This first part of community development deals more with business aspects involved in the technology of buildings. For a while back in the 1960s especially, everyone went into cheap efficiency buildings – concrete blocks basically. But buildings are where we work and live, and if they are sterile, then the Read more…
Continuing on from my last post about other frameworks that are leading the way to changes in business philosophies and practice towards sustainability. Just to show how difficult it can be in our current business paradigm, authors Esty & Winston (Green to Gold, 2009), wrote about the problems with ethical Read more…
In this post I again have taken several comments out of my Environmental Communications Text, Chapter 20. As we think about re-conditioning ourselves away from the consumer and profit only worldviews conditioning, a reminder that being aware that you have been conditioned to begin with, is not only necessary, but Read more…
In this post I have taken several comments out of my Environmental Communications Text, Chapter 20. To pass outside one’s comfort zone means to embrace the unknown and face the fear of failure. Doing the right thing is such a journey when you often have to move beyond the socially Read more…
“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.” Mahatma Gandhi In this post I have taken several comments out of my Sustainable Living Text. Why do we accept the flawed GDP measure Read more…
When I was visiting Eire in 2010, I spent a day with critical economist Richard Douthwaite (Book: Short Circuit; The Growth Illusion; The Ecology of Money) to probe his views. After several hours of pleasant discussion, I asked him what he thought a feasible new economy would actually look like. Read more…
I ended the last post with a statement from Daniel Quinn concluding that the path forward is to recondition ourselves to simply begin anew and stop relying on old failed paradigms to somehow work out solutions for us. When I cover alternative economic paradigms, I am often asked why Read more…
In my Sustainable Living textbook, I have a chapter on economics. Recently, I was looking at it and pondering on how many years I have been trying to get people to see that money and more ‘stuff’ does not make us happy over the long term. I went through my Read more…
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come…” Victor Hugo We have just come through the Christmas Holiday, where in countries where Christianity is a primary religion, we at least, for one day a year espouse, “peace on Earth and good will to all people.” We have Read more…
In the previous post I talked about false narratives that continue to persuade us of the false reality of scarcity, which in turn causes us to make poor decisions about how we live. Yet, what is the alternative? Listening to alternative news and finding out about other grassroots perspectives form Read more…
As an Addendum to the last post, in the USA, in 1949, the Federal Communications Commission created he Fairness Doctrine – “All controversial issues of public importance must be covered in a way that is honest, equitable, and balanced way.” Reporters argued that they, not the FCC, should make decisions Read more…
Most of the problems in the world can be tied one way or another to money, and by default to the need to keep acquiring it – it is what drives our failing world economy. We hear of the levels of money held by the uberwealthy and also the debts Read more…
If standard of living is your major objective, quality of life almost never improves, but if quality of life is your number one objective, your standard of living almost always improves. Zig Ziglar If there is one thing that characterizes how ‘civilized’ humans have lived this past 500 years (at Read more…
When thinking over what large urban centers might look like in a sustainable world, the conclusion is that they cannot be concrete, glass and asphalt sprawls. The reason I say this is because the world sustainability implies self-sufficiency and current large urban centers are anything but self-sufficient. Nearly everything a Read more…
An overview of how cities developed and overwhelmed their environments seems pertinent now as we ponder what our future living environments may become. We can do nothing of course and just await whatever happens in a most non-adaptive and fatalistic way. Some believe that we can keep growing into more Read more…
As I ponder the logistics of what it will mean to live sustainably, I have to wonder if a centralized or more decentralized system is the way to make it happen. Centralized economies (what we erroneously called Communism) failed miserably – even China had to resort to a capitalistic system Read more…
One of the main features I talk about with living sustainably is that everyone will need to live more localized. This then raises the question whether the governing systems will also need to be more localized as well. There has been a growing trend globally in the last 130 years Read more…
Rethinking Economics 3 – A Rant about Corruption and Preoccupation with Money I talked about Les Brown of the World Watch Institute in a previous Blog post VISION – How we focus on what we really Want 3 – population, economics, choice. and morality. When you consider how many trillions Read more…
“The stories we tell literally make the world. If you want to change the world, you need to change your story. The truth applies to individuals and institutions.” Michael Margolis. I had two recent posts on this blog (Spiritual Crisis is the World’s Greatest Problem Part 1 & 2) Read more…
I do not see how we can become a sustainable society with the current economic system that is designed to not be sustainable. How can we have a sustainable world in an endless growth system based on money? As I have often said in economic content within this blog (e.g. Read more…
“The things you are passionate about are not random, they are your calling.” Fabienne Fredrickson Think of Greta Thurnberg’s actions that have made her a worldwide media focus. She isn’t special – she’s just a 16-year-old school girl. There is nothing she has done that really sets her apart from Read more…
“Opinion is the lowest from of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The Highest form of knowledge … is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self-kind of understanding.” Bill Bullard To regular visitors Read more…
A short diversion from Flow to discuss something that we need to fully digest before I come back to how to get to a sustainable world. Do you handle your life or does your life handle you? Do you use love as a weapon or allow Love to work through Read more…
Flow Theory Part 2 – Understanding Why Flow is Important “Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.” “…It is when we act Read more…
“Control of consciousness determines the quality of life” ― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The blog today is a bit more esoteric but bear with me on it. Our focus and mindset is crucial to how anything is perceived and how we feel empowered, or not, about making change happen. So many people Read more…
As I said in the last post, Audience Analysis is good communications technique for well thought out and well-crafted ‘honest’ messaging. Now using data sets from social media platforms with negatively fear based invented news and misinformation has turned it into something resembling an Orwellian control system. We hear a Read more…
Collecting data about people has long been a primary goal of the advertising industry, e.g. The Madison Avenue crowd. The more you know about potential customers, the more closely you can match your advertising to their interests and preferences. This is true for any kind of communications messaging – it’s Read more…
“Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t want plastered on a billboard with your face on it” Erin Bury I just spent three weeks in the Silicon Valley area of California. I toured the Facebook campus and ran through the Google campus as well as wandered around Stanford University – Read more…
There are some modern philosophers that have commented, “The young do not question the wrongs of adults, they just suffer the poor decisions.” We are at a critical point in human history where our descendants will look back on us all and I have to wonder what they will have Read more…
I went online and looked at many varying opinions about 5G and health effects. Like most issues, the opinions were quite polarized. It really came down to the telecom industry and scientists (most that were connected to the telecom industry in some way through employment or research funding) saying there Read more…