This book is about the design of connections between places, communities, and nature. Drawing on a lifetime of travel in search of real-world alternatives that work, I describe the practical ways in which living economies thrive in myriad local contexts. When connected together, I argue, these projects tell a new ‘leave things better’ story of value, and therefore of growth. Growth, in this new story, means soils, biodiversity and watersheds getting healthier, and communities more resilient. 

The signals of transformation I write about are not concepts, and they are not the fruits of a vivid imagination. They are happening now. But in conversations about the book, I am often asked the same question: Are small local initiatives an adequate response to the global challenges we all face?

The sheer number and variety of initiatives now emerging is my first answer to that question. No single project is the magic acorn that will grow into a mighty new oak tree. But healthy forests are extremely diverse, and we’re seeing a healthy level of diversity in social innovation all over the world.

My second answer concerns scale. Many people – for example in government, or in large foundations – tell me that large-scale solutions are essential if we are to deal seriously with the large-scale challenges we face. But that’s not how healthy nature works, I answer. Every social and ecological context is unique, and the solutions we seek will be based on an infinity of local needs. There is no such thing as a correct approach for the whole planet.

My third answer concerns history. Big transformations in history have seldom been the result of a single cause or action; they were a consequence of multiple, interacting, processes and events that unfolded at different tempos. The German word eigenzeit – “proper time” – describes this phenomenon well: The timescales of change for a bacterium, a forest, or an economy, are very different – but they are all interconnected.

History also contains numerous examples of profound transformations that seemed impossible at the time – until they happened: the end of slavery in the United States; women gaining the right to vote England; or the end of apartheid in South Africa. Nelson Mandela’s famous words on the subject – “it always seems impossible until it’s done” – have inspired millions of people – and rightly so.

The assumption that the future is all about cities is another ‘inevitability’ now being reversed.

Designers have taken the lead in rediscovering the qualities and value of rural life Design Harvests, for example, led by Professor Lou Lou Yongqi at Tongji University, leads the way internationally in the creation of of new links – both cultural and economic – between city and rural.

Designing for change, in this context, is less about single, problem-solving actions, and more about the continuous search for value in neglected contexts, and the creation of enabling conditions for system change.

The first and most important enabling condition is a capacity for ecological thinking – the ability to see the patterns of life as a connected whole. Experiencing the world as a web of connection – between humanity, place and nature – is deeply rooted in Chinese culture, but has been forgotten in most of the West.

These connections – or their absence – are best explored at the scale of the bioregions that surround our cities. A bioregional focus re-connects us with living systems, and each other, through the places where we live. It acknowledges that we live among watersheds, food sheds, energy sheds, fiber sheds – not just downtown or in ‘the countryside’.

Thinking ecologically gives new meaning and purpose to the concept of growth. Rather than measure progress against such abstract measures as money, or GDP, growth in a bioregion means observable improvements to the health and carrying capacity of the land, and the resilience of communities. Value is created by the stewardship of living systems rather than the extraction of ‘natural resources’. The language used is one of system stewardship rather than ‘productivity’.

A second enabling condition for system change is a focus on the social. In the North, the sharing or Peer-to-Peer economy has been presented as a novelty in recent times – but throughout history, people have collaborated, and shared resources, to raise and educate their families, take care of the land, and support each other in times of difficulty; social systems based on kinship, and ways to share resources, have deep roots in China, Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. Although these practices have been neglected during the modern age, they have enormous potential today. We need to ask: who has answered a similar question in the past? How might we learn from what worked before?

A third enabling condition for system change design is a shift of focus in design from place making to place connecting. In place of an architecture concerned with discrete buildings, – or the design of stand-alone products – the new priority is relationships. As the biologist Andreas Weber points out, this is how nature works, too: The practice of ecology is the forging of relationships.

A fourth enabling condition for system change is that a new kind of infrastructure – social infrastructure – takes precedence over the concrete kind.

As we change the way we govern our communities and our ecosystems, a variety of different actors and stakeholders need to work together. The exploration of social and cultural assets, for example, can involve a range of skills and capabilities: the geographer’s knowledge of territory; the biologist’s expertise in habitats; the ecologist’s literacy in ecosystems; the economist’s ability to measure flows and leakage of money and resources. This convergence of expertise requires institutional support.

The scale and complexity of learning we have to do now is demanding, but it is not not unprecedented. During the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy, numerous regional institutions were invented to ease our transition. Many of these can be repurposed to do so again.

New sorts of enterprise are also needed: food co-ops, community kitchens, neighbourhood dining, edible gardens, and food distribution platforms. In these new kinds of enterprise, paying attention to the process by which groups work together is just as important as deciding what needs to be done, if not more so.

The social infrastructure we need is beginning to appear in the form of new social and business models: Sharing and Peer-to-Peer; Mobility as a Service; Civic Ecology; Food and Fibersheds; Transition Towns; Bioregions; Housing as a Service; The Care Economy. Platform Co-operatives, in particular, promise to be to effective ways to share the provision of services in which value is shared fairly among the people who make them valuable.

Technology has an important support role to play as the supporting infrastructure needed for these new social relationships to flourish. The re-emergence of gift exchange can be made possible by electronic networks. Mobile devices, and the internet of things, make it easier for local groups to share equipment and space, or manage trust in decentralised ways; technology can help us transition from an economy of transactions, to an economy of relationships. Technology can help reinvent cooperative practices in rural contexts: sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, exchanging, & swapping – in which money is but one means among many of holding or exchanging value.

A focus on the local and the social does not mean abandonment of collaboration at a national or international scale. We can use technology to link projects, initiatives, and individuals in a global ecosystem. Learning in a bioregion – and between them – can also be enhanced by the ways people in the software world find what they need on a day-to-day basis. They ask each other, in real time. The Tech For Good community, for example, keeps up to date on GitHub.

This book is not about pre-cooked solutions. It’s about building on what has already been done, in our various social and cultural histories, and on what’s being done, right now, in diverse contexts around the world. It’s about positive change that is top-down and bottom up; long-term and short-term. It challenges us all to search for connections that are working, and those that need to be made, or repaired. The health of a place, and of the persons who inhabit it, are one story – but it has many different versions.

The post How To Thrive In the Next Economy: Preface to the Chinese edition appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Twenty years ago we proposed noöpolitik (nü-oh-poh-li-teek) as a new approach for American information strategy (1999). According to our argument, strategists will have to rethink what is “information” and see that a new realm is emerging — the noosphere, a global “realm of the mind” — that will profoundly affect statecraft. and its preference for ideational “soft power.” A rethinking is needed because the decisive factor in the new global wars of ideas will be “whose story wins” — the essence of noöpolitik.

Notes about the noosphere and noopolitik — #1: Introductory comments about a new series of posts

As mentioned elsewhere, former co-author John Arquilla and I have been asked — and we’ve agreed — to update our ten-year-old chapter for a new revised edition of a 2009 handbook on public diplomacy. Our chapter back then was titled “Noopolitik: A New Framework for Public Diplomacy”. Not sure what our new title will be, but I do know we will do a major update and rewrite. I also know it might help keep me motivated if I post some draft pieces here as I go along, especially if comments ensue.

In brief, our argument is as follows: As the information age deepens, a globe–circling realm of the mind is being created — the “noosphere” that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (and others) identified ninety years ago. This will increasingly affect the nature of grand strategy and diplomacy. Traditional realpolitik, which ultimately relies on hard (principally military) power, will give way to the rise of noöpolitik (or noöspolitik), which relies on soft (principally ideational) power. Ultimately, noöpolitik is about whose story wins.

Our original RAND report, titled The Emergence of Noopolitik: Toward An American Information Strategy (1999), is available here:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1033.html

Our follow-up paper, “The promise of noöpolitik” (2007), which summarizes the RAND report and was edited down for the chapter in the public diplomacy handbook, is here:

http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1971/1846

Notes about the noosphere and noopolitik — #2: draft of introduction to new paper

[UPDATE — MARCH 20, 2018: What follows is a preliminary draft introducing our likely new paper. I have deleted what was here before about the origins of the noosphere concept, and moved it — revised, expanded — to post #3 in this series]

The Continuing Promise of the Noösphere and Noöpolitik — Twenty Years After

David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla: Twenty years ago we proposed noöpolitik (nü-oh-poh-li-teek) as a new approach for American information strategy (1999). According to our argument, strategists will have to rethink what is “information” and see that a new realm is emerging — the noosphere, a global “realm of the mind” — that will profoundly affect statecraft. The information age will continue to undermine the conditions for traditional strategies based on realpolitik and material “hard power,” and lead to new strategies based on noopolitik and its preference for ideational “soft power.” A rethinking is needed because the decisive factor in the new global wars of ideas will be “whose story wins” — the essence of noöpolitik.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1033.html

The noosphere and noopolitik concepts relate to an organizational theme that has constantly figured in our work about the information revolution: the rise of network forms of organization that strengthen civil-society actors. Few state or market actors, by themselves, seem likely to have much interest in fostering the construction of a global noosphere, except in limited areas having to do with international law, or political and economic ideology. The impetus for fostering a global noosphere is more likely to emanate from activist NGOs, other civil-society actors (e.g., churches, schools), and individuals dedicated to freedom of information and communications and to the spread of ethical values and norms. We believe it is time for state actors to begin moving in this direction, too, particularly since power in the information age will stem, more than ever, from the ability of state and market actors to work conjointly with civil-society actors.

Ten years ago we provided an update on the promise of noopolitik for a handbook on public diplomacy (2007; 2008). In it, we summarized our 1999 report and added four new points: (1) Other new information-age concepts similar to noopolitik — notably, netpolitik, cyberpolitik, infopolitik — had appeared, but all (including noopolitik) were having difficulty gaining traction. (2) Instead, the concept of “soft power” had come to dominate strategic discourse in government, military, and think-tank circles, even though its definition was flawed and lacked operational clarity. (3) Meanwhile, in non-state arenas where noosphere-building ideas had taken hold, activist NGOs representing global civil society were becoming major practitioners of noopolitik — but the most effective practitioners were militant jihadis organized in global networks and outfitted with sophisticated media technologies. (4) Against this background, we argued that American public diplomacy would benefit from a course correction to head in the direction of noöpolitik. But we also cautioned that conditions for doing so were less favorable than when we first fielded the concept a decade earlier — and propitious conditions seemed unlikely to re–emerge anytime soon.
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1971/1846
https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Public-Diplomacy/Snow-Snow-Taylor/p/book/9780415953023

Today, another ten years later, as we prepare this new update, noopolitik remains a promising concept for American information strategy. However, it’s not alive and well here in the United States, where even “soft power” is lately in decline as a strategic concept. Instead, our major adversaries are the ones working on developing noopolitik — but in dark ways and by other names — and they’re using it against us. These new circumstances mean, paraphrasing Charles Dickens, that we are now living in not only the worst of times but also the best of times for revisiting the promise of the noosphere and noospolitik.

So, we’re doing this update differently. Our initial writings analyzed at length the importance of information in the information age and the nature and growth of three information-based realms — cyberspace, the infosphere, and the noosphere. We did so in order to recommend that strategists begin to prefer the noosphere concept. However, by now the importance of information and those three realms are conceptually more familiar to strategists. Thus, for this update, we are skipping over re-summarizing our initial analysis and diving straight into discussing the noosphere concept at length — its origins in the 1920s, and the spread of its influence through today, nearly a century later.

This update proceeds this new way partly because we have learned more about the concept. We have also found new implications for discussing the prospects for noopolitik. We then go on to provide a new assessment of noopolitik for America’s current strategic situation.

Notes about the noosphere and noopolitik — #3: finally getting ahold of The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader (1998)

Further evidence for the growth of interest in the noosphere concept across the decades is the impressive wide-ranging collection by David Pitt & Paul R. Samson (eds.),‎ The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader: Global Environment, Society and Change (1998). As the editors state (on what appears to be the back cover or infold),

“The noosphere concept captures a number of key contemporary issues — social evolution, global ecology, Gaia, deep ecology and global environmental change — contributing to ongoing debates concerning the implications of emerging technologies such as human-created biospheres and the Internet.”

Their book provides, in excerpts, “the central ideas and key writings of many prominent thinkers”, including Teilhard, Vernadsky, and LeRoy — the original coiners of the term — along with admirers and interpreters Henri Bergson, Julian Huxley, Arnold Toynbee, James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, Rafal Serafin, Marshall McLuhan, Theodosius Dobhzansky, Dorion Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Kenneth Boulding, and Nikita Moiseev, among others. Plus Mikhail Gorbachev, who wrote the book’s Foreword.

I wish I’d seen it earlier. But unfortunately, this book was not out when we did our research and writing during 1997-1998. Today in 2018 I wish it could be updated with a second edition (but I can’t find any recent traces of the two editors).

Online download available here, fortunately:

http://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Samson,%20Pitt%20-%20The%20Biosphere%20and%20Noosphere%20Reader%20Global%20Environment%20Society%20and%20Change.pdf

Notes about the noosphere and noopolitik — #4: origins of the noosphere concept (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Vladimir Vernadsky, and Edouard Le Roy)

DRAFT OF PROSPECTIVE SECTION FOR NEW PAPER (SUPERSEDING WHAT WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED AS #2 IN THIS SERIES):

The noosphere: a concept about the world’s future evolution

For discussing information-based realms, the grandest, most abstract, and so far least favored term is the noosphere. This term, from the Greek word noos, meaning “the mind,” was coined — whether separately or collectively is unclear — by French theologian-paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, along with French mathematician Edouard Le Roy, and visiting Russian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, in Paris in 1922. They were already familiar with the terms “geosphere” and “biosphere”, long in use, and innovatively decided that the planet would next evolve a noosphere. The idea spread in Europe and America following Teilhard’s posthumous publications in the 1950s-1960s, and in Russia following Vernadsky’s return there in the 1920s-1930s.

Our earlier writings credited only Teilhard. We did not know about Vernadsky (nor Le Roy, who left few writings behind). So we slightly expand here on our past discussion of Teilhard, then provide a long new discussion about Vernadsky, followed by some comparative remarks. We also add important points from Le Roy’s perspective. Most helpful for doing so was our finally reading David Pitt & Paul R. Samson (eds.),‎ The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader: Global Environment, Society and Change (1998 — hereafter abbreviated as BNR). It contained extracts from Vernadsky’s and Le Roy’s writings that were previously unavailable to us.

Teilhard’s thinking about the noosphere: In Teilhard’s view — especially as expressed in The Phenomenon of Man ([1955] 1965) and The Future of Man ([1959] 1964) — the world first evolved a global geosphere and next a biosphere. Now that people are communicating on global scales, the world is starting to create a noosphere — what he variously describes as a globe-circling realm of “the mind,” a “thinking circuit,” “a new layer, the ‘thinking layer’,” a “stupendous thinking machine,” a “thinking envelope” full of fibers and networks, indeed a “planetary mind” and a planetary “consciousness”, where Earth “finds its soul.”

In the 1964 book’s Introduction, Julian Huxley further defines Teilhard’s concept as “web of living thought” and “a common pool of thought”. He also praises Teilhard for advancing “a threefold synthesis — of the material and physical world with the world of mind and spirit; of the past with the future; and of variety with unity, the many with the one.” And he clarifies that “we should consider inter-thinking humanity as a new type of organism, whose destiny it is to realise new possibilities for evolving life on this planet.”

According to Teilhard, then, forces of the mind — first “psychogenesis’ and then “noogenesis” — have gradually created pieces of the noosphere for ages, while increases in social complexity and human consciousness have laid further groundwork for the noosphere’s emergence. Now it is finally achieving a global presence, and its varied “compartments” and “cultural units” are beginning to fuse. As he puts it, equating cultures with species, “cultural units are for the noosphere the mere equivalent and the true successors of zoological species in the biosphere.” Eventually, a synthesis will occur in which peoples of different nations, races, and cultures will give rise to “unheard-of and unimaginable degrees of organised complexity and of reflexive consciousness” that is planetary in scope (a “mono-culturation”), without people losing their personal identity and individuality.

Fully realized, the noosphere will raise mankind to a high new evolutionary plane, one shaped by a collective coordination of psychosocial and spiritual energies and by a devotion to moral, ethical, religious, juridical, and aesthetic principles. However, he counsels, “No one would dare to picture to himself what the noosphere will be like in its final guise”. Moreover, he warns that the transition may not be smooth — a “paroxysm”, a global tremor and possibly an apocalypse may characterize the final fusion of the noosphere. (Sources: 1964, pp. 175–181, 200–4, 235, 303; 1965, pp. 287–290; 1998, p. 77)

Although Teilhard’s concept is essentially spiritual, and far less technological than cyberspace or the infosphere, he identified increased communications as a cause. Nothing like the Internet existed in his time. Yet he sensed (1964) that 1950s-era radio and television systems were already fostering “a sort of ‘etherized’ universal consciousness,” and someday “astonishing electronic computers” would give mankind new tools for thinking. Today, he is occasionally credited with anticipating the Internet, as well as the idea of the Anthropocene.

Vernadsky’s thinking about the noosphere: Vernadsky’s views parallel but also differ from Teilhard’s — Vernadsky’s are much more materialist, in spots more mystical, and always less spiritual (Vernadsky was an atheist). Like Teilhard, he too held that Earth first evolved a geosphere, then a biosphere — and a noosphere is next. Indeed, he wrote the first book on The Biosphere (1926), in which he treated the spread of life as an essentially geological force.

In his landmark paper, “New Scientific Knowledge and the Transition from the Biosphere to the Noösphere” (1938), Vernadky argues that increases and changes in the nature of “biogeophysical energy” — owing to a progression of inventions from fire-making, to agriculture, to modern communications technologies, etc. — explain the planetary spread of the biosphere and the coming emergence of a noosphere. In his words, “This new form of biogeochemical energy, which might be called the energy of human culture or cultural biogeochemical energy, is that form of biogeochemical energy, which creates at the present time the noösphere.” (p. 16) This kind of energy, he wrote, lay behind the development of the human mind and reason itself; and it will lead “ultimately to the transformation of the biosphere into the noösphere, first and foremost, through the creation and growth of the scientific understanding of our surroundings.” (p. 20)

Vernadsky goes on to say that the creation of the noosphere has “proceeded apace, ever increasing in tempo” during the “last five to seven thousand years” despite “interruptions continually diminishing in duration” (p. 29). He evidently expects “the unity of the noosphere” to bring “a planned unified activity for the mastery of nature and a just distribution of wealth associated with a consciousness of the unity and equality of all peoples”. But while it is “not possible to reverse this process”, he expects “the transitional stage” to be accompanied by “ruthless struggle” and “intense struggles” that may span several generations. Nonetheless, he doubts “there will be any protracted interruptions in the ongoing process of the transition from the biosphere to the noösphere.” (p. 30) Finally, as he conveys all this with confidence, he nonetheless seems to wonder whether it all “transcends the bounds of logic” and whether “we are entering into a realm still not fully grasped by science.” He even makes positive closing references to Hindu philosophy and to the role of art in man’s thinking (p. 31).

Later, despite his dismay about the destructiveness of WWII, Vernadsky clarified optimistically in an article based on translations of earlier writings, in “The Biosphere and the Noösphere” in the journal American Scientist in 1945 that:

“The historical process is being radically changed under our very eyes. For the first time in the history of mankind the interests of the masses on the one hand, and the free thought of individuals on the other, determine the course of life of mankind and provide standards for men’s ideas of justice. Mankind taken as a whole is becoming a mighty geological force. There arises the problem of the reconstruction of the biosphere in the interests of freely thinking humanity as a single totality. This new state of the biosphere, which we approach without our noticing it, is the noösphere. …

“Now we live in the period of a new geological evolutionary change in the biosphere. We are entering the noösphere. This new elemental geological process is taking place at a stormy time, in the epoch of a destructive world war. But the important fact is that our democratic ideals are in tune with the elemental geological processes, with the laws of nature, and with the noösphere. Therefore we may face the future with confidence. It is in our hands. We will not let it go.” (in BNR, p. 99)

Note that despite despair about WWII, he still identified the nascence of the noosphere with such values as freedom, justice, and democracy.

Throughout his varied writings about “the evolution of the biosphere into the noosphere,” Vernadsky extolled the emergence of reason as a powerful, even geological force tied to the development of science and scientific thinking. He thus mostly regarded the noosphere as the “sphere of reason”, the “realm of reason,” the “reign of reason,” and as “the way through which the noosphere manifests itself in the thinking process” — even as “life’s domain ruled by reason.”

Vernadsky’s audience was mostly fellow scientists in Russia, not policy-makers. But he did occasionally argue that government administrators should attend to his findings, and that “Statesmen should be aware of the present elemental process of transition of the biosphere into the noosphere.” (in BNR, p. 38)

Teilhard and Vernadsky compared: Both Teilhard and Vernadsky shared a deep belief in our planet’s evolving a geosphere, then a biosphere, and next a noosphere. Yet their views about causes and consequences differ enough to be worth comparing. Teilhard’s views were far more spiritually-grounded than Vernadsky’s. He preferred to explain the noosphere’s emergence in terms of geological and technological forces. Yet, like Teilhard, he expected the noosphere to have wonderful ethical consequences for humanity — as he noted, “a just distribution of wealth” and “the unity and equality of all peoples”. Moreover, while both viewed the noosphere optimistically as a realm of collective consciousness, neither regarded it as a realm of uniformity. Both valued individualism and variety. Both favored a future built on democracy. And, seemingly contrary to Charles Darwin, both thought that evolution depended on cooperation as much as competition.

Both are quite unclear regarding what the transition to the noosphere will be like for people. They both make the transitional phase seem inevitable. At times, Teilhard even makes it seem alluringly smooth and peaceful. Yet, if they’d just offered comparisons (which neither evidently did) to the transitions to the geosphere and biosphere, they’d surely have noted that evolution of any kind is often far from smooth and peaceful; indeed, it is often chaotic, disjointed, and violent. Fortunately, Teilhard and Vernadsky at least allude to this prospect — Teilhard by noting that a global tremor if not an apocalypse may characterize the final fusion of the noosphere, Vernadsky by noting the likelihood of intense ruthless struggles spanning several generations. Both recognized humanity’s capacity for self-destruction.

Which raises another question about the nature of the transition: Teilhard and Vernadsky both see the noosphere as evolving piecemeal around the planet, much as did the geosphere and biosphere, with some parts arising here and then spreading there, other parts elsewhere, with interconnections and interactions increasing over time, until the entire planet is caught up in webs of creation and fusion. But neither Teilhard nor Vernadsky specifies exactly what parts and pieces may matter along the way. Teilhard at least mentions that “compartments” and “cultural units” will do the “fusing”. That isn’t much to go on, but it’s a bit helpful for thinking strategically, as we elucidate later.

Le Roy’s depiction of the transition: Concept co-founder Le Roy’s few writings offer further insight into how the transition may occur. In his book on The Origins of Humanity and the Evolution of Mind ([1928] in BNR, 1998), Le Roy turns to a “hydro-dynamical” metaphor for showing how the noosphere may emerge from the biosphere. It would not resemble the growth of a branching tree, but instead occur by way of spurts, jets, and spouts that finally link to form a layer. In his words,

“Take the biosphere. Let us imagine in it a few points here and there where spurts, strictly limited and hardly surpassing above the middle level, and where jets grow little by little, open up and finally link up their spouts, spreading a layer that covers the Earth.” According to his imagery, it is “the spurting points that [will] attach the noosphere to the biosphere.” (BNR, p. 66)

Those metaphors aside, Le Roy goes on to identify real-world factors that will drive creation of the noosphere: “division of work, game of association and habit, culture and training, exercise of all types; from where come social classes, types of mind, forms of activity, new powers”. And he says this will ultimately lead to a separation and spiritualization of the noosphere — “a disengagement of consciousness increasingly free and pure, and the constitution of a superior order of existence; the order of spirituality, reaching a point of perfection where the noosphere would strain to detach itself from the biosphere as a butterfly sheds its cocoon.” According to Le Roy, it is “this mysterious force of thought cohesion between individuals that allows the start of organised union in a unique layer”. (BNR, p. 67, 69)

In other words, Le Roy views the expansion of the mind and the creation of the noosphere as a planetary process that will lead to the noosphere’s separation from the biosphere:

“We are, in truth, confronting a phenomenon of planetary, perhaps cosmic, importance. This new force is human intelligence; the reflexive will of humankind. Through human action, the noosphere disengages itself, little by little, from the biosphere and becomes more and more independent, and all this with rapid acceleration and an amplification of effects which continue to grow. Correlatively however, by a sort of return shock, hominisation has introduced, in the course of life, some formidable risks.” (BNR, p. 5)

Quite a depiction.

Notes about the noosphere and noopolitik — #5: spreading recognition of the noosphere concept

Photo by Glassholic

The post A Noopolitik for the Global Commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

As the environmentalist Paul Hawken has pointed out,

‘We are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP’

What the industrial system does is to convert our natural commons into private financial gain and leaves states and communities to pick up the pieces. If we do not find some way of shedding light on the myth of ‘the wealth creators’ and the insufficiency of GDP as any sort of measure of true wealth, we are never going to see the problem for what it really is.

This article by David Roberts of Grist.org highlights exactly how much damage is done to the global commons, especially by fossil fuel extraction:

Of the top 20 region-sectors ranked by environmental impacts, none would be profitable if environmental costs were fully integrated. Ponder that for a moment: None of the world’s top industrial sectors would be profitable if they were paying their full freight. Zero.

Read more here.

Photography by Louis Vest on flickr (CC Licence).

The post None of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use appeared first on P2P Foundation.