• for: doppleganger, conflict resolution, deep humanity, common denominators, CHD, Douglas Rushkoff, Naomi Klein, Into the Mirror World, conspiracy theory, conspiracy theories, conspiracy culture, nonduality, self-other, human interbeing, polycrisis, othering, storytelling, myth-making, social media amplifier -summary
  • This conversation was insightful on so many dimensions salient to the polycrisis humanity is moving through.
  • It makes me think of the old cliches:
    • "The more things change, the more they remain the same"
    • "What's old is new" ' "History repeats"
  • the conversation explores Naomi's latest book (as of this podcast), Into the Mirror World, in which Naomi adopts a different style of writing to explicate, articulate and give voice to
    • implicit and tacit discomforting ideas and feelings she experienced during covid and earlier, and
    • became a focal point through a personal comparative analysis with another female author and thought leader, Naomi Wolf,
      • a feminist writer who ended up being rejected by mainstream media and turned to right wing media.
  • The conversation explores the process of:
    • othering,
    • coopting and
    • abandoning
  • of ideas important for personal and social wellbeing.
  • and speaks to the need to identify what is going on and to reclaim those ideas for the sake of humanity
  • In this context, the doppleganger is the people who are mirror-like imiages of ourselves, but on the other side of polarized issues.
  • Charismatic leaders who are bad actors often are good at identifying the suffering of the masses, and coopt the ideas of good actors to serve their own ends of self-enrichment.
  • There are real world conspiracies that have caused significant societal harm, and still do,
  • however, when there ithere are phenomena which we have no direct sense experience of, the mixture of
    • a sense of helplessness,
    • anger emerging from injustice
  • a charismatic leader proposing a concrete, possible but explanatory theory
  • is a powerful story whose mythology can be reified by many people believing it
  • Another cliche springs to mind
    • A lie told a hundred times becomes a truth
    • hence the amplifying role of social media
  • When we think about where this phenomena manifests, we find it everywhere:

• for: system change, polycrisis, extreme weather, planetary tipping points, climate disruption, climate chaos, tipping point, hothouse earth, new meme, deep transformation
• title: The Great Disruption has Begun
• author: Paul Gilding
• date: Sept 3, 2023
• source: https://www.paulgilding.com/cockatoo-chronicles/the-great-disruption-has-begun

• summary

  • good q uick opening paragraphs that summarize the plethora of extreme events in 2023 up to Sept 2023 (but misses the Canadian Wildfires) and also the list of potential planetary tipping points that are giving indication of being at the threshold.
  • He makes a good point about the conservative nature of science that underestimates impacts due to the inertia of scientific study.
  • Coins a good meme
    • Everything, everywhere, all at once
  • He ties all the various crisis together to show the many components of the wicked problem we face
  • finally what it comes down to is that we cannot stop the coming unprecedented changes but we can and must slow it down as much as possible and we should be prepared for a wild ride

• comment

  • It would be a good educational tool for deep and transformative climate education to map all these elements of the polycrisis and show their feedbacks and interactions, especially how it relates to socio-economic impacts to motivate transformative change and mobilize the urgency now required.

• for: degrowth, polycrisis, simplification
• title: Critics of ‘degrowth’ economics say it’s unworkable – but from an ecologist’s perspective, it’s inevitable
• author: Mike Joy
• date: Aug. 15, 2023
• source: https://theconversation.com/critics-of-degrowth-economics-say-its-unworkable-but-from-an-ecologists-perspective-its-inevitable-211496

• summary: The author makes the claim that state capture lay at the root of our polycrisis. Effectively addressing state capture is a leverage point for rapid whole system change,
• for: state capture, leverage point, rapid whole system change, saving humanity, lobbying
• title: Saving humanity: here’s a radical approach to building a sustainable and just society
• author: Mark Diesendorf
• date: May 18, 2023
• source: https://theconversation.com/saving-humanity-heres-a-radical-approach-to-building-a-sustainable-and-just-society-205566
• reference: book
  • The path to a Sustainable Civilization

• for: climate communication, polycrisis communication, Canadian fires, Canadian wildfires, Canadian forest fires

• quote

  • Across the region,
    • roads buckled,
    • car windows cracked and
    • power cables melted.
  • The emerald fringes of conifers browned overnight,
    • as if singed by flame.
  • Entire cherry orchards were destroyed, the fruit stewed on the trees.
  • More than 650,000 farm animals died of heat stress.
  • Hundreds of thousands of honeybees perished,
    • their organs exploding outside their bodies.
  • Billions of shoreline creatures,
    • especially shellfish,
  • simply baked to death,
    • strewing beaches with empty shells and a fetid stench that lingered for weeks.
  • Birds and insects went unnervingly silent.
  • All the while the skies were hazy but clear, the air preternaturally still, not a cloud in sight.
  • The air pressure was so high they’d all dissipated.

• author: Anne Shibata Casselman

• date: Aug, 2023

• source:

  • https://macleans.ca/society/environment/canada-in-the-year-2060/

• comment

  • this description is so visceral that it should be made into a short movie,
  • a new communication format more powerful than mainstream media presently uses is to record the actual substantial and visceral impacts with video and show to the public

• for: quote, quote - David Bray, quote polycrisis, indyweb - support, People-centered Internet Coalition, polycrisis
• quote
  • I believe we are arriving at multiple simultaneous breaking points.
  • The most obvious is of course the climate crisis, but also consider the mounting levels of
    • inequality,
    • of pollution and of
    • despicable charlatanry exhibited by those in positions of power.
  • These simply cannot go on if we are to survive as a civilization.
  • Since civilization is resilient, the odds are that we develop tools to support a saner society and bring those tools to bear.
  • I’m not prescient enough to enumerate them, but it seems that the single most useful technology would be one that
    • clearly distinguishes
      • verifiable truth from
      • agitprop
    • in an unavoidable and unambiguous way.
  • This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for making progress on any of the key issues we face.
• author: David Bray
  • executive director, People-Centered Internet Coalition

• for: TPF, crowdsource solutions, climate crisis - commons, polycrisis - commons, quote, quote - crowdsourcing solutions, quote Miles Fidelman, Center for Civic Networking, Protocol Technologies Group, bottom-up, collective action
• quote
  • At best, we will see new forms of collaboration among large numbers of people toward beneficial ends.
  • The most obvious example is the changing nature of responses to largescale natural disasters.
  • Perhaps we will see this spirit of volunteer and entrepreneurial cooperation emerge to address such pressing issues as climate change
    • e.g., maybe, the Green New Deal will be crowdsourced.
• author: Miles Fidelman
  • founder, Center for Civic Networking
  • principal, Protocol Technologies Group

• for: polycrisis, Trumpism, Chaos, distraction, climate crisis, climate communication, complexity, adjacency climate change fossil fuel industry, adjacency climate change big oil, adjacency climate change politics big oil, quote adjacency climate change fossil fuel industry, quote adjacency climate change big oil
• key insight
  • claim
    • One big reason that big oil is funding GOP to keep the chaotic Trump story as the main headline is to foster distraction from climate change impacts
    • big news story in the US is Donald Trump and the election, climate change impacts of extreme weather is minimized
    • the distraction of politics from a chaotic GOP is perfect distraction for the masses to ignore climate change and for big oil to continue BAU
• paraphrase
• quote
  • when you take a step back and look at that part of the distraction and the chaos that Trump and these GOP trolls deliver
  • it's it's a wonderful Boon for the oil and gas industry and the Koch brothers and the guys that fund these campaigns and the federal Federalist Society that's owning the Supreme Court
  • they want to keep doing business as usual and the easiest way to do that is
    • to have this big chaotic GOP that ignores climate change and
    • to play into what they want
      • the mainstream media not focusing more on climate change let alone making those two connections
    • a lot of mainstream media is scared to make that connection because oil companies are paying the bills of CNN and every other network
• author
  • Noel Casler

• for: polycrisis, adapt or die, evolutionary pressure, maladaptive
• paraphrase
  • the fact that we could be in the early stages of extinction is evidence that there is something deeply dysfunctional about the systems we have designed
• comment
  • from evolutionary biology perspective, also could argue that
    • we have become maladaptive due to the huge mismatch between
      • rate of genetic biological evolution and
      • rate of human cultural evolution
    • in other words,
      • human (cultural) progress,
      • cumulative cultural evolution,
      • gene-culture coevolution
      • has resulted in progress traps
    • Progress traps leading to our progress traps may be evolutions milestone / marker / indicator to us that
    • we must now evolve to our next stage if we are to even survive
    • in other words, the polycrisis itself may be contextualized as an evolutionary pressure to adapt or die

• for: the lack project, the reality project, sense of lack, sense of self, poverty mentality, polylcrisis, polycrisis - root
• paraphrase
  • the irony is that
    • if this desire
    • if this craving for money
    • if this lack project and
    • we could also call it reality project
      • because another way to talk about all this is to say that we don't feel real enough and we're looking for that which somehow will make us feel more real more complete more whole
  • because whatever the lack project may be it is looking for out something outside
    • that's going to secure this sense of self-inside
  • the tragedy of the whole process is that it doesn't matter how much money you earn
    • it's never going to be enough
    • because what we're dealing with is just a symptom and not the core problem
• key insight
  • the lack project is at the root of our polycrisis

• for: polycrisis, collapse, tweedledums, tweedledees, wicked problem, social mess, stuck, stuckness, complexity
• title
  • Is This How Political Collapse Will Unfold?
• author
  • Dave Pollard
• date
  • Aug 3, 2023
• comment
  • thought provoking
  • honest, diverse, open thinking
  • a good piece of writing to submit to SRG / Deep Humanity analysis for surfacing insights
  • adjacency
    • complexity
    • emptiness
    • stuckness
      • this word "stuckness" stuck out in me (no pun intended) today - so many intractable, stuck problems, at all levels of society, because we oversimplify complexity to the point of harmful abstraction.

• definition

  • Tweedledums

    • This is a Reactionary Caste that believes that salvation lies in a return to a non-existent nostalgic past, characterized by respect for
      • authority,
      • order,
      • hierarchy,
      • individual initiative, and
      • ‘traditional’ ways of doing things,
    • governed by a
      • strict,
      • lean,
      • paternalistic elite
    • that leaves as much as possible up to individual families guided by
      • established ‘family values’ and
      • by their interpretation of the will of their god.

  • Tweedledees

    • This is a PM (Professional-Managerial) Caste that believes that salvation lies in striving for an impossibly idealistic future characterized by
      • mutual care,
      • affluence
      • relative equality for all,
    • governed by a
      • kind,
      • thoughtful,
      • educated,
      • informed and
      • representative
    • elite that appreciates the role of public institutions and regulations, and is guided by principles of
      • humanism and
      • ‘fairness’.
  • references
  • Aurélien
    • https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/reality-would-like-a-word
  • source
  • led here by reading Dave Pollard's other article
    • https://howtosavetheworld.ca/2021/09/13/something-better-than-democracy/
    • which was the result of a Google search on "better than democracy"

• for: polycrisis, polycrisis - response, incrementalism, greenwashing,
• paraphrase
  • our preoccupation with
    • one-upping the Tweedledums, and with
      • social justice’ platitudes,
      • incrementalism,
      • technotopian thinking,
      • niceties of speech, and
      • mistaking
        • virtue signalling,
        • policy platforms, and
        • wishful out-loud thinking
      • for actual progress toward real goals,
      • constitute a
        • grossly negligent and
        • staggeringly ignorant response
      • to the existential crises of the day.

• for: collapse, polycrisis, political collapse
• signs of collapse
  • misinformation
  • disinformation,
  • propaganda
  • censorship,
  • scapegoating,
  • disenfranchisement,
  • suppression of dissent,
  • widespread surveillance,
  • overt and large-scale corruption,
  • emergence and use of paramilitaries,
  • widespread
    • arrests,
    • incarcerations and
    • ‘disappearances’,
  • election interference and fraud,
  • election cancellations and
  • the dismantling of democratic institutions. Over the past decade, most of these have been employed in many countries, and their use is becoming widely normalized in much of the world.

• for: complexity, collapse, polycrisis, vulnerabilities - civilization
• comment
  • the threat of sudden collapse is that our highly interdependent world crashes
  • and we are all specialized cogs in the wheel
  • If sudden collapse happens and complex infrastructure becomes unusable, it takes a tremendous amount of global coordination of specialists to bring the infrastructure back up again
  • global society is not easy to replicate with small groups, as the specialized skills are so fragmented that no small group would likely have the collective knowhow to reconstruct the complexity

• for: gene culture coevolution, carrying capacity, unsustainability, overshoot, cultural evolution, progress trap

• Title: The genetic and cultural evolution of unsustainability

• Author: Brian F. Snyder

• Abstract

• Summary
• Paraphrase
  • Anthropogenic changes are accelerating and threaten the future of life on earth.
  • While the proximate mechanisms of these anthropogenic changes are well studied
    • climate change,
    • biodiversity loss,
    • population growth
  • the evolutionary causality of these anthropogenic changes have been largely ignored.
  • Anthroecological theory (AET) proposes that the ultimate cause of anthropogenic environmental change is
    • multi-level selection for niche construction and ecosystem engineering.
  • Here, we integrate this theory with
    • Lotka’s Maximum Power Principle
  • and propose a model linking
    • energy extraction from the environment with
    • genetic, technological and cultural evolution
  • to increase human ecosystem carrying capacity.
  • Carrying capacity is partially determined by energetic factors such as
    • the net energy a population can acquire from its environment and
    • the efficiency of conversion from energy input to offspring output.
  • These factors are under Darwinian genetic selection
  • in all species,
  • but in humans, they are also determined by
    • technology and
    • culture.
  • If there is genetic or non-genetic heritable variation in
    • the ability of an individual or social group
  • to increase its carrying capacity,
  • then we hypothesize that - selection or cultural evolution will act - to increase carrying capacity.
  • Furthermore, if this evolution of carrying capacity occurs - faster than the biotic components of the ecological system can respond via their own evolution,
    • then we hypothesize that unsustainable ecological changes will result.

• My overall objective in this paper is to
  • unite the sciences of ecology and evolution
  • with the spiritual practice of Zen
    • in order to inspire actions to address the extinction crisis that we are currently facing.
  • I do this by addressing the following three points:
    • Zen and science are both based upon empirical observations of the world.
    • Zen and science both tell us that there is no separation between humans and the world around us.
  • Ecology and evolution provide the scientific background needed to address the biodiversity crisis;
    • Zen provides the deeper knowing that will motivate our action to address this problem

• Title: Buddhism and Money: The Repression of Emptiness Today
• Author: David Loy

David Loy explains how - the denial of ego-self, also known as anatma - becomes the root of a persistent sense of lack - as self-consciousness continues to try to ground itself, reify itself and make itself real - while all the meanwhile it is a compelling mental construction

A good paper on the role (non-rational) relational ritual can play to help us out of the current polycrisis is given here: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrill.com%2Fview%2Fjournals%2Fwo%2F25%2F2%2Farticle-p113_1.xml%3Flanguage%3Den&group=world

//* Loy is stating... - Those engaging compulsively in money, fame, power, materialism - are actually deeply repressing - the fact that the ego-self, and therefore self-consciousness is a construction - To continually reify the ego-self, we engage in these activities - and of course, this is fueling the polycrisis we now find ourselves in

It has been suggested that - the human species may be undergoing an evolutionary transition in individuality (ETI).

there is disagreement about - how to apply the ETI framework to our species - and whether culture is implicated - as either cause or consequence.

Long-term gene–culture coevolution (GCC) i- s - also poorly understood.

argued that - culture steers human evolution,

Others proposed - genes hold culture on a leash.

After review of the literature and evidence on long-term GCC in humans - emerge a set of common themes. - First, culture appears to hold greater adaptive potential than genetic inheritance - and is probably driving human evolution. - The evolutionary impact of culture occurs - mainly through culturally organized groups, - which have come to dominate human affairs in recent millennia. - Second, the role of culture appears to be growing, - increasingly bypassing genetic evolution and weakening genetic adaptive potential. -Taken together, these findings suggest that human long-term GCC is characterized by - an evolutionary transition in inheritance - from genes to culture - which entails a transition in individuality (from genetic individual to cultural group). Research on GCC should focus on the possibility of - an ongoing transition in the human inheritance system.

!- planetary crisis: beyond climate crisis

!- comment : the need to spiral towards an INCLUSIVE sacred - science and religion are not opposites, but seek the sacred from different avenues - humanity has collective evolved towards this polycrisis and fragmented worldviews must find their common human denominators and unite in an INCLUSIVE global commons and citizenship

!- Original source of : polycrisis - According to Prof. Tom Murphy, the original source of our current polycrisis is our collective, human need for control and mastery of our environment starting with civilization building itself, - and has its roots over 10,000 years ago in the beginnings of agriculture

!- Tom Murphy : Comment His thesis is aligned with the work of: - Glenn Albrecht & Gavin Van Horn: Replacing the Anthropocene with the Symbiocene https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhumansandnature.org%2Fexiting-the-anthropocene-and-entering-the-symbiocene%2F&group=world - Buddhist scholar David Loy: On the Emptiness at the heart of the human being that cannot be filled by consumerism & materialism https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2F1Gq4HhUIDDk%2F&group=world - Korean / German philosopher Byung-Chul Han: The Burnout Society https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2FbNkDeUApreo%2F&group=world - Cognitive Scientist, Buddhist scholar Jay Garfield: Losing the Self: https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2FE5lW5XedNGU%2F&group=world

!- collective control of nature : chain of events since agriculture - once we mastered stationary food production - we needed to settle down permanently, giving rise to the first settlements and built environment - surplus harvest needed storage so human settlements were built to stay close to the stores and land producing our food - we started acquiring material possessions, leading to armies to guard them, hierarchies and systems to preserve status - it led to the idea that we could own land and thus began the idea of property, wealth and material accumulation - ownership led to patriarchy, which was associated with religion - monotheism is the great paternal overseer - we had to subjugate humans and other flora and fauna species to serve us - this led to greater extinction and ecological problems

! - summary: how we got here 3 reasons: cheap, abundant (until recently), high calorific value (fossil fuel) energy abundant (until recently) minerals cheap credit

All three are no longer true.

The evidence suggests that humans were responsible for extirpating the largest prey fauna at the time, resulting in intergenerational decline in prey fauna body mass.

This early finding has implications for modern human behavior. In fact, it explains our tendency to overshoot resources until we extirpate them is not a new behavior but one that dates back millions of years. The implications for our current polycrisis suggests we are dealing with an entrenched behavior that may be difficult to change and that technology has amplified our ability to mine natural resources, extirpating them at a faster rate. From this perspective, the Anthropocene can be seen as a logical result of an ever decreasing extirpation rate brought about by increasing efficacy of technological tools for resource extraction.

This is salient and needs to be embedded into any universal framework that sells to address the many complex and global challenges that now face humanity. Creating an effective BVC space that supports high efficacy collaboration is critical for rapid Cosmolocal transition.