Recently, two critical efforts to improve the future, health care reform in Washington and climate catastrophe mitigation in Copenhagen, hit a wall of compromise that proved (to me, at least) that our current model of relying on “leaders” to solve big problems does not work, and should not be expected to. The status quo simply has too much inertia for any small group of people to successfully challenge, especially if their livelihoods and personal power depends on maintaining it.
Unfortunately,…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on December 19, 2009 at 8:30am —
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Coming to terms with the fact that maximizing individual consumption and power over others is incompatible with maximizing the longevity of our species and the well-being of the most number of people, I’ve become increasingly revolted by the overarching promotion of consumption and competition in the socioeconomic system I currently inhabit.
Emotional reactions typically stem from a clash with one’s values. This might suggest that my values have changed, given that it is a major change from how…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on December 3, 2009 at 6:30pm —
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There are at least three ways we can present ourselves to the rest of the world. We can “look good” by hiding or disguising anything that doesn’t match our perception of what’s positive about ourselves (where “positive” is defined by our values). Doing the exact opposite, we can “look bad” by displaying only the parts of ourselves that we don’t like. Third, we can “look true”: enable others to perceive us exactly as we are. In reality, each of us tends to be somewhere in the spectrum between the…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on November 28, 2009 at 10:54am —
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In ecology, “invasive species” are species that evolve in one type of ecosystem and either move, or are moved, into another type of ecosystem. Once there, they typically wreak havoc by outcompeting native species. Humans are arguably the most successful invasive species on the planet; and will continue to be, until we either change, or finish driving ourselves extinct along with as many other species as we can take with us.
Our corporations and empire-building nations are perhaps the most visib…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on November 8, 2009 at 5:00pm —
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I recently watched the movie “The World According to Monsanto,” which together with the movie “Flow” illustrates how corporations are acquiring as much power as they can, up to and including controlling the basic necessities of survival. It is apparently anathema to them for anything to be free and for anyone to not be totally dependent on them. This is the path to monoculture, and because it increases both consumption and the vulnerability of the entire population to single points of failure, t…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on October 26, 2009 at 5:48pm —
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In his book “The Last Days of Ancient Sunlight,” author and radio host Thom Hartmann did the best job I’ve seen yet in summarizing the greatest challenges of our time, the reasons behind them, and what we can do about them. The book details the trends I’ve identified in my own research and provides a useful way of thinking about them, as a conflict between what he calls “older culture” and “younger culture” values.
Specifically, older cultures -- those that last thousands of years -- respect th…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on October 12, 2009 at 11:00am —
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Of all the things my parents taught me, it was the general rules of life that stuck with me the longest. Perhaps the first and most persistent of these was embodied by the admonition to “think before you act.” This could mean planning, as my mother interpreted it -- figuring out exactly what you will do and when, and then following the schedule as close as possible. It could alternatively mean striving to understand the variables involved in reaching the goal of the action -- my father’s approac…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on September 11, 2009 at 6:00pm —
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“They’re idiots!” I’ve long recoiled at such statements, partly because for the first 30 years of my life I often used them to describe myself, and partly because as I grew older it became clear that all of us have areas we can improve on.
Name calling is something we all learn as children. In my opinion, it serves two purposes. First, it enforces uniformity in a group while communicating one’s identity as part of the group. Second, it teaches simplistic ways of understanding the world by categ…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on September 7, 2009 at 2:30pm —
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Yesterday I attended a workshop hosted by the IEEE focusing on the status of various alternative energy technologies from a business and employment perspective, especially in Colorado. There was a strong emphasis on the development of “smart grids” that could efficiently distribute and manage electricity generated from renewable sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal. Indeed, smart grids are seen as an absolute necessity for renewable energy to become more than a small part of what the Unit…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on August 30, 2009 at 3:00pm —
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Discussions with fellow members of the Transition movement and ruminations about my future employment have led to some interesting insights about both my ongoing research into the future of humanity and my own potential role in that future.
The Transition discussions have centered on what kind of society the core members of my local group prefer to live in, setting the basis for a mission statement and the definition of an “energy descent plan” that most painlessly removes dependency on our omn…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on August 23, 2009 at 8:34pm —
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Yesterday my wife and I took a guided tour of White Ranch Open Space Park, west of Golden, Colorado, led by a forest ranger who described the area’s ecosystem with a focus on two of its more famous members: ponderosa pine trees and Abert’s squirrels. Toward the end of the tour, he pointed out how, until humans settled the area, fire naturally kept the population of trees at a sustainable level. Now, with fire control, disease agents such as bark beetles tend to move in and do the job of thinning…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on August 16, 2009 at 3:00pm —
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Few things define a community more than its members’ support of a minimum level of well-being for everyone within it. When they have taken care of basic needs such as food, water, shelter, and protection from large-scale threats such as hostile invaders, fire, and poisoning of necessary resources, the members of a community must deal with the maintenance of their health, which is affected by all of the rest (especially defense against microscopic “hostile invaders”). The debate about community-p…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on August 2, 2009 at 3:03pm —
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“Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change” by Pat Murphy is one of the most well-researched and comprehensive books I’ve read on the causes of the major crises threatening humanity and what to do about them. The book was recommended by one of the founders of my local Transition group, who found in it concrete suggestions about how to go through “energy descent,” one of the primary goals of the community oriented international Transition movement (Murphy himself runs…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on June 25, 2009 at 7:40pm —
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[NOTE: This entry is from my Idea Explorer blog at http://www.ideaexplorer.blogspot.com]
I've pretty much concluded that the kind of world I want to live in will be a cooperative community of people who provide for each other's basic needs and those of future generations to the extent physically possible, and then using what's left (or finding more) to provide opportunities for everyone to optimize their personal happiness without diminishing that of others. By contrast, the world we currently…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on June 18, 2009 at 1:21pm —
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In 2008,
my research showed this to be an extremely critical period of time, one that could determine whether or not humanity survives beyond this century. It was important to examine the basis for this and how to achieve a positive outcome.
It is important to remind readers that, to my knowledge, my consumption models and “laws” have neither been confirmed nor proven wrong by others. The theory and conclusions are totally mine, though the results are…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on December 31, 2008 at 2:55pm —
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Practically, increasing happiness involves creating a range of environments (sets of circumstances) that meets the desires of the most people in a population. One way this can be done is to increase the number and variety of environments; another is to create a single environment that is as close as possible to meeting the desires of an average member of the population.
Mathematical modeling based on international statistics suggests…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on December 4, 2008 at 11:00am —
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For the first time that I can remember, a president or president-elect asked the American people to share their vision of what the country should be. Soon after his election, Barack Obama provided a
Web page for doing just that; and I added my opinion, as follows.
First and foremost, the United States must be true to its core principles, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Most critical among these is our recog…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on November 19, 2008 at 7:39am —
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A familiar mantra on the political Right argues that the nation’s economy is best served by reduced government spending, taxes, and business regulation. To do otherwise is to restrict growth, encourage waste, and invite socialism. This argument assumes some things that have not been proven true: (1) much of the money spent by the government is wasted; (2) the government does not support economic growth and capitalism; (3) businesses are sufficiently self-regulating; and (4) the public and privat…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on October 21, 2008 at 10:34am —
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The final presidential debate of 2008 should have been a time of celebration and re-dedication to the task of getting Barack Obama elected president. Both in style and substance, Obama came across as a prepared, optimistic yet firm leader who cared deeply about his country, while John McCain had all the appeal and wisdom of a modern-day Ebenezer Scrooge. Yet I felt deeply disappointed in both candidates, realizing that neither of them had even a clue just how much the world was likely to change…
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Added by Brad Jarvis on October 17, 2008 at 9:00am —
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