Van Jones – my inspiration for 2009
Photo by luxomedia

I’ve blogged about Van Jones before, but last night I listened to a podcast of a talk he gave at a Social Change Forum at Hollyhock on Cortes Island earlier this year.   With a powerful mix of humour and truth telling, he describes the confluence of social justice and environmental justice and calls for a new politics that transcends dualities, us vs, them thinking and win/lose outcomes.   He also make a powerful point about how our absolute reliance on deliverables, outcomes and achievables makes us liars, as we pretend to be able to tell our donors, funders and stakeholders how we will shape the future.   Van makes a powerful point that when we tell the story that we are successful, and hide that fact that half the time we don’t know WHAT we are doing, we prevent the ability to learn from one another.

The world is a complex, chaotic and changing place, and what is needed now is not winning against but winning over.   We need to invest in prototypes not pretend we know the solutions.   We need experiment, relationship and integrity.   That is the new politics of activism – it is the new politics period – and it is what I am committing myself to here at home on Bowen Island, and in my work in the world for 2009.

Happy New Year and see you out there.

Play, movement, beauty, and grace – this is why I love juggling.   It uses a hard constraint (the predictable inevitability of gravity) as a resource to create beauty.   Thanks to Thomas for the link, who is my own master at this aesthetic.

I have noticed over the years that much public discourse is informed but what we see on television.   Whether it is the cross-examination of the courtroom drama, or the witty one liners of sitcoms, or the over extended drama of soap operas, the way we talk to each other is heavily influenced by what is screened around us.

This clip is interesting: interviews with screenwriters who point out the function of dialogue in a television show.   One of the high points of writing dialogue, it turns out, is that it will never be effective if people are actually seen talking to each other.   So it’s no surprise that bringing these forms of conversation into the real world creates all sorts of dysfunctional social situations.

The only character you should be in real life is you.

With no future there is no worry.   If we are truly present in this moment, the story we hold about the future drops away and with it goes worry.

My friend Thomas Arthur is ensconed on San Juan Island and has decided to charter a personal ritual of hope.   From Solstice to Obama’s inauguration, he is making a short video a day and posting them when he can at his Vimeo page.

What are YOU doing to ring in the changes and see that they take root?