You Need to Reduce Your Impact with a Factor of 120!

In response Trainer points out that if the rich economies grow at 3% until 2070, and by that stage the poorest nations have attained similarly high living standards – which seems to be the aim of the global development agenda – total world economic output and impact could be 60 times larger than it is today. If we assume that sustainability requires that fossil fuel use and other resource consumption must be half of what they are today (and the greenhouse problem would probably require a far larger reduction than this), then what is needed is something like a factor 120 reduction in the per unit impact of GDP, not merely a factor 4 reduction. - Ted Trainer

Photo: Edgar Fabiano

A Timbered Choir

Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,
for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake
of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.
Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.

I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned
at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories
where the machines were made that would drive ever forward
toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw
the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;
I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city.
I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered
footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.

Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monuments
of those who had died in pursuit of the objective
and who had long ago forever been forgotten, according
to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forget
that they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now pursued the objective
as if nobody ever had pursued it before.

The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective.
the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free
to sell themselves to the highest bidder
and to enter the best paying prisons
in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,
which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,
which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress,
to the completed sale, to the signature
on the contract, which was to clear the way
to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home
would ever get there now, for every remembered place
had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.

Every place had been displaced, every love
unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant
to make way for the passage of the crowd
of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless
with their many eyes opened toward the objective
which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,
having never known where they were going,
having never known where they came from.

Wendell Berry

Chilean Documentary: Preparing Pucon for Post-Growth Realities

Pucon in Transition is a wonderful documentary giving voice to the local people involved in a Transition project. Subtitled in English.

Three Great Posts on Christopher Alexander

I was lucky to find these three posts, a series, by Regis Medina.

- Christopher Alexander still matters

- Living in Code

- Christopher Alexander's Theory of Centers

Have a nice read!

Fermacell-plater

Naturligvis kan heller ikke fermacellplater måle seg med heltrepanel, men er et godt alternativ til "reine" gipsplater, med 80 % gips og 20 % cellulosefibre. Også et godt valg som diffusjonsbrems.

The Majority Rules, Even for Toddlers and Chimps

A new study offers some news for parents: even toddlers have a tendency to follow the crowd. That sensitivity isn't unique to humans either; chimpanzees also appear more likely to pick up habits if "everyone else is doing it." ... 

- Listen Up, Parents: For Toddlers (and Chimps), the Majority Rules

Today we have turned into an insane flock of mindless consumers heading for the cliffs. How to make the majority permaculturists?

What is the crowd's opinion?

What's striking me, in the kindergarten children have no role models, except other children. A result of the modernists segregation of function and people. Is it any wonder that the world has gone insane?

All this is a result of fragmentation and complication, the opposite of complexity. How to make the crowd understand the meaning of life is complexity, and that complexity can save our civilization?

Økonomisk vekst vil svi av jordkloden!

Det er ikke kun drivhuseffekten som vil varme opp jordkloden, økonomisk vekst i seg selv vil medføre fatale konsekvenser. La oss se hva som kan skje med en årlig vekst på 2,3 prosent:

• Om kun 400 år, så lenge som Fantomet har regjert i de dype skoger, vil vi forbruke like mye energi som den samlede solinnstrålingen.
• Om 1400 år vil energikonsumet tilsvare det som stråler ut fra soloverflata, men på jordklodens mye mindre areal. Da nytter det ikke lenger med sandaler for ikke å brenne tærne i sanda!
• Om 2500 år vil vi svi av like mye energi som hele vår galakse sammenlagt, med sine 100 milliarder stjerner. Dette vil få selv sola til å blekne! 

- Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist, by Tom Murphy

En storm av hurtige stjernefødsler i galaksen Centaurus A. Paradoksalt nok, med dagens vekstrate vil energikonsumet på jorda raskt overstige all energien som skapes her. 

Jeg minnes en sang fra bedehuset, som lyder som følger:

Himmel og jord skal brenne, høyder og berg forsvinne...

Vel, forhåpentligvis får vi stoppet dagens hjernevaskede konsumentsamfunn før vi kommer så langt. Noen som fikk lyst til litt "degrowth"?

En herlig lavteknologi vedkløyver!

Tenk hvor flott denne vedkløyveren kunne fungere med et vasshjul. Her trengs hverken diesel eller traktor.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (The Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University)

leavergirl Says:

April 8, 2012 at 4:00 pm

Øyvind, I just read Scott’s Seeing like a state, where he describes in great detail how the mad modernist planners and gigantism cultists readily collaborated back and forth between America and the Soviet Union. A brisk movement of ideas and people. Here is a mad mad story for ya: the major American proponents of gigantic modern farms were offered a sweet deal by Stalin: practically unlimited land, and nearly unlimited numbers of intimidated muzhiks to work for you, and the crushing power of the state behind you! So they got together in a Chicago hotel and in two weeks designed the soviet state farm (sovchoz). (And no, it does not have a happy ending.)

- James C. Scott on Wikipedia

Renegade Economist with Positive Money

Switching from School Institutions to Learning Practices

Problem
In a society which emphasizes teaching, children and students - and adults - become passive and unable to think or act for themselves. Creative, active individuals can only grow up in a society which emphasizes learning instead of teaching.

Solution
Instead of the lock-step of compulsory schooling in a fixed place, work in piecemeal ways to decentralize the process of learning and enrich it through contact with many places and people all over the city: workshops, teachers at home or walking through the city, professionals willing to take on the young as helpers, older children teaching younger children, museums, youth groups traveling, scholarly seminars, industrial workshops, old people, and so on. Conceive of all these situations as forming the backbone of the learning process; survey all these situations, describe them, and publish them as the city's "curriculum"; then let students, children, their families and neighborhoods weave together for themselves the situations that comprise their "school" paying as they go with standard vouchers, raised by community tax. Build new educational facilities in a way which extends and enriches this network. - Christopher Alexander, pattern 18 in A Pattern Language

Kristiansand pinsemenighets nye menighetshus, neppe en gave til Gud

For en tid tilbake var jeg innom mine foreldre og tok som vanlig en titt på Vårt Land. Her kunne jeg lese at pinsemenigheten i Kristiansand skal få bygge nytt gudshus, men at dette har blitt redusert fra tolv til seks etasjer. Dette var en god nyhet, men det ville selvsagt vært en enda bedre nyhet hvis planene var blitt redusert til ingen etasjer.

Illustrasjon av det nye menighetsbygget til Kristiansand pinsemenighet. En ting er sikkert, man lovpriser ikke Herren med et slikt nihilistisk monster. Selvsagt, Le Corbusier ville vært meget tilfreds! Kilde: Kristin Jarmund Arkitekter AS

Meningen var å bygge et signalbygg, det blir kanskje ikke det signalbygget man ønsket seg, men det store spørsmålet er alikevel hva man ønsker å signalisere med bygget?

I en video vi lastet opp til Permasolutions nylig, ble det lagt igjen en megetsigende kommentar:

In the future Christopher Alexander will be remembered in the same breath as Galileo and Descartes. He has provided scientific proof that all physical matter is holy and demonstrated an empirical connection between the built environment and the human soul.

Mer om Alexanders funn kan lastes ned her: Empirical Findings from The Nature of Order

I slutten av forelesningen, under spørsmålsseksjonen, kommer Alexander med sitt berømte utsagn om at alt vi lager må være som en gave til Gud. Det mest slående med Kristiandsand pinsemenighets nye gudshus er fraværet av Gud, det finnes intet hellig ved dette bygget, det er tvert imot rein gudsbespottelse, og har sitt opphav i Europas mørkeste og mest nihilistiske ideologier (se også).

Den eneste grunnen til at pinsemenigheten i Kristiansand har kastet seg på dette prosjektet, er at de har et ønske om å framstå som kule!

Coolness started with jazz musicians, and still has something of the spirit of the night, of escape from everyday reality, of unconditioned freedom, of improvisation without a goal. It’s the liberal equivalent of the divine grace that bloweth where it listeth and none can define.

It has something in common with sanctity. The cool are in the world but not of it. They possess a certain disengagement, so that they are independent of their surroundings and not easily flustered or excited. They’re not conventional, and recognize immediately whatever they’re presented with. That gives them a sort of perfect pitch in matters of perception, expression, and practical decision.

Of course, coolness is also very different from sanctity. Sanctity is about eternity, coolness about today. It has religious aspirations, but its hedonism and individualism means it goes nowhere. The lives of the saints have enduring interest because they point to something beyond themselves, the lives of the hipsters don’t. – James Kalb

Det er tragisk at Guds folk på jorden har henfalt til slik hedonisme, billedlig uttrykt gjennom en gudsforlatt arkitektur. Ønsker ikke Kristiansand pinsemenighet å være jordens salt?

The built environment, with its geometrical symbolism, talks about the culture that has created it, and expresses the intimate values of a culture. So, if in the past the built environment was interconnected with their physical and spiritual surroundings, the contemporary has expressed the excessive power of a mechanical culture determining the loss of human identity in favor of “artificial identity”. This artificial structure has transferred its cultural reductionism also to urbanism and architecture and caused laceration of society and deformation of ethical and esthetical values. This new design represents and symbolizes new values like hedonism and a devoid sense of nothing, and is the sculptural expression of our society. – Biourbanism

Jeg vil på det sterkeste anbefale Kristiansand pinsemenighet og deres lederskap om å se forelesningen med Christopher Alexander:

Pris Gud, ikke kun med tungen, men også gjennom skaperverket!

This is a world view in which acceptance of the whole and efforts to heal the whole, in the built world, can be seen as the most profound and most important forms of prayer. They are consistent with modern science and yet call into question some of science’s most deeply rooted assumptions. - Christopher Alexander

Relatert lesning:

• Arkitekt er valgt!
• The architecture of hell
• Neuroscience, the Natural Environment, and Building Design
• Science for Designers: Intelligence and the Information Environment

Short Documentary: Feeding the Soul at Jones Valley Urban Farm

In the heart of downtown Birmingham, Alabama lives a small three acre block where big things are happening. Feeding the Soul takes a brief look at the Jones Valley Urban Farm and highlights some of the incredible ways that this small farm is not only giving back to the city of Birmingham but is setting an example for the entire world to follow. Filmed over the course of the 2008 summer harvest, we witness the hardships and triumphs of a farm that's anything but ordinary.

Liberalism: A Counter-History by Domenico Losurdo

One of Europe's leading intellectual historians deconstructs liberalism's dark side. 

In this definitive historical investigation, Italian author and philosopher Domenico Losurdo argues that from the outset liberalism, as a philosophical position and ideology, has been bound up with the most illiberal of policies: slavery, colonialism, genocide, racism and snobbery.  

Narrating an intellectual history running from the eighteenth through to the twentieth centuries, Losurdo examines the thought of preeminent liberal writers such as Locke, Burke, Tocqueville, Constant, Bentham, and Sieyès, revealing the inner contradictions of an intellectual position that has exercised a formative influence on today’s politics. Among the dominant strains of liberalism, he discerns the counter-currents of more radical positions, lost in the constitution of the modern world order. - Verso

Read more at Verso Books!

Related books:

• Classical Liberalism, by Charles Siegel. Free download as HTML and Pdf.
• The Tyranny of Liberalism, by James Kalb