• for: question - SONEC community governance - participation

• question: SONEC community governance - participation

  • Communities have such diversity, multimeaningverse of lifeworlds converged
  • So many different capacities, limitations and worldviewes - I would recommend the Deep Humanity multi-meaningverse is important as a framework to mitigate misinterpretation

• for: SONEC - building blocks

• building blocks - SONEC

  • Indian neighborhood parliaments - neighbourocracy
  • Sociocratic Circul Organization method (SCN - Sociocracy
    • Operationalizing Elinor Ostro's ideas of managing common resources
  • Design principles of the Commons

• for: recommendation - citizen group - accessibility

• recommendation - citizen group - accessibility

  • a big part of generating participation is feasibility and accessibility
  • combination of physical and online meetings are the most flexible, but the physical space must be accessible. Ideally within walking or biking distance. Try to eliminate any form of car travel as it is polluting and consumes precious time

• for: question - climate crisis - local solutions - scalability

• question

  • These are great starts but is there a trajectory to scaling them to replace a large part of society's GDP as a minimum but total holistic wellbeing as a final goal?:

• for: leverage point - active citizen groups

• leverage point

  • active citizen groups can get a variety of support from elected officials including
    • free suitable spaces
    • paid support staff
    • funding
    • simplification and support for any city permits
    • free marketing

• for: community groups - incentives for municipal government support

• Comment

  • Municipalities have a vested interest to partner with local community groups. They benefit because community groups can take a part of the workload off the shoulders of municipal workers including:
    • increased security leading to less crime
    • sharing un-needed items reduces waste
    • taking responsibility for public spaces can reduce fire hazard, reduce city labor costs, improve tourism

• comment

  • In a South African context
    • helping neighbors in disenfranchised communities can
      • reduce conflict
      • increase security
      • increase food security
      • save money through donation of unused items

• for: community organization - proof of concept

• comment

  • Solving a particular problem that is salient in the community is the best entry point into demonstrating the benefits of such a community organization.
  • The particular problem needs to be:
    • salient
    • feasible to solve with existing resources
  • Having solved this using the emergent, new methodologies, they can have more confidence to tackle bigger and more complex problems _ This gradually eases them into tackling rapid whole system change.

• for: ranked voting, third party - ranked voting, climate crisis - ranked voting, climate crisis - third party with no money from special interests

• for: quote - James Hansen, quote Benjamin Franklin, climate crisis - leverage point - political revolution

• quote

  • If we don't solve the problem in the United States, I don't see us solving the global problem
• author: James Hansen

• date: Dec 2023

• comment

  • Tipping Point network

• climate crisis - leverage points - young people - politics

• comment

  • Hansen considers politics to be the key leverage point for young people now, not protesting and raising awareness

• for: example - nuclear decarbonization - Denmakr

• for: fossil fuel phase out strategy - fee and dividend

• for James Hansen - nuclear, fossil fuel replacement - modern nuclear, question - Janes Hansen - ultradeep geothermal

• question: What are James Hansen's thoughts on ultra-deep geothermal?

• comment

  • obviously, Hansen advocates for modern nuclear since it is has the same high energy density as fossil fuels

,- annotate

• Annotate

• for: architectural plan - redesign the world, BIG architecture

• for: good idea - one global grid for renewables

• from:LinkedIn Post shared by Phoebe Coyne on low economic growth can help achieve staying under 1.5 Deg C.

• for: climate solutions - low economic growth, Jason Hickel,

• to:Resilience website - Low economic growth can help keep climate change within the 1.5°C threshold.

• for: annotate, extreme right politics - evangelical community

• annotate
• for: annotate, high energy density renewable energy

• for: science communication, climate communication

• title: Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Other Groups Declines

• author:
  • Brian Kennedy
  • Alec Tyson
  • Cary Funk
• date:Feb. 15, 2022

• for: hard problem of consciousness - UTok, question - consciosness - UTok mind 1a, Gregg Henrique

• comment

• question - consciousness - UTok mind 1b
  • This is a great diagram and conveys a lot in a succinct manner.
  • However, I have a gut feeling that the Mind 01a is not quite the right representation
  • If language and analysis is in the Mind 3 domain, then it is combined with Mind 1b as neurocognition is itself a mental construction, rather than an object
  • All this addresses that there is a deep entanglement between many scientifically analytically rich "objects" and constructed ideas
    • Scientific objects are spoken about and mixed with non-scientifically-laden objects in the world as if they are one and the same. They are not. Scientifically-laden objects have a huge amount of analytic theory behind them. Without familiarity with that theory, the object loses its validity, especially to the lay person.
    • This could be a possible explanation of why scientists are losing their credibility in modernity and giving rise to alternative facts, misinformation and fake news
      • https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/02/15/americans-trust-in-scientists-other-groups-declines/

• for: climate crisis - role of community

• comment

  • Jane starts off a great conversation with the thesis that communities can be the key for solving the climate crisis

• for: question - can communities have real impact?

• question: can communities have real impact?

  • In this discussion, Ross is acting as the devil's advocate questioning whether communities can have real impact. He is consistent and his comments are based on evidence and experience. He challenges everyone else to prove him wrong and makes everyone go deeper to validate their positions.
  • Ross makes valid points that so far, have not been effectively addressed, mainly because nobody has thought further of how to systematically organize communities to the scale required. It's not trivial!

• for: climate crisis - debate - community action, climate crisis - discussion - community action, indyweb - curation example

• discussion: effectiveness of community action to address climate crisis

  • This is a good discussion on the effectiveness of community action to address the climate crisis.
  • It offers a diverse range of perspectives that can all be mapped using SRG trailmark protocol and then data visualized within Indyweb via cytoscape

• for: cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)

• for: progress trap - economic

• for: capitalism - heart of, adjacency - capitalism - self - othering - societal aspiration

• adjacency between

  • heart of capitalism
  • self other dualism
  • societal aspiration
• adjacency statement
  • The narrative that underlies personal gain is the socially acquired belief in a self and other dualism.
  • This is a deep psychological construct facilitated in early childhood development by what in Deep Humanity praxis is referred to as the mOTHER, the Most significant OTHER at the beginning of our journey in life.
  • From that point onwards, social learning propels us to objectify the world, and in particular others. Self and other co-emerge from early childhood learning.
  • As climate scientist Kevin Anderson notes, the elite 1%, responsible for an outsized ecological footprint are the result of the dominant capitalist narrative. It constitutes the social norm of "good" for most people. It is the societal aspiration from which 1% of the world population, approximately 80 million people, surface from the 8 billion as the elites in their respective field and are compensated through financial and material reward.
    • https://hyp.is/cyUb4p4rEe6LIpeSDrCcDQ/climateuncensored.com/1485-2/
  • This societal aspiration aligns the majority of people to peer in the same direction of trying to win the game and bubble up to the 1% to indulge the rewards of a luxury lifestyle.
  • It is this same winning that will produce the next generation of 1%. They are being groomed as we speak.
  • Yet, their runaway success, and especially their reward is what can seal the fate of our civilization.
  • It is this societal aspiration role of capitalism as the dominant narrative that is the root generator of the next 1% and must be mitigated if we are to address the root of inequality.

• for: cosmolocal, cosmolocalism, cosmo-local, Paddy Le Flufy

• for: carbon emissions - within and between countries, Southern-North, Northern-South, Local North, Local South, Global North - Global South terminology - improving

• comment

  • The wealth and carbon inequality both between and within countries can be better articulated using terminology developed by Stop Reset Go
    • Southern-North
    • Northern-South
    • Local North
    • Local South

• reference

  • Expanding and Improving the Global North / Global South Terminology with Nuances of Post-Colonialism Realities in an Existential Climate Justice Context
    • https://medium.com/@gien_SRG/more-nuanced-terminology-for-post-colonialist-inequality-af2f1609635c

• for: climate crisis - resource flow, carbon budget - resource flow, carbon budget - resource redistribution

• comment

  • This is really a major change in the way resource flows
  • The high consuming countries and individuals need to drop their consumption drastically and give those to the decarbonization effort and to the disenfranchised who need to be uplifted to a state of wellbeing

• for: climate crisis - air travel, climate crisis - triage approach, climate communications - SRG suggestion - energy diet

• comment

  • Kevin's use of the term triage is aligned to a Stop Reset Go strategy of reframing the challenges in the next few years in terms of a potentially temporary energy diet
  • That may be more palatable for transition for people accustomed to the existing high carbon lifestyle culture to accept
  • The potential of developing alternative energy resources plus a shift to low energy / high efficiency lifestyle could get us to the target and provide incentive for a drastic energy consumption cut

• for: SRG energy diet, climate communications - suggestion - SRG energy diet

• comment

  • This statement once again echos the idea of a temporary energy diet as a way to reframe the challenges we face
  • There are potential clean high energy density replacements for fossil fuels but they will take time to develop. Meanwhile, an energy diet is recommended
  • This means we must adapt to a much lower intensity world, at least temporarily
  • We would need to calculate the numbers to see what such a future looks like and what steps must be taken to get there

• for: quote - Kevin Anderson, quote - elite positive feedback carbon inequality loop, climate crisis - societal aspirations, elites - societal aspirations, societal aspirations, key insight - societal aspirations

• quote

  • This 1% of humanity uses its awesome power to manipulate
    • societal aspirations and
    • the narratives around climate change.
  • These extend from
    • well-funded advertising to
    • pseudo-technical solutions,
    • and financialisation of carbon emissions (and increasingly, nature) to
    • labelling extreme any meaningful narrative that questions inequality and power.

• comment

• key insight - societal aspirations
  • it is the societal aspiration of the logic of capitalism and the free market that continues to create the next generation of the 1%
  • How can the luxury industry NOT BE high carbon intensity? It's an oxymoron. High carbon is baked into the definition of luxury, and it is luxury goods and services which accelerate climate breakdown.
  • The elites have a strong feeling of entitlement. They feel they DESERVE to reward themselves with a luxury lifestyle. That aspiration and reward structure multiplied by 80 million (1% of 8 billion) is a major variable driving the climate crisis

• for: carbon inequality, question - new COP - focused on elites?

• comment

  • while COP28 fights over which nations bear what responsibility, from this perspective, there is an entirely different class of people that must be held responsible, not at the nation state level, but at the individual level. Why isn't there a COP where the elites are held responsible?

• question

  • Are we making a grave category error in holding the wrong class of people responsible? Should questions of carbon equity concern both high polluting nations AND individuals?
  • At the very least, should we formally recognize a parallel set of responsibilities and elevate that recognition to the level of COP conventions to deal with the problem?

• for: 1.5 Deg C target - 50/50 chance

• comment

  • What most people don't recognize and pay attention to is 50/50 chance that is part of the 1.5 Deg C target.
  • The world is up in arms about the 1.5 Deg C target when it ONLY GIVES US A 50/50 CHANCE!
  • These are not great odds! In fact, THESE ODDS ARE TERRIBLE! What if you were given those chances in your cancer treatment? You would be concerned, wouldn't you?
  • So what would an intervention closer to 90% chance of staying under 1.5 Deg C look like? If people consider today's intervention impossible, then a 90% chance would be beyond impossible. This is the nature of the challenge we face!

• for: too controversial, too polemic, elite discomfort, ClimateUncensored censored!, Kevin Anderson - censored

• for: climate crisis - elites, Kevin Anderson - elites, carbon emissions - elites, adjacency - elites - carbon inequality - incentives - luxury - capitalism

• title: A Habitable Earth Can No Longer Afford The Rich – And That Could Mean Me And You

• author: Kevin Anderson

• date: Nov. 29, 2023

• comment

• adjacency between
  • elites
  • capitalism
  • free market
  • incentives
  • double bind
  • wicked problem
  • inequality
  • carbon inequality
  • luxury industry
• adjacency statement
  • This article was pulled by "The Conversation" for being too controversial
  • It addresses the double-bind / wicked problems that we find ourselves in.
  • It's not just that the elites that are the highest per capita polluters, but
    • it is an indictment of the entire philosophy and worldview of capitalism and the market economy which produces winners and losers and
    • the winners reap enormous resource benefits, including being able to afford luxury items as rewards which constitute the largest ecological footprint of all
  • while at any one time, there is always a minority of the 1%, who hold the most outsized ecological footprint of all, the logic that produced that 1% also serves as the incentives for the majority of the 99%, who because of the inherent precarity created by capitalism, will fight and struggle to become part of that 1%
  • So while one generation of the 1% die off, a new generation is born and created by the incentive structure of scarcity and precarity.
  • In this sense, capitalism has its own self-reinforcing, positive feedback loop that keeps the masses of the disenfranchised aspiring to the same high resource and ecological footprint, luxury lifestyle
  • Look at the culture industry of sports, entertainment, movies, music, TV, etc. and of business in general. The leaders of these and ALL fields are celebrated as heros and they all reward themselves with an ultra-high carbon intensity, luxury lifestyle.
  • Unless we do more than simply demonize the current set of elites, and recognize the root cause and change the incentive structure itself, we will only ever deal with the symptom and not the problem, and continue to generate the next generation of elites
  • The luxury lifestyle industry is a important role-player in the self-reinforcing feedback loop

• for: academic communication to the public - importance, elites - two types, key insight - elites, key insight - science communication

• comment

• key insight

  • Elites are necessary in every society
  • Historically, people who strongly believe that the current elites aren't necessary or are harmful often become the revolutionaries who become the new elites
  • elites need to speak in their own specialist language to each other but there are two kinds of elites
    • those who serve society
    • those who serve themselves
    • often, we have fox in sheep's clothing - elites who serve themselves but disguise themselves in the language of elites who serve others in order to gain access to power ,
    • we normally think of wealthy people as elites, but Harari classifies scientists as also a kind of elite
  • elites may be necessary but
    • We are caught in a double bind, a wicked problem as elites are also the world's greatest per capita energy consumers and their outsized ecological, consumption and energy footprint is now a existential threat to the survival of our species

• references

  • Kevin Anderson: A Habitable Earth Can No Longer Afford The Rich – And That Could Mean Me And You
    • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fclimateuncensored.com%2F1485-2%2F&group=world
  • The role of high-socioeconomic-status people in locking in or rapidly reducing energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions
    • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41560-021-00900-y&group=world
  • Millionaire spending incompatible with 1.5 °C ambitions
    • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedirect.com%2Fscience%2Farticle%2Fpii%2FS2666791622000252&group=world

• for: insight - history - complexity, bad metaphor - chain of events

• insight: complexity and history

  • chain of events is a bad metaphor for things that occur in history
  • the complexity of history is that many causes come together too being about an event
  • likewise, when that event occurs, it is the cause of many different consequences
  • linear vs systems thinking

• adjacency between

  • history
  • emptiness
  • Indra's net
• adjacency statement
  • history reflects emptiness
  • Indra's net extended into historical events

• for: insight - conservative vs liberal - speed of sdopting social norm

• insight

  • liberals are voted in to speed up adoption of a new social -
  • conservatives are voted in to slow down the acceptance of a social norm
  • paradoxically, humans have both a conservative and a liberal nature. We naturally have a tendency to both conserve and to try new things.

• for: quote - Yuval Noah Harari - AI progress trap, progress trap - AI, quote - progress trap

• quote it is extremely dangerous to create such an autonomous agent when we do not know how to control it, when we can't ensure that it will not escape our control ad start making decisions and creating new things which will harm us instead of benefit us

• author: Yuval Noah Harari
• date 2023

• for: academic communication - need to translate to lay audience, science communication - need to translate to lay audience

• for: AI - lack feelings

• for: question - Yuval Noah Harari - How do you address your critics?

• for: quote - Yuval Noah Harari, quote - storytelling, quote - scientific storytelling, science communication, climate communication

• key insight

• quote

  • If we want to see science having a deeper impact on society and politics, it's crucial that we have also scientific storytelling

• comment

  • I would just add that it should be COMPELLING scientific storytelling

• for: book - Sapiens - origin story

• for: leverage point - collaboration, human superpower - collaboration, quote - collaboration, quote - cooperation

• quote the superpower of our species is not individual genius, it's the ability to cooperate in large numbers.

• author: Yval Noah Harari
• date: 2023

• for: conspiracy theories - truth is much worse

• for: earth system boundaries - downscaled to cities, earth system boundaries for cities, Xuemei Bai - downscaled earth system boundaries

• comment

  • this paper is currently in review but provides earth system boundaries for cities

• for: stats - CCS, Kevin Anderson - CCS stats

• stats

  • actually, IEA shows that we are currently capturing 45 million tons currently (Dec 2023)
  • 45 million tons captured in 2021 (IEA CCS 2021)
  • out of 36.3 billion tonnes emitted (IEA, 2021)
  • 0.124% captured in 2021 and
  • 3x current rate at 125 Mt/yr by 2030
  • far from enough

• reference

  • https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-co2-emissions-in-2021-2
  • https://www.iea.org/energy-system/carbon-capture-utilisation-and-storage

• for: stats - CCS, stats - CCUS

• stats

  • 125 Mt / year by 2030

• for: stats - CCS 2021, CCUS - 2021

• stats

  • CCS / CCUS in 2021: 45 Mt CO2

• for: downscaled planetary boundaries, planetary boundary cities, ARUP - planetary boundary design

• comment

  • There is no threshold information, just general design methods

• for: AI, Anirban Bandyopadhyay, brain gel, AI - gel computer

• title: A general-purpose organic gel computer that learns by itself

• author
  • Anirban Bandyopadhyay
  • Pathik Sahoo
  • et al.
• date: Dec. 6, 2023
• publication: IOPScience

• DOI: 10.1088/2634-4386/ad0fec

• ABSTRACT

  • To build energy minimized superstructures, self-assembling molecules explore astronomical options, colliding ∼10 to 9th power molecules s to power−1. -Thusfar, no computer has used it fully to optimize choices and execute advanced computational theories only by synthesizing supramolecules.
  • To realize it,
    • first, we remotely re-wrote the problem in a language that supramolecular synthesis comprehends.
    • Then, all-chemical neural network synthesizes one helical nanowire for one periodic event. These nanowires self-assemble into gel fibers mapping intricate relations between periodic events in any-data-type,
    • the output is read instantly from optical hologram.
    • Problem-wise, self-assembling layers or neural network depth is optimized to chemically simulate theories discovering invariants for learning.
    • Subsequently, synthesis alone solves classification, feature learning problems instantly with single shot training.
    • Reusable gel begins general-purpose computing that would chemically invent suitable models for problem-specific unsupervised learning. Irrespective of complexity,
      • keeping fixed computing time and power, gel promises a toxic-hardware-free world.

• for: Husserl, epoche, phenomenology, adjacency - epoche - science

• for: annotate, urban planning, downscaled planetary boundaries, downscale earth system boundaries

• for: philosophy - of wonder, Howard L. Parsons, phenomenology - wonder, wonder - theory of

• title: A Philosophy of Wonder

• author: Howard L. Parsons
• date: Sept, 1969

• for: polycrisis wartime mobilization, climate crisis wartime mobilization, 2024 extreme weather - wartime mobilization opportunity

• key insight

• adjacency between
  • real COVID mobilization
  • imagined future climate crisis wartime mobilization

• adjacency statement

  • The rapid response to the COVID pandemic was a real life case of a wartime scale mobilization in a very short time. This shows that it is possible. We need to see if we can strive for this for climate change. If 2024 becomes the year of extreme weather due to El Nino, then we could use it as an opportunity for a wartime mobilization

  • one good thing about the COVID pandemic is that it did show that a rapid wartime mobilization is possible, because it did kind of happened during COVID

• for: climate crisis - Canada - surprising positive public opinion shift

• for climate change - wartime mobilization, interview - Seth Klein - A Good War, polycrisis - conflict, climate crisis - conflict, Naomi Klein - brother

• summary

  • An interview with activist Seth Klein on his book: A Good War. Klein studied how WWI and WWII stimulated a rapid mobilization of Canada with an eye to translating the same methods to combating climate change.

• for: Kevin Anderson, transition, climate equity, climate justice, climate justice - Kevin Anderson, carbon inequality - Kevin Anderson, life within planetary boundaries, lifestyle within planetary boundaries - elites, climate crisis - Kevin Anderson

• summary

  • Kevin offers a picture of what a world within the stable climate planetary boundary would look like for the wealthy of the planet.

• for: science and religion, flat earth misconception, DH, Deep Humanity - science and religion - historical relationship

• summary

  • Dutch historian Jochem Boodt explains how fake news isn't something new, but as old as the history books!
  • Science and religion were not antagonist in early Western history, as is believed today. This was fake news fabricated in a fascinating way.
  • He uses the example of the common misconception that before Columbus, people thought the earth was flat.

• for: climate crisis - Kevin Anderson
• annotate

• for: fossil fuel phase out, fossil fuel phase down, COP28 controversy, Sultan Al Jaber controversy, fossil fuel demand phase out, Nafeez Ahmed - phase out fossil fuel demand, carbon colonialism, colonialism - climate crisis

• title: A Message to White Environmentalists: Demanding a Fossil Fuel Phase Out is Not Enough

• author: Nafeez Ahmed
• date: Dec 6, 2023
• publication: Byline Times

• for: quote - Sultan Al Jabber, quote - energy replacement instead of phase out, key point - focus on energy transition instead of just fossil fuel phase out

• quote

  • Whatever one thinks of Sultan Al Jaber, one statement he’s made repeatedly makes perfect sense: “We cannot unplug the world from the current energy system before we build a new energy system.”
  • The focus, then, has to shift.
    • Instead of focusing on dismantling the incumbent system,
    • we need to focus on accelerating the deployment of the new system that will replace it
• author: Nafeez Ahmed

• date : Dec 6, 2023

• key point

  • we must focus on the energy shift instead of just the phase out or down of the old energy system

• for: COP28 - success without phase out

• key point

  • Even if the final COP28 language does not include phase out or phase down, it can still happen if the other deals are inked, such as tripling of renewables by 2030 or trillions more for climate finance.
  • This is because nonlinear dynamics are at play
  • Tripling investments can result in deployment far beyond the 3x investment
  • If that happens then the resulting atmosphere will force phase down and potentially phase out of fossil fuels simply by market logic
    • current heavy fossil fuel subsidies will be stressed to potential breaking point
    • being so noncompetitive will drive away many investors

• for: definition - green colonialism

• definition: green colonialism

  • applying colonialist thinking to the green transition

• annotate

• for: evolutionary biology, big history, DH, Deep Humanity, theories of consciousness, ESP project, Earth Species Project, Michael Levin, animal communication, symbiocene

• title: The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains

• author: Joseph LeDoux
• date: Jan. 2023

• doi: 0.1080/09515089.2022.2160311

• ABSTRACT

  • The essence of who we are depends on our brains.
  • They enable us to think, to
    • feel joy and sorrow,
    • communicate through speech,
    • reflect on the moments of our lives, and to
      • anticipate,
      • plan for, and
      • worry about our imagined futures.
  • Although some of our abilities are comparatively new, key features of our behavior have deep roots that can be traced to the beginning of life.
  • By following the story of behavior, step-by-step, over its roughly four-billion-year trajectory,
    • we come to understand both
      • how similar we are to all organisms that have ever lived, and
      • how different we are from even our closest animal relatives.
  • We care about our differences because they are ours. But differences do not make us superior; they simply make us different.

• comment

  • good article to contribute to a narrative of the symbiocene and a shift of humanity to belonging to nature as one species, instead of dominating nature as the apex species
• question
  • @Gyuri, Could indranet search algorithm have made the connection between this article and the symbiocene artilces in my mindplex had I not explicitly made the associations manually through my tags? It needs to be able to do this
• Also interesting to see how this materialistic outlook of consciousness
  • which is similiar to the Earth Species Project work and Michael Levin's work on synthesizing new laboratory life forms to answer evolutionary questions about intelligence
• relates to nonmaterial ideas about consciousness

• for: climate crisis - psychology - hope
• annotate

• for: climate crisis - intervention - switch banks, project drawdown - switch banks

• for: building - 3D printed earth building

• annotate
• for: Kevin Anderson - COP28

• for: Indyweb - data visualization, graph

• for: Indyweb - graph

• for: Indyweb - graph

• for: thermal battery storage

• for: polycrisis - migration - crime - Sweden

• for: Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap, The Upside of Down, Commanding Hope, Cascade Institute, Polycrisis

• SUMMARY

  • Thomas Homer-Dixon is a researcher in polycrisis and author of a number of books on aspects of the polycrisis.
  • Here he talks about "Commanding Hope", following his other books "The Ingenuity Gap", "The Upside of Down".
  • Homer-Dixon explores the idea of hope situated in his life, especially surrounding his children and their future in an uncertain world.
  • In particular, he explores a robust form of hope that is honest, astute and powerful and he unpacks the meaning of each of these qualities.
  • Even when the odds are stacked against us, robust hope gives us hope that we can make a big difference.
  • Homer-Dixon offers a bounty of insights for anyone engaged in rapid whole system change. His Cascade Institute is developing tools to assist individuals and organizations alike who want to find the leverage points for rapid system change.

• for: hope - Lord of the Rings

• for: story of hope - a new axial age

• for: quote - the impossible, quote - Thomas Homer-Dixon

• quote

  • We don't know the world's around us the systems around us well enough to know that good things are impossible
• author: Thomas Homer-Dixon
• date: 2021

• for: book - Commanding Hope - essence - How about ?

• for: adjacency - Thomas Homer-Dixon - Ernest Becker, terror management theory, immortality project

• for: quote - when we get our story wrong, we get our future wrong, quote - Thomas Homer-Dixon

• quote

  • When we get our story wrong, we get our future wrong
• author: David Korten, quoted by Thomas Homer-Dixon
• date: 2021

• for: story of hope - Stephanie May

• story of hope

  • Stephanie May was a housewife who one day read the story of nuclear test fallout in the atmosphere and was dismayed
  • She started petition, phoned local people, worked with other housewife to get thousands of people to sign peittion
  • In 3 years, she mobilized mothers around the US, met Betrand Russell in UK, mobilized UK housewives.
  • Went on hunger strike in front of Russian embassy and inspired mothers across the US to also perform hunger strikes
  • She created a mobilization of a previously diffuse group
  • She had good understanding of different worldviews
  • Ultimately, she played an important role in securing a treaty to ban nuclear testing in the atmosphere

• for: story of hope - Stephanie May, hope - mothers stopped nuclear testing

• for: Steven Pinker - Enlightenment Now - critique - violence during Enlightenment, violence during Industrial Revolution

• for: techno-optimist - critique, Steven Pinker - critique, Ray Kurzweil - critique, Peter Diamandis - critique, Elon Musk - critique

• for: Steven Pinker - critique - climate change - Enlightenment Now

• for: example - stupid AI - nuclear launch, AI - progress trap - example - nuclear launch

• for: quote - Thomas Homer-Dixon, quote - danger of AI, AI progress trap

• quote: danger of AI

  • I think the most dangerous thing about AI is not super smart AI, it's stupid AI that is good enough to be put in charge of certain processes but not good enough to not make really bad mistakes
• author: Thomas Homer-Dixon
• date: 2021

• for: comparison - AI - HI - example - driving, comparison - artificial i human intelligence - example - driving

• for:Deep Humanity - worldviews, worldview - tools

• for: polycrisis, perfect storm, reinforcing feedbacks,

• paraphrase

  • the polycrisis is a network of self-reinforcing and diverse crisis:
    • political polarization
    • war
    • fossil fuel entrenchment and expansion
    • precarity
    • migration
    • climate crisis
    • extreme weather
    • AI
    • political polarization
    • misinformation and interference of sovereign voting
    • emergence of authoritarianism
    • incorrect focus of effort - tinkering at the margins
    • runaway inequality - wealth, racial, post colonial, gender
    • dominance of capitalist wealth aspiration
    • rapid change required for entire system
    • sense of despair, hopelessness, anger, fear
    • mass extinction
    • climate departure
    • increasing health burden
    • runaway pollution
    • lack of effective government regulation
    • approaching planetary tipping points
  • the "perfect storm" assumes that these crisis are not related, but they are all syncrhonizing through positive feedbacks -their self-reinforcing positive feedbacks amplify all of them together and it can reach a threshold beyond human institutions to be able to cope
  • Commanding Hope or "Hope to" is critical for meeting these challenges

• for: meme - human stupidity is more dangerous than artificial intelligence

• meme: human stupidity is more dangerous than artificial intelligence

• author:Nikola Danaylov
• date: 2021

• for: quote - survival of the richest, climate crisis - elite walled community

• quote: survival of the richest

  • All that's going to happen to these extraordinarily wealthy folks with their estates in New Zealand with their landing strips is that they're going to have an extra couple of decades to watch things fall apart around them and that doesn't sound very appealing to me
• author: Thomas Homer-Dixon

• date: 2021

• reference

  • Douglas Rushkoff wrote a book on this phenomena
    • https://rushkoff.com/books/survival-of-the-richest-escape-fantasies-of-the-tech-billionaires/

• for: adjacency - rules of the game - violence, dangers of not playing by the rules of the game

• adjacency between

  • rules of the game
  • violence
• adjacency statement
  • When people cannot agree on the rules of the democratic game, we are just one step away from violence
  • Homer-Dixon explores the relationship between environmental breakdown and violence in an earlier book
  • If you believe your "opponent" is not playing by the rules of the game, then they are outside the moral ambit of your community, and you can justify violence
  • Their status as a human being is no longer legitimate and they are dehumanized. Violence is now possible
  • Whenever a group feels another group is not playing by the rules of the game, it is a very dangerous situation as violence can be justified on these grounds

• for: definition epistemic fragmentation, no agreement on basic facts, political polarization, adjacency - epistemic fragmentation - polarization - democracy

• definition: epistemic fragmentation

  • when major parts of society disagree on basic facts
• adjacency between
  • epistemic fragmentation
  • polarization
  • democracy
• adjacency statement
  • democracy is critical to solving our challenges but it won't function if there is so much epistemic fragmentation that we can't agree on basic facts

• for: 3 Deg C world - catastrophic

• for: top challenges humanity faces

• top challenges

  • our relation to the natural world and pushing natural systems to their limits
    • climate change is a symptom of that

for: comparison - hope that - hope to

• comparison: hope that - hope to
  • a part of honest hope is to be able to distinguish between
    • situations where we can't do anything about it and
    • situations where we can
  • start from
    • hope to - to explore possibilities
    • if nothing can be done, then goto hope that

• for: comparison - hope that - hope to

• comparison: hope that - hope to

  • hope that
    • is passive
    • I have no agency
  • hope to
    • is active
    • I have agency
  • Commanding Hope advocates flipping
    • from hope that to
    • hope to

• for: honest hope - description

• description - honest hope

  • a moral stance
  • based on the best of our scientific knowledge available

• for: powerful hope - description

• description - powerful hope

  • psychological view of what hope needs to be in order to motivate agency

• for: astute hope - description

• description - astute hope

  • our epistemological view of the world
  • In complex areas like climate change, we provide tools to help people look at these ideological views

• comment

  • Indyweb can provide a good framework for holding the diversity of worldviews for everyone to experience

• for: definition - hope

• definition: (robust) hope

  • has three characteristics:
    • honest
    • astute
    • powerful

• for: hope - controlling

• comment

  • while I agree with his analysis, I disagree that it must be about controlling hope. We've tried to control nature, and that hasn't turned out very well. Perhaps a better language is allowing a more authentic type of hope to emerge.

• for: book - Commanding Hope - description

• book: Commanding Hope

  • This is a book about agency, activism and personal engagement
  • It takes a philosophical understanding of hope and applies it to the polycrisis we face

• for: for my children, self-centered motivation

• new trailmark: reflections

• reflections: I was inspired by my children

  • How often we hear academic researchers share how a lot of their work is inspired by their care for their children.
  • This is an interesting social phenomena in its own right.
  • It seems natural and yet, it begs the question, with so many existential threats to our entire species, is it only when we think of our own children that we can find motivation to act? Why can we not act without the dread our children might face?
  • Naturally, the answer is because we are selfish. We think, worry and are concerned more for our direct kin than for any other.
  • Perhaps, as a culture, had we had more concern for the others, we might not find ourselves in our current quagmire?

• date: Dec 15, 2023
• from social media software architecture - design an unencloseable post

• to Unenclosable Carriers and the Future of Communication

• for: polycrisis, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Cascade Institute Royal Roads University - Changemakers Speakers Series, etymology - polylcrisis

• Talk: Hope in the Polycrisis

• Speaker: Thomas Homer-Dixon
• Host: Royal Roads University - Changemakers Speakers Series

• Date: 2023

• SUMMARY

  • Thomas Homer-Dixon is a leading complex systems scientist and director of the Cascade Institute, which he co-founded at Royal Roads University in Victoria, B.C., Canada, to study the polycrisis and identify strategic high leverage interventions that could rapidly shift humanity's trajectory in the next few critical years.
  • The talk, entitled "Hope in the polycriisis" chronicles Homer-Dixon's multi-decade journey to understand the convergence of crisis happening in the world today.

  • In a real sense, the evolution of his thinking on these complex problems are reflected in the series of books he has written over the years, culminating in the 2023 book "Commanding Hope", based on a theory of hope:

    • Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (Princeton, 1999). - a book showing how other factors combine with environmental stress to produce violence.
    • “The Ingenuity Gap: Can Poor Countries Adapt to Resource Scarcity?,” which appeared in Population and Development Review in 1995
    • “Resource Scarcity and Innovation: Can Poor Countries Attain Endogenous Growth?" ?” coauthored with Edward Barbier, which appeared in Ambio (1999)
    • The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization (2006), examined the threat to global stability of simultaneous and interacting demographic, environmental, economic, and political stresses. This led to examining energy as a major factor in our modern society.
    • "Commanding Hope: The Power we have to Renew a World in Peril"
      • https://commandinghope.com/

  • Homer-Dixon also talks about practical solutions, His team at Casacade Institute is researching a promising technology called ultra-deep geothermal, which could provide unlimted energy at energy densities comprable to fossil fuels.

  • He finishes his talk with his theory of Hope and how a "Robust" hope can be the key to a successful rapid transition.

• etymology - polycrisis

  • https://polycrisis.org/lessons/where-did-the-term-polycrisis-come-from/
  • Complexity theorists Edgar Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern first used the term polycrisis in their 1999 book, Homeland Earth, to argue that the world faces
    • “no single vital problem, but many vital problems, and it is this complex intersolidarity of problems, antagonisms, crises, uncontrolled processes, and the general crisis of the planet that constitutes the number one vital problem" (p. 74).
  • South African sociologist and sustainable transitions theorist Mark Swilling then adopted the term to capture
    • “a nested set of globally interactive socio-economic, ecological and cultural-institutional crises that defy reduction to a single cause” (2013, p. 98).
  • Climate change, rising inequality, and the threat of financial crises interact in complex ways that multiply their overall impact (Swilling 2013, 2019).

• for: question - colonialism and degrowth

• question: how are colonialism and degrowth situated in his work?

• for: green growth - shortage of batteries

• for: adjacency art - leverage point - idling resource

-: adjacency between - art - leverage point - idling resource - adjacency statement - art is a powerful leverage point that is, unfortunately still an idling resource

• for: example - systems thinking, quote -: many people are complex systems thinkers

• quote:

  • many people are complex systems thinkers even though they don't know it
• Thomas Homer-Dixon

• date: 2023

• examples: complex systems clichés

  • the whole of greater than the sum of its parts
    • nonlinearities
  • the straw that broke the camels back
    • emergence

• comment

  • the first one could be that systems are not the same as just all the parts
  • the second one could also represent Tipping points and nonlinearities of complex systems

• for: leverage points - art

• for: ultra deep geothermal drilling technology

• for: adjacency - outdated government institutions - delegitimization - authoritarianism

• adjacency between

  • outdated government institutions
  • delegitimatization
  • authoritarianism
• adjacency statement
  • Since old government institutions are not coping with the challenges of modernity, suffering an ingenuity gap, it's fueling a political crisis enabling the rise of authoritarianism

• for: adjacency - collective action - government - libertarianism - open source movement - commons movement

• adjacency between

  • collective action
  • government
  • commons movement
  • comminutism
  • libertarianism
• adjacency statement
  • government could be important agent of collective action, except when they are stuck due to competing ideology, especially libertarian views
  • the briefing commons movement of an alternative collection action approach that can compliment government

• for; example - Wicked problem

• example: Wicked problem

• for: fossil fuel energy density - example

• example : energy density of fossil fuel

  • 2 tablespoons of fossil fuel containsv the energy equivalent of one full day of human
  • one full average gasoline tank is equivalent to 2 years of human labour

• for: adjacency - synchronization - clues - positive feedbacks, key insight - synchronisation - positive feedbacks

• adjacency between

  • positive feedback
  • synchronization
• adjacency statement
• key insight
  • look for where the positive feedbacks are occurring within the system
  • that will tell you where the synchronization is occurring within the system

• for: definition - the adjacent possible

• definition: the Adjacent possible

  • Inn complexity science, the boundary between between the real and the possible

• for: rapid behaviour change

• example - rapid behaviour change: COVID lockdown

  • When government policy around the world converged rapidly due to the perception of an imminent threat, civilization responded rapidly

• question: could we ever imagine the climate crisis or polycrisis having the same impact?

• for: progress trap

• progress trap: speed of vaccination

  • If the vaccine was imperfect and caused harm, it could have caused harm to 40% of three population in a short period of time.
  • the shorter the time for something to spread globally, the faster unintended consequence can spread and cause harm

• for: Me2We, individual/ collective gestalt

• for: me vs we, invert the N

• for: expanded sense of community, beyond the human morall community, animal communication, earth species protect

• for: futures, clear vision of desirable future, desirable future - 4 pillars

• desirable future: 4 pillars

  • security
    • we can manage, alleviate, adapt to the dangers of the polycrisis
  • opportunity
    • people can express their agency and grow and explore
  • justice
    • equality and fair distribution of wealth. Everyone deserves to live a life based upon holistic wellbeing
  • identity
    • we all need to feel like we belong

• for:: clean energy source with high energy density -;ultra deep brother power

• comment

  • a practical, cost-effective, initiator ubiquitous, reliable high energy density substitute for fossil fuels can
    • give us authentic hope and
    • propose complimentary actions that can now make sense like
      • temporary energy diet until the practical solution manifests

• for: modernity - high energy density

• paraphrase

  • high density energy sources of a few thousand watts per square meter are required to operate high energy density infrastructure like transportation vehicles and large buildings that consume the same types of energy density

• for: definition - enough vs feasible dilemma, double bind, progress trap

• definition: enough vs feasible dilemma

  • the changes that are actually required are not feasible to do
  • what is feasible to do is not enough
  • this puts us in a double bind
  • we need to have interventions that are BOTH
    • enough to solve these problems and are
    • feasible to execute

• for: meme - honestly can threaten hope

• meme: honesty can threaten hope

  • a reassuring lie is often preferred to na challenging truth
  • denialism is just human nature
    • it's difficult to face the truth when the truth is so unpleasant and triggers intense fear or despair
    • mortality salience could underlay much of this

• for: definition - robust hope, robust hope triplet

• definition: robust hope

• honest instead of false
  • astute instead of naive
  • powerful instead of passive

-for: polycrisis - leverage point - hope, quote - leverage point - hope

-for: adjacency - polycrisis - fear - hope - antidote

-adjacency between - fear - anger - hope - antidote - adjacency statement - hope is the antidote to fear and anger

• for: claim - polycrisis - two parallel interventions

• claim: polycrisis can be tackled with a two pronged approach

  • First, deal with the all the underlying drivers of the stresses simultaneously
    • The incapability of present leaders to deal with the issues causes citizens to lose faith and seek alternative leaders who promise to do a better job
  • Second, deal with the psychological impacts of the fear and anger, otherwise people fall into:
    • despair or
    • conflict as an outlet of anger
  • After writing his two books:
    • The Ingenuity Gap and
    • The Upside of Down
  • the importance of hope as an emotion led him to write the book
    • Commanding Hope

• for: adjacency - polycrisis - fear - anger - political exploitation

• adjacency between

  • polycrisis
  • fear
  • anger
  • political exploitation
  • polarization
  • authoritarianism
• adjacency statement
  • In this polycrisis space, we witness fear leading to anger which is then exploited by political opportunists who then create polarization through authoritarian impulses that superficially quench the desires of the unheard angry citizens

• for: waveform diagram - amplification and acceleration of crisis

• comment

  • nice picture to illustrate increasing frequency and amplitude of the graphical wave representation of a crisis

• for: pernicious cascades - qualities, stats - pernicious cascade, synchronized crisis

• stats - pernicious cascades - climate change

• Pernicious cascades - qualities
  • amplifying
    • global mean temp
      • in 2000: 0.72 Deg C warmer than pre-industrial (1850)
      • in 2020 1.2 Deg C warmer than pre-industrial
  • accelerating
    • warming per decade:
      • 1970 to 2010 - 0.18 Deg C / decade
      • 2010 to 2040 - 0.27 Deg C / decade
  • syncrhonizing
    • many systems are becoming unstable:
      • higher inflation
      • higher levels of precarity
      • higher levels of inequality
      • destabilizing climate / increase in extreme weather events
      • geopolitical conflicts
      • political polarization
      • misinformation
      • major migration
    • Cascade institute does not view these as random events - not a set of coincidence or "perfect storm"
    • instead, invisible synchronization and causality between events
    • our research reveals the invisible connections

• for: cascades - two types, pernicious cascades, virtuous cascades, definition - pernicious cascade, definition - virtuous cascade

• definition - pernicious cascade

  • knock on effects between systems that produce a level of significant harm to society
• definition - virtuous cascade
  • knock on effects between systems that produce beneficial impacts for society

• for: stats - major stressors of the polycrisis, trigger events

• stats: major stressors of the polycrisis

  • profile of a crisis
    • a crisis occurs when
  • a major stressor occurs
    • there are between 15 and 20 of them
  • and combines with much less predictable "trigger" events
    • also called stochastic or random events

• for: Cascade Institute - research focus

• Cascade institute - research focus

  • looking at the deep connections between converging crisis

• for: question - adaptation - answer - adaptation, adaptation - ingenuity, endogenous growth, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Cascade Institute

• question: adaptation

  • why do some societies successfully adapt to environmental stresses while others do not?

• answer: adaptation

  • Ingenuity
    • Researchers within societies that are able to adapt effectively are able to deliver ingenuity at the right time and place to prevent environmental problems from causing severe hardship.

• references

  • The ingenuity Gap: Can Poor Countries Adapt to Resource Scarcity (Homer-Dixon & Barbier,1995)?
    • http://www.homerdixon.com/1995/09/01/the-ingenuity-gap-can-poor-countries-adappt-to-resource-scarcity/
  • Resource Scaricity and Innovation: Can Poor Countries Attain Endogenous Growth (Homer-Dixon & Barbier,1999)?
    • http://www.homerdixon.com/1999/03/01/resource-scarcity-and-innovation-can-poor-countries-attain-endogenous-growth/
  • The Ingenuity Gap (2000)
    • http://www.ingenuitygap.com/
  • The Upside of Down (Homer-Dixon, 2006)
    • https://homerdixon.com/writing/books/the-upside-of-down/

• for: urban planning - open source tools

• for: urban planning - open source tools

• for: urban planning - open source tools

• for: urban planning - open source tools

• for: inefficiencies - example - cars, low carbon futures - reduce cars

• for: progress trap - Kevin Anderson

• validation: SRG mapping tool, Indyweb

• for: carbon footprint of investments - example, carbon footprint - Paypal

• example

  • Paypals carbon footprint of investments and cash in bank was 55x higher than all other emissions combined. Wow!

• for: SRG campaign - stop high emissions banking

• SRG campaign

  • stop - banking with high emission banks
  • reset - search for alternate low emissions bank
  • go - if criteria is met, do the switch

• for: search for - low carbon bank

• to

  • inspired search:[how much of royal bank of canada investments is in fossil fuels?] (https://search.brave.com/search?q=how+much+of+royal+bank+of+canada+investments+is+in+fossil+fuels%3F&source=desktop)

• limitation

  • their tools listed are situated in the US only

• for: stats - bank emissions

• stats: bank emissions

  • if your bank is equivalent to the largest 11 US banks, the Project Drawdown report estimates
    • 0.24 metric tons of CO2 for every $1,000 USD saved in the bank
    • between 20 to 30 percent of your money is likely used to finance fossil fuel projects or other carbon intensive sectors like mining.

• for:climate crisis - solutions - banking

• from:[ Linked In Jonathan Foley Post] (https://hyp.is/TMzeTpnkEe6gsIcc_dt8hg/www.linkedin.com/posts/jonathan-foley-182808b9_how-to-break-up-with-your-bank-activity-7140431002400677888--kqs/)

• for: fossil fuel - financing - RBC

• comment

  • wow!

• from

• from
• to: Royal Bank the No. 1 financier of fossil fuel development in the world, new report finds

to: [Fast Company article on bank emissions] (https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fastcompany.com%2F90996425%2Fhow-to-break-up-with-your-bank&group=world)

• for: key point: alternative COP - breakaway group of nations, quote - alternative COP

• quote

  • What is needed is a breakaway group of nations willing to get serious about the climate emergency. Who would join it? Most of the world’s countries, potentially.
• author: Rupert Read

• date: Dec 4, 2021

• comment

• suggestion
  • This could very well work. By applying social tipping point theory, a coalition of the willing could potentially accomplish a lot more than a coalition mired in friction.
  • There is enough capacity between 100 nation states willing to take far more aggressive measures than what a few petrostates of the COP convention continuously veto that it could bring about a social tipping point.

• for: quote - COP - Rupert Read, quote - COP - come back next year and try again, quote - alternative COP

• quote

  • come back next year and try again
• author: Rupert Read

• date: Dec. 4, 2021

• quote

  • We just can't keep kicking the can down the road
• author: Rupert Read

• date: Dec 4, 2021

• comment

  • Well, COP28 is over and just as Rupert Read predicted above, we will
    • kick the can down the road again
    • come back next year and try again
  • It's a perpetual groundhog day, until it isn't

• from:[hypothesis annotation] (https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Ffeed%2Fupdate%2Furn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7140623789737811969%2F%3FcommentUrn%3Durn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A(activity%3A7140623789737811969%2C7140681818403422208)%26dashCommentUrn%3Durn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A(7140681818403422208%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7140623789737811969)&group=world )

• for: good idea - COP alternative, COP alternative - coalition of the willing, COP alternative - social tipping point, Rupert Read - alternative to COP

• good idea: COP alternative

  • This could work based on the principle of social tipping points
  • The current COP pits the powerful incumbents of the old system delaying as long as possible rapid system change, these are the conservatives
    • This puts the liberals at distinct disadvantage from the conservatives because in a consensus reached agreement, the conservatives can veto any strong and binding language that represents rapid system change
  • In an alternative conference where the 100+ nation states are already in agreement, action in this smaller coalition OF THE WILLING, will lead to rapid action.
  • This could lead to breaking the threshold of system change via reaching the 25% social tipping point threshold

• question: alternative COP

  • If an alternative COP was held, is the nation state the best level to approach?
  • What about a city level COP?

• reference

  • Rupert Read article on alternative COP
    • https://rupertread.net/writings/2021/there-should-be-no-more-cop-climate-summits-we-need-an-alternative-that-could-actually-work/

google.search: nexialist meaning

from: [hypothesis] (https://hyp.is/UJEhzpmfEe6D1tcZ9rSBgw/www.google.com/search?q=nexialist+meaning&sca_esv=590380016&ei=6395ZZnBMLL97_UP-dWZwAo&ved=0ahUKEwjZ4q6Bk4yDAxWy_rsIHflqBqgQ4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=nexialist+meaning&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiEW5leGlhbGlzdCBtZWFuaW5nMgUQABiABDILEAAYgAQYigUYhgMyCxAAGIAEGIoFGIYDMgsQABiABBiKBRiGAzILEAAYgAQYigUYhgNItSZQ5wlYmiNwAXgBkAEAmAGAAaAB5waqAQMxLje4AQPIAQD4AQHCAgoQABhHGNYEGLADwgIQEAAYgAQYigUYQxjJAxiwA8ICDRAAGIAEGIoFGEMYsAPCAg4QABiABBiKBRiSAxiwA8ICExAuGIAEGIoFGEMYyAMYsAPYAQHCAgQQABgewgIGEAAYHhgPwgIGEAAYBRge4gMEGAAgQYgGAZAGCroGBAgBGAg&sclient=gws-wiz-serp)

• for: quote - luxury cannot be democratized, 1% - democracy, elites - democracy, adjacency - luxury - democracy, luxury is not democratic, luxury is inequality, Andre Gorz, Terrestrial website, adjancency - luxury - democracy, quote luxury

• quote

  • ... By its design as by its original destination, the car is a luxury good. And luxury, in essence, cannot be democratized: if everyone has access to luxury, no one benefits from it; on the contrary: everyone cheats, frustrates and dispossesses others and is cheated, frustrated and dispossessed by them.
• author: Andre Gorz
• date: Sept. 25, 2023

• publication: Terrestrial

  • https://www.terrestres.org/2023/09/25/jadore-la-bagnole-andre-gorz-repond-a-macron/

• comment

  • insightful comment reveals an adjacency between luxury and democracy that is obvious in hindsight, but missed seeing in foresight!

• adjacency between:

  • luxury
  • democracy
• adjacency statement
  • luxury is, by definition a premium artefact so by definition is beyond the reach of most people. It is therefore un-democratic by design.