I’m throwing some love out to Jordon Cooper who got accused of plagerism because helinks to things without saying where he got the link. So here are ten pieces of linkage for you, discovered recently, from a variety of sources:
- Funding strategies for progressives
- James Howard Kunstler interview at Worldchanging: “Anybody can put a poster of the Rocky Mountains in their basement and go down there and sit and feel groovy about it, but meanwhile their town is crumbling around them.”
- Nipun Mehta on Organic Orgnaizational Growth: “My vision for any holistic organization would be one that anchors itself in the spirit of service and compassion, one where each of its constituents are rooted in being that change, and one where there is humility and openness for all that our conscious awareness can’t grasp.”
- A Taoist take on activism: “We have to do a lot of work on ourselves to make sure that the people who are making change in the world are making that change from a place of strength rather than weakness,” Legault says. “And that strength is comprised of a strong spiritual grounding — whatever spiritual grounding that is — and that we act from love and compassion rather than fear, hatred and anger.”
- Social innovation conversations: Podcasts with worldchangers.
- Choose your seatmates wisely: “We show ourselves in moments of system failure and panic and change and difficulty and crash-landings, not calm.”
- Watching the Wizard of Oz with Pink Floyd:”After the BLACK &WHITE MGM Lion roars for the THIRD (3rd) time IMMEDIATELY hit the play button on the CD player. Be sure to turn down the sound on the TV because the dialogue and original soundtrack are not necessary for this experiment. “The Dark Side of the Moon” will provide all the sound you need.”
- Down with Jazz: A short story by Dervala Hanley
- The Spirit of the Game: “Spirit of the Game has to be on the rise, in ultimate and beyond, because technology has brought us an era where survival means valuing brains over brawn. It doesn’t matter anymore that my teammates can tackle your teammates to annihilate your key player. Because it can’t matter anymore that my country can blow up your country – everyone knows the devastation caused by nuclear weapons, and knows we’re ALL worse off if balance is lost. If the games we play reflect society, then there’s a damn good reason why kids should learn the negotiation skills ultimate teaches. We’re their examples”
- Incredible photos of the shapes of a flock of 1,000,000 European starlings
Share:
Here are a number of bits and pieces that have been waiting around for ages to get posted:
- Donella Meadows on being a global citizen and dancing with systems. From Bill Harris at Making Sense with Facilitated Systems.
- Getting Started with Action Learning, also from Bill.
- Dave Pollard on indigenous capacities for learning and discovery:
The word indigenous* means ‘born into and part of’, and by inference ‘inseparably connected to’. We are all, I think, indigenous at birth, born into the Earth-organism and connected in a profound and primal way to all life on the planet, even if we are born in the sterile confines of an ‘antiseptic’ hospital. But we are quickly indoctrinated into the civilized conceit of human separateness, and that conceptual separateness is reinforced by a physical separateness until, soon enough, we forget that we are a part of a constituency greater and deeper than family or state. Conception thus becomes our reality.
My most important moments of learning and discovery have occurred in those rare moments when I’ve been able to briefly shake that illusion of separateness, and re-become indigenous, liberated, part of the real world.
- More Dave, on what we can learn from aphids:
If I’m correct, then the aphid I’m looking at right now does think and feel. She wonders. She is curious. She experiences the profound joy of living, and the commensurate desire to go on living. She enjoys the company of and communication with others. She is driven to learn and gets satisfaction from doing so. She experiences emotional grief and/or physical pain at being lost, separated, witnessing the death of a fellow creature, or being stepped on. She cares about all the life she can fathom, and as long as she lives she fathoms more, and passes along more knowledge, and more reason to care, in her DNA. That is why she is here.
- Na’Cha’uaht on Indians and oil:
One of the most basic and fundamental Nuu-chah-nulth principles is embodied in the phrase, “Hish’ukish Tsa’walk” (Everything is one/connected). A full comprehension of this principle teaches us that we cannot support unsustainable development. We cannot support an industry that would threaten our watersheds with complete devastation. We cannont gladly shake the hands of corporations who use proxy governments (US, UK etc.) to wage wars all over the world, killing other Indigenous people. We cannot make the best of an inevitable corporate imposition by selling ourselves for a few jobs and money. We cannot accept this inevitability.
- Squashed Philosophers, a redux of the major thinkers that underpin Western thought.
- Getting out of confusion through conversation by Nadine Tanner:
Conversation can help move us out of the discomfort of confusion. Inquiry opens a space for meaningful conversation. It makes your intangible confusion visible to others so you can begin to build a more complete understanding.
So, next time you’re confused try staying with it for a while. Share it with others. Start conversations. Connect the otherwise unconnected dots
- Patti on following desire lines:
When faced with a bird’s eye view of my own desire lines, measuring in quick paces the decisions I’ve made or not made, do I allow them to become the real path, or do I put up a concrete barrier to redirect myself back to the “official” road? And what is that process of creating our own path? What feelings does it entail, engender, cause?
As Finch said,
“Sometimes, following unknown paths, we find ourselves in a maze of growth, in failing light, unsure where we are, flailing through jungles of stiff, impenetrable shrubs and sharp briars in deceptively benign-looking woods. All at once we realize we are lost, unable to retrace our steps. Then, suddenly, we come out onto a paved highway, far from where we thought we were, feeling a gratefulness and a relief we are ashamed to acknowledge.
But sometimes, just sometimes, we come upon a new and unexpected clearing, a magical place unanticipated in our daily thoughts or even our dreams; and when we do, we are so amazed that we cease even to wonder whether we will be able to find our way back home, or, perchance, whether this might in fact be our new home.”
- Lisa Heft’s collection of papers on Open Space Technology
- Kevin Harris’s musings on community leadership, with links to an interesting paper.