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Re: Choosing Possibilities

Dave Ewoldt's picture
Posted by Dave Ewoldt on April 15th, 2008 at 1:06 pm | 6 Replies

On 15 Apr 2008 at 9:41, Holistek wrote:

Your analysis is built on the repudiation of a whole set
> of human archetypal behaviours, and I think that means
> that it cannot work. We need to work with human nature as
> it is, not as we think it should be, or what we propose will
> simply fail.

Hey David... Do you disagree that humans exhibit compassion, nurturance, creativity? That humans enjoy and attempt to maximize healthy, mutually supportive relationships? That what grows is what we feed? You do seem to agree that diversity is a good thing. But this combination is what I find so confusing about the stance that you're taking.

I really believe that if humans were predisposed to acting like Mad Max, and the only thing that keeps us from this scenario is the thin veneer of civilization, then the majority of the atrocities committed by Hitler could not have occurred. Hitler and his SS shocktroops were outnumbered at least 1,000:1 and if the natural human tendency was to revert to violence, Hitler would have been done away with on short order. But humans don't tend to act violently and aggressively; they have to be manipulated and forced into it, and even then only if they can't find some other way around it.

The whole myth of archetypes, like almost all myths, does have some foundation in both subjective and objective reality. People do have tendencies, some of which are based in biology. Men tend to pee standing up. Women lactate to feed the young. The missionary position tends to be good for quickies. After that, though, it breaks down rather quickly and spectacularly.

This whole archetype story, advanced by Jung and others, is based on a set of assumptions -- those being that dominator hierarchies are "normal" and the fantasies, dreams, and nightmares that arise from them are indications of an individual's inability to adapt, not that they arise from a forced disconnection from being fully human. Archetypes, and the stereotyping that results from them, is only possible in a culture that believes in reductionism. As Ervin Laszlo says, "we sacrifice coherence on the alter of facticity."

All we have to do is look at the world around us to see the results of the dominator mindset.

Nature does not work through competition. Competition is a rationalization to excuse the worst of human behaviors. The food chain _is_ a natural aspect of life. It's part of the way life creates more life. Each organism has a role to play which is cooperative, not competitive. As long as we continue to refuse to come to terms with this reality, we will continue to work at odds with evolution -- with disastrous consequences.

There is _major_ contention regarding the theory that extinction is the result of competitive failure. It springs from the same mindset that sees the "selfish gene" as providing explanatory efficacy; that promotes individual selection over group selection and commits massive resources into denigrating the latter (see Howard Bloom's "Global Brain" for a well referenced articulation of this). In a dynamic system, the role of some species is taken up by others, or they simply become unnecessary. The majority of saplings in a climax ecosystem don't fail because there is a "ruthless competition" for light. They don't grow to maturity because carrying capacity has limits on soil nutrition, groundwater, and other factors. When, due to fire or aging of mature trees, the ecosystem has room for more saplings, they will grow to maturity. Since the exact timing of this can't be known in advance, trees create lots of seeds to be ready for this eventuality.

The so-called tension between male and female is another concept that is only possible in a dominator system. Tension assumes that differences infer either superiority or inferiority. Tension infers a loser. It ignores and/or denies the value and strength of diversity.

Cooperation is far from sterile. Cooperation is how we combine our differences to create something better. It is an intimate aspect of diversity. I don't see this as an attempt at ideological purity. It arises from being humble enough to spend five minutes in a healthy ecosystem, quieting the chatter of the monkey mind, and simply observing and experiencing what's going on around me.

If we just assume collapse, and do nothing differently, then collapse is most assuredly what we'll get. If we assume it is impossible to do things differently, because it either goes against or isn't in our nature to do so, then we cut ourselves off from possibilities. We could (there is no _rational_ reason why not) use our intelligence to look around and realize we've been quite mistaken in how we interpret the world and the human role within it, and then decide to do things differently based on taking a fresh perspective on how things seem to work.

Jung and Maslow, while bright, well-intentioned, and an order of magnitude better than totally disconnected thinkers like Freud and Skinner, still didn't quite have their finger on it. Mainly, it seems to me, because they accepted the dominator paradigm as fundamentally correct, and nature, including our inner wilderness, as something that needed to be controlled, subjugated -- transcended in some linear or color-based scheme -- in order to realize our potential. This leads to popular nonsense like Ken Wilbur being accepted by a public that is starving for a different way of being.

Tom Ellis's picture
Tom Ellis
April 15th, 2008

Re: Choosing Possibilities

Well--perhaps. But I tend to think that both the "dominator" model and the alternative "partnership" model are drastic oversimplifications of the irreducible complexity of nature (including, of course, human nature.)
 
Lynn Margulis is closer to the mark when she says (I think it was she)--"Symbiosis writes and competition edits."  In short, we cooperate when we perceive that it is in our interest to do so; we compete (i.e. fight or flight) when we feel that we are threatened.
 
Symbiosis provides the basis for innovation; competition and the mutual avoidance thereof preserve the ecological status quo. The only constants in all of this are the three cardinal survival values of all living beings:
--health (internal homeostasis);
--competence (the specialized skills to survive in a predictable niche) and
--adaptive flexibility (the generalized skills necessary to adapt to unpredictable change).
 
And there's the rub--in a time of (relative) systemic stability, we tend to select for competence; conversely, in a time of systemic collapse and/or catastrophic change, Gaia selects for adaptive flexibility, which depends--above all--on diversity--of genes, of skills, of diets, of coping mechanisms.
 
And of course, cooperation generally (but not necessarily) increases our collective adaptive flexibility.
 
This is why I keep returning, as the wave of global economic collapse approaches ever closer to home, to three simple injunctions:
 
Plant gardens.  Get to know your neighbors, and grow community. Create local, sustainable economies.
 
Or putting it even more simply, I adhere to a "Dharma Gaia Mantra" I have invented: ten verb phrases I repeat on the outbreath, to quiet my mind and focus my priorities:
 
Breathe, Observe, Let Go.
Be well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch. (with gratitude to Garrison Keillor)
Learn Gaia.
                Teach Gaia
                                Heal Gaia
                                               Create Gaia. 
 
Best wishes,
 
Tom
On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 4:08 PM, Dave Ewoldt <dave@> wrote:

On 15 Apr 2008 at 9:41, Holistek wrote:

Your analysis is built on the repudiation of a whole set
> of human archetypal behaviours, and I think that means
> that it cannot work. We need to work with human nature as
> it is, not as we think it should be, or what we propose will
> simply fail.

Hey David... Do you disagree that humans exhibit compassion, nurturance, creativity? That humans enjoy and attempt to maximize healthy, mutually supportive relationships? That what grows is what we feed? You do seem to agree that diversity is a good thing. But this combination is what I find so confusing about the stance that you're taking.

I really believe that if humans were predisposed to acting like Mad Max, and the only thing that keeps us from this scenario is the thin veneer of civilization, then the majority of the atrocities committed by Hitler could not have occurred. Hitler and his SS shocktroops were outnumbered at least 1,000:1 and if the natural human tendency was to revert to violence, Hitler would have been done away with on short order. But humans don't tend to act violently and aggressively; they have to be manipulated and forced into it, and even then only if they can't find some other way around it.

The whole myth of archetypes, like almost all myths, does have some foundation in both subjective and objective reality. People do have tendencies, some of which are based in biology. Men tend to pee standing up. Women lactate to feed the young. The missionary position tends to be good for quickies. After that, though, it breaks down rather quickly and spectacularly.

This whole archetype story, advanced by Jung and others, is based on a set of assumptions -- those being that dominator hierarchies are "normal" and the fantasies, dreams, and nightmares that arise from them are indications of an individual's inability to adapt, not that they arise from a forced disconnection from being fully human. Archetypes, and the stereotyping that results from them, is only possible in a culture that believes in reductionism. As Ervin Laszlo says, "we sacrifice coherence on the alter of facticity."

All we have to do is look at the world around us to see the results of the dominator mindset.

Nature does not work through competition. Competition is a rationalization to excuse the worst of human behaviors. The food chain _is_ a natural aspect of life. It's part of the way life creates more life. Each organism has a role to play which is cooperative, not competitive. As long as we continue to refuse to come to terms with this reality, we will continue to work at odds with evolution -- with disastrous consequences.

There is _major_ contention regarding the theory that extinction is the result of competitive failure. It springs from the same mindset that sees the "selfish gene" as providing explanatory efficacy; that promotes individual selection over group selection and commits massive resources into denigrating the latter (see Howard Bloom's "Global Brain" for a well referenced articulation of this). In a dynamic system, the role of some species is taken up by others, or they simply become unnecessary. The majority of saplings in a climax ecosystem don't fail because there is a "ruthless competition" for light. They don't grow to maturity because carrying capacity has limits on soil nutrition, groundwater, and other factors. When, due to fire or aging of mature trees, the ecosystem has room for more saplings, they will grow to maturity. Since the exact timing of this can't be known in advance, trees create lots of seeds to be ready for this eventuality.

The so-called tension between male and female is another concept that is only possible in a dominator system. Tension assumes that differences infer either superiority or inferiority. Tension infers a loser. It ignores and/or denies the value and strength of diversity.

Cooperation is far from sterile. Cooperation is how we combine our differences to create something better. It is an intimate aspect of diversity. I don't see this as an attempt at ideological purity. It arises from being humble enough to spend five minutes in a healthy ecosystem, quieting the chatter of the monkey mind, and simply observing and experiencing what's going on around me.

If we just assume collapse, and do nothing differently, then collapse is most assuredly what we'll get. If we assume it is impossible to do things differently, because it either goes against or isn't in our nature to do so, then we cut ourselves off from possibilities. We could (there is no _rational_ reason why not) use our intelligence to look around and realize we've been quite mistaken in how we interpret the world and the human role within it, and then decide to do things differently based on taking a fresh perspective on how things seem to work.

Jung and Maslow, while bright, well-intentioned, and an order of magnitude better than totally disconnected thinkers like Freud and Skinner, still didn't quite have their finger on it. Mainly, it seems to me, because they accepted the dominator paradigm as fundamentally correct, and nature, including our inner wilderness, as something that needed to be controlled, subjugated -- transcended in some linear or color-based scheme -- in order to realize our potential. This leads to popular nonsense like Ken Wilbur being accepted by a public that is starving for a different way of being.


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To Unsubscribe from this list visit your My Subscription page for the group

Sarah Edwards's picture
Sarah Edwards
April 16th, 2008

Your Mantra



I like your mantra, Tom.
Plant gardens.  Get to know your neighbors, and grow community that create local, sustainable economies.
S
______________
 
Sarah Anne Edwards, LCSW, PhD Ecopsychologist
Co-Author, Middle Class Lifeboat, and Advocate for Affordable Health Care
"If you don't change to keep up with your situation, you will be in a bad situation."
                                                                                                                  Bo Bice
_____________
Subscribe to our free newsletter - Natural Wisdom
Nature's Lessons for Health Wealth and Happiness sedwards@
Vist our web sites: www.MiddleClassLifeboat.com  www.PineMountainInstitute.com
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Tom Ellis
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 6:12 PM
Subject: CoordinatorHUB Re: Choosing Possibilities

Well--perhaps. But I tend to think that both the "dominator" model and the alternative "partnership" model are drastic oversimplifications of the irreducible complexity of nature (including, of course, human nature.)
 
Lynn Margulis is closer to the mark when she says (I think it was she)--"Symbiosis writes and competition edits."  In short, we cooperate when we perceive that it is in our interest to do so; we compete (i.e. fight or flight) when we feel that we are threatened.
 
Symbiosis provides the basis for innovation; competition and the mutual avoidance thereof preserve the ecological status quo. The only constants in all of this are the three cardinal survival values of all living beings:
--health (internal homeostasis);
--competence (the specialized skills to survive in a predictable niche) and
--adaptive flexibility (the generalized skills necessary to adapt to unpredictable change).
 
And there's the rub--in a time of (relative) systemic stability, we tend to select for competence; conversely, in a time of systemic collapse and/or catastrophic change, Gaia selects for adaptive flexibility, which depends--above all--on diversity--of genes, of skills, of diets, of coping mechanisms.
 
And of course, cooperation generally (but not necessarily) increases our collective adaptive flexibility.
 
This is why I keep returning, as the wave of global economic collapse approaches ever closer to home, to three simple injunctions:
 
Plant gardens.  Get to know your neighbors, and grow community. Create local, sustainable economies.
 
Or putting it even more simply, I adhere to a "Dharma Gaia Mantra" I have invented: ten verb phrases I repeat on the outbreath, to quiet my mind and focus my priorities:
 
Breathe, Observe, Let Go.
Be well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch. (with gratitude to Garrison Keillor)
Learn Gaia.
                Teach Gaia
                                Heal Gaia
                                               Create Gaia. 
 
Best wishes,
 
Tom
On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 4:08 PM, Dave Ewoldt <dave@> wrote:

On 15 Apr 2008 at 9:41, Holistek wrote:

Your analysis is built on the repudiation of a whole set
> of human archetypal behaviours, and I think that means
> that it cannot work. We need to work with human nature as
> it is, not as we think it should be, or what we propose will
> simply fail.

Hey David... Do you disagree that humans exhibit compassion, nurturance, creativity? That humans enjoy and attempt to maximize healthy, mutually supportive relationships? That what grows is what we feed? You do seem to agree that diversity is a good thing. But this combination is what I find so confusing about the stance that you're taking.

I really believe that if humans were predisposed to acting like Mad Max, and the only thing that keeps us from this scenario is the thin veneer of civilization, then the majority of the atrocities committed by Hitler could not have occurred. Hitler and his SS shocktroops were outnumbered at least 1,000:1 and if the natural human tendency was to revert to violence, Hitler would have been done away with on short order. But humans don't tend to act violently and aggressively; they have to be manipulated and forced into it, and even then only if they can't find some other way around it.

The whole myth of archetypes, like almost all myths, does have some foundation in both subjective and objective reality. People do have tendencies, some of which are based in biology. Men tend to pee standing up. Women lactate to feed the young. The missionary position tends to be good for quickies. After that, though, it breaks down rather quickly and spectacularly.

This whole archetype story, advanced by Jung and others, is based on a set of assumptions -- those being that dominator hierarchies are "normal" and the fantasies, dreams, and nightmares that arise from them are indications of an individual's inability to adapt, not that they arise from a forced disconnection from being fully human. Archetypes, and the stereotyping that results from them, is only possible in a culture that believes in reductionism. As Ervin Laszlo says, "we sacrifice coherence on the alter of facticity."

All we have to do is look at the world around us to see the results of the dominator mindset.

Nature does not work through competition. Competition is a rationalization to excuse the worst of human behaviors. The food chain _is_ a natural aspect of life. It's part of the way life creates more life. Each organism has a role to play which is cooperative, not competitive. As long as we continue to refuse to come to terms with this reality, we will continue to work at odds with evolution -- with disastrous consequences.

There is _major_ contention regarding the theory that extinction is the result of competitive failure. It springs from the same mindset that sees the "selfish gene" as providing explanatory efficacy; that promotes individual selection over group selection and commits massive resources into denigrating the latter (see Howard Bloom's "Global Brain" for a well referenced articulation of this). In a dynamic system, the role of some species is taken up by others, or they simply become unnecessary. The majority of saplings in a climax ecosystem don't fail because there is a "ruthless competition" for light. They don't grow to maturity because carrying capacity has limits on soil nutrition, groundwater, and other factors. When, due to fire or aging of mature trees, the ecosystem has room for more saplings, they will grow to maturity. Since the exact timing of this can't be known in advance, trees create lots of seeds to be ready for this eventuality.

The so-called tension between male and female is another concept that is only possible in a dominator system. Tension assumes that differences infer either superiority or inferiority. Tension infers a loser. It ignores and/or denies the value and strength of diversity.

Cooperation is far from sterile. Cooperation is how we combine our differences to create something better. It is an intimate aspect of diversity. I don't see this as an attempt at ideological purity. It arises from being humble enough to spend five minutes in a healthy ecosystem, quieting the chatter of the monkey mind, and simply observing and experiencing what's going on around me.

If we just assume collapse, and do nothing differently, then collapse is most assuredly what we'll get. If we assume it is impossible to do things differently, because it either goes against or isn't in our nature to do so, then we cut ourselves off from possibilities. We could (there is no _rational_ reason why not) use our intelligence to look around and realize we've been quite mistaken in how we interpret the world and the human role within it, and then decide to do things differently based on taking a fresh perspective on how things seem to work.

Jung and Maslow, while bright, well-intentioned, and an order of magnitude better than totally disconnected thinkers like Freud and Skinner, still didn't quite have their finger on it. Mainly, it seems to me, because they accepted the dominator paradigm as fundamentally correct, and nature, including our inner wilderness, as something that needed to be controlled, subjugated -- transcended in some linear or color-based scheme -- in order to realize our potential. This leads to popular nonsense like Ken Wilbur being accepted by a public that is starving for a different way of being.




To view this group on the web, visit The Coordinator HUB Home Page
To Unsubscribe from this list visit your My Subscription page for the group




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Steve Hamm's picture
Steve Hamm
April 16th, 2008

Being prepared

Tom's suggestions may sound too simple but it's really building community that is going to be the saving grace for those who make it through. However, there's also an implication from those like Dave who foresee a period of social chaos and probable violence.
It seems we've been skirting this issue and not addressing it directly but being prepared for those who denied or ignored the writing on the wall seems critical. How this is done means having contingency plans for the worst case scenario.

This issue is a tough one for me because I'm not a Machiavellian survivalist and the implications are clear that armed defense may be required if (or, more likely, when) push comes to shove. While our ultimately malevolent behavior toward our environment may result in Nature claiming the final victory and taking down a lot of people without us committing violence, that's not likely to be the only or primary result.

So, though it saddens me to say this, it seems important to at least be aware of, if not prepared for, the tactics that humans have always seemed to rely on in times of social and political upheaval.

Steve Hamm

-----Original Message-----
From: Sarah Edwards [mailto:sedwards@]
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 10:21 AM
To: Coordinator HUB
Subject: CoordinatorHUB Your Mantra



I like your mantra, Tom.
Plant gardens. Get to know your neighbors, and grow community that create local, sustainable economies.
S
______________

Sarah Anne Edwards, LCSW, PhD Ecopsychologist
Co-Author, Middle Class Lifeboat, and Advocate for Affordable Health Care
"If you don't change to keep up with your situation, you will be in a bad situation."
Bo Bice
_____________
Subscribe to our free newsletter - Natural Wisdom
Nature's Lessons for Health Wealth and Happiness sedwards@
Vist our web sites: www.MiddleClassLifeboat.com www.PineMountainInstitute.com

----- Original Message -----
From: Tom Ellis mailto:tiellis@ -->
To: Coordinator HUB mailto:coordinate@ -->
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 6:12 PM
Subject: CoordinatorHUB Re: Choosing Possibilities

Well--perhaps. But I tend to think that both the "dominator" model and the alternative "partnership" model are drastic oversimplifications of the irreducible complexity of nature (including, of course, human nature.)

Lynn Margulis is closer to the mark when she says (I think it was she)--"Symbiosis writes and competition edits." In short, we cooperate when we perceive that it is in our interest to do so; we compete (i.e. fight or flight) when we feel that we are threatened.

Symbiosis provides the basis for innovation; competition and the mutual avoidance thereof preserve the ecological status quo. The only constants in all of this are the three cardinal survival values of all living beings:
--health (internal homeostasis);
--competence (the specialized skills to survive in a predictable niche) and
--adaptive flexibility (the generalized skills necessary to adapt to unpredictable change).

And there's the rub--in a time of (relative) systemic stability, we tend to select for competence; conversely, in a time of systemic collapse and/or catastrophic change, Gaia selects for adaptive flexibility, which depends--above all--on diversity--of genes, of skills, of diets, of coping mechanisms.

And of course, cooperation generally (but not necessarily) increases our collective adaptive flexibility.

This is why I keep returning, as the wave of global economic collapse approaches ever closer to home, to three simple injunctions:

Plant gardens. Get to know your neighbors, and grow community. Create local, sustainable economies.

Or putting it even more simply, I adhere to a "Dharma Gaia Mantra" I have invented: ten verb phrases I repeat on the outbreath, to quiet my mind and focus my priorities:

Breathe, Observe, Let Go.
Be well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch. (with gratitude to Garrison Keillor)
Learn Gaia.
Teach Gaia
Heal Gaia
Create Gaia.

Best wishes,

Tom

On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 4:08 PM, Dave Ewoldt wrote:

On 15 Apr 2008 at 9:41, Holistek wrote:

Your analysis is built on the repudiation of a whole set
> of human archetypal behaviours, and I think that means
> that it cannot work. We need to work with human nature as
> it is, not as we think it should be, or what we propose will
> simply fail.

Hey David... Do you disagree that humans exhibit compassion, nurturance, creativity? That humans enjoy and attempt to maximize healthy, mutually supportive relationships? That what grows is what we feed? You do seem to agree that diversity is a good thing. But this combination is what I find so confusing about the stance that you're taking.

I really believe that if humans were predisposed to acting like Mad Max, and the only thing that keeps us from this scenario is the thin veneer of civilization, then the majority of the atrocities committed by Hitler could not have occurred. Hitler and his SS shocktroops were outnumbered at least 1,000:1 and if the natural human tendency was to revert to violence, Hitler would have been done away with on short order. But humans don't tend to act violently and aggressively; they have to be manipulated and forced into it, and even then only if they can't find some other way around it.

The whole myth of archetypes, like almost all myths, does have some foundation in both subjective and objective reality. People do have tendencies, some of which are based in biology. Men tend to pee standing up. Women lactate to feed the young. The missionary position tends to be good for quickies. After that, though, it breaks down rather quickly and spectacularly.

This whole archetype story, advanced by Jung and others, is based on a set of assumptions -- those being that dominator hierarchies are "normal" and the fantasies, dreams, and nightmares that arise from them are indications of an individual's inability to adapt, not that they arise from a forced disconnection from being fully human. Archetypes, and the stereotyping that results from them, is only possible in a culture that believes in reductionism. As Ervin Laszlo says, "we sacrifice coherence on the alter of facticity."

All we have to do is look at the world around us to see the results of the dominator mindset.

Nature does not work through competition. Competition is a rationalization to excuse the worst of human behaviors. The food chain _is_ a natural aspect of life. It's part of the way life creates more life. Each organism has a role to play which is cooperative, not competitive. As long as we continue to refuse to come to terms with this reality, we will continue to work at odds with evolution -- with disastrous consequences.

There is _major_ contention regarding the theory that extinction is the result of competitive failure. It springs from the same mindset that sees the "selfish gene" as providing explanatory efficacy; that promotes individual selection over group selection and commits massive resources into denigrating the latter (see Howard Bloom's "Global Brain" for a well referenced articulation of this). In a dynamic system, the role of some species is taken up by others, or they simply become unnecessary. The majority of saplings in a climax ecosystem don't fail because there is a "ruthless competition" for light. They don't grow to maturity because carrying capacity has limits on soil nutrition, groundwater, and other factors. When, due to fire or aging of mature trees, the ecosystem has room for more saplings, they will grow to maturity. Since the exact timing of this can't be known in advance, trees create lots of seeds to be ready for this eventuality.

The so-called tension between male and female is another concept that is only possible in a dominator system. Tension assumes that differences infer either superiority or inferiority. Tension infers a loser. It ignores and/or denies the value and strength of diversity.

Cooperation is far from sterile. Cooperation is how we combine our differences to create something better. It is an intimate aspect of diversity. I don't see this as an attempt at ideological purity. It arises from being humble enough to spend five minutes in a healthy ecosystem, quieting the chatter of the monkey mind, and simply observing and experiencing what's going on around me.

If we just assume collapse, and do nothing differently, then collapse is most assuredly what we'll get. If we assume it is impossible to do things differently, because it either goes against or isn't in our nature to do so, then we cut ourselves off from possibilities. We could (there is no _rational_ reason why not) use our intelligence to look around and realize we've been quite mistaken in how we interpret the world and the human role within it, and then decide to do things differently based on taking a fresh perspective on how things seem to work.

Jung and Maslow, while bright, well-intentioned, and an order of magnitude better than totally disconnected thinkers like Freud and Skinner, still didn't quite have their finger on it. Mainly, it seems to me, because they accepted the dominator paradigm as fundamentally correct, and nature, including our inner wilderness, as something that needed to be controlled, subjugated -- transcended in some linear or color-based scheme -- in order to realize our potential. This leads to popular nonsense like Ken Wilbur being accepted by a public that is starving for a different way of being.

To view this group on the web, visit The Coordinator HUB Home Page http://www.relocalize.net/groups/coordinate -->
To Unsubscribe from this list visit your My Subscription page for the group http://www.relocalize.net/og/manage/1583 -->

To view this group on the web, visit The Coordinator HUB Home Page http://www.relocalize.net/groups/coordinate -->
To Unsubscribe from this list visit your My Subscription page for the group http://www.relocalize.net/og/manage/1583 -->

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Sarah Edwards's picture
Sarah Edwards
April 16th, 2008

Re: Being prepared



Security is always mentioned in the list of things that a community will have to deal with. Olov said that it will be one of the best sources of jobs after a collapse. He suggests everything will need to be watched until/if order is restored, even grandmothers watching the cucumber patch, is how I believe he put it.
I have thought about this relative to our community. We have a contingent of retire police and highway patrol here. I feel this is an advantage because they are trained and hopefully have a standard of conduct. I also believe we're lucky to be far from everything, hard to get to, have little to one could take and easy to defend given only one way in and out.
There will probably be a lot of contention among residents locally though because there already is and we have no crises. We have virtually no ability here to make decisions together constructively. People already act out quite a bit. I'm part of a group that has been working to change the culture of civility but we've made very little progress. We have concluded that this is because we're at the bottom of the governmental structure. People can't effect their county gov, their state gov. there nat'l gov, so but we're required to involve everyone so all the anger, frustration and powerlessness people feel can be taken out on our local level, and it sure is. I don't know if or how this would be different if there were no co, state or nat'l gov to contend with.
I agree security and violence are definitely something we should discuss.
Sarah
______________
 
Sarah Anne Edwards, LCSW, PhD Ecopsychologist
Co-Author, Middle Class Lifeboat, and Advocate for Affordable Health Care
"If you don't change to keep up with your situation, you will be in a bad situation."
                                                                                                                  Bo Bice
_____________
Subscribe to our free newsletter - Natural Wisdom
Nature's Lessons for Health Wealth and Happiness sedwards@
Vist our web sites: www.MiddleClassLifeboat.com  www.PineMountainInstitute.com
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Hamm
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 2:52 PM
Subject: CoordinatorHUB Being prepared

Tom's suggestions may sound too simple but it's really building community that is going to be the saving grace for those who make it through. However, there's also an implication from those like Dave who foresee a period of social chaos and probable violence.
It seems we've been skirting this issue and not addressing it directly but being prepared for those who denied or ignored the writing on the wall seems critical. How this is done means having contingency plans for the worst case scenario.

This issue is a tough one for me because I'm not a Machiavellian survivalist and the implications are clear that armed defense may be required if (or, more likely, when) push comes to shove. While our ultimately malevolent behavior toward our environment may result in Nature claiming the final victory and taking down a lot of people without us committing violence, that's not likely to be the only or primary result.

So, though it saddens me to say this, it seems important to at least be aware of, if not prepared for, the tactics that humans have always seemed to rely on in times of social and political upheaval.

Steve Hamm

-----Original Message-----
From: Sarah Edwards [mailto:sedwards@]
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 10:21 AM
To: Coordinator HUB
Subject: CoordinatorHUB Your Mantra



I like your mantra, Tom.
Plant gardens. Get to know your neighbors, and grow community that create local, sustainable economies.
S
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Sarah Anne Edwards, LCSW, PhD Ecopsychologist
Co-Author, Middle Class Lifeboat, and Advocate for Affordable Health Care
"If you don't change to keep up with your situation, you will be in a bad situation."
Bo Bice
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Subscribe to our free newsletter - Natural Wisdom
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----- Original Message -----
From: Tom Ellis mailto:tiellis@

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To: Coordinator HUB mailto:coordinate@ -->
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 6:12 PM
Subject: CoordinatorHUB Re: Choosing Possibilities

Well--perhaps. But I tend to think that both the "dominator" model and the alternative "partnership" model are drastic oversimplifications of the irreducible complexity of nature (including, of course, human nature.)

Lynn Margulis is closer to the mark when she says (I think it was she)--"Symbiosis writes and competition edits." In short, we cooperate when we perceive that it is in our interest to do so; we compete (i.e. fight or flight) when we feel that we are threatened.

Symbiosis provides the basis for innovation; competition and the mutual avoidance thereof preserve the ecological status quo. The only constants in all of this are the three cardinal survival values of all living beings:
--health (internal homeostasis);
--competence (the specialized skills to survive in a predictable niche) and
--adaptive flexibility (the generalized skills necessary to adapt to unpredictable change).

And there's the rub--in a time of (relative) systemic stability, we tend to select for competence; conversely, in a time of systemic collapse and/or catastrophic change, Gaia selects for adaptive flexibility, which depends--above all--on diversity--of genes, of skills, of diets, of coping mechanisms.

And of course, cooperation generally (but not necessarily) increases our collective adaptive flexibility.

This is why I keep returning, as the wave of global economic collapse approaches ever closer to home, to three simple injunctions:

Plant gardens. Get to know your neighbors, and grow community. Create local, sustainable economies.

Or putting it even more simply, I adhere to a "Dharma Gaia Mantra" I have invented: ten verb phrases I repeat on the outbreath, to quiet my mind and focus my priorities:

Breathe, Observe, Let Go.
Be well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch. (with gratitude to Garrison Keillor)
Learn Gaia.
Teach Gaia
Heal Gaia
Create Gaia.

Best wishes,

Tom

On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 4:08 PM, Dave Ewoldt wrote:

On 15 Apr 2008 at 9:41, Holistek wrote:

Your analysis is built on the repudiation of a whole set
> of human archetypal behaviours, and I think that means
> that it cannot work. We need to work with human nature as
> it is, not as we think it should be, or what we propose will
> simply fail.

Hey David... Do you disagree that humans exhibit compassion, nurturance, creativity? That humans enjoy and attempt to maximize healthy, mutually supportive relationships? That what grows is what we feed? You do seem to agree that diversity is a good thing. But this combination is what I find so confusing about the stance that you're taking.

I really believe that if humans were predisposed to acting like Mad Max, and the only thing that keeps us from this scenario is the thin veneer of civilization, then the majority of the atrocities committed by Hitler could not have occurred. Hitler and his SS shocktroops were outnumbered at least 1,000:1 and if the natural human tendency was to revert to violence, Hitler would have been done away with on short order. But humans don't tend to act violently and aggressively; they have to be manipulated and forced into it, and even then only if they can't find some other way around it.

The whole myth of archetypes, like almost all myths, does have some foundation in both subjective and objective reality. People do have tendencies, some of which are based in biology. Men tend to pee standing up. Women lactate to feed the young. The missionary position tends to be good for quickies. After that, though, it breaks down rather quickly and spectacularly.

This whole archetype story, advanced by Jung and others, is based on a set of assumptions -- those being that dominator hierarchies are "normal" and the fantasies, dreams, and nightmares that arise from them are indications of an individual's inability to adapt, not that they arise from a forced disconnection from being fully human. Archetypes, and the stereotyping that results from them, is only possible in a culture that believes in reductionism. As Ervin Laszlo says, "we sacrifice coherence on the alter of facticity."

All we have to do is look at the world around us to see the results of the dominator mindset.

Nature does not work through competition. Competition is a rationalization to excuse the worst of human behaviors. The food chain _is_ a natural aspect of life. It's part of the way life creates more life. Each organism has a role to play which is cooperative, not competitive. As long as we continue to refuse to come to terms with this reality, we will continue to work at odds with evolution -- with disastrous consequences.

There is _major_ contention regarding the theory that extinction is the result of competitive failure. It springs from the same mindset that sees the "selfish gene" as providing explanatory efficacy; that promotes individual selection over group selection and commits massive resources into denigrating the latter (see Howard Bloom's "Global Brain" for a well referenced articulation of this). In a dynamic system, the role of some species is taken up by others, or they simply become unnecessary. The majority of saplings in a climax ecosystem don't fail because there is a "ruthless competition" for light. They don't grow to maturity because carrying capacity has limits on soil nutrition, groundwater, and other factors. When, due to fire or aging of mature trees, the ecosystem has room for more saplings, they will grow to maturity. Since the exact timing of this can't be known in advance, trees create lots of seeds to be ready for this eventuality.

The so-called tension between male and female is another concept that is only possible in a dominator system. Tension assumes that differences infer either superiority or inferiority. Tension infers a loser. It ignores and/or denies the value and strength of diversity.

Cooperation is far from sterile. Cooperation is how we combine our differences to create something better. It is an intimate aspect of diversity. I don't see this as an attempt at ideological purity. It arises from being humble enough to spend five minutes in a healthy ecosystem, quieting the chatter of the monkey mind, and simply observing and experiencing what's going on around me.

If we just assume collapse, and do nothing differently, then collapse is most assuredly what we'll get. If we assume it is impossible to do things differently, because it either goes against or isn't in our nature to do so, then we cut ourselves off from possibilities. We could (there is no _rational_ reason why not) use our intelligence to look around and realize we've been quite mistaken in how we interpret the world and the human role within it, and then decide to do things differently based on taking a fresh perspective on how things seem to work.

Jung and Maslow, while bright, well-intentioned, and an order of magnitude better than totally disconnected thinkers like Freud and Skinner, still didn't quite have their finger on it. Mainly, it seems to me, because they accepted the dominator paradigm as fundamentally correct, and nature, including our inner wilderness, as something that needed to be controlled, subjugated -- transcended in some linear or color-based scheme -- in order to realize our potential. This leads to popular nonsense like Ken Wilbur being accepted by a public that is starving for a different way of being.

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Holistek's picture
Holistek
April 15th, 2008

Re: Choosing Possibilities



Allow me to summarize.
 
You think that I am inappropriately co-opted by the current culture, especially its dominator paradigm, and thus unable to see human beings clearly.
 
I think that you are in inappropriate reaction against the excesses of current culture, unable to integrate its value, and thus unable to see human beings clearly.
 
I see little possibility of either of us changing the mind of the other.  Let us agree to differ, and appreciate that we can do so in a forum such as this.  Thank you for the engagement.  If either of us has experiences that might lead to a revision of our stance, let us return to this at that time.
 
David
David Parkinson's picture
David Parkinson
April 15th, 2008

Re: Choosing Possibilities

This is the same dichotomy underneath the distinction between liberalism and conservatism: the perfectibility versus the inherent corruption of the human spirit. It's visible in the distinction between thinkers like Rousseau and Hobbes, or nowadays between Heinberg and Jensen. Since this is an age-old and unresolved (unresolvable) dichotomy, it's a fun parlour game, but it ain't gonna answer the question of where the potatoes are going to come from.
 
David Parkinson
Powell River, BC
(where some of the potatoes are going to come from)
On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Holistek <david@> wrote:



Allow me to summarize.
 
You think that I am inappropriately co-opted by the current culture, especially its dominator paradigm, and thus unable to see human beings clearly.
 
I think that you are in inappropriate reaction against the excesses of current culture, unable to integrate its value, and thus unable to see human beings clearly.
 
I see little possibility of either of us changing the mind of the other.  Let us agree to differ, and appreciate that we can do so in a forum such as this.  Thank you for the engagement.  If either of us has experiences that might lead to a revision of our stance, let us return to this at that time.
 
David

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--
David