I’ve been mulling this one over for a few days. At WorldChanging, Jeremy Faludi posted a set of six ideas on preserving change once you have it. In sum: Stricter rules and oversight Good public relations Networking progress, spreading the benefits through agents at the edges rather than central hubs Decentralizing administration and authority Self-sustaining financing (make it pay for itself) This might be a good list to add to. Here are some things I can think of: Build learning and deliberation around the progress. Make the gain part of the public conversation around policy by hosting gatherings where citizens …
I love being a dad. One of the reasons fathering is so great is you get great singing partners out of the deal. And so in honour of all the fathers out there, and their children, here is an offering for your ears. This is a Tibetan father and son singing together. Enjoy! mp3: Father and Son
George Por went digging around in his archives dating back to the late eighties and came up with an interview he did with Peter Senge on “generic structures.” Senge said: We’ve had a particular view on this point for many years that is one of the specific contributions of the systems dynamics field is the idea of what we call “generic structures”. Basically the idea is simply that nature tends to repeat certain patterns. Now, structure has a very particular meaning in our work. It does not mean a structure imposed on people or anything like that. It has to …
A couple of days ago I had my first experience on a ropes course. We only had a short time at this facility and so the piece I chose to do was what was described as the most fearsome of all the apparati. It was affectionately dubbed “the Pamper pole” after the diaper brand. The Pamper pole is a a 10 meter high log stood on its end with a platform on top. It has little cleats that you can climb up and the point of the exercise is to get to the top, stand on a platform and leap …
On Friday morning, David Korten offered a very brief and very effective overview of the “perfect economic storm” scenario, whereby peak oil, climate change and the collapse of the US dollar provide the conditions for a fundamental global economic transformation. There are many places where this is being talked about (Google for more), but I as I thought about this scenario, I gave some thought to what this might mean for First Nations economies. It’s clear to me that any future economic development or endeavours based on oil – in other words, strongly dependant on long range distribution systems – …