To "be Realistic"—that is, to Scrap any Serious Challenge to the Existing Order of Society and Focus on a Narrowly Defined Agenda Instead

Christian fundamentalism and the environmental movement had far more political clout even in their idealistic early phases, and so had to be bought off; in both cases this was done, as it’s usually done, by dangling the bait of money and influence in front of organizations and spokespersons in the movement who were willing to "be realistic"—that is, to scrap any serious challenge to the existing order of society and focus on a narrowly defined agenda instead. - John Michael Greer

Humanity’s Salvation Lies in the Correct Application of Scientific Theory to Architecture

I thank Maureen Mullarkey for these supporting and insightful comments on my latest essay with Michael Mehaffy.

This post raises profound points of disagreement on the possible solutions to our civilization’s decline, however.

I happen to be an architectural theorist as well as a scientist. My new book, “Unified Architectural Theory” (just being proofread), was written because I am convinced that humanity’s salvation lies in the correct application of scientific theory to architecture. Furthermore, I argue that the so-called “theory” used up until now is just cult doctrine and ideology, which is what has destroyed our culture.

Many of us agree on the urgency of the problem, and on the problem itself, but not on the solution. And I believe that people’s mistrust of theory is misplaced — the dominant discourse today in artistic circles is pseudo-theory, and should be condemned for its pretension.

For Robert: CAD programs used today are like loaded firearms: you can use one to protect your family from criminals; or to rob a convenience store. Its use depends on the user’s intention, not the capabilities of the tool itself.

Best wishes,
Nikos

Assumptions Lead to Trouble

In principle, there are three ways of knowing about something or someone: what we know, what we don't know, and what we think we know...and it's usually what we think we know that gets us in trouble. When we assume things, we gamble; the bigger the assumption, the bigger the risk.

In any endeavor based on assumptions we can absolutely count on some of them giving way, like support timbers under a house collapsing. Some assumptions may hold for a long time, some almost forever, but most will collapse at a bad time and cause damage. When we make decisions based on facts and when we acknowledge all that we do not know, the long-term outcomes are better.

Practical Tip:
When analyzing a situation write down what you know, what you don't know, and what you assume. Naming assumptions is key. Want to play it safe? Don't make assumptions. How? Catch yourself making assumptions. - Craig Freshley

NEW EU-LAW: Illegal to grow, reproduce or trade any vegetable seed or tree that has not been tested and approved by a new “EU Plant Variety Agency.”

From The Corporate Enclosure of Seeds Intensifies:

"The enclosure of seeds took another nasty turn this week as ag-biotech companies sought to make it illegal to grow, reproduce or trade any vegetable seed or tree that has not been tested and approved by a new “EU Plant Variety Agency.” In effect, unauthorized gardening or farming would be prohibited. The noose of proprietary control over natural processes grows tighter!

The ostensible reason for the new EU law is to fix the “complexity and fragmentation” of existing legislation covering seeds. Different EU countries have different seed laws, causing “uncertainties and discrepancies” in market practices and regulatory enforcement. The new law is supposedly needed to “harmonize” the laws, and in so doing, “reduce cost and administrative burdens and support innovation.”

But the upshot of the new law is to squeeze out commons-based alternatives to proprietary seeds. Again, the commons is seen as a form of unwanted competition to the market. The new law, if enacted, could make it illegal for companies to grow and sell heirloom and rare varieties of vegetables and other plants. It would shrink the zone of legality now enjoyed by seed banks, organic growers, home gardeners and small-scale market farmers. (More about the proposed law can be found at the Real Seed Collection website.)

These types of growers would be put at a disadvantage because seeds would have to be tested and approved before they could be distributed and sold. Of course, this would favor large multinational corporations that have the resources and lawyers to game the system, shape the market and exclude competitors (including commoners).

The proposed EU law, “Plant Reproductive Material Law,” threw a few bones to amateur growers, who are allowed to save and swap “unapproved” seeds. And organizations can do so, too, so long as they have fewer than ten employees.

But the real point is that the future of seeds would be controlled by an EU bureaucracy and the major companies that dominate its policymaking. If your seeds aren’t on the “approved list,” well, you are a pirate….a scofflaw….a brigand.

That’s the whole point of enclosure, of course: to declare the commons illegal and shut it down as a source of subsistence and survival. And don’t go about thinking that generous concessions today amount to much – because they are likely to be attacked tomorrow.

I have heard of a proposal a few years ago to establish a General Public License for Plant Germplasm, in order to do for seeds what the GPL did for software. If you know of any efforts afoot on this front, please let us know. Update: Here's how US taxpayers are supporting US State Department efforts to promote Monsanto's biotech seeds around the world." - David Bollier

The Commons are Vital for Maintaining Ecosystems and Farmland

Kagan and the other justices proved what relics they truly are. They actually think that innovation only emerges from the incentives of private property rights and market exchange. They do not comprehend that commons are vital for maintaining ecosystems and farmland, and for giving farmers a responsible, interactive role with respect to land. It is no surprise that American agriculture has degenerated into a kind of “factory,” treating soil and seed as inert things, and ignoring the nasty market “externalities” that such a mentality invariably produces.

The Court didn’t address these issues, of course. Not legally germane. Nor did the Court address the fact that Monsanto will dominate the seed market even more, now that its patents extend from one generation of seeds to the next and the next. This ruling will entrench a monoculture of crops and Monsanto’s oligopoly powers.

The folly of “human law” is that nature’s law always has the last say. And as crops become less robust after years and years of an artificially restricted genetic base, and as the soil and ecosystems lose their vitality after years and years of pesticide and herbicide spraying – all to support the concentrated market power of Monsanto – nature will rebel. Too bad the rest of us are being held hostage to this destructive economic and agricultural regime. - David Bollier

Boredom & Behaviour

Not long ago at a conference I was asked whether I thought that boredom was an important cause of bad, and worse than bad, behaviour. I said that I thought that it probably was, though I could not positively prove it. At any rate, those who behave badly often claim to do so because they are bored, and no one claims to behave well because he is bored. - Theodore Dalrymple

Er noen tonn plank og stein, håndtert av polakker i 2-3 måneder, verdt et liv som gjeldsslave?

Lurer på når Aftenposten skal begynne å skrive om noe annet enn bolig? Før eller siden skjønner folk at noen tonn plank og stein, håndtert at polakker i 2-3 måneder, ikke er verdt et liv som gjeldsslave. - CarlEd_Leve

Relatert:

• Inside Zone 0

Vandringsled

A Small but Definite Contribution

Unknown, helping soil recover is definitely a good step, but I'd encourage you to start with your own yard: tear out the grass, and put in a vegetable garden and plants that feed native pollinators, and you've made a small but definite contribution right there. - John Michael Greer

Red Door

Click on the image for a magnification

Roughness is the odd shape, the quick brush stroke, the irregular column size or spacing, the change in pattern at the corner – it is adjusting to conditions as they present themselves with meaning, but without ego or contrived deliberation.

Though it may look superficially flawed, especially with human perception accustomed to mass-produced regularity and perfection as a goal, an object with roughness is often more precise because it comes about from paying attention to what matters most, and letting go of what matters less. - Tom Kubala

“Things which have real life always have a certain ease, a morphological roughness. This is not an accidental property”  

Christopher Alexander, Book One, The Nature of Order, p. 210

“It is certainly noticeable that all great buildings do have various small irregularities in them, even though they often conform to approximate overall symmetries and configurations. By contrast, buildings which are perfectly regular seem dead.”

Christopher Alexander, Book One, The Nature of Order, p. 214

“The seemingly rough arrangement is more precise because it comes from a much more careful guarding of the essential centers of the design.”

Christopher Alexander, Book One, The Nature of Order, p. 211

An Architect's Home (Not a Single Pattern to be Found)

A manifestation of the architectural elite's hatred to Alexander's A Pattern Language. No words can express this hatred better than this building!

Arkader på Gjøvik Gård

Vi er ikke akkurat bortskjemte med arkader her på Gjøvik, denne eldgamle og geniale oppfinnelsen, elsket fram til modernismen tok sitt jerngrep om vår hals på begynnelsen av forrige århundre, og frarøvet våre byer alt av liv

A portico is a fractal on the human scale

Non-fractal structure suppresses the human scale

Relatert:

- Fractals in the New Architecture

Pavlovakake

Pavlovakake er oppkalt etter den russiske ballett-danserinnen Anna Pavlova.. Klikk på bildet for å ta den nærmere i øyensyn.

Human Beings are Right Up There with Rats and Cockroaches in Our Ability to Adapt to Different Environments

Bill, exactly. Human beings are right up there with rats and cockroaches in our ability to adapt to different environments, a classic generalist species well adapted to sudden change and disruption. Given the geographic spread and the diversity of environments currently inhabited by Homo sap., too, we're an exterminator's nightmare. I expect global population to bottom out in two centuries or so at well under half a billion people, but that's an ample breeding population for long term survival, to say nothing of the impact of all that Darwinian selection. - John Michael Greer

Rats and humans have a lot more in common than we might like to think. No wonder that we always have had a close, but odd relationship. Image: JSharp

På parti med den nære framtida?

Terje Bongard, Norsk Inst. for Naturforskning

Menneskets forbruk av den totale fotosyntesen på jorda er beregnet til mellom 30 og 50 % [1]. Det fører til at de fleste arter utenom mais, hvete, ris og en håndfull andre lever på lånt tid. Det ser ut til at forbruket av global planteproduksjon vil nå 100 % på 40 år. Det er imidlertid umulig. Da er det ikke noe mat igjen til andre arter enn oss, og vi vil dø ut fordi omsetningen i naturen vil bryte sammen. I løpet av denne tiden vil vi være flere milliarder mennesker mer, og olje og gassforbruket ha økt. Klimaendringene vil ha uante, men negative effekter på for eksempel plankton i havet. På denne bakgrunn publiserer Aftenposten 6.11.2012 en «innsikt»-artikkel som forteller at ved å gange lakseoppdrett og sjømatfangst med seks kan «verdiene» økes fra 90 til 550 milliarder. En industri som er avhengig av olje, og bruker mer mat til fór enn det kommer ut, anbefales å vokse til den skaller hodet i ressursveggen. Hvordan kan det være mulig å publisere denne oppdrettsreklamen som «innsikt»?

Lakseoppdrettsanlegg i Nesseby. Foto: Marius Fiskum

Svaret er fordi det produseres penger. Politikere, forskningsråd og gründertiltak er enige om at verdiskaping er basert på lønnsomhet, det vil si produksjon av penger. Vi har skrevet flere kronikker om økonomi og ressurser, provosert fram av finanskomiteens leder Torgeir Micaelsens utsagn i TV for noen år siden: «Nå har vi så mye penger at vi kan leve av dem til evig tid» (http://www.sabima.no/sabima/vedlegg/Terje-Bongard-pengefolelsen-kronikk.pdf). Dagens økonomi og kapitaleiere jobber i et vakuum, frikoblet fra virkelighetens matproduksjon, ressursmengder, arters resirkuleringer og livsviktig abiotisk gjendannelse av luft og vann. Framtidens mat, fiber, vann, fisk og kjøtt kan imidlertid verken måles i eller byttes i dagens penger. Det vi skal leve av må rett og slett finnes til stede i framtida. Nå tømmes disse ressursene i en ufattelig hastighet, og omdannes til harddisker med pengedata som vi pensjonister og våre barnebarn skal ete om noen tiår. Dette er et pyramidespill hvor alle vil tape. Det hjelper ikke å salte ned familieformuer i kunst eller eiendom: Når det blir tomt for det grunnleggende er det ingen som bytter Munch mot mat.

Kvinne i svart, Edvard Munch

Å forholde seg til slike perspektiver er et daglig ubehag for stadig flere, ikke bare biologer. Svært få journalister har våknet, merkelig nok. Vi har i boken «Det biologiske mennesket» (Akademika 2010) beskrevet denne galskapens bakgrunn i menneskeatferd og hvorfor den kan gå sin gang, og samtidig pekt på en demokratisk organisasjonsmodell som kan være en mulig udramatisk vei ut av hva som venter oss de neste tiårene. Neste høst skal det stemmes, men ingen partier har forstått alvoret. Venstresida er nesten borte, og de verdikonservative som er antikapitalister har heller ingen å stemme på. Det er på tide å danne et nytt parti nå.

1. Vitousek, P.M., et al., Human domination of Earth’s ecosystems. Science, 1997. 277(5325): p. 494-499.

Relatert:

• Fra massesamfunn til stammesamfunn? Terje Bongard hos NRKs Verdibørsen
• John Michael Greer's response to my comment on the above fact: "Øyvind, any exponential trend taken far enough results in absurdity. You might want to look into the law of diminishing returns and the concept of homeostasis, and apply them to the simplistic model you've proposed here."