“You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”- Buckminster Fuller

Ruth Gordon: In recent years there’s been a global awakening to the momentous choice humanity now faces: do we cling to the old system and choose extinction, or create a new system that grants us a future worth living?

Movements such as Standing Rock, Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for Future are giving voice to the widespread longing for a tenable alternative to capitalism – our urgent need for new, regenerative ways of living: systems of life that use clean renewable energy, restore ecosystems, and re-position human beings as nurturers of social networks that enable us to be caretakers for the Earth.

In Fridays for Future, the weekly youth strikes kick-started by Greta Thunberg’s solo action of protest, a new generation are questioning the apathy of the societies they’ve been born into, marching under the slogan “System Change, Not Climate Change.” They are loudly demanding that we wake up, pull ourselves back from the brink of catastrophe, and put our energies into co-creating a system of life that can avert climate disaster.

The success of Extinction Rebellion, “a revolution of love, deep ecology and radical transformation,” is partly due to the ways in which their vision of building such a regenerative culture guides their methods of organization. It was the integrity of their commitment to nonviolence and the functioning support systems that emerged among members that made it so difficult for the police to make arrests during the recent ten days of protest in the UK.

Those who thronged the streets were nourished by the actions they took part in, which were creative and joyful. This led to results, with the UK Parliament declaring a climate emergency. It remains to be seen whether this will really influence decision-making in the UK, but it’s further proof that nonviolent action sustained by networks of real solidarity can create change.

Standing Rock set a precedent for this form of holistic activism. It was one of the most diverse mass political gatherings in history, hosting such historic scenes as US army veterans asking forgiveness from Native American elders. Its unique power to gather together Indigenous peoples, environmentalists, spiritual seekers and ordinary Americans was a tribute to the depth of intention at its core – people took a stand for life itself, for the water, for the sanctity of the Earth. It showed how a global cry of outrage can be transformed into a healing convergence for life.

Although President Trump’s executive order to go ahead with the pipeline was eventually passed and the camp violently evicted, the story did not end there. Resistance continues at Standing Rock, and its example has inspired many other water protectors to stand up in movements around the world. But how can we create a worldwide and permanent shift to regeneration in every sphere of life?

What could a regenerative culture look like?

In 2017, when members of the Tamera Peace Research and Education Center in Portugal heard about the resistance at Standing Rock, they accompanied the protest with prayer and reached out to its leaders in solidarity. This exchange led to the initiation of the annual “Defend the Sacred” gatherings, which foster a network of exchange and support among activists, ecologists, technologists and Indigenous leaders who share the vision of creating a regenerative cultural model as a response to the global crisis.

Tamera is an attempt by Europeans to restore community as the foundation of life, with the vision of seeding a network of such decentralized autonomous centers (known as Healing Biotopes) right across the world. Creating solidarity between diverse movements and projects requires deep investigation of the human trauma that so often creates conflict and derails attempts at unification. This is why Defend the Sacred gatherings focus on healing trauma through consciousness work, community building, truth, and transparency. The goal is to create bonds of trust among people that are so strong that external forces will no longer be able to break them.

The leaders of the gatherings know that we can’t create a regenerative culture solely by trying to ‘smash capitalism.’ Instead, we need to understand and heal the underlying disease that generates all such systems of oppression. This disease can be described as the Western sickness of separation from life, or “wetiko,” as it was named by the North American Algonquin people. Martin Winiecki (the gatherings’ co-convenor) describes it like this:

“‘Wetiko,’ literally ‘cannibalism,’ was the word used by the Indigenous peoples to describe the disease of white invaders. It translates as the alienated human soul, no longer connected to an inner life force and so feeding on the energy of other beings.”

Wetiko is the psychic mechanism that keeps us trapped in the illusion that we exist separately from everything else. Within the isolated selfish ego, the pursuit of maximum personal gain appears to be the goal and meaning of life. Coupled with the chronic inability to feel compassion for the lives of other beings, violence, exploitation and oppression are not only justified, but appear logical and rational. If we resist only the external effects of wetiko, maybe we can win a victory here or there, but we can’t overcome the system as a whole because this ‘opponent’ also sits within ourselves. It is from within that we constantly feed and support this monstrous system.

An important part of healing wetiko relates to healing our interracial wounds. It’s significant that Defend the Sacred was initiated in Portugal – the place from where so many perpetrators of genocide and slavery in the Americas and Africa set out. A new path towards a nonviolent future will emerge from creating spaces where we can acknowledge our violent past and gain insight about what we have done as a collective. Such spaces offer the possibility of finally stepping out of the futile pattern of oppression, guilt and blame.

Tangible visions of the future.

In a recent co-written book, Defend the Sacred: If Life Wins, There Will Be No Losers, participants in the gatherings offer a mosaic of short essays that present their shared vision, along with many different ways to put it into practice. These include ending fossil fuel dependence, healing natural water cycles in cooperation with ecosystems and animals, transforming economic structures from systems of extraction to systems of giving, re-centering the voice of the feminine, creating a planetary network of solidarity and compassion, and anchoring everything in spiritual connection with the Earth as a living organism.

Supporting the transition away from fossil fuels, some members of the group are developing decentralized alternative technologies based on solar energy, while others are creating open source blueprints that enable people without specialist knowledge to construct simple plastic recycling machines all over the world.

Continuing the work of Standing Rock, the last two gatherings focused on thwarting oil drilling threats in Portugal, and each included an aerial art action in which participants used their bodies to form giant images alongside messages to “Stop the Drilling.” These actions strengthened the growing resistance in Portugal to fossil fuel extraction, which won a significant victory in October 2018 when the oil companies involved announced that they were voluntarily withdrawing all plans to extract oil in the country.

The group is also working on an approach to climate change that goes beyond the mechanical question of carbon reduction or balancing inputs and outputs, to one that views the Earth as a living whole whose ‘organs’ all need to be intact for life to flourish. A key part of this approach is the widespread restoration of ecosystems through creating Water Retention Landscapes (a method of sculpting the land to help it absorb and retain rainwater where it naturally falls). Such landscapes heal natural water cycles, which in turn can rebalance the climate and protect forests from the increasing risk of wildfires.

Another central aspect of the group’s work is to create social systems that both support the revival of feminine power and reestablish a basis of mutual support between the masculine and the feminine. Since overcoming patriarchy cannot be achieved by simply demanding change, this means creating forms of human co-existence that do not replicate patriarchal structures, but, as Monique Wilson puts it (another contributor to the book and coordinator of One Billion Rising), instead allow women to rediscover solidarity and “remember their abilities to heal, to teach, to create and to lead.”

Imagine what would happen if all the separate movements for climate justice, racial justice, ending sexual violence and developing new forms of economy could unite around a shared spiritual center, just as they did at Standing Rock. Imagine if, drawn together by their love of life and their commitment to protecting our home, the Earth, they could come together to articulate a shared vision for a future that is more compelling to people than remaining in the current broken system. This is what our planet needs now.

To join this year’s Defend the Sacred gathering from August 16–19, please click here.

For more information on our new book, Defend the Sacred: If Life Wins, There Will Be No Losers, please click here.

Reprinted from opendemocracy. You can find the original post here!

Featured image: Aerial art action during Defend the Sacred in Portugal, 2018. | Tamera Media. All rights reserved.

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Within just three months, 42 councils have signed the pledge – representing over 17 million people between them in the UK  – and more than 34 million in the US, Australia, Canada and Switzerland.

Declaring a climate emergency creates an opportunity to:

1. Involve citizens through citizen’s assemblies and other processes of participation and consultation in setting priorities for ambitious carbon reduction and understanding and engaging with the difficult choices that implies.
2. Create healthier, more resilient and sustainable local communities powered by locally generated low carbon energy, served by affordable and sustainable transport, higher quality and more efficient housing stock and fed by sustainable food and land systems.
3. Un-do business as usual. In a time of cut-backs, reverse costly policies and investments in carbon-intensive infrastructures such as roads or airports and divest council pension funds from fossil fuels.

What does it mean to declare a climate emergency?

For a council to have called a ‘climate emergency’, commonly advanced guidelines say that they must have: used these specific words in a motion or executive decision; they must set a target date to reduce their local climate impacts consistent with the IPCC report; they must set up a working group to report within a short timescale; and they must engage with a cross section of the community.

When in ‘emergency mode’, councils must allocate discretionary funds towards climate action. That includes things such as: educating the community, advocating for action from higher level governments, mitigating and building resilience against the impacts of climate change, and funding or undertaking the planning and research needed to implement full state and national emergency mobilisation.

So far, councils’ pledges and aims have varied enormously. For example: Scarborough council has committed to a target of zero carbon emissions by 2030, and will seek up to £80,000 in funding over two years for a sustainability officer to help achieve their goals. Meanwhile, Liverpool City Council deleted all references to declaring a ‘Climate Emergency’ and many of the suggested actions to be taken. Its plan has no stated target, no timeline and no budget. In Lancaster and Oxford a Citizen’s Assembly is being set up as part of their process; this is a deliberative process in which a representative group of citizens selected at random from the population, learn about, discuss, and make recommendations in relation to a particular issue or set of issues.

Local governments are often in the front line of dealing with climate change impacts (such as flooding, fires, storm damage) and the on the receiving end of demands for mitigation action. A key issue is working out what local governments have exclusive control over (as opposed to national and regional authorities): and where the boundaries of responsibility lie, because with climate change they are often very complex and diffuse. Clearly councils also facing funding difficult constraints. Yet, across transport, energy, housing, waste, buildings, people are looking to councils for leadership.

So what can they do?

We are not short of concrete ideas about what to do. Reports such as Zero Carbon Britain show sector by sector analysis of what’s possible in the UK by 2030. Many cities have already taken the lead with emissions reduction pledges and zero carbon targets including commitments from Bristol and Manchester aiming to be carbon neutral by 2030 and 2038 respectively. Across the world, the cities organisation C40 has been calling for fossil free streets: commitments to procure only zero-emission buses from 2025; and ensuring a major area of the city is zero emission by 2030.

Planning is key and so is reducing demand. The services people want, such as heat and mobility, are often those they show the greatest indifference towards. We are often fearful of challenging people’s attachment to their cars, for example. But if safe, reliable and affordable alternatives are provided, people will use them. When affordable and accessible infrastructures are built for buses and bikes and pedestrians, people use them as numerous examples around the world have shown.

Around housing, councils can help to deliver on the government pledge to halve energy use from new build by 2030 and for all new homes to be heated by fossil free systems by 2025. They can promote energy efficiency schemes and exploit other grant funding, promote new carbon neutral housing schemes, either as authority owned projects or with partners and transform council’s own properties to maximise their own potential for energy production and saving.

Regarding transport, councils can promote energy efficiency in local transport, promote cycling and car sharing, consider car exclusion zones or access charges, promote the use of electric cars by providing charging points and invest in EV infrastructure, improve public transport integration (bikes, buses and trains) and consider how transport contracts can be used to promote green travel.

On energy, councils can promote low energy use- smart energy, energy efficiency and conservation. They can consider providing funding for solar energy installations on the basis of shared returns, review the authority’s own energy use and consider setting up ESCOs (energy service companies).

Others areas include waste and food. Councils can review waste and recycling policies- take pressure off land-fill and reduce methane and other emissions. Where possible they might target food consumption through procurement and menus in schools to include less meat and dairy.

In terms of business, they can promote support services for local businesses. Preferential business rates for local firms, for example, as part of much needed regional redevelopment, or creating Local Enterprise Partnerships to set up low carbon enterprise zones with tax breaks to nurture jobs, investment and innovation.

What can we stop doing?

As well as thinking creatively about how to deliver services in low carbon ways, we also need to accelerate the shift away from the fossil fuel economy.

Declaring an emergency permits a veto over actions which are incompatible with radical decarbonisation in line with the Paris agreement, and climate-proofing all areas of policy. This should mean divestment from fossil fuels. Local councils in the UK invest over £14 billion in the fossil fuel industry. Divestment from cities assets from fossil fuels though pension funds sends a powerful signal and makes a major contribution. Of the 1032 institutions that have divested from fossil fuels worldwide, just 15% are governments. But there are now more than 15 UK councils – from Sheffield to Stroud, Brighton to Birmingham –calling for divestment from their pension funds.

Beyond the local

Local council action doesn’t exist in a vacuum of course. Some of the measures described above require a supportive national regulatory environment. Financing could be delivered as part of a Green New Deal. Carbon budgets need to be set and enforced by independent national agencies such as the climate change committee. National government needs to give direction by laying down limits and reversing major decisions that produce carbon lock-in incompatible with 1.5 around airport expansion and fracking for example. Local government can make their voice heard to lobby government on this.

Declaring a climate emergency is just a starting point, and not without its challenges. But the good news is there are numerous policies that can be put in place as well as initiatives bubbling up from below that can be harnessed to scale up and accelerate the pace of change.

So what are we waiting for?

Reprinted from Rapid Transitions Alliance. You can find the original post here!

Featured image: Climate Emergency – PeoplesClimate-Melb-IMG_8280. By Takver. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0).

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The book showcases the wealth of transformative ideas that the international commons movement has to offer. With contributions by Kate Raworth, David Bollier, George Monbiot and many others, Our Commons is a political call to arms to all Europeans to embrace the commons and build a new Europe.

Commons Network’s very own Sophie Bloemen and Thomas de Groot worked on this book for almost two years, doing research and interviews, working with academics, policy makers, authors and activists to paint a colourful picture of the commons as the blueprint for a new future, one that is inclusive, ecologically sustainable, equitable, democratic, collaborative, creative and resilient.

Our Commons features reflections on the enclosure of knowledge and the monopolisation of the digital sphere, stories about renewable energy cooperatives and community foodwaste initiatives and urgent pleas to see the city as a commons and to treat health as a common good. Published by the Institute of Network Cultures, the book is first released online as an e-book, free for all to download and share and as a printable PDF. The book will also be available on a wide variety of print-on-demand platforms.

In the next few months, Commons Network will organise a number of official events around the book. Please get in touch at thomas@commonsnetwork.eu if you are interested in hosting a book-launch with the editors and possibly with some of the contributors of the book. Off- and online media that are interested in publishing texts from the book or interviews with the editors and/or contributors are encouraged to reach out to thomas@commonsnetwork.eu.

Download the ePub or the print-PDF here and make sure to share this page with as many people as possible, using the hashtag #OurCommonsBook

For all further questions, press inquiries or event bookings, possible citations or cross-posting, or requests for hard-copy printed books, please do not hesitate to reach out to the editors, Thomas de Groot and Sophie Bloemen.

(thomas@commonsnetwork.eu)

(sophie@commonsnetwork.eu)

Reprinted from commonsnetwork, you can see the original post here.

The post New Book Out Now: Political Ideas for a New Europe appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Derek Wall: Almost every day, we learn of new horrors in the Middle East. Syria and Iraq are suffering from a brutal war. Fundamentalist groups like the so-called Islamic State and authoritarian leaders are murdering innocent citizens. Yet there is one sign of possible hope: in Northern Syria, the Kurdish people and their allies have established a secular, feminist and ecological republic, called Rojava, which means ‘the West’.

It would be easy to romanticise this – in a situation of conflict and war, it can be difficult to put high ideals into practice. Nonetheless, Rojava, with its organic agriculture, cooperatives, direct democracy and women’s leadership, is both fascinating and inspiring.

Most striking is the fact that Rojava is based on the teachings of a New York, working-class and Jewish-born green philosopher, Murray Bookchin. Bookchin, who died in 2006, is having a massive and massively positive effect in the Middle East. Ecology or Catastrophe is the unputdownable biography of Bookchin, which I am sure will be thought provoking to any member of the Green Party.

Bookchin was born in the 1921. His parents had emigrated from Russia and his grandmother had been a member of the Socialist Revolutionaries, a peasant- based radical organisation. From childhood, Bookchin was immersed in political activity and made a transition from socialism to anarchism to his own form of politics he called communalism.

He can be seen as an early advocate of radical green politics. His book, Our Synthetic Environment, published in 1962, discussed the dangers of pesticides. In the 1950s, he was already warning of the effects of climate change caused by fossil fuels. He campaigned against giant freeways that devastated cities and felt that cars were wrecking the environment.

Janet Biehl was Bookchin’s partner, and her book is honest, showing Murray’s flaws as well as his greatness. It is a very personal and sometimes sad book, but it is also political and philosophical, introducing the reader to important ideas.

Bookchin thought deeply about green politics, arguing that capitalism threatened our survival and that we need a democratic, ecological alternative. To challenge climate change and introduce a socially-just society isn’t easy, but Murray provides some ideas and inspiration we can learn from.

Reprinted blog by Derek Wall on Greenworld, you can see the original post here

Featured Image: “Kurdish YPG Fighters” by Kurdishstruggle is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

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This letter was collaboratively written with dozens of aligned groups. As the weeks of action called by Extinction Rebellion were coming to an end, our groups came together to reflect on the narrative, strategies, tactics and demands of a reinvigorated climate movement in the UK. In this letter we articulate a foundational set of principles and demands that are rooted in justice and which we feel are crucial for the whole movement to consider as we continue constructing a response to the ‘climate emergency’.

Dear Extinction Rebellion,

The emergence of a mass movement like Extinction Rebellion (XR) is an encouraging sign that we have reached a moment of opportunity in which there is both a collective consciousness of the immense danger ahead of us and a collective will to fight it. A critical mass agrees with the open letter launching XR when it states “If we continue on our current path, the future for our species is bleak.”

At the same time, in order to construct a different future, or even to imagine it, we have to understand what this “path” is, and how we arrived at the world as we know it now. “The Truth” of the ecological crisis is that we did not get here by a sequence of small missteps, but were thrust here by powerful forces that drove the distribution of resources of the entire planet and the structure of our societies. The economic structures that dominate us were brought about by colonial projects whose sole purpose is the pursuit of domination and profit. For centuries, racism, sexism and classism have been necessary for this system to be upheld, and have shaped the conditions we find ourselves in.

Another truth is that for many, the bleakness is not something of “the future”. For those of us who are indigenous, working class, black, brown, queer, trans or disabled, the experience of structural violence became part of our birthright. Greta Thunberg calls world leaders to act by reminding them that “Our house is on fire”. For many of us, the house has been on fire for a long time: whenever the tide of ecological violence rises, our communities, especially in the Global South are always first hit. We are the first to face poor air quality, hunger, public health crises, drought, floods and displacement.

XR says that “The science is clear: It is understood we are facing an unprecedented global emergency. We are in a life or death situation of our own making. We must act now.”  You may not realize that when you focus on the science you often look past the fire and us – you look past our histories of struggle, dignity, victory and resilience. And you look past the vast intergenerational knowledge of unity with nature that our peoples have. Indigenous communities remind us that we are not separate from nature, and that protecting the environment is also protecting ourselves. In order to survive, communities in the Global South continue to lead the visioning and building of new worlds free of the violence of capitalism. We must both centre those experiences and recognise those knowledges here.

Our communities have been on fire for a long time and these flames are fanned by our exclusion and silencing. Without incorporating our experiences, any response to this disaster will fail to change the complex ways in which social, economic and political systems shape our lives – offering some an easy pass in life and making others pay the cost. In order to envision a future in which we will all be liberated from the root causes of the climate crisis – capitalism, extractivism, racism, sexism, classism, ableism and other systems of oppression –  the climate movement must reflect the complex realities of everyone’s lives in their narrative.

And this complexity needs to be reflected in the strategies too. Many of us live with the risk of arrest and criminalization. We have to carefully weigh the costs that can be inflicted on us and our communities by a state that is driven to target those who are racialised ahead of those who are white. The strategy of XR, with the primary tactic of being arrested, is a valid one – but it needs to be underlined by an ongoing analysis of privilege as well as the reality of police and state violence. XR participants should be able to use their privilege to risk arrest, whilst at the same time highlighting the racialised nature of policing. Though some of this analysis has started to happen, until it becomes central to XR’s organising it is not sufficient. To address climate change and its roots in inequity and domination, a diversity and plurality of tactics and communities will be needed to co-create the transformative change necessary.

We commend the energy and enthusiasm XR has brought to the environmental movement, and it brings us hope to see so many people willing to take action. But as we have outlined here, we feel there are key aspects of their approach that need to evolve. This letter calls on XR to do more in the spirit of their principles which say they “are working to build a movement that is participatory, decentralised, and inclusive”. We know that XR has already organised various listening exercises, and acknowledged some of the shortcomings in their approach, so we trust XR and its members will welcome our contribution.

As XR draws this period of actions to a close, we hope our letter presents some useful reflections for what can come next. The list of demands that we present below are not meant to be exhaustive, but to offer a starting point that supports the conversations that are urgently needed.

Wretched of the Earth, together with many other groups, hold the following demands as crucial for a climate justice rebellion:

• Implement a transition, with justice at its core, to reduce UK carbon emissions to zero by 2030 as part of its fair share to keep warming below 1.5°C; this includes halting all fracking projects, free transport solutions and decent housing, regulating and democratising corporations, and restoring ecosystems.
• Pass a Global Green New Deal to ensure finance and technology for the Global South through international cooperation. Climate justice must include reparations and redistribution; a greener economy in Britain will achieve very little if the government continues to hinder vulnerable countries from doing the same through crippling debt, unfair trade deals, and the export of its own deathly extractive industries. This Green New Deal would also include an end to the arms trade. Wars have been created to serve the interests of corporations – the largest arms deals have delivered oil; whilst the world’s largest militaries are the biggest users of petrol.
• Hold transnational corporations accountable by creating a system that regulates them and stops them from practicing global destruction. This would include getting rid of many existing trade and investment agreements that enshrine the will of these transnational corporations.
• Take the planet off the stock market by restructuring the financial sector to make it transparent, democratised, and sustainable while discentivising investment in extractive industries and subsidising renewable energy programmes, ecological justice and regeneration programmes.
• End the hostile environment of walls and fences, detention centers and prisons that are used against racialised, migrant, and refugee communities. Instead, the UK should acknowledge it’s historic and current responsibilities for driving the displacement of peoples and communities and honour its obligation to them.
• Guarantee flourishing communities both in the global north and the global south in which everyone has the right to free education, an adequate income whether in or out of work, universal healthcare including support for mental wellbeing, affordable transportation, affordable healthy food, dignified employment and housing, meaningful political participation, a transformative justice system, gender and sexuality freedoms, and, for disabled and older people, to live independently in the community.

The fight for climate justice is the fight of our lives, and we need to do it right. We share this reflection from a place of love and solidarity, by groups and networks working with frontline communities, united in the spirit of building a climate justice movement that does not make the poorest in the rich countries pay the price for tackling the climate crisis, and refuses to sacrifice the people of the global South to protect the citizens of the global North. It is crucial that we remain accountable to our communities, and all those who don’t have access to the centres of power. Without this accountability, the call for climate justice is empty.

The Wretched of the Earth

• Argentina Solidarity Campaign
• Black Lives Matter UK
• BP or not BP
• Bolivian Platform on Climate Change
• Bristol Rising Tide
• Campaign Against the Arms Trade CAAT
• Coal Action Network
• Concrete Action
• Decolonising Environmentalism
• Decolonising our minds
• Disabled People Against the Cuts
• Earth in Brackets
• Edge Fund
• End Deportations
• Ende Gelände
• GAIA – Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives
• Global Forest Coalition
• Green Anticapitalist Front
• Gentle Radical
• Grow Heathrow/transition Heathrow
• Hambach Forest occupation
• Healing Justice London
• Labour Against Racism and Fascism
• Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants
• London campaign against police and state violence
• London Feminist Antifa
• London Latinxs
• Marikana Solidarity Campaign
• Mental Health Resistance Network
• Migrants Connections festival
• Migrants Rights Network
• Movimiento Jaguar Despierto
• Ni Una Menos UK
• Ota Benga Alliance for Peace
• Our Future Now
• People’s Climate Network
• Peoples’ Advocacy Foundation for Justice and
• Race on the Agenda (ROTA)
• Redress, South Africa
• Reclaim the Power
• Science for the People
• Platform
• The Democracy Centre
• The Leap
• Third World Network
• Tripod: Training for Creative Social Action
• War on Want

Wretched of The Earth is a grassroots collective for Indigenous, black, brown and diaspora groups and individuals demanding climate justice and acting in solidarity with our communities, both here in the UK and in Global South. Join our mailing list by completing this registration form.

Image of Wretched of the Earth bloc with “Still fighting CO2lonialism Your climate profits kill” banner.

Originally published on the Red Pepper website, 3rd May 2019: https://www.redpepper.org.uk/an-open-letter-to-extinction-rebellion/

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12.00pm, Thu 23 May 2019 – 6.00pm, Sat 3 August 2019

Arts Catalyst
74-76 Cromer Street
London
WC1H 8DR

FURTHER INFORMATION

Free, no need to book

we-are-in-this together-but-we-are-not-one-and-the-same” — Rosi Braidotti

Towards the Planetary Commons is a new exhibition investigating agency and autonomy in the face of global ecological crises. Encompassing artist film, an evolving installation and a programme of talks and workshops, the programme reflects on different ways of living and how new knowledge can emerge from struggles against current ecopolitical challenges.

Part I
Showing Marwa Arsanios: Who’s Afraid of Ideology? Part I (2017) and Who’s Afraid of Ideology? Part 2(2019)
23 May – 6 July 2019 | Preview: Wednesday 22 May, 6.30pm 

Part II 
Showing Paloma Polo: The earth of the Revolution (2019) 
11 July – 3 August 2019 | Preview: Wednesday 10 July, 6.30pm 

Neoliberal policies imposed on communities of humans and non-humans reinforce strategies of land grabbing and monoculture, threatening the land and its biodiversity. Whilst corporations and governments alike remain removed from accountability for pollution, natural resource extraction and displacement of entire communities, across the world, in regions such as the Philippines and Kurdistan, people are collectively adopting new modes of decision-making and self-governance through approaches inspired by eco-feminism, class struggle and planetary commoning practices. 

In one room of the exhibition is a rotating programme of artist films by Lebanese artist Marwa Arsanios and Spanish artist Paloma Polo, all of which are presented for the first time in the UK. 

In Who’s Afraid of Ideology? Part I (2017) Arsanios addresses forms of self-governance and knowledge production that have emerged from the autonomous women’s movement in Rojava. Shot in the mountains of Kurdistan and through recorded testimony, the film tracks the practical work of the movement – how to use an axe, how to eat fish within its biological cycles of production, when to cut down a tree for survival and when to save it. It explores how individuals come to a conscious participation in the movement; how they become part of the guerrilla, highlighting group learning as essential to the movement itself. In the film, the soundtrack of testimonies, analyses, and critical histories from those within and in proximity to the movement are edited together in a single, solid density. In Who’s Afraid of Ideology? Part 2 (2019) Arsanios focuses on the ecofeminist groups that form part of the movement, honing in on the alliance between communities of women, nature and animals and problematising the care roles ‘naturally’ assigned to women. 

The second phase in the programme, will see artist Paloma Polo’s The earth of the Revolution (2019) premiered for the first time. Emerging from Polo’s research in the Philippines, cultivated over three years, and during which time the artist located herself at the heart of the ongoing democratic struggles in the region – a struggle in which marginalised countryside communities are actively fighting for democratic and progressive transformations, emancipation and the common good – this new work offers viewers a glimpse into the political practices that underlie the revolution. Segmented into scenes, the film closely follows the guerrilla as they go about their everyday tasks, from lessons and habitual meetings, reporting and assessments to personal conversations and confidences, moments of solitude and rest. Blurring the distinctions between documentary and artist film, The earth of the Revolution seeks to expand our understanding of how revolution manifests itself in a contemporary context, reflecting on some of the positive human elements and processes that might arise from such conflicts. 

Arts Catalyst’s second space will take the form of a ‘living room,’ an evolving installation showcasing case studies that emerge from the programme, presented within the framework of a modular environment designed by artist Lorenzo Sandoval. Works by collective practice They Are Here, artists-in-residence throughout 2019, will be presented alongside Sandoval’s installation. They Are Here draw from research over the past two years into Wardian Cases, a botanical container developed in the early 19th Century to transport plants across great distances. Prototypes for New Wardian Cases (2019) are material structures modelled on non-European architectural histories that function as a form of speculative design. In the context of the public programme, They Are Here will present a live-mix of their new audio-visual work, BRUNO, an enveloping, free-ranging meditation on the relationships between ecology, migration and the urban environment. 

Towards the Planetary Commons is part of Arts Catalyst’s Test Sites programme, an ongoing co-inquiry exploring the rapid transformations in human and non-human lives caused by environmental change. Featuring works by international artists, this next phase in the project opens up the programme to broader planetary perspectives. An accompanying programme of talks, conversations and workshops will be announced soon via Arts Catalyst’s website.

Image: Paloma Polo: Still from ‘The earth of the Revolution’ (2019), courtesy the artist

Reposted from the Arts Catalyst website: https://www.artscatalyst.org/towards-planetary-commons-reimagining-infrastructures-autonomy

The post Arts Catalyst Event in London, UK – Towards the planetary commons: reimagining infrastructures for autonomy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Innovation is an obsession in our current society. We are enamored with technological innovations, we celebrate innovators. We want to be them. And yet when you look closely at the various crises and risks around the world, it becomes clear that the human propensity for innovation is again and again repeatedly at the heart of our collective crises.

Innovation in broad terms is responsible for the decline of critical ecosystems, the production of an unsafe climate, and an unprecedented level of risk that human beings face today. Nuclear weapons, which the US used against Japan to bring it to its knees and end the war, led to the Pandora’s box of weapons proliferation. Now US foreign policy is obsessed with the problem, involving North Korea, Iran, and the detente with Russia. The use of fossil fuels and the combustion engine, brought us among other things motorized vehicles, of course transformed our ability to travel. At the same time it is fundamentally complicit to air pollution in cities and carbon emissions, and of course automobile traffic!

Do not get me wrong I am actually a technological optimist! But my optimism does not come from thinking about the next great product, the next innovation. It comes from thinking about how as human beings we can change our consciousness, culture, worldview, our orientation towards how we interact with the world. So at the heart of innovation is a fundamental contradiction that as human beings we are being fundamentally confronted with today. Innovation and our capacity to transform the world around us is fundamental to our prosperity, our capacity to communicate with each other, indeed now it has become fundamental to the transformation of human knowledge. And at the same time it is brought an unprecedented scale of crises, risk and unintended consequences.

The solution is not to disown innovation, pretend that the 20th century didn’t happen. The solution as well is not to deny that innovation has a shadow — that it has contradictions. The solution is to engage with this contradiction actively and inquire into its transformation, the possibility of an integration, of a transcendent position that can hold the complexity of the contradictions we experience today. For thinking about our future, our shadow is our friend.

This is what I hope to develop in this talk. To do this we need a method like Causal Layered Analysis to help us go down the rabbit hole from symptoms to systems to epistemology and to core metaphors that help us understand our human predicament. So let’s begin.

Symptoms

The most basic symptoms that we see today are what most concerns us. A recent report highlighted the decline in insect numbers around the world. We see the collapse of bee colonies in many parts of the world. There is now a Great Pacific Garbage Patch that swirls around in the ocean, with the plastic slowly breaking down and filtering into every ocean-based ecosystem. And most reports on climate change are now saying that 1.5° to 2° warming is a conservative estimate, and when we look at the actual implications of 2° to 3° warming they are profound and disturbing. There are otherwise sane people talking about civilizational collapse. But, if we look at a deeper level, however, we begin to see that these are all symptoms of a system that ‘intentionally’ produces this as an outcome.

Systems

For example economies today are interlinked in a grand drama of industry, innovation and competition. This industrial innovation system is supported by every major player that is part of it. In the US this is largely funneled through the defense industries, which act as a subsidy for commercial applications. In Japan they have the ministry of industry trade and innovation. The EU has its own system. The field of foresight actually got its start supporting the industrial innovation system. I’ve call this the STIF model. Science technology and innovation foresight. Through futures research, research institutes identify the growth industries, technologies and opportunities, which helps governments to prioritize research areas, then the money funnels through. The system has been working for well over 70 years, at least since the 1950s. As R&D gets funded, the prototypes move into commercial application, driving industrial transformation. This has basically been the formula for the dramatic technological revolution that we have experienced over the last 70 years.

And yet, as the sociologist Ulrich Beck argued, the same system has produced risk at a grand scale — he defined this as the “global risk society”. Rather than some kind of fluky happenstance production of risk — his argument is that it is actually a systematic production of risk. And if we look at the complicity of this system in our most pressing challenges today, this becomes very clear. Today we see new breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and machine learning, which herald an age of robots-as-servants. But it also has brought us into the potential death spiral of autonomous military robotics. We have systematically designed our global economic system to produce risk.

This of course was coupled with the growth mindset coming out of the 1940s and 50s. As a bulwark against communism, the West adopted Keynesian economics, with its emphasis on economic growth. Of course this economic growth was to be built on the back of this technological revolution, productivity gains and more jobs. And so we not just designed a global economic system to produce risk, but also to produce an unsustainable trajectory of economic growth, given the carrying capacity of our ecological systems. Current estimates show we are well beyond 1.5 planets of carrying capacity. A recent report shows that our capacity for resource extraction far outstrips the earth’s long term carrying capacity. We now have an “earth overshoot day” dedicated to highlighting this. We now use one Earth’s worth of resources in 7 months. The other 5 months are “deficit” or “loan” months — it will need to be paid back. And can I just add that eco-futurists and ecological economists like Hazel Henderson, Herman Daly and Donella Meadows have been talking about this since the 1970s! For 50 years!

Then there is capitalism. Now I am not going to argue here that markets and competition are not needed. I believe markets and competition are fundamentally needed. When I choose a cell phone provider I want to have some choice, and I want one group to be competing against another to provide me with the best service. When I want to go down the street and buy some bread, I don’t want to be limited to one business, whether private, public or otherwise. I want some choice where I buy my bread. I’m gonna buy my bread from the people that are friendliest to me and whose bread is the best and the tastiest. So we’re not talking here about markets and competition. But I am no Milton Friedman.

In simple terms capitalism is a system of accumulating value — by shareholder to accumulate value. This hasn’t changed much in about 400 years of history. The Dutch East India Company and the English East India Company, for example practiced this through a variety of methods. They were backed by their shareholders, their investors and they were tasked with bringing back / accumulating more value. The problem is having been removed from the source of where that value was coming from, terrible things can happen — the company takes land, kills, even enslaved people. We know this from the history of mercantile colonialism.

But the core capitalist logic has not changed much. So when you look at an operation like Facebook, we say okay Facebook is different. It’s connecting all these people, it’s making all kinds of things possible. But capitalism creates social externalities. In the process of accumulating value for shareholders, the company creates a problem somewhere else. So for example now we see a lawsuit against Facebook by content moderators, who are arguing that they experience severe psychological trauma for having to moderate disturbing Facebook content for hours on end — they have posttraumatic stress disorder. It’s like that scene out of the Mexican sci-fi film the Sleep Dealer. Technology has replaced human labor but it hasn’t replaced human exploitation.

And this is not to mention the way in which Facebook has driven social polarization. To be fair it’s not just Facebook but it’s a whole suite of social media platforms. But research that has come out recently essentially argues that the way in which content gets contained within filter bubbles, and the algorithms that govern the content that we see produces a web of self-referentiality — people are more and more exposed to the same or similar ideas reinforcing their thinking, indeed making their thinking more entrenched and extreme. And it’s not in their interest to give you content that’s going to contradict your worldview. Why would they? They just want you to spend more time in front of the screen so they can sell you more advertisements. If you get confused, experience cognitive dissonance and then have to work this out, that is not more advertisements for them. So we have Trump and we have Bolsonaro… and other countries where, the social externality of capitalist driven social media is social polarization. If you ask me this is a very high price to pay. So at a deeper level we have innovation and technology embedded in political economy.

Epistemology

But I want to take us one step deeper and explore something else. And this is that there’s been a fundamental disconnect in the way that innovation and technology have played out in the 20th and early 21st centuries, with respect to our understanding of ecological systems. It is a remarkable fact that in the West the systems literature only really emerged in the late 60s and 70s. Somehow in the madness of progress and modernity something profound was lost. There were presumptions about the distinction between man and nature. “Nature” is out there somewhere — “man” is here. I use the word MAN deliberately as this distinction emerged in a patriarchal era.

The fundamental premise here is that human beings are at the center of the world context. We can shape the nature to the will of the human. We can pour pesticides and fertilizers onto soils with abandon. We can divert water systems any way we want. We can operate as masters and controllers. Its humanity with a God complex! But in fact this worldview has fundamental blind spots. This is the same worldview that empowers a company like Monsanto to super-sell glyphosate to farmers as a way to kill weeds. The only problem is, the glyphosate also kills farmers. So in the US today there is a case in the upper courts where farmers are suing Monsanto for the effects of glyphosate. And it’s been implicated in colony collapse disorder. And what do farmers and bees have in common? Besides being very busy? They are both living systems. Glyphosate is both one of the key contenders as the culprit of colony collapse disorder, it is also a key contenders for a cause of cancer in humans.

Myth and Metaphor

This then brings me to the core premise of this talk — a fundamentally unprovable hypothesis, but to me it makes sense. I believe that hardwired into the human psyche is a technological bias. From our origins it was technology that became the success formula for our species. If wanted to defend ourself from lion, before technology we had our bare hands.

Some anthropologists argue that the physiological transformation of hominids was driven by the invention of cooking. By being able to cook raw food we were able to eat food quicker and digest faster — we were able to consume more calories. They argue that the evidence shows that the invention of cooking coincides with a rapid expansion in the size of the human brain, essentially that the capacity to absorb more nutrients through cooking was reflected physiologically. This might explain why cooking shows are so popular.

And this brings me to the wonderful image and metaphor in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey. When the proto-human throws the bone into the air, it flies up and spins and becomes a space station. And we are projected hundreds of thousands of years into the future, to the year 2001 — (which for us has passed but those in the 1960s it was the future). The significance of this image cannot be understated. For me it is nothing less than the affirmation of who we are as technological beings. Humans don’t do technology — we are technology. But as we saw with the tragic unfolding in 2001 a Space Odyssey, the film itself, technology and innovation can have some unintended consequences. The artificial intelligence that ran the ship — Hal 9000 — went a little crazy.

And this brings me to the wonderful image and metaphor in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey. When the proto-human throws the bone into the air, it flies up and spins and becomes a space station. And we are projected hundreds of thousands of years into the future, to the year 2001 — (which for us has passed but those in the 1960s it was the future). The significance of this image cannot be understated. For me it is nothing less than the affirmation of who we are as technological beings. Humans don’t do technology — we are technology. But as we saw with the tragic unfolding in 2001 a Space Odyssey, the film itself, technology and innovation can have some unintended consequences. The artificial intelligence that ran the ship — Hal 9000 — went a little crazy.

And so embedded in our dreamscape of who we are is also a nightmare. I believe films speak from the collective unconscious. It’s an idea from philosopher Susanne Langer. And I believe what the collective unconscious is saying is that at a certain level of awareness we know here is a fundamental contradiction, and this unease, this terror, expresses this feeling in our relationship to technology — indeed who we are as technological beings. Humanity’s disowned self is speaking to us through the medium of collective dreams and nightmares — film. And this gets reiterated in film after film after film. We see this in films like Terminator, in Ex Machina, in so many films.

Reconceptualizing

So now this is a very good place to come back to the core idea for the talk — that we have a problem with innovation. But that there are some solutions. And so I want to provide a few design principles that we might think about in terms of solving the problem of innovation — in the way that it “defutures” to use Tony Fry’s terminology — in its current manifestation, and how it might “refuture” in its next manifestation.

So innovation that refutures — that gives us a future rather than taking it away — this is anticipatory innovation. It is not the next cool gadget for the future. Because as I discussed the cool gadget of the future, whether it’s an iPhone or a plastic bottle or artificial intelligence or whatever, it is an expression of humanity’s ingenuity but also its shadow, it is contradiction embodied.

But innovations that that come from an an awareness of this contraction and which “refuture”, this is anticipatory innovation. It is not really a new idea. People like Bucky Fuller, Lewis Mumford, Ivan Illich, Hazel Henderson, many others articulated similar and profound sentiments decades ago.

So drawing from this conversation there are four design strategies for anticipatory innovation here:

• Piecemeal amelioration of symptoms
• Cosmo localization
• Understanding the web of life
• Owning our shadow as technological beings

Piecemeal amelioration

At the most basic level, at the level of symptoms, we need lots of projects and lots of new technologies. Let’s clean up the great Pacific Garbage Patch. We need renewable technologies, we need low carbon technologies. We need to sequester carbon as quickly as possible.

Cosmo localization

But at the level of political economy we have to do something completely different. Instead of designing and producing something in two different parts of the world, meant to compete with each other, proprietary and un-shareable, producing as many problems in the long-term as it solves, we need to mutualise the production of value for mutual sustainment. This is Cosmo localization (also known as “Design Global Manufacture Local“), a political economic vision shared by a number of people around the world.

The basic idea is that we are in the era of planetary challenges that have local manifestations. To solve local problems we need to enlist a globally distributed community which can pool knowledge, expertise and resources. In biological terms this is called “stigmergy” — whereby as a global community we build on each others work toward shared goals and outcomes. Thus a “planetary stigmergy” is the mutualization of value, designs, knowledge and strategy at a globally coordinated level. Cosmo-localism entails developing such planetary contributory systems, meaning that for any one problem or challenge, local or distributed, people contribute to the problem solving from everywhere.

Michel Bauwens argues that “cosmo-localization is a new paradigm for the production and distribution of value that combines the universal sharing of knowledge (cosmo), but the ‘subsidiarity’ of production as close as possible to the place of need (‘local’), essentially through distributed local manufacturing and voluntary mutualization. The general idea is not to impede technological progress though intellectual property, in an era of climate change where we cannot afford the 20-year lag in innovation due to patents; and to radically diminish the physical cost of transport through local production. Cosmo-localization is based on the belief that the mutualization of provisioning systems can radically diminish the human footprint on natural resources, which need to be preserved for future generations and all beings of the planet.”

Cosmo-localization describes the process of bringing together our globally distributed knowledge and design commons with the high-to-low tech capacity for localized production. It is based on the ethical premise, drawing from cosmopolitanism, that people and communities should be universally empowered with the heritage of human ingenuity that allow them/us to more effectively create livelihoods and solve problems in their local environments, and that, reciprocally, local production and innovation should support the wellbeing of our planetary commons.

Likewise, Vasilis Kostakis and Andreas Roos argue “what is light (knowledge, design) becomes global, while what is heavy (machinery) is local, and ideally shared. Design global, manufacture local (DGML) demonstrates how a technology project can leverage the digital commons to engage the global community in its development, celebrating new forms of cooperation. Unlike large-scale industrial manufacturing, the DGML model emphasizes application that is small-scale, decentralized, resilient, and locally controlled.”

And thus Cosmo-localization is a conscious twining of a consequentialist cosmopolitan ethics with technology. It takes the view that technology is not value neutral, but rather proscribed by discourse, culture and worldview. The same cultural milieu that gave us “disruptive innovation” is one that is premised on individualism, disrupt or be disrupted, and lacks a concern for the social implications and applications for technology — and reflects an unconscious stance toward technology, as something “out there” rather than as an integral part of what human beings are.

This twining of a planetary ethics, with the emerging potential of open source design and the new localized production technologies being born augurs a transformation. A new universal human rights and ethics applies to the right to the human legacy of designs — a global design commons; This global design commons needs to be directed toward the production of goods and services within planetary boundaries; And thus a planetary contributory system emerges where people coordinate in solving shared problems. Problem solving is localized while simultaneously being supported by a global web of solidarity.

Understanding the Web of Life

At another level, though, we need to innovate with a clear understanding that we are embedded in the web of life. We are not masters of it, we are not controllers of it. In fact we emerged from it. In our DNA and in our physiology is the legacy of 4 billion years of evolution. So we need to innovate with a clear understanding of ecological principles. These principles can’t be covered here in great depth because it’s actually quite complex — there are many context and there’s a lot going on. There is permaculture, Panarchy, Regenerative agriculture, biomimicry, and a whole number of strategies and frameworks that can help us innovate using principles for ecological resilience.

For starters we need to understand that our fundamental life-support system is this complex living system which is our planet. This is the fundamental unit. At a bioregional scale we need to really understand the complex and nuanced interactions between species. At the level of the human body we need to see ourselves as living systems. Whatever we put into the environment will become us — whether it’s pollution or pesticides or radioactivity. And at the microlevel we need to understand the complex dynamics that provide the foundations for resilience — the health of soils, microbiological dynamics and what it means to have healthy gut bacteria flowing through our body. We are part of the web of life.

Already there’s plenty of projects that take ecological principles into account. The literature around the circular economy is inspired by how the web of life works — nothing is wasted, every output is an input for another process. And much of this also can be found in premodern systems of production. In Edo period Japan there were a very well developed systems of what we would call today a circular economy to deal with human waste in urban environments that was then used in rural farming, and how they had a complex artisanal system of repairing broken items. So today we also have the right to repair movement.

And in Mexico City, there is the precolonial legacy of Tenochtitlan. A city that, at the time of the conquest, had a larger population than any European city, and sustained itself through a complex system of what we would now call aquaponics. I don’t want to over-romantisize the Aztecs, but the main idea is that we can learn a lot from history — many of the “new” ways forward are embedded in the past.

The Commons

At the most fundamental level we are grappling with who we are as technological beings. Really until we fully accept the shadow of our technological self, we will continue to produce crisis after crisis, externality after externality. So the last key idea is the idea of the commons. I have defined the commons as that which we mutually depend on for our survival and wellbeing, such that we are implied into new systems of collaborative governance of these commons. And when we look at what this is, there is a lot there — we depend on:

• Healthy soils
• A safe climate
• Water
• Honest media
• Good systems of governance
• The list goes on…

So when we think about our technological shadow, well indeed, we can also see that this is part of the commons. We need to innovate in a way that creates a future rather than takes it away — we need anticipatory innovation. We need to make sure innovation creates less risk and not more. And so, anticipatory innovation as a practice is part of our commons.

And indubitably, when we realise that we are mutually implicated in something that we mutually depend on for our survival and wellbeing, well, that then is our call to action, that we need to engage in the governance of this, the management of this, that we become active shapers of it, rather than victims of inaction. This is “commons governance”, which has a rich literature, and as David Bollier and Silke Helfrich argue, means we become “commoners” and practice “commoning”. In practical terms this means applying the precautionary principle more actively, as a partnership and political contract between citizens, the state and commercial sectors.

Conclusion

If we bring on board these design principles, we can create innovations that refuture, rather than defuture. We can practice an anticipatory innovation that can make our world a healthier and safer place for all of us.

I use a technique called the anticipatory experimentation method, that helps to challenge “used futures”, create new ones, to bring the preferred future into the present through experiments that can scale for impact. It’s a methodology for anticipatory innovation.

The great futurist Hazel Henderson talked about our entire planetary existence is one great laboratory of learning. The challenges we face collectively are like a planetary classroom. We are being asked to learn something fundamental about ourselves, about how we behave in the world, about a new level of thinking.

We can take the crises we face as a signifier of many different things, how terrible the human species is, how difficult the challenges is …. There are some lazy ways of thinking that lead to fatalism.

I prefer to take our current dilemma as a way to frame humanity’s evolutionary leap. We need to ask “what is this planetary era asking us to learn collectively today?”

If we can use Henderson’s metaphor, then the lesson plan for humanity becomes pretty clear.

The post Anticipatory Innovation: Integrating the Shadow of Design appeared first on P2P Foundation.

‘Environ-Mental Health’
on Saturday 23 February 2019,
from 1:00 to 6:30pm

Click here for booking

featuring special guest Nora Bateson

Nora Bateson , based in Sweden and the USA, is an award-winning filmmaker, social justice-oriented systems thinker, writer and educator.

Her work asks the question:

“How we can improve our perception of the complexity we live within,
so we may improve our interaction with the world?”

Nora wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father, Gregory Bateson. Her work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology and information technology together in a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems.

Her book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles released by Triarchy Press, UK, 2016, a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity is the core text of the Harvard University LILA program 2017-18. Her new book, Warm Data, will be released in 2019 by Triarchy Press.

A big shout out to VMIAC – https://www.vmiac.org.au/  – The Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council – who have generously provided their spacious event venue for this independent ‘not-for-profit’ public forum.

The event is ticketed – to book please go to Trybooking – https://www.trybooking.com/BARTZ

Any proceeds will go to the International Bateson Institute – http://internationalbatesoninstitute.org/

Nora Bateson’s father, Gregory, the subject of her award-winning film, ‘An Ecology of Mind’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnL0ZB1SzZY and https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bateson

critiqued the biomedical model of mental illness (genetic determinants and chemical changes) and proposed a much broader, more integrated socio-ecological epistemology of mental health.

He developed the notion of the double-bind and contributed enormously to the growth of family therapy, and community and ecological systems approaches to communicative and relational health and our understanding of mental illness.

“Rigor alone is paralytic death, but imagination alone is insanity.”

― Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature

“We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong” 
― Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind

Gregory Bateson’s first wife was the anthropologist Margaret Mead, who went on to become president of the World Federation for Mental Health.

“Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements

are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals.”

― Margaret Mead

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

― Margaret Mead

Environ-Mental Health will be conducted over four sessions from 1:00 to 6:30pm:

1. a ‘scene-setting’ Warm Data and Mental Illness short presentation from Nora Bateson
2. a dialogue on resistance to and transcendence of the status quo hegemonic model with VMIAC Human Rights Adviser and mental health advocate and consultant, Indigo Daya
3. a dialogue on attachment, love and biological, psychological, socio-cultural diversity with systems family therapist, educator and author of ‘Rethinking Love’, Claire Miran-Khan
4. a dialogue on climate/environmental/relational threats/opportunities – mutual self-help, media ecology open dialogue and peer support with MemeFest founder Oliver Vodeb and Laceweb curator Les Spencer.

Intention: The purpose of the event is to engage with and explore the full range of situations, contexts and relationships and determinants and dynamics that influence mental health and mental illness in the 21^st Century.

What to expect: to participate in a lively, thought provoking exploration of our current global and local social, cultural, political, economic, ecological and cosmological challenges and opportunities and how they impact our individual and collective emotional, psychological and mental health.

Anticipate: the offering up of many solutions to currently intractable mental health system crises, a broadening and deepening of the context and relationships relevant to mental health and mental illness and much ‘food for thought’ for the forthcoming Victorian Royal Commission into Mental Health.

Consumers: Consumer/survivors of institutional psychiatric services are encouraged to attend; as are mental health professionals; carers, family and community members; as well as human rights and social, cultural, democratic, ecological and climate justice advocates and activists. 

Here’s the ticket booking link again: https://www.trybooking.com/BARTZ

Inclusion: If cost is a barrier for you, please contact Daryl Taylor on 0497 097 047 to discuss how you can secure a place.

Nora Bateson’s social media sites and links are listed below:

Engaging Emergence: https://vimeo.com/258433882 

Twitter https://twitter.com/NoraBateson?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

WordPress: https://norabateson.wordpress.com/ 

Medium: https://medium.com/@norabateson 

Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nora-bateson-b4a2456/detail/recent-activity/posts/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/norabateson 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/norabateson/ 

Website: https://batesoninstitute.org/ 

Film: http://www.anecologyofmind.com/ 

Reviews: http://www.anecologyofmind.com/reviews.html 

Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bateson  

In 2019 the Victorian Royal Commission into Mental Health will begin deliberations.

‘The royal commission is going to give us the answers we need. It is going to change lives. It is going to save lives. Only a royal commission will help us build the mental health system our community deserves.’
― Daniel Andrews, Premier of Victoria

“VMIAC welcomes the Labor Party’s promise of a Royal Commission if re-elected. We believe that an inquiry into mental health services in our state is long overdue and urgently needed. As a peak organisation representing Victorian people with an experience of mental distress or emotional issues, VMIAC hear hourly from people who are hurt and distressed by their lack of access to support, or their treatment within Victoria’s mental health system. The impact of treatment is often worse than the problem people presented with. VMIAC believes that the terms of reference to this Royal Commission must be wide ranging and led by the people experiencing these traumas. We need the Royal Commission to have the same focus as any royal commission: the people who’ve been hurt, not the people with the power to harm.”

― Maggie Toko, VMIAC CEO

https://youtu.be/cC0txyEaRQ0 and: https://www.vmiac.org.au/royal-commission-into-mental-health/

“Mental illness remains a serious health issue in Victoria and throughout the country, with one in five Australians experiencing a mental health illness or disorder, and almost half experiencing a mental health condition at some point in their lives. In addition, the national suicide rate has spiked to its highest rate in the past decade, more than 3000 Australians, and more than 600 Victorians, taking their own lives in a year. In the face of these challenges, however, Victoria also has the lowest funding per head of population of all the states and territories for mental health – despite significant funding boosts from the State Government. This has led to what many refer to as a ‘broken’ mental health system, which is what Premier Andrews has said he hopes to fix with the results of the royal commission.”

― Amanda Lyons, Journalist, RACGP

Source: https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/professional/will-the-promised-victorian-royal-commission-into

“The dominant model of progress and development reflects one particular worldview: modernity. Modernisation is a pervasive, complex, multidimensional process which characterises our era. Industrialisation, globalisation, urbanisation, democratisation, scientific and technological advance, capitalism, secularism, rationalism, individualism and consumerism, all part of the processes of cultural Westernisation and material progress (measured as economic growth) …. In contrast, psycho-social dynamics are all about relationships: between us, separately and together, and with other things or entities, both physical and metaphysical. They describe the ways in which social conditions affect individual psychology and behaviour and vice versa, and how perceptions, expectations and values influence the intrinsic meanings of life events and social situations, and so affect our emotional responses. These interactions can bring satisfaction, happiness, contentment and fulfilment – or cause stress, depression, anxiety, isolation, insecurity and hostility. They frame how we see the world and our place in it, and so what we do in the world, shaping our personal lives and, collectively, the societies in which we live.”

― Richard Eckersley, Is the West Really the Best?

The post ‘Environ-Mental Health’ – a dialogue with Nora Bateson appeared first on P2P Foundation.

January 2019

We, intellectuals, academics, artists, activists and others in solidarity, as well as organizations, associations and collectives from across the world, express our solidarity with the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in this critical moment in its history, and condemn the ongoing campaign of disinformation, lies, and slander directed against the Zapatistas.

For us, and for many others around the world, the Zapatista struggle is a key referent for resistance, dignity, integrity and political creativity. 25 years ago, the cry of Ya Basta! was a historically transcendent event and one of the first categorical rejections of neoliberal globalization at a planetary scale, because it opened the way toward the critique and refusal of a model that at that time seemed unquestionable. It was and continues to be an expression of the legitimate struggle of indigenous peoples against the domination and contempt they have suffered for centuries and for their rights to autonomy. The self-government that the Zapatistas have put into practice with the Juntas de Buen Gobierno(Good Government Councils) in the 5 Caracoles is an example of radical democracy that inspires people and should be studied in social science departments around the world. For us, the Zapatista construction of autonomy represents the persistent and honest search for an alternative and emancipatory model crucial for a humanity facing the challenges of a world that is rapidly sinking into a deepening economic, social, political, ecological, and human crisis.

We therefore express our concern for the Zapatista communities and many other indigenous peoples in Mexico whose territories are being attacked by mining, tourism, agribusiness, and large infrastructure projects, etc., as recently denounced by the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the Indigenous Governing Council (CIG) of Mexico. At this very moment, the new Mexican administration is imposing a series of large-scale development projects — including the Trans-isthmus Corridor, a one million hectare commercial tree planting project, and the so-called “Mayan Train”– that Subcomandante Moisés, EZLN spokesperson, recently denounced as a humiliation and provocation that would have very serious impacts on the territories of the Mayan peoples of southeastern Mexican.

In addition to the devastating environmental effects and the massive tourist development the “Mayan Train” is designed to unleash, we are concerned about the pseudo-ritual asking permission from Mother Earth that was used to legitimize the race to begin laying its tracks, an act that the Zapatista spokesperson denounced as unacceptably mockery. We are outraged by ongoing preparation for further attacks on Zapatista territories and the denial of indigenous people’s rights, including their right to prior, free and informed consultation and consent, as established in ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples. This represents a serious violation of Mexico’s international commitments.

We echo the EZLN’s total rejection of these and other mega-projects that seriously threaten the autonomous territories and ways of life of indigenous peoples. 

We denounce in advance any aggression against Zapatista communities, either directly by the Mexican State, or through groups or organizations of armed or unarmed “civilians.” We hold the Mexican government accountable for any confrontation that may arise through the attempted implementation of these mega-projects, which represent an already defunct, unsustainable and devastating model of “development” that is determined within the highest spheres of power in violation of the rights of original peoples.

We call on all good-hearted people to see through the current wave of disinformation about the Zapatistas and about the proposed mega-projects, and to be alert to the imminent risk of aggression against Zapatista communities and other indigenous peoples.

To read the list of current signatories and add your own name, visit: http://solidarityfrombelow.org/

The post 2019: Letter of solidarity and support for the Zapatista resistance and autonomy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This episode looks at the successful and ongoing story of the Ghana Permaculture Institute and their work in creating region-wide economic development using permaculture strategies. Dr. Paul Yeboah has not only restored the fertility and the water table of his 30 acre demonstration site, but he has created a processing system for a number of local crops to add value that is then returned to the farmers, improving their livelihoods and basic standard of living. He has 10,000 farmers growing moringa, 3,000 producing honey, as well as many others growing other fragrant plants for essential oils that he is processing and selling on the local and global markets. His economic organization is making a huge impact and now the government of Ghana is paying him to advocate for permaculture and promote the economic and ecological models he has pioneered. This is a success story with lots of wisdom to share from West Africa.

WEBSITE
permacultureghana.wordpress.com
ghanapermaculturei.wix.com/permaculture

BIO:
Paul Yeboah, is an educator, farmer, permaculturist, community developer, and social entrepreneur. He is the founder and coordinator of the Ghana Permaculture Institute and Network in Techiman, Ghana, West Africa. It is located in the Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana. The purpose of the Institute is to build and maintain a stable food system, to take care of the local ecosystems, and to improve the quality of life in the rural areas. The GPN trains students and community in sustainable ecological farming techniques. They support projects throughout Ghana; women groups, micro-finance projects; teach growing Moringa; mushroom production; alley cropping, food forests development and Agroforestry.

Image: Flickr

The post Dr. Paul Yeboah: Region-wide Permaculture Economic Development appeared first on P2P Foundation.