"If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate-change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low down on the ground, with its arms around the people who go to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains and their rivers because they know that the forests, the mountains and the rivers protect them.
The first step toward re-imagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination – an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment.
To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for the survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past but who may really be the guides to our future. To do this, we have to ask our rulers: Can you leave the waters in the rivers, the trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain? If they say they cannot, then perhaps they should stop preaching morality to the victims of their wars." [source]
-- Arundhati Roy
“This is not about getting back to nature.
It is about understanding we’ve never left.”
-- Sierra Club poster
It is about understanding we’ve never left.”
-- Sierra Club poster
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17 comments:
they should stop leaching and preaching but they won't so what's our on the ground leverage? without a new and viable way of organizing a substantial and lasting social force we better start working on our mourning rituals...
-dmf
Ah, yes. Leverage. Our tactics must be as diverse as those leveraged against us. We must disrupt, obstruct, defend, resist, withdraw, abstain and above all keep adapting. The days of simply revolt are over.
What we need now is a multidimentional rejection of the status quo and a movement towards alternative life-styles and infrastructures. This means engaging in local settings and municipal politics to carve out niches of alternate modes of existence. And there are many ways to go about the carving.
One key aspect would be to create new associations between families and workable cooperatives for subsistence production and security.
I could go on for days as this is what I am supposed to be good at 'social engineering' - but I'll spare everyone the self-rightuous proscriptions for now...
I would welcome some proscriptions the time for building viable and sustainable alternatives is now or never I'm afraid, bring on the social engineering! seriously I think that there are a substantial number of people of good will, myself included, who are pleading for a way to plug/gear into something that will make a real difference to our dwelling in the world.
-dmf
I agree Dirk, the only problem is - logistical challenges aside for now - how do we collect all of this good will into something approaching a consensus, without falling prey to clashing values, insecurities and existing commitments?
There are a boat load of good ideas out there but there seems to never be enough centripetal force to bring the right resources and engeries together to actually link micro-projects into macro difference...
For example, the work I am doing right now with a regional school board to augment the culture of life-practices, pedagogy and health-seeking behaviors in schools is constantly being thwarted by the habitual concerns, attitudes and monetary politics of administrators, unions, and parents. With so many different perspectives, levels of education, ethnic influences and agendas at play proposing deep changes are almost viewed an anathema to effective school board operations.
this " how do we collect all of this good will into something approaching a consensus, without falling prey to clashing values, insecurities and existing commitments?" is the bursting heart of the problem and why we need a better understanding of cognitive-biases, socialization, rhetoric, etc., and why I keep harping on the need for organization ethics and keep arguing against reification in Larval-Levi and others. Otherwise it doesn't matter how clever our theories/models are. Only those of us working in realms of such resistances will understand these drags and spurs in a concrete way that can generate a will for real change.
-dmf
I think you nail it when you signal a need to attend to issues of cognition and situated (social) discourse dynamics within matrices of institutions and cultural activity. Paging Michel Foucault and Paul Rabinow!!
The literature on social psychology is vast and unwieldy but I increasingly resonate with the work Dan Siegel is doing in “interpersonal neurobiology” (The Developing Mind, 1999). His linking of attachment theory and neuroscience offers a way to think about biologically instantiated egos and how they form and effect/affect decision-making and our relationships with others. The core of this research shows how the development of embodied ‘minds’ (cognition generally) in determined in direct conjunction/confrontation with the social and ecological context in which it grows and operates. Heidegger, of course, knew this well, but Siegel and his colleagues have the science chops to back it up, and significantly, at least for the kinds of work you and I actually do, attempt to apply such detailed knowledge to make a difference at the individual, organizational and societal levels, and all with the aim of “improving human flourishing”. And this approach explicitly aligns itself with the so-called ‘principle of consilience’ (E. O. Wilson 1998) which holds that the advancement of knowledge (practical and theoretic) flows from our ability to identify common patterns emerging from different disciplines.
Of course, we would need to integrate all that with systems theory and 4EA cognition camps, but that is an ongoing project. And to put an anthropological (and speculative pragmatist) spin on it all?
George Lakoff has done some good work on cognitive frames, embodiment and behavior as well I think. His Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (1999) had a profound influence on me. Do check it out.
What do you suggest re: “organization ethics”?
The Developing Mind, Second Edition: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (2012)
This bestselling book put the field of interpersonal neurobiology on the map for many tens of thousands of readers. Daniel J. Siegel goes beyond the nature and nurture divisions that traditionally have constrained much of our thinking about development, exploring the role of interpersonal experiences in forging key connections in the brain. He presents a groundbreaking integrative framework for understanding the emergence of the growing, feeling, communicating mind. Reflecting significant scientific and technical advances, the second edition incorporates new discussions of cutting-edge topics, plus an epilogue describing specific pathways to well-being and therapeutic change.
Using a wealth of illustrative examples from clinical practice and everyday life, Siegel traces the interplay of human and neural connections in early childhood and beyond. The book reveals how difficulties with attachment to caregivers can result in problems with memory, self-organization, and emotional regulation. Implications for adult states of mind, emotional competence, and the ability to cope with stress are considered, as are links to such clinical problems as dissociation and depression. Siegel offers compelling insights into how therapeutic and personal relationships can promote healing and integration as the mind continues to develop throughout the lifespan. The second edition provides expanded discussions of neuroplasticity, epigenetics, mindfulness, the neural correlates of consciousness, and more. It also includes useful pedagogical features: pull-outs, diagrams, and an extensive glossary
I don't really have an answer but I know that all previous attempts at organization/consensus do as you say fall prey to clashing values, insecurities and existing commitments which is why I rail against treating figures of speech and other imagined collectives (and or "ideologies", Ideas) as literal-minded systems/machines, that said without a viable alternative approach we are at something of a standstill or worse endlessly chasing our own tails in the name of critique, building castles of sand...
Dirk,
Have you watched the Zeitgeist movies? I don't agree with everything in those movies but I do like the idea of a resource-based economy, and I do think we need to radically rework our community infrastructures towards cultivating better humans. This is why I work in public health and school systems. 'Public' being the key word here - because the intent is to design habitats and develop practices that support but also evolve the social contract without diminishing the rights and resposibilities of individuals.
Towards new collectives?
And, i might add, Roy's point about being open to alternative imaginaries is a good one. Sure there are technic aspects that needs to be present, but there also needs to be some mutation in our habitual catagories (habitus) generating new values. Value augmentation is important for our future survival.
My quick fix in this regard is what I would refer to as 'dialogics': dialogue, conversation, exercises in mutual understanding, and work on priority syntheses... Here we can make some loose connections with healing circles and the like, on the way to enacting productive khôras from which we co-create worlds
I have done similar work for years and it tends to depend on having fairly mature and committed actors which are sorely in demand (hiring personnel is a nightmare) and even than to find people with good reflexive capacities is another degree of difficulty that puts most existing groups/populations out of the mix, which is why Dewey wanted to start over with early education/socialization but even then you need adult staff, so it's a bit of a nightmare. I've probably asked before but have you read any Donald Schon?
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-schon.htm
Yeah, that is why I take solace in the role I play in affecting incremental changes – all the little building blocks that go into creating better education and healthcare ecologies: with small innovations in policy, technology, programming, curriculum, occupational health practices, ergonomics, building efficiencies, and so on. In making these changes it is important to be sensitive to and track the complexity, effects and systemic consequences of everything we do, all the way from the impact of and on human cognition and emotion (cf. wayfinding and being as coping), to governance economics, decision-making procedures, community resourcing, and the local landfill.
Of course the long-term goal is to evolve more efficient and adaptive public institutional ecologies (infrastructures) conducive to developing more flexible, intelligent and happy humans, while expressing non-zero sums (win-win situations) for nonhumans and supporting bioregions.
Human flourishing via generative non-zero matrices?
Notice in all this I'm obviously not an anarchist, as many people have assumed. I make no strong proscriptions re: the way we eventually decide to work together as populations to get these things done, as long as we work together to get things done.
I’m better at pointing out what does not work politically than I am suggesting what a polity should be like.
I believe several types of governance systems can work to maximize individuality and optimizing privacy while also supporting a strong public sphere and sense of community. I suggest we look to evolve hybrid forms of sociality and democracy where technical issues are perhaps kept at a distance from issues of political representation and lobbying.
Increasingly I have found that my localized efforts get sucked apart by the undertows of wider economic/political tides here in the US but let's stick to building-blocks if not silos, I think we would do well to start to trace out more explicitly what these important characteristics* that you raise would look like in practice, and here Rabinow might be of some help/inspiration:
http://openwetware.org/images/7/7a/SB1.0_Rabinow.pdf
*In making these changes it is important to be sensitive to and track the complexity, effects and systemic consequences of everything we do,
I'm not sure what you mean by characteristics here? What are we tracing? The composition of a particular social milieu? We would have to pick a particular location/situation and then trace out how that situation (town, sector, community, organization or whatever) is composed and maintained, and then determine which set of activities and materials we want to intervene on. If you want to get down to it pick a problem or situation that we can get specific about.
yes I think we should take a case study and work it through, I would start with a particular/localized problem/goal and work outward so we know when we have enough context mapped out to be making effective changes or know that the problem may be intractable, sorry by "characteristics" I just meant to draw attention to your " to be sensitive to and track the complexity, effects and systemic consequences of everything we do".
no hurry here, but maybe we can help someone with their day jobs.
Pick a case study D and we'll try to work it through... any suggestions?
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