowing owls from the quiet secluded fields I once knew. Gone is the liquid melody of the meadowlark I so often heard as a boy. Gone is the fencerow trill of the towhee. Gone are the song sparrows, Bewick’s wrens, yellow warblers, and MacGillivary’s warblers. Gone are the dusky-footed woodrat nests, the Beechy ground squirrels, and the cottontail rabbits.

Today, compared with the time of my youth, the valley’s floor offers little in the way of habitat, other than a great, depersonalized, open expanse of naked fields in winter and a monotonous sameness under the sun of summer, super highways, and sprawling towns. And everywhere around my hometown, housing developments—with the accompanying noise of automobiles, lawn mowers, and leaf blowers—are still encroaching ever farther into what was used to be a landscape wherein Nature held uncontested sway and thus filled it in spring, summer, and autumn with the colors of flowers and butterflies and the songs of birds.¹²

POLLUTION

The money chase, with all of its ramifications, is adding pollution worldwide, which is putting something deleterious into the global commons, rather than taking something out. Pollutants entrained in the currents of air as they circumnavigate the globe, are negatively affecting the quality of the sunlight that reaches Earth and thus having harmful effects on the totality of the commons. These atmospheric pollutants are capable of a phenomenon known as long-distance transport, which simply means that they can travel great distances from their sources on air currents, such as the so-called “Arctic haze” that covers the top of the world in spring. The Arctic haze has been traced to forest fires raging in southern Siberia (Lake Baikal area) and agricultural burning in Kazakhstan (southern Russia).¹³

However, rain and snow scrub many pollutants from the air and deposit them in the soil and open waters, where they begin the journey to the oceans of the world. Acid rain is illustrative because it has long been recognized as a pollution problem in Europe, where statues and gargoyles that once proudly adorned city streets and plazas and guarded centenarian buildings have had their faces dissolved over recent decades. The statues that I remember seeing as a boy, in perfect form and feature, today are often-unrecognizable relics of a past era because acid rain has eaten away the marble much as leprosy eats away the flesh.

Acid rain is not confined to European cities, however. It is also found in forest and fen, in highland and lowland. There, too, it is destroying the essence of life as it joins league with other forms of industrial/technological pollution, where it contributes to a phenomenon the Germans call Waldsterben, which translates to “the dying forest.” (If you want more detailed information on Waldsterben, see “Sustainable Forestry.”¹⁴)

The dying forest syndrome is not exclusively the property of Europe; every industrial country, including the United States and Canada, owns it. Called forest dieback in the United States, it manifests primarily along the eastern seaboard, where declining growth rates and the progressive demise of red spruce and other species of trees, particularly at high elevations, are attributed to atmospheric pollution, of which acid deposition is one of the most widespread components.¹⁵ Here, a primary human source of the precursors to acid deposition is coal-fired power plants, which account for about one third of the nitrogen oxides and about two thirds of the sulfur dioxide produced each year in the United States.¹⁶

A lesser-known case of pollution being washed from the atmosphere by rain occurs in the severely fouled air of southern China, where the nitrogen emissions are not only accruing rapidly but also increasingly being deposited in the subtropical-forests of this warm and humid region. Long-term, high-nitrogen deposition causes elevated leaching in both young coniferous forests and old broadleaf forests, although it is most pronounced in the old forest, where growth is negligible. In fact, the availability of nitrogen even exceeds its biotic demand in the young, aggressively growing forests during the rainy season (March to August). In any case, the increased leaching of nitrogen during the rainy season, especially in the old, broadleaf forest, further augments evidence that it is at least partly hydrologically driven.¹⁷

Clearly, we humans directly affect the atmosphere and both directly and indirectly affect the soil and water—the litho-hydrosphere. However, although the spread of point-source pollution is scientifically predictable, its path of dissemination is not necessarily intuitive. If, for example, we choose to clean the world’s air, we will automatically cleanse the soil and water to some extent because airborne pollutants will no longer exist to be extracted by rain and snow. If we then choose to treat the soil in a way that allows us to grow what we desire without the use of artificial chemicals (and if we stop using the soil as a dumping ground for toxic wastes and avoid overly intensive agriculture), the soil can once again purify water by filtering it. If we then discontinue dumping toxic effluents into the ditches, streams, rivers, estuaries, and oceans, they too can begin to cleanse themselves and regain some of their former health. That said, it’s unlikely the oceans will ever fully regain their previous condition.

With clean and healthy air, soil, and water, we can also have clear, safe sunlight with which to power the Earth. Clean air is the absolute bottom line for social-environmental sustainability and, therefore, long-term human survival within a global commons of excellent quality and high functional integrity. With the eventual repair of the ozone shield, we can enjoy a more benign—and perhaps predictable—climate than we now have. In addition, effective population control can tailor human society to fit within the world’s biophysical carrying capacity.

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE

Regardless of the initial cause of the changing global climate, it is having myriad deleterious effects on life as we know it, such as the often-mentioned, dramatically visible glacial melting. However, some effects of a warming climate are less apparent. One experimental grassland study is illustrative: plant communities with one, three, and nine species were tested for the effects of a warming climate. The production of vegetative biomass decreased both aboveground (by 29 percent) and belowground (by 25 percent) due to the negative effects of the prevailing increase in summer heat and drought stress. Moreover, the data suggest that a warming climate and the associated drying out of the soil could reduce primary production in many temperate grasslands, a condition that could not necessarily be mitigated by efforts to maintain or increase species richness.¹⁸

ENDNOTES

David Western. Human-modified ecosystems and future evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98 (2001): 5458-5465.

Jianguo Liu, Thomas Dietz, Stephen R. Carpenter, and others. Complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems. Science, 317 (2004):1513-1516.

Jeff Barnard. Court Upholds Salmon Hatchery Policy. Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, OR. March 17, 2009.

J.E. Cinner, T. Daw, and TR. McClanahan. Socioeconomic Factors that Affect Artisanal Fishers’ Readiness to Exit a Declining Fishery. Conservation Biology, 23 (2009):124-130.

Garrett Hardin. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 162 (1968):1243-1248.

The discussion of over-exploitation is based on: (1) Donald Ludwig, Ray Hilborn, and Carl Walters. Uncertainty, Resource Exploitation, and Conservation: Lesson From History. Science, 260 (1993):17, 36; (2) F.F.H. Allen and Thomas W. Hoekstra. 1994. Toward a Definition of Sustainability. Pp. 98-107. In: Sustainable Ecological Systems: Implementing an Ecological Approach to Land Management. W. Wallace Covington and Leonard F. DeBano (Technical. Coordinators). USDA Forest Service General Technical Report RM-247, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Fort Collins, CO.; and (3) Chris Maser. Earth In Our Care: Ecology, Economy, and Sustainability. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ. 2009. 304 pp.

The foregoing paragraph is based on: (1) Chris Maser. The Perpetual Consequences of Fear and Violence: Rethinking the Future. Maisonneuve Press, Washington, D.C. (2004) 373 pp; (2) Khalid Tanveer. 2002. Pakistani tribe orders gang-rape as penalty. The Associated Press. In: Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, OR. July 4; and (3) Jocelyn Craugh Zuckerman. We Must Stop The Rape and Terror. Parade Magazine, March 22, 2009:6-7.

Wendell Berry. Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community: Eight Essays. Pantheon Books, New York, N.Y. (1993) 208 pp.

The foregoing discussion of transients is from: Chris Maser. Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Development. Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, FL. (1999) 235 pp.

Ibid.

Arnold Toynbee. http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com/topics/history_and_historians
_quotes.html (accessed March 17, 2009).

The foregoing discussion of my hometown is from: Chris Maser. Ecological Diversity in Sustainable Development: The Vital and Forgotten Dimension. Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, FL. (1999) 401 pp.

C. Warnek, R. Bahreini, and J. Briode. Biomass Burning in Siberia and Kazakhstan As An Important Source For Haze Over the Alaskan Arctic in April 2008. Geophysical Research Letters, 36 (2009):L02813, doi:10.1029/2008GL036194.

Chris Maser. Sustainable Forestry: Philosophy, Science, and Economics. St. Lucie Press, Delray Beach, FL. (1994) 373 pp.

Ibid.

Robert Cullen. The true cost of coal. Atlantic Monthly, December (1993):38, 40, 48-50, 51.

Y. T. Fang, P. Gundersen, J. M. Mo, and W. X. Zhu. Input and Output of Dissolved Organic and Inorganic Nitrogen in Subtropical Forests of South China Under High Air Pollution. Biogeosciences, 5 (2008):339-352.

H. J. De Boeck, C. M. H M. Lemmens, C. Zavalloni, and others. Biomass Production in Experimental Grasslands of Different Species Richness During Three Years of Climate Warming. Biogeosciences, 5 (2008):585-594.

If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also listen to me give a presentation.

Harvest Dinner!

Bateslife — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:23:42 +0000

“Check out the menu:
Domestic & Imported Cheeses with Seasonal Fruit
Mixed Greens Salad w/choice of dressing one to be cranberry vinaigrette
Bread & Butter Pickles
Deviled Eggs
Spiced Pumpkin Soup
Native Seafood Chowder
Roast Breast of Turkey (Turkey Gravy)
Slow Roasted Pot Roast w/ Onions, Native Maine Potatoes and Carrots (Pot Roast Gravy)
Lobster Stuffed Haddock
Butternut Squash Casserole
Peas & Onions
Mashed Potatoes (vegan)
Cape Cod Cranberry Sauce
Green Bean and Tofu Stir Fry
Eggplant and Read Bean Stew
Basmati Rice w/Asparagus & Cashews
Sam’s Rolls
Chocolate Cream Pie
Pumpkin Pie
Apple Pie
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OUR CULTURAL COMMONS (PART 3): THE ONGOING STRUGGLE TO GOVERN THE COMMONS

chrismaser — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:19:57 +0000

THE ONGOING STRUGGLE TO GOVERN THE COMMONS

Chris Maser

A discussion of governing the commons has a minimum of four interactive components: (1) recognizing perception as truth, (2) the degree to which a commons is isolated, (3) the changing biophysical environment, and (4) the need for adaptive principles of governance.

RECOGNIZING PERCEPTION AS TRUTH

Perhaps the major challenge to governing the commons wisely and unselfishly for all generations lies in fact that every person sees and understands the world differently because each person is imbued with a unique story based on individual circumstances. One’s interpretation of that story is informed by personal perception—and that perception is unarguably one’s sense of the truth. This being the case, the notion of right versus wrong can exist only metaphorically because the reality of everyone’s perception is right, right, and different.

The Indian spiritual leader, Mahatma Gandhi, said that, “A votary of truth [a person fervently devoted to truth] is often obliged to grope in the dark.” Our challenge therefore lies in our blind spots, not in our vision. Unlike correcting a blind spot in the rear view of an automobile, which can be rectified simply by adding a different kind or a supplemental mirror, we cannot correct our personal blind spots so easily. To correct them, we must grow in our perception and in our acceptance of what is. “Perceive” is from the Latin percipere, which means “to seize the whole of something, to see all the way through.” Perception, therefore, is the act of seeing in the mind, of understanding.

Although our perceptions grow and change as we mature, not everyone’s perceptions mature at the same rate, which accounts for the widely differing degrees of consciousness with respect to cause-and-effect relationships. This disparity is neither good nor bad; it simply means that each of us have different gifts to give at different times in our lives as we see different versions of the truth.

Truth is absolute, whereas perceptions of truth are relative. Therefore, facts, which are perceptions of truth, are relative. Consider the following statement: The world functions perfectly; our perception of how the world functions is imperfect. What does that mean? We don’t know because our perception is constantly changing as we increase the scope of our knowledge.

Trying to understand this concept is the essence of science. Yet even having worked as a scientist for 40 years or more, I would not know a “scientific truth” derived from testing a hypothesis if I stepped on one, because all science can do is disprove something. A scientific fact is therefore a fact only by consensus of the scientists, which means that a scientific fact or truth is only an approximation of what is. It represents our best understanding of reality at this moment and is constantly subject to change as we learn.

Perception is learning, because cause and effect are always connected. Gandhi had reached this conclusion when he said, “My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements, but to be consistent with the truth.” He was consistent in his changing perceptions of what the truth was at different stages in his life. He grew from “truth” to “truth” as his vision cleared and he could see greater and greater vistas. So he said that if one found an “inconsistency” between any two things he wrote, the person “would do well to choose the latter of the two on the same subject.”

As I have grown, I am increasingly struck by the way my perception of what is continues to unfold, like a many-petalled flower. As each petal matures, I see the world anew, and thus perceive it differently. My reality is therefore different.

Truth is perfect understanding of that which is. It is neither the spoken word nor the written word, although these may have a ring of truth to them. Truth cannot be defined; it can only be experienced and lived.

With respect to governing the commons, the flawed assumption made during policy debates is that everyone involved has a similar level of understanding of the problem being discussed. In reality, however, vast differences in knowledge and understanding underpin the resource problems confronting the commons because those in charge are either not understood the issue or ignored it through “informed denial.” When religious, political, or other special-interest ideologies are added to the milieu, uncertainty and contestation over potential solutions is a virtual certainty.¹

In addition to differences in knowledge, understanding, and ideologies, men and women intuitively perceive their respective worlds differently. Men tend to be relatively direct, linear, quantitative, and short-term oriented in their approach to problems, whereas women are predominantly interrelationship oriented based on a familial sense of multiple generations and thus a greater propensity for simultaneously considering an integrative approach in successive time scales.

THE DEGREE TO WHICH A COMMONS IS ISOLATED

In the early days of shared use, governance of a commons was a jointly assumed responsibility of everyone in the hunter-gatherer group who used it. Although most such commons were sustainably used over centuries, that likely began to change with the advent of herding and the beginning of competition for grazing and a more sedentary way of life that led to local increases in human populations. Nevertheless, it took the onset of agriculture to effectively seal the fate of long-term sustainability with respect to Nature’s commons. The rapidly increasing numbers of people and domestic animals in the agricultural areas not only incited and fostered growing inter-tribal competition for arable land and water but also the conflicts it engendered. These conflicts grew in scale and intensity as various tribes coalesced into larger and larger societies, which spread across the landscape and conquered smaller, weaker groups of people. What becomes evident from history is that sustainable governance of a commons collapses more often due to unfavorable influence from without than from within. Ancient Greece is a case in point.

Greece, flourishing under wise agricultural use during the beginning of the Iron Age (12^th century BCE), had nevertheless greatly altered its landscape, in spite of its apparently sound agricultural ethic. But all the human-caused changes, including deforestation, do not appear to have caused the collapse of the agricultural system. It was sustainable in fact, and it might have continued to be so had not been for the effect of outside influences.

Although the Greeks modified their landscape, making it ecologically fragile, their agricultural system was sustainable as long as there was a full human population to tend the terraced fields. The destruction of their agricultural system was not a consequence of the system itself, but rather of Romans raiding the Greek countryside for slaves that reduced the population of workers and left the vulnerable landscape increasingly untended, thereby allowing the terraces to collapse and the soil to wash into the Aegean Sea.

As long as the Greeks maintained adequate cover crops that functioned to hold in place the soil as the forests had once done, their agricultural system was sustainable. Unfortunately, as Roman slavers continually reduced the Greek’s working population, there came a threshold beyond which this labor-intensive agriculture simply could not be maintained, and the system collapsed with the loss of the topsoil.²

Prior to the advent of Greek agriculture, the land had been forested for millennia, making sustainability a moot point. Sustainability arose as a problem not because of deforestation, but because of the inability of a society debilitated by slaving to continue performing the function of the forest, namely soil conservation.

This same kind of dynamic is occurring today in many other parts of the world, but for another reason. While working in Peninsular Malaysia, I observed a number of abandoned rice paddies, some of which were being reclaimed by young-growth jungle, while others were simply eroding away. When I asked why this was happening, I was told that many of the younger people were migrating to the cities, such as Kuala Lumpur.

Growing rice without modern machinery is labor intensive. As long as there are enough young people in the villages to augment and eventually replace the old people in the labor pool, the rice paddies will be sustainable. But as the young people leave the villages for the cities, they diminish the village labor pool just as surely as the Romans did when they captured and removed Greek peasants as slaves. When a village labor pool falls below a certain threshold minimum, the rice paddies are no longer sustainable as part of the village commons.

THE CHANGING BIOPHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

Today every aspect of the commons is increasingly under attack from the global-scale growth in the human population; rampant, wasteful use of resources in the industrialized countries; competition in the global-market money chase, which fosters deployment of advanced technologies for resources exploitation worldwide; the virtually unlimited human access to the once-isolated commons of indigenous peoples, as well as compounding effects of polluting the global ecosystem.³

We humans have jointly inherited the commons, which is more basic to our lives and well-being than either the market or the state. We are “temporary possessors and life renters,” wrote British economist and philosopher Edmund Burke, and we “should not think it amongst [our] rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance.”⁴

Despite the wisdom of Burke’s admonishment, the commons is today almost everywhere under assault, abuse, and degradation in the name of economic development as corporations are increasingly hijacking (euphemistically termed “privatizing”) both Nature’s services and every creature’s birthright to those services. Pollution despoils the air, defiles the soil, and poisons the water. Noise has routed silence from its most protected sanctuaries. City light hides the stars by night. Urban sprawl, the disintegration of community, and the attempts to control, engineer, and patent the very substance of life itself are all part or the economic raid on the commons for private monetary gain. “Corporations,” says author David Korten, “are pushing hard to establish property rights over ever more of the commons for their own exclusive ends, often claiming the right to pollute or destroy the regenerative systems of the Earth for quick gain, shrinking the resource base available for ordinary people to use in their pursuit of livelihoods, and limiting the prospects of future generations.”⁵

This is not to say that all corporations are bad or that the market is inept. It is to say that both corporations and the market must have boundaries to keep them within the realm of human competence and moral limits. “The market economy is not everything,” asserted conservative economist Wilhelm Ropke in the 1950s. “The supporters of the market economy do it the worst service by not observing its limits.”⁶ And it’s by ignoring the moral limits of the market economy that we, the adults of the world, create poverty and increasingly mortgage all the generations of the future—beginning with our own children and grandchildren.

As long as humanity is motivated by fear, of which “greed” is a part, every market economy will be destructive. Although money, which is seen as personal security, is the true object of competition, the ultimate battlefield is the global environment—the commons. The only possible solution for human survival with any sense of dignity and well-being is a conscious reduction of and cap on the human population. Even then, the market economy would remain destructive, but the biophysical carrying capacity for human life would be in better balance with the long-term availability of natural resources.

THE NEED FOR ADAPTIVE PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNANCE

Although there is increasing emphasis on the significance of mutual trusteeship of our natural resources, generalized social bounds—while essential—are not enough to shift the entrenched patterns of interactions toward new, adaptive forms of cooperative caretaking and governance of a commons in response to ongoing environmental change. In fact, the more complex a commons is biophysically and the more diverse the segment of humanity that uses it, the more contentious the interactions are likely to be. Under such circumstances, sound, often-strict, local enforcement of predetermined social behavior is necessary to protect and maintain the potential biophysical productivity of the commons.⁷

On the other hand, I have found that the level of consciousness that causes and problem in the first place is not the same level that can fix it. For this reason, I have over the years facilitated the transformative resolution to environmental conflicts, which raises the level of the participants’ consciousness of cause and effect with respect to their decisions and actions. The outcome of this transformative conflict resolution is a shared vision based on the heightened level of awareness whereby the participants negotiate a new standard of behavior—inevitably a personal constraint of some kind—in order to achieve a greater collective freedom with respect to a future condition.⁸

As environmental problems become more complex, however, it is good to identify a complement of guiding principles that touch the heart and soul of people even as they protect the productive capacity of the commons for all generations—present and future. Whereas an interdisciplinary group of 16 people engaged in a discussion that promulgated six principles for the sustainable governance of the oceans as a global commons, it is with humility that I add the seventh: (1) responsibility, (2) matching scales, (3) precaution, (4) adaptive caretaking, (5) full-cost allocation, (6) participation, and (7) shared leadership. As the authors state it, “The [seven] Principles together form an indivisible collection of basic guidelines governing the use of all environmental resources, including, but not limited to, marine and coastal resources.”⁹

I have rewritten the principles in order to engage them as fully as possible in the care we take of all aspects of the global commons:

Principle 1: Responsibility. Access to environmental resources carries with it attendant responsibilities to use them in a manner that is ecologically effective, economically sensitive, and socially just to ensue the continued productive capacity of the commons in question. Individual and corporate responsibilities and incentives must be aligned with one another and with the broad goals of social-environmental sustainability.

Principle 2: Matching Scales. Ecological problems are rarely confined to a single scale in time or space. Therefore, decision concerning environmental resources must: (i) be assigned to institutional levels that maximize their ecological contribution, (ii) ensure the flow of ecological information among all appropriate institutional levels, (iii) be inclusive and take all concerned citizen into account, and (iv) internalize costs and benefits. Appropriate scales of governance are those with the most relevant information, can respond quickly and effectively, and are able to integrate within and among scales in time and space.

Principle 3: Precaution. In the face of uncertainty and the irreversibility of environmental impacts, decisions concerning their use must err on the side of caution. The burden of proof is thus shifted to those whose activities could potentially damage the environment.

Principle 4: Adaptive Caretaking. Given that some level of irreversibility always exists in caring for environmental resources, decision-makers must continuously gather and integrate appropriate—monitoring—ecological, social, and economic information with the goal of adaptive improvement.

Principle 5: Full-Cost Allocation. All of the internal and external costs and benefits of alternative decisions concerning the use of environmental resources, including social and ecological, are to be identified and allocated. For the sake of transparency, education, and social-environmental sustainability, markets must continually be adjusted to openly reflect full costs. As history demonstrates over and over, true economic transparency is the road to social justice within and among generations.

Principle 6: Participation. All stakeholders must be engaged in the formulation and implementation of decisions concerning environmental resources—which means someone must speak for the children of all generations. Full understanding and participation on the part of affected citizens is necessary for credible, accepted rules that appropriately identify and assign the corresponding responsibilities.

Principle 7: Shared Leadership. The sustainable governance of the commons will require an ongoing, participatory, and open process involving all the major stakeholder groups—including someone speaking for the children of all generations. It will also require integrated assessment and shared leadership and to accomplish fully adaptive caretaking.

Shared or revolving leadership comes about in two ways: first, when “subordinates” break custom and become leaders, and second, when someone’s particular expertise is needed and they temporarily assume leadership. Revolving leaders are indispensable in our lives because they take charge in varying degrees, as circumstances require.

Such leadership relies on three things: (1) inclusivity, which presumes that lasting solutions require the participation of all affected parties, including someone speaking for the children of all generations; (2) mutual accountability, which presumes that sustainable solutions depend on all sides taking responsibility for answers (which means mutual blaming is not enough); and (3) cultivating the skills of democracy, which presumes that we are not born knowing how to be effective within a democratic system of government and must be taught the art of participation—from active listening to negotiation and evaluation.¹⁰ When, however, we view government as distinct from civil society, we exempt it from practicing inclusive, participatory approaches to interpersonal relationships.¹¹

Revolving leadership is the basis of day-to-day of the participatory democratic process required in all contexts of social-environmental sustainability. Such participation is both one’s opportunity and responsibility to be accountable through the example of one’s personal behavior, by participating in the democratic process and thereby extending a willingness to accept ownership in the resolution of it society’s problems.

Because no one person can be an expert in everything, the person in the official position of overall leadership must have the common sense and good grace to support and follow the lead of a person whose expertise is momentarily in demand. It is difficult for many people to be open enough to recognize what is best in a given circumstance and to step aside when specific leadership—other than theirs—is required.

In the last analysis, leadership must be shared (but neither given away nor sold) because a time will arise when we must count on someone else’s special competence. If we think about the people with whom we share the commons, it becomes apparent that we must be able to count on one another if our commons is to meet our needs while protecting our deepest values. By ourselves, we are severely limited, but together we can be something truly awesome.

But, you might say, I’m only one person, what can I do? My actions account for so very little. Because so many people feel this way, it might be instructive to consider snowflakes.

When snowflakes begin falling, those coming down first land on the warm soil and melt, entering the ground without a trace. One after another, they come into view out of the sky, fall past our faces, and land on the ground, only to disappear as rapidly as they appeared—or so it would seem.

But each snowflake does something as it touches the soil. Its coolness dissipates the soil’s heat. As flake after snowflake touches the ground and melts, the collective coolness of their beings creates a cumulative effect by which the soil is eventually cooled enough that falling snowflakes melt progressively more slowly until some don’t melt at all. Now, snow begins accumulate, gradually at first, until the land is covered in a blanket of white.

Is one snowflake more important than another? Is the one you see sparkling in the sun more important than the one that melted upon landing? Neither is more or less important than the other. Without those that melted and cooled the soil, the ones that ultimately formed the blanket of winter white would not have survived to do so. Therefore, just as every snowflake (individually and as part of the collective) is important to the whole of winter, so is each person (individually and as part of the collective) important to the whole of a commons.

Just as no two snowflakes are exactly alike, no two people are identical. Thus, each individual has a unique gift to offer, a special talent that in the collective of a democratic council is complementary rather than competitive. Each person’s belief, being a little different from all the others, helps a democratic council of caretakers to see itself when that person’s voice is raised in expressing their particular point of view.¹²

Although I recognize that flawless, ecologically sound, democratic governance of any aspect of the global commons is a wishful illusion, such as the elimination of air pollution, we come closest to achieving our goals by aiming for the ideal. And if we fall short of achieving the ideal, we will at least have accomplished more than if our aim had been lower.

There is a land in the imagination, however, that some call “Utopia,” a land much written about through the centuries as people struggle to find peace and equality in a world that seems designed and governed by conflict. Like the Utopias imagined by philosophers, the Idyllic Isle of my dreams, the possibility I hold fast in my heart, is today still surrounded by a brooding sea of strife and thus difficult to reach, although long ago I touched its shore.

Throughout the years of middle-life, I used to get glimpses of the Idyllic Isle from time to time after strenuous, focused effort. But as I get older, I succeeded more easily in making the journey to that shore of possibility—a land where people choose to love one another; where work is transformed into labors of love that some would call “play;” and where social-environmental problems are untangled with patience, compassion, and ease. Earth, too, could be like this, so the story goes, if only. . . But here, today, it is one thing to envision a better future, and quite another to pry people loose from their entrenched, habitually negative thinking and drag them, in full resistance, into that better future.

I emphasize negative thinking because Utopias are not imagined perfection, but rather imagined cures for imperfection, and herein lies the problem with most “solutions.” Namely, a solution is conjured in an attempt to move away from an unwanted circumstance rather than moving toward a desired outcome. Put another way, instead of moving toward the ideal, most solutions attempt to cure an imperfection by moving away from it, an action that is neither physically nor psychologically possible because we not only become but also create what we focus on—in this case, the imperfection.

Regardless of how it may seem, I am not intimating the kind of Utopia described by Sir Thomas More, that imaginary isle of perfection in human relationships. But, I am suggesting an ideal because an ideal is all that is worth striving for and thus writing about.

To solve our social-environment problems, we must have a destination in the form of an idealized vision toward which to journey. This ideal can then define an agenda resting firmly on the bedrock of a shared vision that incorporates the collective wisdom, personal courage, and political will needed to inspire true social progress. Although this sounds good, where, in a practical sense, do we go from here?

Despite the usual elusiveness of an ideal, we can each begin our personal journey toward wholeness, toward “psychological maturity,” which, upon attainment, will allow us to both envision our ideal and work toward it as an unconditional gift of love to bestow on the generations of the future by leaving the world a little better for having been here. To those who doubt this is possible, I offer an admonishment by the aforementioned Edmund Burke: “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”¹³

I know from experience that achieving psychological maturity is no easy task. It requires discipline, self-reflection, a willingness to admit and learn from mistakes, the courage to change with each new insight, and, above all, the courage to purposefully struggle within oneself toward an ideal of being that has as its reward an inner freedom and peace unparalleled in the outer world. “We actually live today in our dreams of yesterday,” mused aviator Charles Lindbergh, “and living those dreams, we dream again.”¹⁴ Thus begins the journey toward the Idyllic Isle.

The extent to which each person achieves psychological maturity is the extent to which society as a whole approaches the shore of the Idyllic Isle—the Isle of Positive Possibility. There is but one time to set sail. And that time is now!¹⁵

ENDNOTES

William M. Adams, Dan Brockington, Jane Dyson, and Bhaskar Vira. Managing Tragedies: Understanding Conflict over Common Pool Resources. Science, 302 (2003):1915-1916.

The preceding discussion of ecosystem fragility, and the example from ancient Greece, is based on: Fritz M. Heichelheim. The effects of Classical antiquity on the land. Pp. 165-182. In: W. L. Thomas (Editor). Man’s role in changing the face of the Earth. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. 1956.

Thomas Dietz, Elinor Ostrom, and Paul C. Stern. The Struggle to Govern the Commons. Science, 302 (2003):1907-1912.

Jonathan Rowe. 2001. The hidden commons. Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, Summer (2001):12-17.

David C. Korten. 2001. What to Do When Corporations Rule the World. 2001. Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, Summer (2001):148-151.

Jonathan Rowe. 2001. The hidden commons. Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, Summer (2001):12-17.

Per Olsson, Carl Folke, and Terry P. Hughes. Navigating the transition to ecosystem-based management of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (2008):9489-9494.

Chris Maser. Resolving Environmental Conflict: Towards Sustainable Community Development. St. Lucie Press, Delray Beach, FL. (1996) 200 pp.

The foregoing discussion of principles of sustainably governing a commons is based on: Robert Costanza, Francisco Andrade, Paula Antunes, and others. Principles for Sustainable Governance of the Oceans. Science, 281 (1998):198-199.

The foregoing two paragraphs are based on: Chris Maser. Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Development. Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, FL. (1998) 235 pp.

Frances Moore Lappé and Paul Du Bois. A Place for Democracy. Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, Winter (1997):37-38.

The foregoing discussion of shared leadership is based on: Chris Maser. Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Development. Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, FL. (1998) 235 pp.

Edmund Burke. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/e/edmundburk100421.html (accessed on March 23, 2009).

Charles A. Lindbergh. http://www.mcrecord.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=2&ArticleID=43777 (accessed on March 23, 2009).

The forgoing discussion of utopia is based on: Chris Maser. Of Ditches And Ponds: A Journey Through The Metaphors Of Childhood And Maturity. Woven Strings Publishing, Amarillo, TX. (2006) 282 pp. E-Book. 2505KB.

If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also listen to me give a presentation.

PARADIGM SHIFT

chrismaser — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:13:51 +0000

PARADIGM SHIFT

Chris Maser

No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated. — Ellen Glasgow, American author.

Cultural evolution expresses itself through changing values. Culture is not genetically inherited. It can only be learned from the past, modified in the present, and passed on to future generations. The notion of culture poses two questions: (1) What happens when the evolution of culture tears the social fabric with great force because of a shift in values in one part of society? and (2) How do we heal the social rupture that results from such a shift in cultural values?

Trying to answer these questions helps me put my idea of a paradigm shift in context with my understanding of a profession as a microcosm of societal dynamics, such as forestry in the United States, which is relatively young, rich in experience, and was noble in its early vision. But the vision of its inception—once on the cutting edge of social responsibility, science, and “correctness” for its time—has dimmed, and is rapidly being relegated to cultural history. Be that as it may, prior to casting out an old paradigm, wisdom dictates that we have a new one to take its place.

Each new paradigm is built on a shift of insight, a quantum leap of intuition, with only a modicum of hard, scientific data. Those who cling to the old way often demand irrefutable, scientific proof that change is needed, but such proof is seldom—if ever—available to the “diehard’s” satisfaction. Ironically, however, today’s old way of thinking was yesterday’s new way of thinking, which was challenged by an even older way of thinking to prove change was necessary or even desirable.

Time and human effort have proven the old paradigm to be more “correct” in terms of contemporary knowledge than its predecessor, but still only partially “correct.” So it is with the new; it too will be more “correct” than the old and will eventually be proven to be only partially “correct,” hence in need of change.

The personal and professional trap of every paradigm lies in its self-limiting nature, which manifests itself when the paradigm becomes too comfortable. At that point, new data cannot fit into the old way of thinking, which has grown rigid with tradition and hardened with age. It is thus necessary to periodically crack open an old belief system if a new thought-form is to enter and grow, moving both the individual and the profession forward in a renewed sense of authenticity in keeping with the cultural times.

Moving forward may be difficult for those whose belief system and personal identity is totally invested in the old paradigm, wherein their perception is vested in the cobwebs of the past, which preclude seeing any reason for change. For those who subscribe to a new paradigm, moving forward is easier, because there is something exciting and novel toward which to move—an opening vista that hints at what the profession must become, a vista more in tune with the knowledge and understanding of the day. Yet those who harbor the new ideas are not better as human beings just because their views differ from those who cling to the old patterns of thought.

The British historian, Arnold Toynbee, asked the critical question: “Why did 26 great civilizations fall?” The answer, he concluded, was that the people would not, or believed they could not, change their way of thinking to meet the changing conditions of their world.

Thus, a profession or society can move forward only to the extent that individuals within it accept new philosophies and practices as demanded by a rapidly changing culture. No profession or society can remain the same. Those who feel they cannot accept new ideas must—and will—fall by the wayside. The constant evolution of culture decrees that every new paradigm will eventually be replaced by one more correct in terms of contemporary knowledge. And we must bear in mind that now is always a time of change, because change is a universal constant—the fruit of which is constant novelty.

Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us. — Van Wyck Brooks, American Author

If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also listen to me give a presentation.

THE QUESTIONS WE ASK

chrismaser — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:55:41 +0000

THE QUESTIONS WE ASK

Chris Maser

A question is a powerful tool when used wisely since a question opens the door of possibility. For example, it was not possible to go to the moon until someone asked: “Is it possible to be to the moon?” At that moment, going to the moon became possible, albeit no one knew how. To be effective, each question must: (1) have a specific purpose, (2) contain a single idea, (3) be clear in meaning, (4) stimulate thought, (5) require a definite answer to bring closure to the human relationship induced by the question, and (6) explicitly relate to previous information.

In a discussion about going to the moon, one might usefully ask: “Do you know what the moon is?” The specific purpose of this question is to find out what, if anything, a person knows about the moon. As such, the question contains a single—an inquiry into the extent of a person’s knowledge about the moon. The question stimulates thought about the moon and may spark an idea of how one relates to it; if not, that can be addressed in a second question. The question, as asked, requires a definite answer, and the question relates to previous information.

A question that focuses on “right” versus “wrong” is a hopeless exercise because it calls for human, moral judgment, and everyone is right from their point of view. A good question, therefore, would be to ask if a proposed action is good or bad in terms of something, such as caretaking a particular forest, imposing a quota on a certain species of oceanic fish, etc. To find out, we must inquire whether a good short-term economic decision is it also a good long-term ecological decision and so a good long-term economic decision. Such questions are important because a good short-term economic decision can simultaneously be a bad long-term ecological decision and so a bad long-term economic decision, one that generations of the future would have to pay for. The point is that we must ask before an answer can be forthcoming.

In essence, every question is a key that opens a door to a room in the human mind, a room that is filled with mirrors, each one of which reflects a facet of the answer. There is, however, a single question per room, and the totality of its answer can be found only in the collective reflection of all the mirrors. Leave out the reflection of one mirror, and the answer is incomplete—and always will be. Nevertheless, “it is still true,” as Louis Pasteur said, “that a well-posed question is half resolved.” This said, however, we must understand and accept that if we want a really new answer to a question, we must risk opening a new room with a new key by asking a fundamentally new question.

On the one hand, we need to know. On the other, we’re afraid of knowing and thus live by surrounding ourselves with informed denial, which keeps us asking the same, old comfortable questions, opening the same familiar door, and looking at the same known and safe reflections in the long-familiar mirrors. On a rare occasion, when we think it safe to feel “feisty,” we may use a little cleaning agent to polish the aging mirrors and hope thereby to find a new and different meaning from the worn-out answer to a question that is so tired we’re no longer quite sure why we’re asking it—like an old person hoping to see a youthful image when looking into the mirror. Or we might think we can mix and match by picking the lock and stealing a mirror from a different room with the hope of stumbling onto a new, workable answer to some threadbare question. But the world doesn’t work that way.

The old questions and the old answers, which have led us into the mess we’re in today, are guiding us toward the even greater mess we’ll be in tomorrow. We must, therefore, look long and hard at where we’re headed because only when we’re willing to risk asking really new questions can we find really new answers and leave the future something better than we are today creating for ourselves.

Heretofore, we have generally been more concerned with getting politically correct answers than we have been with asking fundamentally wise questions. Politically correct answers validate our preconceived, economic/political desires. Wise, farsighted questions would lead us toward a future wherein options are left open, so the generations to come can define their own ideas of a “quality life” from an array of possibilities.

A good question is a bridge of continuity across the generations. While a different answer may be derived every decade, the answer does the only thing an answer can do—brings a greater understanding of the question. Although an answer cannot exist without a question, by the same token, no answer resides completely within a question. Rather, a partial answer is all we can derive from the information we temporarily glean as an illusion of having “answered” the question.

Consider, for example, that when we think we understand a pathogen sufficiently to control it, based on knowledge acquired through the questions we have thus far asked, it mutates and causes us to redefine the original question about controlling it by forcing us to ask more and different questions. Clearly, therefore, other facets of the answer of how to control the organism lie hidden in questions yet to be asked because knowledge is always relative, never definitive, whereas the Creative Principle is forever active, novel, and open-ended. And so it is that another question is always required to approach more closely the ever-incomplete answer.

In the final analysis, the questions we ask guide the conscious evolution of humanity and its society, and it’s the questions we ask—not the answers we derive—that determine the options we bequeath to the future. Answers are fleeting, here today and gone tomorrow, but questions may be valid for a century or more. Questions are flexible and open-ended, whereas answers are rigid and dead-ended. The future, therefore, is a question to be guided by questions and thus defined and determined by questions. The irony is that every answer to every question the human mind can think to ask is only partial, despite appearances, because one must be able to understand, in a single instance, the cyclical-curvilinear nature of the whole universe as an interactive system in order to understand the whole of any given answer to any given question at any given moment.

If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also listen to me give a presentation.

THE DECISIONS WE MAKE

chrismaser — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:01:50 +0000

THE DECISIONS WE MAKE

Chris Maser

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled wity an illicit passion for them when someone proposed to rob us of their companionship.—James Harvey Robinson, American historian (1863-1936)

Elizabeth Sherrill, Guideposts Roving Editor, summarized in a few words the heart of my following discussion about socially responsible decisions. She wrote:

Promises [decisions] are scary things. To keep them means relinquishing some of our freedom; to break them means losing some of our integrity. Though we have to make them today, promises are all about tomorrow—and the only thing we know for sure about tomorrow is that we don’t know anything for sure!

Over the years, my experience has been that making decisions in the political arena is an area in which people know what they need to do on moral grounds (be it the President of the United States, a member of the Congress, a state governor, or someone in an agency) but are often afraid of doing it on political grounds because making a decision, especially if unpopular, brings one face to face with personal accountability, the risk of criticism, and quite possibly, if not probably, the loss of one’s job. The appalling lack of moral courage and political will in the United States today points to the fact that most people prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t, which is but saying that the “terrible known” is often more comfortable than the unknown, even if the unknown promises to be better. People thus chart a course by consciously avoiding charting a course, which was precisely the circumstance in the British Parliament in 1935, prior the outbreak of World War II, which caused Winston Churchill to chide parliamentary members, because he saw with clear foreboding the onrushing threat of Nazi Germany:

When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have affected a cure. There is nothing new in the
story. . . . It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong—these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

While in Churchill’s time, World War II was the critical component affecting human survival, today it’s the declining health of the environment. How are the political leaders of today any different than the members of parliamentary in Churchill’s time? Where in the United States today are the unequivocal voices among local and national politicians who speak for the children through such actions as a firm commitment to doing our part in cleaning the air and eliminating the production of greenhouse gasses? Where are the unequivocal voices among local and national leaders who not only speak for but also stand firmly behind maintaining the productive capacity of the ecosystem, from the local scale to the national scale and beyond?

Without such voices of moral courage and unconditional political commitment to the future in each community in the United States and each nation in the world, we, the adults, are condemning the children—our children and grandchildren—to pay a progressively awful price for our petty, psychological immaturities as we bicker amongst ourselves about who will do what, rather than accepting the sometimes bitter pill of our adult responsibilities. Based on the lack of moral fiber and political will I so often witness in today’s “leaders,” I wonder how many of them will be able to look into the mirror of their reflective years and say: “I’m glad I made that decision the way I did!” rather than, “I wish I had made that decision differently. . .”

Part of the problem is that we, in every generation, too often do not understand that a particular level of consciousness, which causes a problem in the first place, is not the level of consciousness that can fix it; so most people keep doing the same thing over and over (despite the lessons of world history), while each time expecting new and dramatically different results. This is but saying that if one thinks the way one has always thought, one will naturally get the same results one has always gotten.

The above paragraph is, in large measure, a summation of the way in which Western industrial society has navigated the 20th century, a century in deadly grapple between society’s immediate materialistic wants and demands and the environment’s sustainable capacity to produce that which is desired. Unless we are finally willing to change our thinking, we will surely navigate the 21st century in much the same manner as we have the 20th century, but with far deadlier results. Our task for this century, if our society is going to continue to exist as we know it, must be for each of us adults to elevate our own level of consciousness above that which caused the environmental problems of last century. And fortunately, we can elevate our consciousness individually—and thus collectively—because we can each control our thoughts, our motives, our attitudes, and our behavior.

Be that as it may, a decision is no more and no less than the selection of a choice of action from amongst an array of choices of potential actions. We all have choices, and one of the great paradoxes of life is that we must choose. Not to choose, not to decide, is simply not an option because not choosing is still a choice, still a conscious decision. Making a decision—any decision—is as easy as the snap of one’s fingers. Why, then, are so many people in public service unwilling to make socially responsible decisions and, what’s worse, unwilling to keep their commitment to those decisions?

While making a socially responsible decision is easy, becoming psychologically mature enough (other-centered enough) to make such a decision and be openly accountable for its outcome is often difficult because one must live with the results of one’s actions. This poses a myriad problems for psychologically immature (self-centered) people seeking the impossible—to make their lives risk free by avoiding personal responsibility while retaining a sense of power. “It is easier,” as author Marsha Sinetar says, “to manipulate, blame or seduce others into labeling us or doing things for us than it is to define ourselves or to do things for ourselves in our own way.” This, continues Sinetar, is how “people avoid taking authority and authorship for their own lives.”

Sinetar’s words were echoed at a university dinner my wife, Zane, and I attended. During the meal, the head of a department, who sat next to us, looked around to see who might be listening or who might be able to hear and then said in a quiet voice, “The secret of climbing the ladder in university politics is to never make a decision; that way, you can pass the blame when things fail and claim the credit when they work.” In their zeal to avoid personal responsibility, such psychologically immature people have invented a number of myths to rationalize why they cannot make a socially responsible decision that would perchance embodied the risk of changing their personal circumstances.

Each myth is supported by a pattern of belief that reinforces the perceived disaster looming in the immediate future. This way of thinking simply means that our negative beliefs are normally far stronger than our faith in a positive outcome, when faced with making a socially responsible decision. According to author Caroline Myss, we cling so tenaciously to our negative beliefs because we think of them as being just around the corner, whereas our positive beliefs we project into an unlikely future. But regardless of what we believe, it’s a belief and not a fact.

Thus, according to Myss, no myth releases its grip on one’s psyche without a fight. If, therefore, one is intent on being a genuine, other-centered public servant, one has no choice but to engage in that battle by developing thought-forms to supplant the negative myths with beliefs in a positive future of which one is determined to be a creative and responsible part. To become such a person, one must learn to see things as the best they can be—not as they apparently are.

THE MYTHOLOGY OF ABNEGATING PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Although mythology is variously construed as a fundamental frame of reference for how to lead one’s life, it is here meant as an intellectual fabrication used to justify existing in one’s fear of change, rather than fully engaging life, which entails a measure of risk. The mythology of abnegating personal responsibility, like a chameleon, assumes a number of guises, of which I will discuss seven.

Myth One—I Can’t Change Because I’m Locked In

A common myth of being stuck, which has surfaced over the years, is the notion of being locked into a certain position or circumstance in life, of being out of control and thus unable to change one’s current existence. The truth, however, is that we, each and every one of us, always have a choice, that no one is “locked” into anything, that change is always an option. While a person of faith and psychological maturity will examine first and foremost the opportunities presented by an impending change, be they personal growth or material gain, and will weigh the associated risk accordingly, a psychologically immature person, who lacks faith, will focus first and foremost on the perceived risk of loosing whatever he or she already has and thus decline the opportunity, no matter how good or important it is intuitively known to be. Thus, as British philosopher James Allen noted: “Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.” Or as author Anaïs Nin wrote: “We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.”

Some years ago, for example, a man, I’ll call him “Bob,” who worked for a government agency, was sold on a job by a friend in a different state with a different government agency, and Bob took the job only to find out that it was neither ethically planned nor ethically administered. Although Bob could have gone back to work for the agency he left, where he had felt good about what he did, he said that he was “locked in” to his new job, despite his better judgment, and that, when he allowed himself to think about it, he felt betrayed, miserable, depressed, and dishonest.

When I asked why he did not go back to his original agency, which had gladly offered him his old job, Bob said it was too expensive to move again, that he had just gotten his family settled, that he was just learning the ropes of his new job, which he hoped might get better, but he did not see how it could. Finally, Bob said it was not fair to let his friend down, while steadfastly refusing to acknowledge that his friend had sold him a bad bill of goods. He had a litany of reasons that sounded good, but when really pressed, it turned out that Bob found it easier to stay, where he knew in his heart he did not belong, rather than risk the potential ridicule of changing his mind and admitting, by going back to his old agency and job, that he’d made a terrible mistake.

True, returning to his old job would undoubtedly have caused short-term hardships, but it would have earned him his self-respect and the inner peace of feeling good about what he did to earn his living. Instead, Bob prostituted his fundamental beliefs to avoid the short-term pain of taking personal responsibility for what turned out to have been an unwise decision. In so doing, he paid a much higher personal cost over a much longer period of time.

Another spin on this myth is that the “terrible known” is more comfortable than the unknown, even when one can clearly see that it promises to be better. How often I have heard someone say: I know I must do something else because I’m no longer fulfilled by my job or doing it justice, but I can’t quit now. I’m too close to retirement, and I can’t risk giving that up. However, the real question is: how many years of misery is one willing to accept, rather than experience personal growth, joy, and fulfillment by risking change.

Myth Two—I Can’t Commit Future Leaders to a Course of Action

When I worked as a research scientist in the USDI Bureau of Land Management, and later served as an advisor to county government in my home county, I was told by more than one person faced with an uncomfortable decision that he could neither speak for, nor commit, future leaders to a particular coarse of action, that it was unfair to “lock them in.” With this kind of thinking, there would not be a Constitution of the United States of America or a Bill of Rights for US citizens, nor would there be national parks or national forests because the decision-makers would have sought to avoid the risk of making a decision that would be unpopular with the people who had the political power to execute them for treason in the former case and turn them out of office in the latter.

Despite one’s personal trepidations, some decisions, which in fact are a lock and key to enrich the future, must be made in the present moment, such as the Congressional authorizion of wilderness areas or protection of endangered species. If the people responsible for the authorship and passage of these legal mandates had not had the individual courage embodied in the psychologically maturity to act for the benefit of future generations, despite fierce opposition, our nation and all its people would indeed be culturally and spiritually poorer today, while a very few individuals would have made substantial monetary gains.

Eighteenth-century British philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke succinctly addressed the problem of the monetary greed of the few at the cultural and spiritual expense of the many when he wrote:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men [and women] of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Burke’s statement brings to mind the test every public decision-maker must confront and pass if he, or she, is to make socially responsible decisions. The test was aptly described by Senator William Pitt Fessenden of Maine as he delivered the eulogy in 1866 for Senator Foot of Vermont:

When, Mr. President, a man becomes a member of this body hecannot even dream of the ordeal to which he cannot fail to be exposed;

of how much courage he must possess to resist the temptations which daily beset him;

of that sensitive shrinking from undeserved censure which he must learn to control;

of the ever-recurring contest between a natural desire for public approbation and a sense of public duty;

of the load of injustice he must be content to bear, even from those who should be his friends;

the imputations of his motives;

the sneers and sarcasms of ignorance and malice;

all the manifold injuries which partisan or private malignity, disappointed of its objects, may shower upon his unprotected head.

All this, Mr. President, if he would retain his integrity, he must learn to bear unmoved, and walk steadily onward in the path of duty, sustained only by the reflection that time may do him justice, or if not, that after all his individual hopes and aspirations, and even his name among men, should be of little account to him when weighed in the balance against the welfare of a people of whose destiny he is a constituted guardian and defender.

Two years after Senator Fessenden delivered this eulogy, his vote to acquit Andrew Johnson brought about the fulfillment of his own prophecy. This is often the price of true social responsibility. Unfortunately, few people have the moral courage to pay it because, as James Allen wrote: “Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.”

Myth Three—It’s not My Responsibility Because It’s not in My Job Description

It is quite common, I have found, for people afraid to make a decision to rationalize that the letter of the law, the letter of their job description, must be followed at any cost, rather than embrace the heart or intent of either and risk making a conscious choice based on their moral judgment, social responsibility, or the greater good of humanity. And make no mistake, all decisions are based on morality because we humans are subjective creatures; we cannot be otherwise. If you think you are, or can be, objective, try holding a neutral thought in your mind for one minute.

Myth Four—I Can’t Make a Decision Because I Lack Definitive Data

We will never have enough data, let alone perfect data, which translates into all the data we desire to make an entirely safe decision. But not to make a socially responsible decision is still to make a decision, albeit one that usually proves to be less than wise. For those who suffer interminable labor pains of giving birth to a decision, I would point out that, in the end, there are but two choices (too soon or too late) because virtually all data are inconclusive. Generally speaking, therefore, I find that too soon is better then too late.

On the other hand, claims of not having either definitive data or enough data to warrant a change has long been used by the timber industry to justify business as usual. I say this because I, who use to be a research ecologist in forestry, encountered this argument endlessly from the industrialists, even as an expert witness in the court of law. The argument went something like this: We don’t have enough data to prove conclusively that we need to change the way we do business. Therefore, we won’t change because it would introduce economic uncertainty into our business and cost us too much. If, however, you can prove definitively that change is necessary, we’ll consider it.

Although the latter statement sounds reasonable, conclusive proof is, of course, impossible—especially if one summarily rejects all scientific data that goes counter to one’s desired outcome. Nevertheless, this refrain is played like a broken record, regardless of how much data are on hand that demonstrate the ecological necessity of change in order to ensure, as much as possible, a sustainable future for all generations.

But not all people plead ignorance because of a lack of data to avoid making a responsible decision. I once sat next to a building contractor on a flight from Alaska to Oregon. Knowing nothing about building a house, I asked him how he did it.

“Well,” he said, “before I buy the first nail or board, I build the house a hundred times in my head so that I can see and fix all the potential problems before they arise. As long as the house stands as I built it, I’m only one who really knows it, regardless of who buys it or how long they live in it.”

Although the contractor did not have perfect data, he did the level best he could with the data on hand, and he took responsibility for his work. It was, after all, his identity as a person and an artisan that went into the construction of each house, and his integrity meant more to him than the money he could make by using cheap materials and cutting other hidden corners.

Myth Five—It Can’t be True, so I Won’t Believe it

When one refuses to accept data, no matter how clearly valid it is, one is steeped in an interesting dichotomy—the need to know and the fear of knowing, which can be thought of as informed denial. In this instance, a person gathers all the data possible, always hoping it will affirm his or her point of view, while simultaneously rejecting out of hand any unfavorable data by denying or refusing to believe its scientific validity. To give this notion a human face, I know a man whose refrain to anything that threatens his point of view is: “I’m skeptical.” With this statement, he summarily dismissed whatever he finds to be uncomfortable.

In addition, I use to know a wildlife biologist who worked for a state department of fish and game. He is perhaps the most extreme example of informed denial. His professional responsibilities included looking out for the welfare of a herd of elk that used parts of two counties as its habitat. Scientists within the same department studied this particular herd of elk across its geographical range, but the biologist would not accept any data as valid from the neighboring county, if it posed for him an uncomfortable decision. This is known as the “NIH Factor,” which means it’s “not invented here” and thus, by definition, is invalid.

Another colleague of mine used a slightly different approach. He navigated his professional life ignoring whatever he did not want to deal with on the theory that, if ignored long enough, whatever it was would simply go away, which included bothersome people.

Informed denial is perhaps the most rampant myth, when it comes to avoiding the personal risk of making an unpopular, but socially responsible, decision. I have found this myth in every conceivable bureaucratic closet in every level of government in the United States. If you doubt the accuracy of this statement, read the newspaper with an open mind and a discerning eye or listen to the news with an open mind and a discerning ear.

Myth Six—Yes, But I Have to Face Reality

“What you say is all well and good, but I have to face reality.” “It’s fine to be idealistic, and it would indeed be nice if things could be that way, but the reality is. . . .” Note that the foregoing statements summarily dismiss the other person’s point of view.

Facing reality, as it is put forth to avoid making a socially responsible decision one feels is risky, boils down staying within the limits of someone else’s intellectual, political, or economic “bottom line.” Reality, however, is what we each make it to be based on the philosophical underpinnings of our individual worldview. Such views are founded on the fear of potential loss or on the faith of potential opportunities. Although the choice is ours, the vast majority of people unfortunately elect the former.

Myth Seven—What You Are Asking is Impossible

“What you’re asking is impossible; it can’t be done.”

While I was still working as a scientist for the Bureau of Land Management, I wanted to hire an extremely well-qualified woman as a plant ecologist to help with some work. I went carefully through all the necessary hoops the personnel department put in front of me. After six months, however, the head of personnel told me that I could not hire the woman, that it was impossible. When I asked him why, he simply repeated that it was impossible. Finding his answer unacceptable, I went to the State Director, and explained the situation.

“Ridiculous!” he exploded.

With that, he picked up the telephone, called the head of personnel, and the woman was hired within 15 minutes.

As it turned out, the head of personnel had use inappropriate judgment a some months earlier and had been reprimanded. So, still feeling like his pride had been stung by mad hornet, he was taking no chances when my request reached him. His problem this time: by not acting appropriately out of fear of criticism, he got himself in trouble once again.

By suggesting that the required decision is impossible, one is pleading impotence from a position of power, thereby seeking to avoid personal responsibility. When Napoléon Bonaparte was confronted with such a situation, he said, “You write to me that it’s impossible; the word is not French.”

So, in the end, what are these myths protecting? They are protecting the fear of self-definition and personal responsibility for one’s decisions, and in the process are perpetuating one’s existence in the maw of one’s own fear.

FEAR

Although reputed to come in many guises because we fling it outward at such things as change, successes, failure, personal responsibility, criticism, and so on, fear is rooted in one particular facet of our lives—loosing our sense of control. Fear has only one garment with which to cover its various psychological projections, no matter how good they sound.

Fear’s singe garment is the anticipation of an unwanted outcome cast into an unknown future, where we envision ourselves as slaves to an undoubtedly disastrous circumstance beyond our control. Therefore, fear exists simply for the sake of itself and is made real only when we empower it with our thoughts, something President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood, as evidenced by a comment he made to his wife, Eleanor, on their first date.

While dancing, a nervous Eleanor stepped on Franklin’s foot and apologized profusely, prompting him to ask her if she was frightened. When she replied yes, he told her: “Fear is an illusion. If you use the same energy to be confident, the most wonderful things happen.” Unfortunately, few people think the way FDR did and are thus confronted almost daily by fear, especially when facing critical decisions.

The following are some of the guises of fear that people face when confronted with the necessity of making an unpopular, but socially responsible, decision:

change, which is seen as having to confront an uncertain, unknowable future of some scale of real or imagined magnitude with no guarantee of a successful outcome, so one of two things usually happens—either one bargains with the circumstance by trying to scale down the amount of change necessary and thereby minimize the perceived risk of unknown consequences, or one studiously resists change through informed denial of the needed change; in the first case, one tries to cut the best possible deal, and in the latter case, one steadfastly avoids making any decision if at all possible

failure in one’s endeavor and the ridicule it may bring, so one hides from the requisite decisions

success and the greater visibility and expectations to which it may lead, so one sabotages any chances of success by making poor decisions, most often unconsciously

criticism, which most people take personally, so risky decisions are left unattended

personal responsibility, which is dealt with through a perpetual lack of focus, confusion, and a dissipation of energy via numerous distractions, which preclude a risky decision

losing one’s position of authority, which is seen as personal power and control, so the political wind is constantly tested lest a responsible decision be made in unfavorable times and thus jeopardize one’s position

The following examples, in contrast, represent projections of fear flung by someone at a person who is expecting a socially responsible decision to be made:

What you are asking for is too expensive; who will pay the bill?

You’re being too philosophical in your approach to this decision—forgetting, of course, that every concrete idea has its own philosophical foundation.

What you’re asking is unrealistic.

You’re expecting too much, too fast.

You’re asking people to go against human nature.

There isn’t enough data to support your position.

These reasons all sound good, but they’re not real. If, for instance, each time you ran out a reason why change was impractical or impossible, I was to respond by saying: “Other than that (which is the reason you just cited), what is stopping you from making a decision?” you would sooner or later run out of false reasons, no matter how plausible they sounded. Then, and only then, would the real reason come out—whatever it is that you are afraid of.

“Nothing is so much to be feared as fear,” wrote Henry David Thoreau. Fear, which is always the anticipation of something that might happen but has not yet happen, can exist only in the future. Fear is being afraid that something, which happened, might have happened, or could have happened to someone else in the past, and could happen again—to you. True, it could happen again, but that does not mean it will.

While there is always the possibility that a given negative thing might happen, the probability is that it won’t. Conversely, there is always the possibilitythat a given positive thing will happen, and the probability, in my experience at least, is that it will because I find far more positive things happening in my life each day than negative things.

Consider briefly your own life. How many events, which you originally took to be negative, actually turned out to be positive? You may well find, upon review, that the vast majority of your life has been positive. So you can look upon FEAR as an acronym for: False Evidence Appearing Real.

The problem is that we tend not only to remember the negative things but also to focus on them. I say this because I have found, in the years I’ve dealt with the resolution of environmental conflicts, that people agree on about 80% of everything and disagree on the remaining 20%. Nevertheless, it’s the latter on which they focus, to the exclusion of the former. When, however, people focus on the areas of agreement, the contested areas are put into perspective and become largely or totally negotiable.

Yitzak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister and warrior, learned this lesson well, and in teaching it to the world, forfeited his life to a young Israeli man who could not see beyond his own fear and hatred. All the years Rabin lead the fight against the Palestinians, Israel was in danger of attack. Then, as Prime Minister, he realized that the only way Israel would ever have national security would be if the Palestinians also had national security. Thus, the one-time warrior became the emissary of peace, a transformation of heart and mind that took the utmost courage. Sadly, the peace process initiated by Rabin died with him, because no one else seemed to fully understand what he saw, much less demonstrate the courage to carry it through to conclusion.

In this context, Buddhism offers an important insight: fear cannot exist in the present moment, in the here and how, despite the fact that it is ordained in the nature of life that we never know from one moment to the next how things will turn out. This being the case, one can see the future as positive or negative depending on whether one chooses to focuses on the possible opportunities or possible disasters, both of which are part of any future. You can, therefore, choose a possibility mindset based on faith and live virtually free of fear, as instructed in an old Chinese proverb: Fear knocked at the door; faith opened it; and there was no one there.

Consider the observation of Helen B. Juniper of Claremont, California. As she jogged around the warm-up track, carefully avoiding mud puddles and soft places, she began to notice the different imprints people’s sneakers left in the mud. Where, she suddenly wondered, were her footprints. Stopping, she pressed the sole of one shoe into the damp soil, made a mental note of her sole’s pattern, and began looking for it on the track. It was, however, difficult for her to find any sign of her passing because she avoided all the soft places, which caused her to realize just how easy it is to avoid the uncertain spots in life—like making a socially responsible but unpopular decision—and thereby leave little impression in one’s passing. Now, she says, she is more willing in her life to go into challenging territory, where fear may still resides, and let her prints stand out in bold relief, as did Yitzak Rabin, “to encourage those who follow.”

THE “WHY IT WON’T WORK” EMPTYING EXERCISE

Most of us, in the process of growing up, became trained, albeit often unconsciously, by our parents, teachers, peers, and our societal framework in the habit of negative, limited thinking. How frequently are we told why something is not possible, why we can’t do what we have dreamed of doing, or why we won’t succeed. The old television series, “Mission Impossible,” which Napoléon would assure us in not a French program, cast each episode in the unlikely realm of the impossible, and the whole point of the show was to accomplish that which on the surface appeared highly improbable—in other words, to prove it possible!

With so many years of ingrained and habituated, negative self-reinforcing feedback loops, no wonder many of us can throw out, quicker than you can snap your fingers, a litany of why something we’re afraid to do won’t work. When the world turns around such a negative, central axis, is it any wonder that so much of life has been contaminated with this perspective? The worst-case scenario becomes the area of life in which one exists, one’s comfort zone, as it were. A possibility, opportunity mentality actually becomes the unfamiliar country of discomfort, where one is loath to sojourn or even dream.

Just to balance the equation in a more holistic perspective, it’s heart warming to acknowledge that there are individuals who look on the bright side, the best-case scenario: What can we do? Why will this work? What are the successes here? These individuals constitute role models worthy of our emulation. They are the explorers, the trailblazers, the path finders of potential possibilities and opportunities who habitually see the growth or gain, even when it entails suffering and pain.

Stop for a moment and allow yourself to feel the territory—positive or negative—in which you most often think, speak, and act. What is your perspective generally like?

Try an experiment to see if you can really get a grasp of how pervasive your overall attitude affects your thoughts, your choices, your growth or the lack thereof, and your life in both small and large ways. Consider an issue you may currently be grappling with. It can be something with your spouse or partner, your child, your job, whether to take some kind of course, or even as mundane as deciding whether to paint the exterior of your house and what color(s) to choose.

When you have chosen the issue, allow your thoughts free reign, as much as you can. Let them be spontaneous and uncensored. Then take a sheet of paper and begin to record your stream of thoughts, without any inner editorial advice.

Once you simply give yourself permission to feel the way you do, you will see the pattern of your thinking. Did you, for example, run out a stream of all the reasons why, whatever it is, won’t work: why it’s a stupid idea; why it’s too difficult; why it’s too time consuming; why it’s too expensive; why you need to be concern about what others will think of you; and so on? Were you able to detect how this negative gush of why it won’t work sabotaged every potentially positive action or outcome, even that of feeling good about yourself? As you flushed out all the apparent reasons why whatever it is wouldn’t work, did you notice that your thoughts began to change as the negatives dissipated?

In an atmosphere of acceptance, you may notice that you actually begin considering the reasons why, whatever it is, could work, why the idea or direction is both reasonable and possible. Yes, maybe I can do this or that. Maybe it’s a plausible idea or plan that I didn’t see because my fear and its gang of grisly accomplices were casting their shadows into my light.

You may recall the children’s story of the little train with its fear and it’s dialogue as it approached its test of: “oh that hill looks daunting and impossible to climb” to “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can” as the train kept on going up the hill. As it crested the peak of achievement, it’s positive, reaffirming refrain became: “I knew I could, I knew I could, I knew I could.”

You too can reach the top of the hill by making the frightening decision with which you are confronted, but unlike the little train confined to its pre-laid tracks, you have the option of thinking outside of box you find yourself in, which is but saying that your imagination lays the tracks for your reality to follow. Thinking outside the box is a gift of Zen, and is called having a beginner’s mind.

THINKING OUTSIDE OF THE BOX

It is likely that most people in their lives have seen a beginner at a game win it easily and/or have someone say, somewhat disparagingly: “That just beginner’s luck.” It wasn’t beginner’s luck, but rather the open-ended thinking of a beginner’s mind that was on display.

A beginner at anything is unfettered by the mental limitations imposed by someone else’s rules and thus can see what the answers might be because he or she does not know what they should be according to conventional wisdom. The one who thinks of himself or herself as an expert, on the other hand, is bounded by the rules that govern being an expert. Such a person considers himself or herself as something special, the one who knows the “correct” answer, yet is too often blind to what other, equally valid, answers might be. The beginner is free to explore and discover, whereas the expert grows rigid in a self-created, mental prison. However, I know of two women and a man who exemplify the beginner’s mind.

I have often used a simple exercise, which requires nothing more than six wooden toothpicks, to help people understand that their imaginations are either as tethered as their blind acceptance of social convention or as free as their willingness to reach beyond such convention in seeking their soul’s creative eye—their willingness to think outside of the socially constructed and acceptable box. The instructions are simple enough: Sit at the table and make four equilateral triangles out of the six toothpicks without crossing one over another.

Rarely does a person succeed, because it seems impossible to accomplish this feat on the single dimension of a table’s flat surface, which their minds quickly tell them, even as they struggle not to accept it. They think it must be possible because they were told to do it, but they can’t figure out how and eventually give up. There are, however, at least four ways to solve this problem.

The way I had learned to solve the problem was to make one triangle on the table’s flat surface and then stand the other three upright within the one, thus encompassing more than a single dimension. The second, third, and fourth ways both entail breaking the toothpicks and arrange them appropriately on the table’s surface.

This first time I saw the problem solved by breaking a toothpick was at a workshop I was conducting to help wildlife biologists look beyond professional convention for answers to their management problems. During the workshop, one of the biologists came to me and said that his wife, who had accompanied him to the meeting, was interested in what was being discussed and asked if she could join group.

With the lady sitting at the table, I gave my usual instructions and then simply watched what happened. While all the men arranged and rearranged their toothpicks to no avail, she put hers on the table and sat looking at them. Suddenly, a tiny smile crept over her face. Picking up a toothpick, she laid it down at an angle. Then she deftly broke the second in two, laying each half across from the other on each side of the middle of the first toothpick. Finally, she arranged the remaining four in a square to close the exposed sides. Although not perfect because she had not removed a piece of the broken toothpick to account for the width of the first one, which she had laid on the table, she had four triangles!

Over the years, I have continued giving my original instructions, wondering if anyone else would break a toothpick. Finally, after more than two decades, a sixth grade teacher looked at her toothpicks for about thirty seconds, then looked up and asked, “Can I break the toothpicks?”

“Yes,” I answered, and then asked, “How did you figure that out so fast?”

“Well,” she said, “any time I’m given limits, the first thing I do is check them to see if there’s an alternative.”

What a marvelous answer! How fortunate her students! They have a rare teacher, one with a beginner’s mind who regularly checks the mental box she is given to see if there is a way to get outside for a new and different view.

The third way to solve the problem came from a district ranger in the U.S. Forest Service. I gave him six toothpicks and the usual instructions. Seated at his kitchen table, he laid the toothpicks on the table’s top, looked at them for a few seconds, while his young son watched, and then broke each toothpick in two.

The boy turned to me with a questioning voice and said: “He broke them.”

“He didn’t tell me I couldn’t,” replied his father as he made four equilateral triangles on the tabletop, with one piece left over.

The fourth way came from a woman who look at the tooth picks for about 30 seconds, and then broke them all, after which she proceeded to make four equal sided triangles of different sizes all hooked together on the flat of a table. When she had finished, she looked at me with a question in her eyes. All I could say was: “Marvelous!“

Once again, I had never said that all the triangles needed to be the same size, only that the sides had to be equal in length. This woman is the only person I have seen make the triangles different sizes.

What does this exercise have to do with making a decision? First, it demonstrates that most socialized individuals become stuck within socially imposed limitations to their imaginations, whether real or not. Second, it shows there are a relatively few, rare individuals who refuse to accept the intellectual box society attempts so hard to put around their minds and thereby simply remain open to the possibilities—a beginner’s mind.

The beginner’s mind, in turn, allows each person’s inner genius to unfold. There are at least eight ways in which one can think outside the socially restrictive box, ways of thinking that one can adapt to making decisions:

Examine each problem from every conceivable angle, i.e., question everything, which means abandoning the first approach that comes to mind because it likely stems from past experience. This necessitates re-conceptualizing the problem, which not only can solve the immediate problem but also will identify a new one. In this case, one might, for example, think of the four people who found ways to make four equilateral triangles by breaking the toothpicks.

Make thoughts visible by developing the visual and spatial ability to display information in new ways—a picture is worth a thousand words. Some people us flow diagrams. I once knew an architect who built a freestanding model out of balsam wood when he came across a conceptual problem, the solution for which he could not find on paper. The model also served to translate the concept from the one-dimensional blueprint into a multidimensional image for the contractor.

Be productive. Dean Keith Simonton, of the University of California at Davis, found, for instance, that most respected scientists produced more “bad” works than their lesser known peers because the former risk more productive activities. By the same token, Babe Ruth, the baseball player, had to accept more strikeouts in a single season than anyone else in order to hit more home runs in a single season than anyone else.

The beginner’s mind, like the playful child it is, constantly combines and recombines ideas, images, and thoughts. In other words, by like a child and entertain the possibility that anything and everything is possible. Consider the imaginary relationship between the comic-book character, Flash Gordon, and his adventures in space and the reality of space walks by today’s astronauts. Where do you think the ideas came from?In another venue, Albert Einstein combined the concepts of energy, mass, and the speed of light in a novel way and thus discovered a previously unknown relationship. One does not, therefore, necessarily have to discard the conventional box; one can re-envision it and thus redefine its characteristics and/or its relationship to a given problem.

The facility of connecting unconnected relationships allows one to see things others miss. When, for example, Samuel Morse was trying to figure out how produce a telegraphic signal strong enough to transmit from coast to coast, he observed teams of horses being exchanged at a relay station, where the tired horses were replaced by rested ones. From this observation, Morse deduced that a traveling signal of a given strength could cover the distance from coast to coast with the aid of periodic boosts of power along the way. What Morse discovered when he constructed the relay boosters for his telegraph signal was that we only possess the power of an insight when we give it expression by acting on it.

According to physicist David Bohm, one can think differently, i.e., outside the conventional box, if one can tolerate ambivalence between two incompatible subjects, to which Niels Bohr, another physicist, added that if one can hold opposites together in one’s mine, one will suspend one’s normal process of thinking and allow an intelligence beyond rational thought to create a new form. By way of example, consider that Bohr’s ability to imagine light as both a particle and a wave led to his conception of the principle of complementarily. Thus it is that creativity comes from understanding the paradoxical.

Thinking metaphorically, which is drawing analogies between abstract principles and concrete everyday occurrences, allows one to perceive resemblances between two separate areas of existence. Alexander Graham Bell compared the concrete everyday occurrence of how the inner ear works with the abstract notion of a stout piece of membrane as it moved steel and, in the process, conceptualized the telephone.

“Whenever we attempt to do something and fail,” says author Michael Michalko, “we end up doing something else,” which is the first principle of the creative accident. The second principle is recognizing the “accident” as a creative opportunity, asking ourselves what we have done, and answering our question in a novel, unexpected way, which, according to Michalko, “is the essential creative act.” This creative act is not luck, but rather where opportunity and a prepared beginner’s mind intersect outside of the conventional box, which Michalko calls “creative insight of the highest order.” (The preceding discussion is based on: Michael Michalko. 1998. The Art of Genius. Utne Reader, July-August:73-76.)

Here, perhaps, the most important lesson is to drop everything one is doing when something of interest rears its head and pursue it with singular focus. Many, or even most, intelligent people fail to make significant leaps of creativity because, having failed to engage their imaginations and think outside of their mental boxes, they have either accepted society’s collective limitations of perception and/or are fixated on their own preconceived notions and plans. But not so the person with a beginner’s minds; he or she both recognizes an interesting opportunity and pursues it relentlessly to fruition. Such people are the hope of the future. To which I must add that people who possess both a beginner’s mind and a highly developed spiritual awareness (as opposed to religious doctrine) will, in the end, have the most positive influence on changing the world for the better.

In my opinion, it behooves us all to find the moral courage and political will to unequivocally accept our adult responsibilities, those entrusted to us by one another and our children, and to make our decisions for the benefit of those we serve, present and future, because a decision—any decision—is but the first step in a never-ending story of cause and effect, the one(s) we each set into motion by our individual and collective choices. May we therefore decide wisely, with those in mine who must reap the consequences of our decisions as their circumstances—the children of all generations.

I am grateful to my wife, Zane, who helped me to improve this essay, especially the section titled: “The ‘Why It Won’t Work’ Emptying Exercise.”

If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also listen to me give a presentation.

Indische Johads: Wasser als Gemeingut

Silke Helfrich — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:12:04 +0000

Demnächst werde ich in München zum Thema Wasser als Gemeingut diskutieren. Guter Anlaß, um das Thema Wasser auf dem Blog prominenter zu platzieren.

Im trockenen Norden von Indien ist schon seit Jahren eine Tendenz zur Wiederbelebung lokaler Wasserinitiativen beobachtbar, so der Council of Canadians in Local Control of our Water Commons.

Monsunregen einerseits, Dürre andererseits. Wie das zu händeln ist, zeigt die NGO Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS) im ariden Rajasthan. Die Leute in den Dörfern bauen mit Unterstützung von TBS Johads. Das sind …halbmondförmige Teiche – stabilisiert durch aufgeforstete Flächen – die dabei helfen, Regenwasser zu ernten und den Grundwasserspiegel zu heben. Wenn der Monsunregen nieder geht, sammeln sich in den Johads viele kleine Bäche und Quellen aus einem Gebiet von ca 100 ha. In den bis zu 5 m tiefen Teichen wird das Wasser über die gesamte Trockenzeit gespeichert. Durch das Anstauen hat das Wasser Zeit, um allmählich im Boden zu versickern (statt, den Boden mitreißend, abzufließen). Jeder Johad ist anders, je nach Bodenbeschaffenheit oder Topographie.

In Rajasthan ist die Regenernte überlebenswichtig. Die Region leidet unter Wasserknappheit und Wasserstress. Rajasthan hat schätzungsweise 5,4 Prozent der nationalen Bevölkerung und 13,9 Prozent der landwirtschaftlich nutzbaren Fläche, doch nur 1,16 Prozent des nationalen Anteils von Oberflächenwasser, und nur 1,7 Prozent der Grundwasservorkommen.

Der Arzt Rajendra Singh und Kollegen von TBS haben in ihrem Einsatz für die Wiederbelebung lokalen, gemeinschaftlichen Wassermanagements voran allem auf die Frauen gesetzt. Sie haben im ländlichen Indien üblicherweise die Verantwortung für die Beschaffung sicheren Trinkwassers.

Die Zahlen und Ergebnisse sind beeindruckend:

Zwischen 1985 und 2003 wurden über 5000 Johads gebaut. Jährlich kommen ca 400 hinzu. Wassersparende Landwirtschaft ist wieder möglich, die Menschen kehren auf ihre Dörfer zurück.
Fünf Flüsse, die früher nach der jährlichen Monsunzeit versiegten, sind wiederbelebt. Der Freitag nennt Singh den Flussmacher.
Der Grundwasserspiegel hebt sich um mehrere Meter.
Die für den Wasserschutz essentiellen Waldflächen, nehmen signifikant zu (in einigen Regionen um 33 Prozent).

TBS hat zudem gewaltfreie Aktivitäten der Gemeinschaften gegen wasser-intensive Industrieansiedlungen oder Privatisierungsbestrebungen unterstützt.

“Wichtig ist hierbei, daß die gesamte Verantwortung für die Planung, Durchführung und Kontrolle der Maßnahmen in den Händen der lokalen Selbstverwaltungskörperschaften liegt, da ohne das Verantwortungsbewußtsein der gesamten Bevölkerung keine langfristige Aufrechterhaltung möglich ist.” schreibt die CDU-nahe Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Dürre ist ein politisches Problem im Jahr 2000.

Und die gesamte Bevölkerung zum Mitmachen zu bewegen, braucht Zeit. von “endlosen Diskussionen, die mehrere Jahre dauern können”, berichtet Singh.

Schlüssel zum Erfolg war das traditionelle Wissen. Johads gab es nämlich in der Region von alters her. Doch sie waren in Vergessenheit geraten. Singh wurde von einem alten Mann in der Region in die Kunst des Johadbaus eingeweiht. Zur rechten Zeit.

Auch die Umweltorganisation Center for Science and Environment (CSE) hat vor über 20 Jahren damit begonnen, die traditionelle Methoden der Regenwasserernte zu dokumentieren und Pilotprojekte aufzubauen. Sunita Narrain, prominente Umweltaktivistin und Direktorin von CSE hat zu unserem Buch “Wem gehört die Welt” einen Beitrag beigesteuert, der verdeutlicht, wie das traditionelle Chouka-System den Menschen ermöglicht, jeden der raren Tropfen Wassers so zu nutzen, dass Futtermittel- und damit Milchproduktion erhöht werden. Und zwar so, dass die Menschen in den Dörfern davon leben können.

(Narrains Text: “Wenn Märkte wirklich für Menschen arbeiten” findet sich hier, S. 149-151.)

“Die Rückgewinnung der Allmende stellt dabei den ersten Schritt zur Reaktivierung dieser Flächen dar.”, schreibt Narrain.

Anders gesagt, die Kontrolle der Menschen über ihre Ressourcen, über Wald, Wasser, Land ist Bedingung für tragfähige Lösungen vor Ort. Der Staat spielt hierbei nicht immer eine rühmliche Rolle. Im zitierten Beispiel versuchten die indischen Behörden den Bau von Johads zu blockieren. Sie hielten sie für “unwissenschaftlich”.

Mehr zu traditionellen Wassererntesystemen findet sich hier.
Mehr zu Wasser als Commons auf onthecommons.org

 Foto; by International Rivers, Lizenz: CC: BY, NC, SA

(und nicht des Staates, der im zitierten Beispiel den Bau von Johads für “unwissenschaftlich” hielt)

Life good share it

squidcake — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:32:46 +0000

Most of the people have the best friend and those people think keeping best friend is good. But in my experience keeping best friend no not good. Before I also have best friend and if I have stress, I am always share the everything to him. But it will make another big stress Most people think friendship is sharing caring and understanding others feeling. if you share a things to your best friend he /she will try to make happy sending massage of friendship giving gift and going to lung each other to make others happy but this will never make happy from big stress and if u r still not happy ..Than what will happen to u r friend so u must show that u r happy.. aaahaa another big stress. So if u have stress or did something very bad, please contact to u r creator that’s god” ALLAH” he will help u if u have good heart.this is 100% guarentee

Maldives gangstars are seeking for right path

squidcake — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:25:33 +0000

the big secrets of happiness and success is Islam.so everybody is searching for happiness and success. finally some of Maldivian gangster have choose the right choice . how lucky they are and how smart they are. in-front of me they are fighting to other they are killing people and they do many bad thing but finally Allah shows the right path Alhamdhu lilla.

Beneath the University, The Commons

rikowski — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:53:25 +0000

Commons

BENEATH THE UNIVERSITY, THE COMMONS

Beneath the University, the Commons
A conference at the University of Minnesota
April 8-11, 2010

// Antioch 05.08 // Rome 10.08 // Athens 12.08 // New York City 12.08 // Helsinki 03.09 // Zagreb 05.09 // Heidelberg 06.09 // London 06.09 //Santa Cruz 09.09//

Seemingly discrete struggles over the conditions of university life have erupted around the world within the past year. These struggles share certain commonalities: outrage over precarious and exploitative conditions, the occupation of university spaces, and goals of reclaiming education from state and corporate interests. It is becoming increasingly apparent that recent struggles over the university are not merely discrete events. They express a wider collective desire for direct control over the means of production and forms of life; a desire to create relationships of learning,
collaboration, and innovation beyond the university’s attempts to quantify and discipline them.

Although the modern university has served the interests of the state and capital since its inception, the past thirty years have witnessed tightened ties with corporate, financial, and geopolitical interests. The subsumption of higher education under capital-driven business models has intensified the expropriation of the products of cooperative labor. With the proliferation of student-consumer and scholar-manager subjectivities, we increasingly find ourselves uncomfortably and often unwittingly occupying the role of active participants in these trends. As the global struggles over the past year have illustrated, however, opposition to these mechanisms of capture is mounting, as are creative strategies for alternatives and exodus. Struggles against the corporate university are linking up across borders; the slogan of the International Student Movement, “One World – One Struggle : Education is Not for Sale,” and the slogan of the Anomalous Wave, “We Won’t Pay for Your Crisis,” appear in actions across Europe, the Americas, and South Asia.

“Beneath the University, the Commons” builds on the work accomplished by activists, organizers, artists, and academics at the “Re-thinking” and “Re-working” the University Conferences of 2008 and 2009 (http://www.reworkingtheu.org), while expanding the scope of our discussions and bringing together more international scholars in order to address an increasingly volatile global situation. Our goal is to aggregate and accelerate our knowledge of university conditions and our collective acts of resistance to them, including alternative forms of engaging with each other and with the world. To this end, the 2010 conference will draw together a diverse set of people committed to exploring how we can understand, create, and experiment with the commons beneath the
university. Our questions include but are not limited to:
//How do we enact and sustain occupations of the university in the exceptional times and spaces of the everyday?

//How do we generate an international “undercommons,” maintaining – as Stefano Harney and Stevphen Shukaitis have suggested – subversive positions as actors within, rather than of, the spaces of the university?

//How can unionization projects and occupation struggles learn from and collaborate with one another?

//How do we negotiate the line between stability and revolutionary effectiveness?

//How do we open up sustainable and liveable spaces for radical research, education, and scholarship, without being subsumed by the publish-or-perish disciplinary apparatus?

//How can we collaboratively map and share research, information, tactics, and cultures?

//In recognition that our conditions are a part of a larger set of global occupations and injustices, how do we link with social movements outside of and across the university?

This four-day event will consist of two days of conference sessions bracketed by two days of workshops, writing collaborations, skill shares, and plenty of time for sustained conversations among participants. We are accepting proposals both for formal papers and for non-conventional forms of participation.

– If you would like to present a paper, please submit an abstract and a CV or brief biographical statement.
– If you would like to participate in another way (by leading a workshop, facilitating a roundtable, presenting media, etc), please submit a brief (1-2 pages) description of the proposed activity and include what kind of resources we would need to provide, along with a CV or brief biographical statement.

All proposals should be addressed to conference@beneaththeu.org, and must be received by January 1, 2010.
–
Stevphen Shukaitis
Autonomedia Editorial Collective
http://www.autonomedia.org
http://info.interactivist.net

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Wem gehört der Schnee? Zum Unterschied zwischen Öffentlichen Gütern und Gemeingütern

Silke Helfrich — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:20:53 +0000

“Fundsachen der Allmendewiese”: Manchmal macht das Blog seinem ursprünglichen Untertitel alle Ehre. Heute gefunden: “Die Entwicklung des Schnees von ‘res communis’ zum Staatsgut” von Professor Fernández de Buján. Der spanische Rechtshistoriker hielt diesen Vortrag zum 1. Skirechtsforum italienischen Bormio (Dez. 05). Es ist ein Ausflug ins römische Recht, um dort Ansatzpunkte für ein einheitliches Skirecht zu suchen. Wem also gehört der Schnee? Und wie dachten die alten Römer über Gemeingüter im Unterschied zu öffentlichen Gütern?

Güter waren ursprünglich zweigeteilt, …Gaius beginnt im II. Buch über Güter mit solchen,

“die sich in oder außerhalb unseres Vermögens befinden.” (res intra patrimonium und res extra patrimonium)

Später nehmen die justinianischen Schriftgelehrten diese Zweiteilung auf, und führen weitere Unterscheidungen ein. Einige Güter gelten ihnen als “divini iuris“, andere als “humani iuris“. Letztere sind, zunächst in klassischer Zweiteilung, private und öffentliche Güter (res privatae und res publicae). Unterschieden werden zudem (den divini iuris zugehörend) die res extra commercium, verkehrsunfähige Sachen mit denen kein Handel getrieben werden darf, von den res intra commercium, mit denen gehandelt werden darf. Das ist ein Punkt, der auch in der aktuellen Commonsdebatte sehr präsent ist und sich im Unterschied zwischen Eigentum und Besitz reflektiert. Eigentum ist veräußerbar. Besitz nicht.

“Es geht also um die Tatsache, wie Güter im Rahmen rechtlicher und vermögensrechtlicher Beziehungen zu behandeln sind”, schreibt Fernández.

Später unterscheiden die Justianischen Schriftgelehrten drei Güterklassen.

Der Text in den Instituta drückt … eine Dreiteilung aus, die der Jurist Martianus vornimmt,…. Das Wesentliche und Neue an diesem Fragment ist die Formulierung einer Kategorie, nämlich die der res communes omnium,…” (bibliogr. Bezug: Martianus 3, inst., habe dazu im Netz leider nichts gefunden, S.H.)

Nun also: res privatae (private Güter), res publicae (öffentliche Güter) und res communes (Gemeingüter). Mancherorts gibt es noch eine vierte Kategorie. Die res sacrae.

Erhellend finde ich die Ausführungen von Fernández über die öffentlichen Güter:

“Ein anerkannter juristischer Text im berühmten Kapitel XVI des Buchs L, mit dem Titel „De Verborum significationem” begründet ohne Zweifel das Konzept der res publicae.”

Ulpianus schreibt:

“Publica sunt quae populi romani sunt. – Öffentlich ist nur das, was dem Römischen Volk gehört.” (Kommentare, Buch X zum Edikt des Prätors, D.50,16,15)

Die Rechtslehre geht nun davon aus, so erklärt Fernández, dass der Ausdruck “Populus Romanus” mit der modernen Auffassung vom Staat oder der Zentralverwaltung übereinstimme. Die römischen Juristen wollten sich demnach auf den politischen Machtbereich Roms beziehen oder auf Machtorgane wie Gebietsverwaltungen und Provinzregierungen.

“Res publicae“, so folgert der Autor, sind demnach das, was wir heute unter Staatsgut oder “Öffentlichem Gut” im Sinne von ‘dem Staat gehörend, vom Staat verwaltet, für den öffentlichen Nutzen‘ (utilitas publica) verstehen.

Und da gibt es einen Unterschied zu den Gemeingütern, denn

“Wasser oder Luft erfordern keine feierliche, förmliche Zuordnung und werden im römischen Recht als publicatio bezeichnet.”

Anders gesagt: Sie sind ihrer Natur nach und wegen ihrer Funktion öffentlich.

Daneben gab es die Bezeichnung vetustas. Das Wort bedeutet: “alt, von langer Dauer”. Der Begriff drückt aus,

“dass einem Gut öffentlicher Nutzen zugesprochen wurde, was durch das gesellschaftliche Bewußtsein der Tatsache bedingt war, dass das betreffende Gut seit Menschengedenken von allen und allgemein genutzt wurde.” (Herv. S.H.)

Ein schönes Zitat zum Unterschied zwischen Öffentlichen Gütern und Gemeingütern bringt Neratius Priscus:

“Der Strand und die Küste sind nicht im selben Sinne öffentlich, wie das Volkseigentum…” (Buch V der Membranae in D.41,1,14)

Sic! Ab Ende des II Jahrhunderts n.Ch. werden die öffentlichen Gütern eindeutiger und stets als “nicht handelbar” beschrieben, als res extra commercium. Das belegt Fernández mit interessanten Textstellen. Wobei Vermietung möglich war, um öffentliche Dienstleistungen zu finanzieren. So geschehen mit dem ager publicus, jenem Land, welches sich in der Römischen Republik im Besitz des Staates befand. Es war die ursprünglich übliche Form des Eigentums an Grund und Boden.

“Die private Nutzung dieses Lands war in der römischen Geschichte eine zentrale innenpolitische Frage …, die ab dem 2. Jahrhundert v. Chr. immer wieder zu heftigen Auseinandersetzungen führte, so zum Beispiel bei den Gracchischen Reformen“, weiß die Wikipedia.

“Der durch Abgabe an Privatpersonen schrumpfende ager publicus wurde durch Landgewinne aus Kriegen immer wieder aufgestockt.”, heisst es dort. Ager captivus nannten das die Römer.

Die Verteidigung der Gemeingüter der Einen kann der Untergang der Gemeingüter der Anderen sein.

“Bis zur frühen Kaiserzeit jedoch war der gesamte ager publicus innerhalb Italiens aufgeteilt und Privateigentum geworden.” (Quelle: Wikipedia)

Zusammenfassend bestimmen die römischen Gelehrten die öffentlichen Güter nach drei Kriterien (dem rechmäßigen Besitzer, den Nutzungsrechten, den Veräußerungsrechten)

dem Populus Romanus gehörend, also der Öffentlichkeit (dem Staat)
prinzipiell und ohne Einschränkungen zur Nutzung aller bestimmt
angesichts ihrer speziellen Bestimmung und Nutzung nicht veräußerbar

Komplette Auflistungen, welche Güter den res publicae zuzurechnen sind, gibt es nicht. Die Gesetzestexte seien pragmatisch und problembezogen. Sie bringen die Kategorien stets in Betrachtung einer Sache oder eines zu lösenden Falls. Da tauchen dann die Flüsse und die Häfen auf, das Forum oder

“etwas vergleichbares, das dauernd von der Öffentlichkeit genutzt wird.” (Venuleius, De Stipulationes, I.Buch, D.45,1, 137,6)

Im Unterschied dazu findet sich ein klassisches Zitat zu den Gemeingütern in den bereits erwähnten Justinianischen Instituten, 2,1,1:

“Et quidem naturali iure communia sunt omnium haec: aer, aqua profluens, et mare et per hoc litora maris.

“Und durch naturgegebenes Recht sind in Wahrheit die
folgenden Güter allen gemein: die Luft, das fließende Wasser und das Meer und aus demselben Grund, die Küsten des Meers.”

Der Text folgt dem bereits zitierten Martianus. Interessant ist folgende Einschätzung von Fernández:

“Die vorherrschende Rechtslehre geht davon aus, dass sowohl die Schaffung der Kategorie der res communes omnium, als auch ihre Konkretisierung durch vier materielle Realitäten eine einzigartige Kreation des Juristen selbst ist, der stark durch metajuristische Konzepte und Kategorien beeinflusst wurde.

Martianus hat das also nirgends abgeschrieben und keine anderen juristischen Texte verarbeitet, sondern er ist vom Charakter und den physischen Realitäten der Dinge ausgegangen, von ihrer Funktion für die Menschen und hat sie originär klassifiziert. Humanist sei er gewesen, Kenner von Philosophie und Literatur.

Diese justinianische Schrift wurde für Jahrhunderte zum Lehrtext. In den heutigen wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Studiengängen scheint sie in Vergessenheit geraten, denn dort werden die Gemeingüter seit Jahrzehnten eher stiefmütterlich behandelt.

Der Schnee ist nun solch ein Gemeingut, folgert Fernández. Im martianischen Sinne. Jedenfalls habe die unterschiedliche Begriffsbestimmung

“zu keiner Zeit die Rechtsordnung beeinflusst, da Schnee, als gefrorenes Wasser, zu keinem Zeitpunkt Gegenstand von exklusivem Privateigentum sein konnte, dessen Recht auf
allgemeine Nutzung verhindert werden konnte.”

Um Schnee zu privatisieren, musste man zunächst auf die Idee kommen, ihn künstlich herzustellen. Oder wem gehört der Kunstschnee?

Kurioses zum Thema: Schnee als Werbeträger

Foto 1: CC BY SA
Foto 2: CC BY, SA, Stefan Bauer, http://www.ferras.at

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Elinor Ostrom Nobel Prize Economics 2009

owen59 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:09:36 +0000

I have just been introduced to the work of Elinor Ostrom, although she’s been around for a while. More than ever, her research is important.

From her website:

Analysing the design of long-enduring CPR institutions, Elinor Ostrom (1990) identified eight design principles which are prerequisites for a stable CPR arrangement:

1. Clearly defined boundaries

2. Congruence between appropriation and provision rules and local conditions

3. Collective-choice arrangements allowing for the participation of most of the appropriators in the decision making process

4. Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators

5. Graduated sanctions for appropriators who do not respect community rules

6. Conflict-resolution mechanisms which are cheap and easy of access

7. Minimal recognition of rights to organize (e.g., by the government)

8. In case of larger CPRs: Organisation in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small, local CPRs at their bases.

Follow-Up on Lessig Interview

openedblogger — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:17:37 +0000

Last month OEN reported that Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig was interviewed by 7th graders. Jane Park at Creative Commons has posted an interview with the teacher who arranged the original interview with Lessig. From the post:

Mr. Mayo and his class have integrated CC licensed works into their daily activities, documenting it all at mrmayo.org.

Politics made interesting (yes, really)

WUI — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:54:29 +0000

I’m not going to pretend I know a huge amount about politics. However, I’m not one of those people who sits in a pub complaining about the price of a pint, the lack of jobs, unreliable trains, and then says ‘But I don’t do politics.’ I know it affects me, and I am aware of its importance in the functionality of this country.

I think most people know decisions made in parliament affect them, so in a way it’s strange that so few know exactly what goes on behind those parliamentary doors. Come to think of it, most people probably didn’t know you could take a free tour to find out, either…

Entering the area around the Palace of Westminster (also known as the Houses of Parliament) and its additional buildings (such as Westminster Hall) is like going through airport security. When you do get in, you are given a photo ID to wear around your neck, and told you must be accompanied by a pass holder at all times.

I was taken to Westminster Hall, and as I sat waiting for the tour to begin, I started thinking. It’s funny how, despite the fact I’ve lived in the south-east of England my whole life, there are so many places like this in London I’ve never visited. I guess when you live so close to something you don’t feel obligated to make the effort. In the same way that most New Yorkers have never been up the Empire State Building.

The tour itself was superb – educational, yes, but somehow still extremely interesting. I was shown around the House of Commons, House of Lords, the Queen’s Robing Room, the Prince of Wales’ chamber, and got an up-close look at some significant things associated with parliament. For instance, we saw the original copy of the Commons notes when Guy Fawkes was first found to be plotting to blow up parliament. The Queen’s throne in the House of Lords was obviously very impressive, as was standing in the exact place Gordon Brown would when speaking in the House of Commons.

Our guide was extremely knowledgeable, and apart from his phone ringing during a minute’s silence for Remembrance Day, was brilliant. He explained the origins of parliamentary rituals that I’ve always known but never quite understood, like Black Rod banging on the door of the Commons. He was happy to answer any bizarre, irrelevant questions from members of the tour group, and even did so with a straight face.

After it finished, I felt really pleased that I’d done it. It was enlightening, interesting, and wasn’t so long that it became boring in the least. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to find out a bit more about what goes on in those buildings we see on TV most days, and how the country is run. After all, we do live here.

More about this free tour – and the one including a tour of Big Ben – can be found here and on the UK Parliament site.

by Chris Warburton

Mashing OER Wiki

openedblogger — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:15:48 +0000

“laurapasquini” has tweeted about a wiki page on mashing up OER. The wiki provides a workflow, list of tools and relevant URLs.

Google Book Settlement News 11/19/09

openedblogger — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:15:10 +0000

Universities add their own custom Google Book search.
Gavin Baker (outside of Open Access News) examines the revised settlement.
Irvin Munchnick on why the Justice department is the one to watch.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation looks at the silver lining of the revised settlement.