• for: quote, truth, beauty
  • beauty is how truth feels

• for: climate communication, role of imagination
• comment
  • Timothy is advocating for sharing creative, gentle communication that helps us imagine something new

• for: climate communication, crisis communication
• claim
  • global warming is the biggest problem on the planet therefore
    • we have to make it be the most attractive sexiest ever problem to solve

• for: climate communications, crisis communications,
  • one of the reasons why we don't do it is that
    • we think there needs to also be a sudden huge change inside
    • but actually there doesn't need to be a sudden age change inside at all
    • that thing is funnily enough getting in the way
  • An awful lot of people who write about ecological things in the newspaper are preventing you from being ecological
  • I know that sounds a bit rude to my to my colleagues you know who write editorials for newspapers
    • but it I'm afraid it's true because you know
    • you look at page one of the newspaper and basically it says
      • you're stupid right ?
      • it gives you a whole bunch of facts that you didn't know
        • in the form mostly of quite raw data
        • it just sort of dumps the data on you which we don't do about
      • anything else we don't do it about?
        • we don't do it about racism
        • we don't do it about economics
      • we don't just dump data on on page one but we do do it regarding global warming and I think that's a bit of a problem
    • then you go on to the middle of the newspaper and you get to the editorial section
    • and the editorial section is saying
      • you're evil
      • you're a bad person
      • you're not being ecological enough
    • stupid and evil is not a good place from which to launch a successful politics or ethics or any kind of creativity
    • what is creativity fundamentally?
    • it's inviting the future
    • creativity means you're allowing the future to be different from the past doesn't it?
      • because you're creating something (new)
      • that's what creating means
      • and in order to do it successfully you actually have to be incredibly gentle

• for: rapid whole system change, transformation, inner/outer transformation

• key insight

  • we just have to realize we already are an ecological being
  • we are already in inter-relationship
  • we already are the individual entangled with the collective

• comment

  • we can call this "ecological realization"
  • seeing that we already are an ecological being

• for: system change, social tipping point
  • if theology can change so radically, so too can economics

• for: capitalism faults
  • bad at considering the long term future
  • bad at considering other species

• critique of Don't look up
  • "I told you so" approach
  • we don't need any more wagging the finger
  • it shouldn't be staged as missing things, as efficiency
  • it should be staged as increasing pleasure of being a living being in the biosphere
• comment
  • the film fails to reach the audience that could lead to deep transformation
  • evangelical Christians' narrative is already that an apocalypse is coming and THAT is the transformative event that will clean up an imperfect earth

• for: inner/outer transformation, inner transformation, rapid whole system change
• quote
  • I think that there needs to be some kind of religion-scale energy or quality to the way in which human beings confront this problem
• author
  • Timothy Morton

• for: inner/outer transformation, transformation, rapid whole system change,
• Title
  • The Human Form Divine
• Speaker
  • Timothy Morton

• for: inner/outer transformation, transformation, rapid whole system change
• description
  • this talk is called "The Human Form Divine
    • It is about dimensional transformation of the self and of the ecosystem
    • It explores the use of imagination, creativity and art in a practical way to assist in this transformation

• for: symbiocene,

• question

  • All living beings have values
  • We can't place human values above that of other species
  • how do we put this into practice, for example in the area of food?
    • we harvest and kill other species for food.
    • we are not alone in being a predator of other living beings
    • however, being self-conscious beings aware of the suffering that death causes, are we not in a dilemma, since we have to eat another living being in order to survive?
    • this appears to be an intrinsic dilemma of a self-conscious being
    • eating another living being is equivalent to killing another living being, which is equivalent to taking away its most valued aspect, its life
    • so eating other species is causing suffering to that other species or individual of that species
    • how do we overcome this?

• definition

  • Intrinsic dilemma
    • a dilemma which is unavoidable

• for: ecological civilization, degrowth, futures, deep ecology, emptiness, polycrisis, human exceptionalism, planned descent
• source
  • The Great Simplifcation
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE39xfNRRyw

• Description

  • Nate hosts this discussion on what constitutes an ecological civilization with guests
    • William Rees
    • Rex Weyler
    • Nora Bateson

• Reflections Overall,

  • an insightful discussion on the polycrisis and
  • reflections on what is in store for civilization.
• There is consensus that
  • what we are experiencing has been decades in the making and
  • the solutions-oriented approach to solving problems has only treated the symptoms and indeed has made things worse.
• There is a strong undercurrent of the emptiness in nature

• Rex

  • emphasized the folly of human exceptionalism that has been socially normalized and which
  • continues to create the major separation that fuels the polycrisis.
  • Not recognizing that we are nature, not recognizing our animal nature
  • we look upon nature with an attitude of controlling nature, rather than flowing with her.
  • advocated Taoism as a more consistent way to frame nature rather than the reductionist, control methodology that separates us from nature.

• Nora's perspective is the folly of abstraction that generates fixed preconceptions of aspects of nature that we then reify.

  • The fixed preconceptions are solidified but they are an oversimplified version of reality,
  • and that oversimplification leads to actualizing the cliche"a little knowledge is dangerous" into civilization
  • in other words, the continuous manufacture of progress traps.

• William sees our impending crash as not only inevitable, but natural.

  • In this, he concurs with Rex's perspective.
  • Human beings are simply another species and like them,
    • we are susceptible to population explosions when negative feedbacks are removed,
    • which can lead to nature self-correcting with mass dieoff when resources are overconsumed.

• for: tautology
• definition
  • ecology of thinking is adverse to adverse to ecology
  • tautology is adverse to new information comes in
    • Leonard Cohen
      • there's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in

• for: planned descent
  • negative feedbacks are nature's way of handling explosive overshoot
  • if we are a wise species, we would do it ourselves.

• for: symbiocene, human exceptionalism
• question
  • how do we invite them in? if they cannot represent themselves, how do we represent them?
    • does anyone know what' it's like to be a bat?
• remind ourselves of our animal nature
  • mortality salience counters human exceptionalism

• for: anthropomorphism, apex species
• quote
  • it does not make sense for one species to command most of the energy flow through the ecosystems which it is part of. That's a very destabilizing situation and the wise species would do everything possible to reestablish some kind of balanced energy material throughput.

• for: nature has no values, human values, purpose, purposelessness,
• key insight
  • evolution doesn't care
  • humans care, humans construct value and want to save ourselves. Evolution doesn't care if entire species live or die.
• comment
  • I've thought the same thing. It differentiates human beings from nature
  • Another way to say this is that humans have purpose, nature does not

• for: planned descent
• William Rees talks about planned descent, planning to start breeding animals of servitude again to replace all the mechanized, fossil fuel systems, plus one or two acres to sustain those draft animals.

• for: contraction, planned descent, overshoot,
• comment
  • Nora basically advocates for spontaneity, winging it, but with tools at your disposal to emerge solutions as appropriate.

• for: ecological civilization
  • William Rees

• for: ecological civilization
• Rex
  • danger is we will build a model
  • question to Rex:
    • what then is the alternative?
    • admit we are animals
    • if we overshoot, we have to contract

• for:nonexceptional human
• If you think of a plague of locusts or a plague of mice or frogs or whatever,
  • every species, when it is situated in an environment<br /> which for whatever set of juxtapositional reasons is favorable to the expansion of that species,
    • it will explode and expand.
  • And humans are no different.
  • With fossil fuel, we acquired the ability to exploit the planet and provide all the other resources needed to grow the human enterprise
    • to realize for the first time in human history, our full exponential growth potential.
    • up until about the industrial revolution, we were held in check by negative feedback.
    • The positive feedback tendencies of the species shared by all other species was held back by resource shortages, disease, war, and all of that stuff.
    • Well, fossil fuel temporarily relieved us of that, and we exploded just as a plague of locusts explodes during a favorable environment.
    • But then what that explosion does is deplete the resources and it crashes.
    • So I think we're on a one-off population boom/bust cycle, which is completely natural.
    • It just, it's never happened to humans before on a global scale
    • it has many times before on a local scale. But this time it's a global thing.
    • It's natural, it's going to happen, get used to it.
    • And Rex is right. Don't panic. Start taking care of what you can in your immediate environments.

• for: separation
• comment
  • economics is a human construct that has no useful information about ecological or social relationships.

• for: progress trap

• example

  • progress trap
    • quote
      • Where we get caught is thinking that we can identify a static snapshot in an ecological process
      • and get control over it, we can enact something upon it,
      • and thinking that we can do that toward what has been perceived as a positive outcome.
      • Without recognizing that with all of these different organisms that are changing each other all the time,
      • we're actually going to make a mess. -author
      • Nora Bateson

• for: emptiness, human interbeing, human interbecoming
• example
  • BEing journey
    • I think this is also part of our sense of who we are as humans, as ourselves,
    • and the idea of the self, the individual, and even the humans as this individual species,
    • these divisions are arbitrary.
    • I don't stop at my skin.
    • I'm breathing air.
    • I'm drinking the water.
    • I'm eating food.
    • I'm eating an apple.
    • When I eat an apple, when do the molecules of the apple become me? -When I'm chewing it in my mouth?
      • when it's in my stomach?
      • when my system has broken down the nutrients?
      • when is that point that nitrogen molecule becomes me versus the apple?
    • I would propose that apple is me when it's growing on the tree.
    • I think of the blossoms of the tree and the bees.
      • The blossoms of the tree,
      • the tree can't reproduce without the bees.
      • So is the bee part of the tree?
      • The bee is part of the reproductive system of the tree.
      • So the bee is part of the tree,
      • the tree is part of the bee.
      • The bee needs the tree.
      • The tree needs the bee.
    • This is just one simple relationship,
      • but it's not simple at all because
        • the bee needs a lot of other things,
        • and the tree needs a lot of other things.
        • And the mycelium and the soil.
    • We talk about a tree and the soil and the atmosphere and the bee as if they're all separate things.
    • And that's convenient because our language has nouns that mean certain things.
    • So we want to talk about trees.
    • It's nice to have a word for tree,
      • but we get it in our head that the tree is separate from the soil,
      • which is separate from the atmosphere,
      • which is separate from the bee.
    • And I'm saying no, those divisions are indeed somewhat arbitrary,
    • but we use them for convenience.
    • But the soil's not the soil without the relationship with the tree
      • and the tree's not the tree without the relationship with the soil and the atmosphere.
      • And the atmosphere is not the atmosphere without the relationshi to the tree, to the bee, to me and the soil.
    • So to me that's the essence of ecology.
    • And that we have to expand this sense of self,
      • individual self as well as
      • the species of humans.
  • And this isolated self, I think is a socially reinforced construct, - but we get sucked into it.
    • And we talk about relationships in ecology and we talk about the value of all living things,
    • but in our actions we come back to the individual self.

• for: human rights, nonhuman rights

• for: emptiness, ecology and emptiness, ecology and Taoism

• for: carbon inequality, W2W, leverage point

• five leverage points

  • consumer.
  • investors
  • lobbyist
  • influencer
  • citizen

• for: W2W, carbon inequality, leverage point
• quote
  • "people who are wealthy contribute the most to causing climate change,
    • they are unfortunately also in the most ideal position to help us mitigate climate change"
• author
  • Kristian Nielsen
    • https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-021-00900-y
    • The role of high-socioeconomic-status people in locking in or rapidly reducing energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions

• for: carbon inequality, w2w
• comment
  • it would be useful to have the accounting process used to calculate how the top1% emit carbon equivalent to bottom 50% to help us identify areas where interventions can be developed

• for: w2w, elites, top 1%, 1%, leverage point
• title
  • How the rich wreck the climate (and how to stop them)
• source
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvPlCr_fPSA

• for: collective action
• what the world needs it is to cut the emissions to stay below 1.5 degree centigrade and currently we are 1.2 degrees Centigrade warmer than the pre-industrial and the ipcc Sciences told us that if we want to abide by this 1.5 degree Centigrade limit of Paris agreement we have to cut our emissions by 50 percent by 2030 t but there is this is a huge ask and you know I cannot answer your million dollar question
• a world should come together somebody like me sitting in a developing country with its struggling economy, I can only hope that Collective action will happen
• we need the transformation of our Energy System
  • and especially when it comes to the use of air conditioner
• I'm among the haves I can afford but I feel for the street vendor out at home he cannot afford
• this year we had a record-breaking Heat Wave and then the record Bridges flooding in Pakistan both extreme events tarnish the economy of the country altogether and those were the front lines or the poorest of the poorest who suffer
• so I'm gonna say it's a big question mark it's a big question for the developed countries to to take the action to bring the world together at one place

• for: safe and just boundaries, earth system justice, planetary boundaries

• for: interdependent, emptiness, cascading tipping points
  • the Arctic which is warming three times faster than the planet on average
  • and releases cold fresh water into the North Atlantic slowing down the whole overturning of heat in the North Atlantic
  • which pushes the monsoon further south
  • which can explain droughts and forest fires over the Brazilian part of the Amazon
  • moreover the slowing down of overturning of heat means that more warm water is stuck in the Southern Ocean
  • which can explain why the West Antarctic ice sheet is melting faster than we had expected so there's a connection between the North Pole and the South Pole in this web of interactive tipping elements so
• This is something we have to recognize we are today a big world on a very small planet and it's all interwired and we are interdependent now

• for: bend the curve, planetary boundaries, planetary tipping points, 1.5 Degree, overshoot 1.5 Degree C

• two alternatives

  • come to net zero by 2040 with limited overshoot
  • come to net zero by 2060 with 3 decades of overshoot to 1.6, 1.7 Deg C
• first alternative is no longer viable

• for: downscaled planetary boundaries, earth system boundaries, bend the curve

• for: earth system boundaries, planetary boundaries, safe and just boundaries, earth system justice, just boundaries
• key finding
  • if we include justice in the planetary boundaries, then the 1.5 Deg C target becomes 1.0 Deg C.
  • In other words, we have already breached the safe and just boundary!

• for: bend the curve, climate clock

• for: planetary boundaries, tipping points, planetary tipping points

• for tipping point, planetary tipping point
• likely temperature thresholds for breaching planetary tipping points at 1.5 Deg C
  • Greenland Ice sheet
  • West Antarctica ice sheet
  • tropical coral reef system
  • boreal permafrost
  • Berent sea ice

• for: BAU

• for: earth resilience

• for earth resilience

• for: civilizational journey

• for: social tipping point, STP
• title
  • Creating Change: How to Make Big Things Happen
• guest
  • Damon Centola
• description
  • a very clear exposition of how complex contagion works and what must be done to spread complex behavior change
• comment
  • this is particularly important for rapid whole system change and mobilizing a bottom-up movement to deal with our current polycrisis

• for: polycrisis, dual crisis, climate change and political polarization

• key insight

  • we have to deal with climate crisis AND political polarization simultaneously
  • unless we solve the political polarization problem, we will be stuck in policy gridlock

• for: stop reset go

• for: progress trap, species map, indra's net

• for Indra's Net of Jewels, progress trap
• definition
  • Muir Web
    • A diagram that shows all the relationships between species of a particular ecological habitat

• for: progress trap
• definition
• quote
  • progress trap
    • A progress trap is the condition in which we find ourselves when science, technology and industry create more problems than they can solve. Often inadvertently.
• author
  • Dan O'Leary
• source
  • https://www.progresstrap.org/2010/02/12/the-progress-trap/

• for: progress trap, abstraction
  • comment
    • we do not recognize the power of abstraction
    • through it, we begin to construct Indra's Net of Jewels, one jewel (idea) at a time
    • but each jewel (idea) that we construct is just a little knowledge, and as Dan observes, a little knowledge, compared to the endless knowledge reflected in any jewel is dangerous.
    • this then, is our dangerous predicament - we base technology on incomplete jewels of Indra's net
    • as we know from mathematics, when the finite meets the infinite, it can never win

• for: progress trap
• quote
  • Since humanity is a small product of nature, he can by definition not control nature. To believe that he can is a delusion.
• Author
  • Dan O'Leary

• for: progress trap, progress traps

• Tttle

  • Escaping The Progress Trap
• Author
  • Gordon Kubanek
• Source
  • Canadian Association for the Club of Rome
  • https://canadiancor.com/escaping-the-progress-trap/
• Description
  • Gordon Kubanek shares his review of Dan O'Leary's book, "Escaping the Progress Trap"

• four mitigating factors that make power appear to corrupt when something else is actually going on.
  • dirty hands
    • people in power often are faced with no good alternatives and your hands will appear dirty, even when you choose the lesser of the evils
  • the idea of learning
    • authoritarian leaders are new to the job in the beginning and they have to learn to be good at being bad. Their leadership may appear to get worse but they are just learning how to be more effectively ruthless - on-the-job training
  • the problem of opportunity
    • a scaling effect. A leader of a country has far more people they can harm with his/her decision than a janitor.
  • the problem of scrutiny
    • people in power get more scrutiny
    • if you are not in power, you could be committing a crime but never get caught because you are not scrutinized to the same degree - think Donald Trump

• example
  • difficult choices for people in power
    • Winston Churchill breaks Enigma code
    • Knowledge that an Australian ship was going to be torpedoed by the Nazis but Churchill could not prevent it
    • He made the choice to allow hundreds of sailors die to save millions of people who would have died had the Nazis found out that the Enigma code was broken

• self-selection effect
  • example
    • police
      • it is likely that abusive, controlling people are on average, more attracted to being police officers because they can control and abuse others in that position

• Example
  • self-selection effect
    • Doraville police department created a video of hyper-masculine SWAT team to attract new officers
    • they attracted hyper-masculine males
    • New Zealand took the opposite approach
      • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9psILoYmCc
    • We absolutely have to have oversight and very close scrutiny of police officers who abuse their authority.
    • But at the same time, we have to think more carefully about who ends up in the uniform to begin with.

• recommendation
  • to eliminate the problem fo self-selection bias
    • produce shadow bodies of power that provide oversight to the real body of power, but that is randomly selected
  • So the idea here is that
    • you have to think carefully about screening people who are seeking power,
    • you have to have psychological tests for the highest levels of power, and
    • you also have to ask questions of people that would expose whether they're in it for the sake of power or they're in it for themselves.
  • And far too often, people are in it for themselves, and psychological tests would expose the fact that they are people who are not the ones that you want at the helm of a company or a country or with the sole control of nuclear weapons.

• critical question for all top leaders
  • I wish there was a certain question that was asked to people who wanted to wield immense amounts of power that is often not asked. And that question is this.
    • What would it take for you to think that you are no longer necessary in power?
  • In other words, what is the goal that you want to achieve with your power,
    • that if you were to achieve it, you would think it's time to step down?
  • And the reason that question is so important is because
    • it would cause most politicians to freeze like deer in the headlights.
  • They've never thought about it.
  • For them, power is the goal.
  • It would expose them as having never thought about it.
  • And for those who do actually answer that question, they would put themselves on the record as what they think their power is for, such that if they actually achieve it, they can retire.
  • And I think that's something that would be a great screening mechanism to see how people answer that question.
  • Most power-hungry people in leadership positions think, "I am God's gift to power, and therefore I should inhabit this role as long as I can stay here,"
    • which is why dictators cling to power as long as they can.

• we look at a bad person
• try to get rid of him/her
• when we do, then another bad person ends up in the role
• this is because we are treating the symptom, not the root cause

• how to create a system that mitigates abuse, based on the UN diplomat parking example
  • create a system that attracts the right kind of people so that the people who are clean and nice and rule-following end up in power.
  • Give them all the right incentives to follow the rules once they get there.
  • If you do have people who break the rules, there needs to be consequences.

• recommendation
  • politicians and other leaders need deep training and constant scrutiny as a condition to being in those positions
  • it is unthinkable that a tour guide position should have more training than a president of a country!

• recommendation
  • mandatory psychological testing for politicians

• key insight
  • changing a psychopath is hard
  • changing a system that produces the psychopath is easier

• key finding
  • rotten systems attract rotten people
  • good systems attract good people

• key insight
• quote
  • if we want to end up with a world that is shaped by the best of us, rather than very often the worst of us,
    • we have to think carefully, we have to engineer a system.
    • think of the worst person for the job position you are hiring for
    • design the system to
      • screen that person out
      • if they do manage to get in, have oversight that can eliminate them from the post
      • have a system in place that looks upwards to the top position to scrutinize them and hold them accountable

• dark triad trait people do not see threat in a rational way
  • they think they can defeat the threat

• dictators have extreme amounts of the dark triad trait

• the dark triad
  • these three traits usually occur together

• key observation
  • job interviews are poor at screening out psychopaths because they can put on superficial charm for short periods of time.
  • the psychopath can say whatever they think needs to be said in order to get the job

• definition
  • superficial charm

• a psychopath's ability to make you like them, so that you can be manipulated

• superficial charm blinds us to the psychopath

• brain scans support the idea that psychopaths feel no empathy by default, but can switch empathy on when they need to show "superficial charm"
• normal people cannot switch empathy off, but psychopaths can switch empathy on

• successful psychopaths
  • are not like Steve Raucci
  • they are
    • in boardrooms
    • managing hedge funds
    • politicians
    • business leaders
  • they are
    • ruthless
    • very power-hungry
    • able to hatch complicated plots to get their way
    • very disciplined at times
    • are the worst of the world
    • terrible at wielding power
    • extremely abusive
    • very likely to inflict damage to subordinates
    • but have the right amount of discipline when to stop acting like a psychopath

• definition
  • dark triad traits
• someone who has dark triad traits has three traits:
  • machiavellianism (the ends justify the means)
  • psychopathy
  • narcissism
• Steve Raucci was a janitor who had the dark triad traits, that led him to ascend to power and commit all kinds of crimes
• reference
  • https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/After-decade-of-denial-Steve-Raucci-admits-to-13616374.php

• facial bias
  • experiments show that children and adults alike who didn't know any of the faces shown, chose actual election leaders and runner ups of elections to be their leaders
  • China exploits the "white-guy-in- a-tie" problem to win deals.
    • Companies hire a white person with zero experience to wear a nice suit and tie and pose as a businessman who has just flown in from Silicon Valley.

• definition
  • babyfaceness
• when a person's face resembles a baby's face,
  • it can advantage or disadvantage that person depending on
    • which race they are part of
      • if they are babyfaced white, then they will be frowned upon because they are perceived as weak
      • if they are babfaced minority, then they will be more likely to be promoted as they are less threatening

• if your name or face is a minority, it already disadvantages you
  • supported by extensive research

• definition
  • snowy peak problem
• if you are a minority looking up at management in politics, business or other hierarchical organizations, you often see old, white males at the top.

• key observation
  • we often vote for "strong men" who are not in the business of public service but are oriented towards conquering and dominating due to a cognitive bias developed from tens of thousands of years of evolution.
  • in ancient times, a physically strong man to lead us often increased our chances of survival.
  • This is no longer true today, but that cognitive bias is still with us because evolution takes a long time.
  • Hence, this cognitive bias to select strong men is maladaptive today.

• key observation
  • the dynamics and relationship between
    • self-selection bias and
    • survivorship bias
  • gives us insight of how power operates
  • The wrong kinds of people who are power-hungry, seek power more in the first place.
  • Then they're better at obtaining it.
  • They show up in our ordinary lives because they've survived,
    • they've made it.
  • So when we think about who is powerful,
    • we have to think about
      • the people who didn't seek power in the first place and
      • the people who didn't obtain power in the first place.
      • the people who didn't survive in power for very long, and therefore they dropped out.
    • The presidents and prime ministers,
    • the generals,
    • the cult leaders,
    • the business leaders,
  • those people are basically people who have survived and who self-selected.

• example
  • survivorship bias
    • Abraham Wald was a statistican who was tasked by the Allied war effort with understanding how to make the Allied war planes function better.
    • And he was presented with a series of airplanes that had bullet holes throughout them as they had gone from bombing runs over Nazi Germany.
    • And he looked at them, and he saw that there were
      • holes in the wings,
      • holes in the tail,
      • holes in the nose of the plane.
    • And the general said to him, you know, "Based on your statistical expertise, where should we put extra armor?
    • Where should we reinforce the plane?"
    • And most of the people thought they should put them where the bullet holes were.
    • Abraham Wald took one look at this, and he said, "If you put armor over the places where the holes are,
      • you're going to make the planes get shot down more."
    • Because the reality was the places that didn't have bullet holes were the most crucial.
    • The places that had been shot in
      • the fuselage,
      • the middle of the plane where the engine was,
    • those were in Germany, they didn't survive,
      • they were wrecks.
    • So they never made it back to be analyzed.
    • So survivorship bias is a bias where we look at the wrong kinds of data because we only look at what survived.

• There's two forms of bias around power that are really important to understand.
  • The first is self-selection bias, but then there's another bias called
  • survivorship bias.
• And this is where we only see people who make it into power.
• When you think about the people you know who are powerful, those are people who have survived,
  • they've sought power, and
  • they've obtained it, and
  • they've maintained it.
• The people who didn't seek power in the first place,
  • weren't successful in achieving it, or
  • only lasted for a short time,
• those don't show up when we think about powerful people.

• key observation
  • People who are power-hungry, people who are psychopaths
    • tend to self-select into positions of power more than the rest of us.
  • And as a result, we have this skew, this bias in positions of power
    • where certain types of people, often the wrong kinds of people,
    • are more likely to put themselves forward to rule over the rest of us

• key insight
  • we've engineered a society in which power itself is costly to everyone
  • cost
    • it's invasive, your life will be scritinized, your family may pay a price, and may be destroyed
      • for the power-hungry, they can often accept the cost
      • for most ordinary people, that cost is too high

• problem
  • power hungry people intentionally seek out power more than anyone else.
  • this creates a real problem.
  • the more power a position has, the more likely power-hungry people will be attracted
• solution
  • make systems of power more attractive for ordinary and decent people

• key strategy
  • design system to screen out power hungry people

• key strategy for dealing with power-hungry people
  • recruitment
• power is something that draws in the wrong kinds of people like moths to a flame.
• So the way you deal with that is you attract more people to basically be able to zap some of the bad moths and be left with ones who are actually in it for the right reasons. -
• And that's why recruitment is so important.

• key finding
  • some systems of power have absolutely no barriers
• comment
  • when there are no barriers, then power seekers will have opportunity to actualize power

• four main arguments about power
  • 1. worse people get power, corruptible people seek power
  • 1. power makes people worse, power corrupts
  • 3 we are drawn to the wrong kinds of leaders for all the wrong reasons
  • 4 we can design systems to make better people end up in power

• key question
  • knowing the self-selection effect, how do we design better systems that end up putting good people in positions of power?

• definition
  • self-selection effect
    • those people who are power-hungry and seek control are far more likely to seek positions of power in the first place, and are focused and develop skills to get it.

• comment
  • interesting analysis that it is the system that promotes the wrong type of people to positions of leadership.

• quote
  • power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely
• Author
  • Lord Acton
• Context
  • Lord Acton coined the term to whiitewash the brutality o Spanish Inquisition

• Key question
  • Why is it that despite incredible 21st century advances in every realm of medicine and science and so on,
    • we still are stuck with all the wrong people in charge of our lives?

• Source
  • Big Think interview
• Book Title
  • Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us
• Book Author
  • Brian Klaas

• Title
  • A New Golden Age Of Sailing Is Here: Five Exciting Projects
• Author
  • Nishan Degnarain
• Source
  • Forbes magazine

• Title
  • Relevance Realization and the Emerging Framework in Cognitive Science
• Authors
  • John Vervaeke
  • Timothy P. Lillicrap
  • Blake A. Richards
• Date
  • Oct 27, 2009
• Source
  • https://academic.oup.com/logcom/article-abstract/22/1/79/1007787?redirectedFrom=fulltext

• food supply chain vulnerability
• most US cities would run out of food in 3 days if there was a major food supply chain disruption

• Title
  • The Planet's Scarcest Resource is Time
• Source
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXVgTD2F6ZQ
• Description
  • Interview with Lester Brown

• Oxfam inequality report
• Report name
  • Survival of the Richest
• Date
  • Jan 2023
• Key findings
  • the richest 1% earned nearly 2/3 of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020
  • the remaining 99% earned the remaining 1/3

• The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020,
  • almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population,

• Key finding
  • when the size of the committed minority reached ~25% of the population,
    • a tipping point was triggered, and the minority group succeeded in changing the established social convention.

• Title
  • Experimental evidence for tipping points in social convention
• Authors
  • Damon Centola
  • Joshua Becker
  • Devon Brackbill
  • Andrea Baronchelli
• Date
  • 2018
• Source
  • Science 360, 1116-1119 (2018)

• comment
  • the Zen mindfulness practices demonstrated in the rest of the paper depend on one assumption
    • that the scientific narrative employed are within the salience landscape of the reader
  • if they are not aligned to these narratives (ie, if they are religious fundamentalists) then these practices will fail to be effective
  • this suggests that we may need to appeal to an even more fundamental human quality that IS shared by all of us, the creation of narratives

• Quote
  • I try to remember that it's not me, John Seed, trying to protect the rainforest. Rather I'm part of the rainforest protecting myself. I am that part of the rainforest recently emerged into human thinking."
• Author
  • John Seed (in Macy, 1991: page 184)

• Quote

• quote
  • interesting statistic ' "8 out of 10 people who reproduced in northern Europe 1,000 years ago are the ancestors of all living people with some European ancestry."
• Author
  • Fred W. Allendorf
  • 8 out of 10 people who reproduced in Northern Europe 1,000 years ago
    • are the ancestors of all living European descendants today
  • if we go even further back, all humans share just a few common ancestors
  • The most recent common ancestor of all present-day humans lived just a few thousand years ago
    • Rohde, D. L. T. , Olson, S. , & Chang, J. T. (2004). Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans. Nature, 431, 562–566. 10.1038/nature02842

• Guided meditation
  • When did your life begin?
  • Regress to your mother's egg divided to determine which gene to pass on to you.
    • this, while inside her mother's womb
  • Regress 40 generations for 1000 years (average lifespan was 25 years!)
  • Regress a billion years, then 4 billion
  • With each regression stage, your ancestors were other species and ultimately, nonbiotic life as well.
• comment
  • this has limitations as well, as it is bu ilt on scientific narratives subject to change.

• Guided meditation
  • What was your original face before you were born?
  • A Zen koan sometimes used to guide contemplation of one's ancestry

• Guided meditation
  • consciousness thinking about its own atomic constituent

• Carbon cycle meditation

  • to help achieve awareness of our physical connection to the world

• Comment

  • This is a limited practice as it still depends on conceptual models.
  • An atom is not an object we can directly experience phenomenologically.
  • Rather, it is a conceptual model and through social norm of using it as if it were phenomenologically a directly experienced object, we confuse ideas of phenomena with the phenomena itself
  • One way to determine if it is a fundamental human quality or if it is simply one narrative, is to determine if there are people such an exercise would NOT resonate with?
    • For instance, it would likely not resonate strongly with
      • climate deniers,
      • uneducated people
      • religious fundamentalists
  • to develop a method to reach ALL people, we need to look at even more fundamental commonalities - namely, how we use language to mediate reality
  • Perhaps a BEing journey can consist of two lievels
    • 1st level: conceptual
      • do the BEing journey as described using conventional concepts
    • 2nd level: meta-level
      • observe how you construct the narrative using language
  • it could be good to animate this with AI drawing program

• comment
  • these guided meditations are interesting because they are one level of our superorganism (consciousness)
    • thinking about a lower level of the same human superorganism
      • carbon molecule that was part of us
      • genetic material that was part of our ancestors going back billions of years

• quote
  • “If we want to continue to enjoy our rivers ‐ to swim in them,
    • walk beside them,
    • even drink their water ‐ we have to adopt the non‐dual perspective.
  • We have to meditate on being the rivers so that we can experience within ourselves the fears and hopes of the rivers.
  • If we cannot feel
    • the rivers,
    • the mountains,
    • the air,
    • the animals, and
    • other people
  • from within their own perspective,
  • the rivers will die and we will lose our chance for peace”
• comment
  • Thich Nhat Hahn's quote reflects
    • perspectival knowing
    • situatedness
    • dissolving dualistic barriers to achieve nondual integration and empathy
• Author
  • Thich Nhat Hahn

• The ecologist David Barash (1973) discussed the parallels between Zen Buddhism and ecology.
  • interdependence and unity of all things was fundamental to both
    • the practice of Zen and
    • the science of ecology
• adjacency
  • ecology
  • Zen
  • interdependency and unity are fundamental to both Zen and ecology
  • both share a common nondualistic view of the fundamental identity of subject and surrounding
  • a bison cannot be understood in isolation from the prairie
    • understanding requires studying the bison-prairie unit
• quote
  • "The very study of ecology is the elaboration of Zen's nondualistic thinking".

• author

  • David Barish

• comment

  • adjacency
    • indyweb treats words and ideas as empty,
      • that is, they are selfless, and have no meaning except in relation to all other words / ideas

• adjacency
  • ecology
  • Indra's net of jewels -translation
  • of Indra's Net story
  • “Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra,
    • there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer
    • in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions.
  • In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities,
    • the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of the net,
    • and since the net itself is infinite in dimension,
      • the jewels are infinite in number.
  • There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude,
    • a wonderful sight to behold.
  • If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it,
    • we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number.
  • Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels,
    • so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring"
    • Author
      • Cook, F. H. (1977). Hua‐Yen Buddhism: The jewel net of Indra. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. [Google Scholar]

• The Buddha taught that everything is
  • connected and
  • constantly changing.
• These fundamental observations of the world are shared by
  • ecology and
  • evolution.
• We are living in a time of unprecedented rates of extinction.
• Science provides us with the information that we need to address this extinction crisis.
• However, the problems underlying extinction generally do not result from a lack of scientific understanding,
  • but they rather result from an unwillingness to take the needed action.

• I present mindfulness and meditative aspects of Zen practice that provide the deeper “knowing,” or awareness that we need to inspire action on these problems.

• comment

  • emptiness is interdependency and change
  • in Deep Humanity praxis, it is equivalent to
    • human INTERbeing and
    • human INTERbeCOMing

• 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
  • Zen and deep evolution: The optical delusion of separation
• Author
  • Fred W. Allendorf
• Date
  • 2018

• Source

  • https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6099813/

• Abstract

  • The Buddha taught that everything is connected and constantly changing.
• These fundamental observations of the world are shared by ecology and evolution.
  • We are living in a time of unprecedented rates of extinction.
• Science provides us with the information that we need to address this extinction crisis.
  • However, the problems underlying extinction generally do not result from a lack of scientific understanding, -but they rather result from an unwillingness to take the needed action.
  • I present mindfulness and meditative aspects of Zen practice
    • that provide the deeper “knowing,” or awareness that we need to inspire action on these problems.

• US political polarization at local level
  • there's really shocking data that shows
    • red zip codes are getting red or redder and
    • blue states are getting Bluer
  • people are self-selecting into communities based on their political beliefs
    • and this is the highest rate we've ever seen it since polling began in that space
  • The phenomenon is really hyper localized

• If we magically transformed the global economy overnight, and air pollution fell to near zero, we’d get:
  • an immediate rise in global temperatures of between 0.5 and 1.1 degrees Celsius, according to the new study.
    • (For reference: The climate has warmed about 1.2 degrees Celsius since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.)
  • The warming would be concentrated over the major cities of the northern hemisphere,
    • close to where most aerosols are emitted.
  • In the hardest hit parts of highly-urbanized East Asia, for example,
    • the complete removal of aerosols would likely have a bigger effect than all other sources of climate change combined.
  • Temperatures in the Arctic could jump as much as 4 degrees Celsius – a catastrophe that would shove the region further toward a permanently ice-free state.

• Aerosol progress trap
  • a devil’s bargain:
  • Aerosols
    • are necessary for normal weather and
    • help moderate rising temperatures,
  • but they’re also killing us.
  • Turns out we have been unwittingly geoengineering for decades,
  • and just like in the movies, it’s gone off the rails.

• Air pollution impacts
  • 5.5 million people die each year of air pollution from
    • burning coal
    • driving cars
    • burning fires to clear land
      • and forest fires

• Title
  • Devil’s Bargain: Why Aerosols Pose a Deadly Climate Change Threat
• Author
  • Eric Holthaus
• Date
• Feb 8, 2018
• Source
  • https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/devils-bargain-why-aerosols-pose-a-deadly-climate-change-threat-126855/

• Title
  • ‘Out of time’: Temperature records topple around the world
• Source
  • https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/30/out-of-time-temperature-records-topple-around-the-world

• statistic
  • 75% of young people surveyed said that they think their future is frightening

• Title
  • Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey
• Authors
  • Hickman et al.
• Date
  • Dec 31, 2021
• Source
  • https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/publications/climate-anxiety-in-children-and-young-people-and-their-beliefs-ab

• question
  • how to we split the burden of collectively staying within the PBs?
  • To know if e.g. a person or a company is absolute environmentally sustainable,
    • we need to know that person’s or the company’s assigned SoSOS.
  • How to determine a person’s or a company’s assigned SoSOS is not only normative,
    • but essentially a question of distributive justice.

• Definition
  • sharing principles
    • synonyms
      • allocation principles
      • distributive principles

• Definition
  • share of the safe operating space
    • SoSOS

• Title
  • Downscaling the planetary boundaries in absolute environmental sustainability assessments – A review
• Authors
  • Morten W. Ryberg
  • Martin Marchman Andersen
  • Mikotaj Owsianiak
  • Michael Z. Hauschild
• Date
  • Dec 2020
• Source
  • https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652620333321
• Abstract
  • Excerpt
    • To ensure choices concerning sharing principles in absolute environmental sustainability assessments (AESA) are deliberate,
      • there is a need for understanding the distributive justice theory underlying the sharing principles. -This study provides a framework for determining and communicating the distributive justice theories that underlie the choice of sharing principles in AESA

• Title
  • How to solve complex problems using systems thinking
• Author
  • Gino
• Date
  • July 4

• Two methods of approaching problems differently
  • 1) How do I choose to be in relationship to this problem?
  • 2) What opportunity is presenting itself through my problem?

• Title
  • Moving Beyond Problem Solving: A Potential-Based Approach
• Author
  • Rosalie Puiman -Date
  • Dec 6, 2017
• Source
  • https://www.huffpost.com/entry/moving-beyond-problem-sol_b_7277644
• Description
  • Introduction to Alan Seale's approach to problem solving
    • Center for Transformational Presence
      • http://transformationalpresence.org/

• Title
  • Addressing the Climate Crisis: An Action Plan for Psychologists
• Date
  • Feb 2022

• Title
  • Psychology and Global Climate Change: Addressing a Multi-faceted Phenomenon and Set of Challenges A Report by the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Interface Between Psychology and Global Climate Change
• Authors
  • Janet Swim
  • Susan Clayton
  • Thomas Doherty
  • Robert Gifford
  • George Howard
  • Joseph Reser
  • Paul Stern
  • Elke Weber

• Title
  • A crucial year for understanding how ocean warming affects marine life
• Author
  • Alison Snyder
• Date
  • June 18, 2023
• Source
  • https://www.axios.com/2023/06/18/ocean-heatwaves-marine-life

• Title
  • Visualizing freely available citation data using VOSviewer
• Author
  • Nees Jan van Eck
  • Ludo Waltman
• Date
  • Oct 23, 2017
• Source
  • https://www.cwts.nl/blog?article=n-r2r294
• Description
  • Today we released version 1.6.6 of our VOSviewer software for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks.
  • The most important new feature in this version is the support for working with Crossref data.
  • Recently, the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) managed to convince a large number of scientific publishers to make the reference lists of publications in their journals freely available through Crossref.
  • Thanks to I4OC, Crossref has become a valuable data source for VOSviewer users.
  • In this blog post, we discuss how users of the new version 1.6.6 of VOSviewer can benefit from Crossref data.

• Title
  • Visualizing a Field of Research With Scientometrics: Climate Change Associated With Major Aquatic Species Production in the World
• Authors
  • Mohamad N. Azra
  • Mohn Iqbal Mohd Noor
  • Yeong Yik Sung
  • Mazlan Abd Ghaffar
• Date July 13, 2022
• Source
  • https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2022.905428/full
• Abstract
  • Climate change research on major aquatic species assists various stakeholders (e.g. policymakers, farmers, funders) in better managing its aquaculture activities and productivity for future food sustainability.
  • However, there has been little research on the impact of climate change on aquatic production, particularly in terms of scientometric analyses.
  • Thus, using the
    • bibliometric and
    • scientometric analysis methods,
  • this study was carried out to determine what research exists on the impact of climate change on aquatic production groups.
  • We focused on
    • finfish,
    • crustaceans, and
    • molluscs.
  • Data retrieved from Web of Science was
    • mapped with CiteSpace and
    • used to assess
      • the trends and
      • current status of research topics
    • on climate change associated with worldwide aquatic production.
  • We identified ocean acidification as an important research topic for managing the future production of aquatic species.
  • We also provided a comprehensive perspective and delineated the need for:
    • i) more international collaboration for research activity focusing on climate change and aquatic production in order to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal by 2030;
    • ii) the incorporation of work from molecular biology, economics, and sustainability.

• Title
  • The landscape of biomedical research
• Authors
  • Rita González-Márquez,
  • Luca Schmidt,
  • Benjamin M. Schmidt,
  • Philipp Berens
  • Dmitry Kobak
• Date
  • April 11, 2023
• Source
  • https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.10.536208v1.full
• Abstract
  • The number of publications in biomedicine and life sciences
  • has rapidly grown over the last decades,
  • with over 1.5 million papers now published every year.
  • This makes it difficult to
    • keep track of new scientific works and
    • to have an overview of the evolution of the field as a whole.
  • Here we
    • present a 2D atlas of the entire corpus of biomedical literature, and
    • argue that it provides
      • a unique and
      • useful overview
    • of the life sciences research.
  • We base our atlas on the abstract texts of
  • 21 million English articles from the PubMed database.
  • To embed the abstracts into 2D, we use
    • a large language model PubMedBERT, combined with
    • t-SNE tailored to handle samples of our size.
  • We use our atlas to study
    • the emergence of the Covid-19 literature,
    • the evolution of the neuroscience discipline,
    • the uptake of machine learning, and
    • the distribution of gender imbalance in academic authorship.
  • Furthermore, we present an interactive web version of our atlas that
    • allows easy exploration and
    • will enable further insights and facilitate future research.

• Title
  • Curtis A. Deutsch (homepage) -Source
  • https://geosciences.princeton.edu/people/curtis-deutsch
• Description
  • Research focus on climate change impacts on ocean and marine ecosystems

• Title
  • Multiple ecosystems in hot water after marine heatwave surges across the Pacific
• Date July 13, 2023
• Source
  • https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/07/230713142059.htm

• quote
  • "Policymakers need to win public support for energy demand reduction mechanisms. -The reality is decarbonisation on the supply side, where energy is generated and distributed, will not be enough to deliver the emission reductions that are needed. -So, energy demand will have to be reduced. That is the inescapable reality."
• Author
  • Milena Buchs
• Experts on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate that
  • reducing energy demand could produce between 40% and 70% of the emissions reductions that need to be found by 2050.

"Our research is indicating that public support for energy demand reduction is possible if the public see the schemes as being fair and deliver climate justice."

• comment
  • aligned with Kevin Anderson's findings from 2013 that
    • it takes decades to build out supply-side infrastructure that can replace fossil fuel systems
    • therefore, significant demand side reductions are necessary to delivery the reductions in carbon emissions needed now
    • https://hyp.is/lOljjiV1Ee65J2N_QMPZhw/kevinanderson.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Edinburgh-presentation-Oct-2013.pdf

• One energy demand reduction strategy
  • Cap the top 20% of energy users
  • while allowing those people
    • who use little energy and
    • have poverty-level incomes
  • to be able to
    • increase their consumption levels and
    • improve their quality of life.

• lead researcher
  • Milena Büchs,
• Position
  • Professor of Sustainable Welfare
• Institution
  • University of Leeds

• Title
  • Cap top 20% of energy users to reduce carbon emissions

• Publication

  • https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/07/230717175940.htm

• Summary -Consumers in the richer, developed nations will have to accept restrictions on their energy use

  • if international climate change targets are to be met, warn researchers.
  • The big challenge is to identify the fairest and most equitable way
  • that governments can curtail energy use,
    • a process known as energy demand reduction. -The research team analyzed several scenarios to identify a potential solution.

• energy demand side reduction
  • too early for supply side infrastructure to fully scale
  • therefore, only significant demand-side reductions can keep us safe

• quote
  • "When their antennae become clogged with pollution particles,
  • insects struggle to
    • smell food,
    • smell a mate, or
    • smell a place to lay their eggs,
  • and it follows that their populations will decline,"
• Author
  • Prof Mark Elgar

• Title
  • Air pollution particles may be cause of dramatic drop in global insect numbers
• Date
  • July 12, 2023
• Publication
  • https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/07/230712124747.htm

• comment
  • Disney is an ardent wealth and climate reformer and was protesting the 1%'s use of carbon intensive jet planes.

• Title
  • Abigail Disney Arrested During ‘Private Jet’ Protest

• Source

  • https://insidethemagic.net/2023/07/abigail-disney-arrested-during-protest-emd1/?taid=64b2e5af9f67e300011a350c

• Description

  • She is the heiress to the Walt Disney empire but is a climate activist.
  • She performed this action to bring attention to the carbon intensive activity of the 1%
  • She stated the carbon inequality fact that the wealthiest 1% are responsible for carbon emissions equal to the bottom 50% of humanity.

• THE PATHWAY TO EMERGENCE

  • Human viability depends on advancing Emergency action
  • in ways that facilitate Emergence of the
    • culture,
    • institutions,
    • technology, and
  • infrastructure
  • of an Ecological Civilization
  • guided by the maps of a 21st century eco-nomics.

• These are some action steps on the path to Emergence that follow from the Ubuntu Principle and its corollaries

  • Break up concentrations of corporate power, including private banks.
    • Restructure the individual pieces to support equitable, locally rooted participation in ownership.
    • Assure that every business is dedicated to and ultimately accountable for fulfilling a public purpose beneficial to the communities in which it does business. -Take democracy to the next level as a participatory process of community self-organization, not just a competitive voting contest between two or more candidates from opposing political parties funded by wealthy patrons. Replace GDP as the primary measure of economic performance with measures of the health and wellbeing of people, communities, and nature—giving priority to equality, material sufficiency, and spiritual abundance for all.
    • Eliminate financial speculation and free individuals, community businesses, and governments from perpetual debt bondage.
    • Transform our relationship to nature to restore and enhance its regenerative health and beauty as we learn to nurture ourselves in ways that nurture all.
    • Organize bioregionally defined political jurisdictions around urban hubs with strong rural-urban links that
      • seek to optimize regional environmental and labor self-reliance.
      • Eliminate inefficient land use by converting suburbs to rural-urban use.
    • Eliminate gas powered vehicles and redesign infrastructure
      • to minimize dependence on private cars in all but remote rural areas.
    • Minimize air travel by
      • vacationing locally within local rural-urban jurisdictions and
      • organize all but local meetings and conferences as web conferences.
    • Strengthen non-monetized relationships
      • between people and
      • between people and the lands and waters that sustain them.
    • Encourage responsible community-centric parenting and child development consistent with a just and prosperous future for all.
    • Invest in life sciences research advancing understanding of the organizing principles, structures, and processes of healthy living systems.
    • Accelerate
      • social innovation,
      • adaptation, and
      • learning by
        • nurturing cultural diversity and
        • removing intellectual property rights impediments to the free and open sharing of beneficial knowledge and technology. • Transform economics and management educa- tion to provide future leaders with the knowl- edge and skills needed to lead institutional transformation and the creation of resilient self-governing communities.
    • Organize material processes around
      • continuous circular flows and
      • minimize movement of
        • physical and
        • energy resources
          • both within and
        • between self-reliant bioregional communities

• quote
  • "“We will prosper in the pursuit of life, or we will perish in the pursuit of money. The choice is ours.”
• Author
  • David Korten

• quote
  • "We see virtually no prospect that the Wall Street system will transform itself from within.
  • Change depends on citizen’s working from outside the establishment
    • to create from the bottom up a New Economy based on new values and institutions."
• Author
  • David Korten

• seven trillion dollars in toxic subsidies

• Title
  • Detox Development: Repurposing Environmentally Harmful Subsidies
• Author
  • World Bank

• Title
  • Hiding in plain sight: The missing trillions for climate change
• Author Axel Van Trotsenburg
• Date
  • June 15, 2023
• Publisher
  • World Bank

• Title
  • Big Oil v the World Series 1 03 Delay
• Author
  • BBC

• Title
  • Big Oil v the World Series 1 02 Doubt
• Author BBC

• Title
  • Big Oil v the World Series 1 01 Denial
• Author BBC

• title
  • The Great Turning
• Author
  • David Korten
• Description
  • David Korten describes "the great unraveling" as a multi-dimensional ecological, social and economic crisis

• Third great separation

  • industrial agricultural revolution

    • Farming was a community affair, by necessity.
    • Nearly everyone in the United States lived on a farm, had lived on a farm, or knew someone who lived on a farm.
    • There was still a sense of connectedness to the land, the earth, through food and farming.
    • But ​“times changed” in rural America.

    • The industrialization of agriculture removed the necessity for community-based farming.

    • Farmers eventually lost their sense of connectedness to

      • their land,
      • to each other and
      • to their communities.
    • Consumers no longer know
      • who produces their food,
      • where it was produced, or
      • how it was produced.
    • What happens to food between the earth and the eater has become largely a mystery.
    • Food for family gatherings and religious holidays are of economic importance to the food industry,
      • but have little social or spiritual significance beyond following cultural traditions.
    • The dependence of humanity on the Earth for food is no less than during the early times of hunting and gathering,
      • but the sense of connectedness between the eater and the Earth has been lost.

• quote

  • Farming was a community affair, by necessity
  • What happens to food between the earth and the eater has become largely a mystery.

• Second great separation
  • Industrial Revolution
    • The early enclosure movement during the 1600s
      • separated people into farmers and non-farmers
      • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.parliament.uk%2Fabout%2Fliving-heritage%2Ftransformingsociety%2Ftowncountry%2Flandscape%2Foverview%2Fenclosingland%2F&group=vnpq69nW
    • Prior to the enclosures, land was held in common for public use, not owned by individuals.
    • The rise of capitalism also occurred during this time.
      • Adam Smith wrote his landmark book, The Wealth of Nations, in 1776.
      • Land was privatized so the most efficient use of land could be determined
        • by market competition rather than
        • community consensus.
      • Labor then also had to be ​“commodified,” or bought and sold,
        • so non-farmers could work for wages and buy food and the other necessities of life they had been getting from the land.
      • With reliance on working for wages, buying, and selling
        • the necessity for personal relationships were diminished.
      • With the diminished necessity for personal relationships,
        • the social cohesion within families, communities and society began to diminish as well.
    • The persistence of chronic poverty and malnutrition, even during times of tremendous economic growth and individual wealth, are direct consequences of a growing sense of disconnectedness from each other that was nourished by the industrial era of economic development.

• Machine learning
  • will learn all our bad habits
  • and become supercharged, amplified versions of them
• The antidote to apocalyptic machine learning
  • is human happiness and wisdom