2014: Et underlig år for Permaliv

Trenden snudde i mai, med en topp som stiger opp lik Himalaya, bestående av et uventet besøkshopp av Indere og Kinesere. En spesiell takk til disse, dere fikk Permaliv til å klatre på Googles søkemotorer.

2014 ble et underlig år for Permaliv. På begynnelsen av året fant jeg ut at Permaliv var et dårlig navn, og startet derfor opp Leveveg. Interessen for Permaliv falt, men for Leveveg tok det seg aldri opp, med kun noen titalls sidevisninger per dag. Så i mai skjedde noe rart, lesere strømmet til Permaliv i tusentall fra Kina og India, og statistikken gikk i taket med 12.719 sidevisninger.

Det virker som om Permaliv med dette hoppet også gjorde et hopp oppover på Googles søkemotorer, og har i ettertid ligget opp mot 10.000 sidevisninger per måned. Nå, en time før året ebber ut, viser statistikken 10.238 sidevisninger for desember.

Etter hendelsen i mai var det klart at jeg måtte tilbake til Permaliv, så jeg parkerte Leveveg etter livets veg. Nå har jeg også slått meg til ro med navnet, og synes Permaliv er et godt og megetsigende navn for bloggen.

Jeg vil takke alle mine lesere fra alle kriker og kroker av jordkloden, for at dere har besøkt meg i året som har gått! I desember har Norge faktisk falt helt ned på tredjeplass på statistikken, med 2972 sidevisninger for USA, 2154 for Frankrike og 2143 for Norge.

Jeg vil ønske alle mine lesere et riktig godt nytt år med følgende fantastiske hilsen fra Kulturverk:

- Nyttårsforsett

Min takknemlighets-hilsen til "Nyttårsforsett":

Takk for denne livseliksiren av visdom og oppmuntring ved årets slutt!

Vi avsluttet året med fjellets gull, molte og moltekrem, plukket på Totenåsens myrer. Også en livseliksir, med en glød som får alt av fyrverkeri til å blekne.

A Poetic Pattern Language

By Christopher Alexander. Original text here.

Published at P2P-Foundation on 29th December 2014.

WHAT DOES WRITING POETRY GET YOU? Some people are reluctant to try writing poetry. If you feel that way, please be reassured that there is a good reason for such an attempt. We are looking for word “pictures” that have feelings in them – that describe reality in ways beyond analytical and technical ways of thinking. Writing poetry gives you permission to talk about things freely, in this feeling way, when otherwise it may not be so accessible.

Use the following sequence as a model for making your own first rudimentary pattern language for the neighborhood — just to get started. Although the following may seem “far out”, it is intended to encourage you to allow free reign to your imagination at this earliest stage.

This example originally written for Samarkand city center, Uzbekistan, 1994

1. It is a sequence of public squares, gardens, and buildings, which will form the new center of the city of Samarkand, uniting historic and traditional buildings and quarters.

2. There is a new dimension here, a center of spiri­tual life. It is not a commercial center, not a cultural center, not a religious center in the old idea. It is not a convention center. Somehow, this new center of the city of Samarkand, unites old and new, weaves to­gether the thread of the silk road, the tomb of Timur the Great, with the modern world, and a vision of the world in which comfortable human concern, and a spiritual awareness of the importance of life, is vis­ible, felt, and active.

3. It is an inspiring place to go. A place of pilgrimage, which will receive visitors from the five continents, in increasing thousands.

4. A network of beautiful paths, formed by columns, colonnades, brick walls, buildings, gardens. This network of paths, which passes across the whole area, is formed by the building masses which arise out of it, and by formal gardens.

5. Do the paths open into courtyards, ponds, gardens, hidden places? Are they formed only by mysterious buildings, rising in color, tile, and marble? Are there figures, statues, animals, Gods, people, statues stand­ing at the places where the paths cross?

6. Are the animals themselves covered with mysteri­ous animals?

7. Is there any reference to voyages?

8. The main thing one is aware of is a network of green and beautiful jewel-like streets. Each has lush trees, seats, platforms, streams.

9. These green streets, made by their trees, benches, sitting platforms, and edges, form a lacework of places to walk. They are like parks, long and nar­row, you can explore for many hours, walking around these streets.

10. Each one of the streets arrives on some new trea­sure. Each building is like a treasure, arrived at by the green streets.

11. Samarkand, historically, and in the time of Ulugh Beg, was a crossroads of the world. In the Tang dynasty period, every conceivable exotic sub­stance, or idea, or artifact, or art on earth, came through Samarkand. No matter where it went, or where it came from, it went through Samarkand.

12. Somehow, then, one may imagine these green heavenly paths, as a network—almost a mythical bazaar in which reference to these many exotic sub­stances exists.

13. The blue tile work of the Timurids, the hand-painted blue tiles, with small black, yellow, and white detail, on mud brick—these tiles, and the yel­low bricks are in evidence on walls, domes, court­yards throughout the center. It is a thread which connects.

14. The whole network of paths is almost like a forbidden city. A place which is walled, punctured at very occasional places which allow one to enter, a special area that contains its own magic.

SUMMARY OF TASKS FOR THIS UNFOLDING:

• Write a poem like the one for Samarkand, for your own new, imagined neighborhood. Allow yourself free reign, free imagination, and make it poetically whole. Capture the spirit of the very best, and most serious that this new neighborhood could be.

• If possible, pin up the poem you have written, on the wall where people can see it, and listen to what they say.

• Put a copy in your workbook!

Ønsker du å gjøre den kommende mørketiden litt lysere?

Les artikkelen kommentaren er knyttet til:

- Den teknologiske Jesus

En meget interessant artikkel jeg vil studere nærmere ved anledning.

Vi har dog kommet til et punkt i den industrielle sivilisasjon hvor teknologi ikke lengre kan kompensere for økende inneffektivitet:

http://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/12/29/how-increased-inefficiency-explains-falling-oil-prices/

Dette vil bringe med seg store opptøyer:

http://steigan.no/2014/12/30/i-schnoggersburg-skal-eu-trene-pa-a-knuse-folkelige-oppror/

JMG har nettopp utgitt ei bok som viser hvordan fremskrittstroen utspiller seg nå i endetiden:

http://www.newsociety.com/Books/A/After-Progress

Ved vår sivilisasjons fall vil vi entre historiens første globale mørketid, hvor relevante teknologier kommer til å bli svært begrenset:

- Dark Age America: The Fragmentation of Technology:

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.no/2014/12/dark-age-america-fragmentation-of.html

Ønsker du som kristen ingeniør å bidra til å gjøre den kommende mørketiden litt lysere, gjør du best i å identifisere og fremme "teknologidresser" passende for et post-industrielt samfunn.

Denne oppfordringen gjelder oss alle nå som vi snart går inn i et nytt år! 2015 kan gjerne bli det året hvor fallet av den industrielle sivilisasjon skyter fart. Hva kan du gjøre i det nye året for å bringe litt lys og varme med på veien for våre etterkommere?

Slår grafen til Tverberg til kan 2015 bli året hvor fallet av den industrielle sivilisasjon skyter fart

THE NEIGHBORHOOD YOU IMAGINE BUILDING: HERE’S WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO TO START IMAGINING IT

By Christopher Alexander. Original text here.

Published at P2P-Foundation on 27th December 2014.

One of the best ways to see clearly, or to find out what your vision is, is to close your eyes, and imagine that you have just arrived in the place. What do you see? What is most wonderful about the place you see?

WHAT DO YOU SEE WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES?

It is also very possible to do the closed-eyes process with your friends. Just sit around, all close your eyes together, and talk about what you see.

Write down what you see, in your workbook. It is sometimes elusive, and if you don’t write it down the memory can fade.

WHO ARE YOUR PARTNERS?

What we mean by “partners” are any of the people who are likely to do this project together. They may be lay people, neighbors, professionals, city people, and anyone who has an important part to play, to get the project done. It will take a while to identify these people as a group. Allowing it to form gradually will help the process.

Sometimes you just do not know the people who are likely to live and work in a new neighborhood, because it is too early, or too hard, to identify them. Even in this case, it is helpful — almost necessary — to involve people who are living and working nearby, and treat them as a source of information, and inspiration, so that what you are doing becomes as real as possible, even in the temporary absence of some of your future occupants.

DO YOU ALREADY HAVE YOUR LAND, OR IS IT NOT YET CHOSEN?

Two different scenarios:

(a) A piece of land is already identified. People have a piece of land and have an idea of what they want to do there. Walk the land together. Spend time on the land where you imagine this project can be done. Visit the place fairly often. Involve your partners in continuing conversation about the place and its value. Make sure that you gradually achieve cohesion as a group by being on the land together, and continuing to talk.

(b) A piece of land is not yet identified. People have an idea of what they want to do but haven’t yet found a piece of land where they feel it’s appropriate to do what they have in mind. Even then you can begin thinking about the ingredients of the community, and what will be unique to this place.

WHAT MIX OF INGREDIENTS WILL DEFINE THE NEIGHBORHOOD?

Given the piece of land, what are some of the ingredients you are thinking about putting there?
Is it a conventional group of houses?
Can it contain businesses and workplaces?
How much park and green space would you like to see?
How much in the way of gardens?
Would you like something communal — church, town hall, association? This last is very important — but it needs an inventive attitude and time to think of a communal building that will really work.

The overall mix of things should be inventive, and particular to you. How they fit together may not be immediately obvious and may be hard to talk about, but it is important to do so. How will it work economically? How will it work socially? Given your choices of the above ingredients, you also need to answer the key question How much of each is going to be happening there?

Later these ingredients, may be refined to become patterns, and then steps of the generative code.

A MORE VISIONARY MIX OF INGREDIENTS

The list in the last paragraph may seem a bit bureaucratic or unexciting. That’s because it isn’t yet your list, it is ours. Do you and your friends see a more vivid picture, one with very particular emotional colors, activities, buildings, and businesses? If this vividness is real — then give that reality voice. Your neighborhood will be a more lively place, in the long run people are likely to love it more. And there is probably more chance of it helping to make the world a better place.

If you have an idea for this that you would like to sketch, or if you want to make sketches of some of the elements of your vision, that’s a very good idea. Keep your sketches in your workbook and share them with others.

SUMMARY OF TASKS FOR THIS UNFOLDING:

• Write down a description of the vision you have gained.

• Share it with your colleagues, and edit it until it is more or less shared among all of you.

• It should be written in as much detail as you feel you know, and kept in your workbook.

• It’s to be hoped that this vision is largely shared, but if there are points of disagreement or opinion, not settled yet, then write those down as well.

Value

Monsterforeldre

I en tidligere kulturverksartikkel har jeg uttrykt bekymring for at min datter skulle utvikle seg til ei monsterprinsesse. Men det ser nå ut til at jeg heller bør bekymre meg for meg selv. Er jeg et pappamonster?

Forleden dag avleverte vår treårige datter oss de nedenfor viste tegninger, og hun forklarte at det var mamma og pappa som var sinte fordi hun bråket. Vi ble nesten sjokkerte over intensiteten i tegningene, de viste en aggresjon som jeg selv ikke er i stand til å uttrykke med fargeblyanter.

Vi ble alvorlig bekymret for at hun lager slike tegninger i barnehagen og forteller barnehagetantene at de er av mamma og pappa. Hva vil de da tro om oss som foreldre? Så det er nok best vi skjerper oss!

Monsterpappa

Monstermamma

Communities and Governments are Switching to Localized Alternative Energy Systems

Introduction in Norwegian:

Noe av hva jeg setter mest pris på med natursamfunnsbevegelsen er prinsippet om å være selvforsynt med energi. Sentraliserte gjennomstrømsløsninger, som sentralisert energiproduksjon, vann- og avløp etc., er totalt imot alle permakulturens kjerneprinsipper.

When the needs of a system cannot be met from within itself, we pay the price in energy and pollution. - Bill Mollison

Å være tilknyttet sentrale energiløsninger for en permakulturist kan derfor best sammenlignes med et Jehovas vitne som er tvunget til å ta imot blod, et overgrep mot ens innerste verdier.

Årsaken til at myndighetene og korporasjonene ønsker å fore oss med all denne energien så vi nesten sprekker, er for å drive økonomisk vekst.

Energisløsingen i verden er skremmende. En befolkning kan være fornøyd med mye mindre energi enn hva vi tror vi trenger i dag. Se inn i fortida, hvor lite energi de hadde til rådighet! Legg til våre medisinske og vitenskapelige framskritt til en tradisjonell samfunnsmodell, for et godt liv. Resultatet kommer ikke engang i nærheten av forestillingen om sinnssyk forbrukerisme, oppmuntret av media! Media forer oss med en vrangforestilling; at vi er tvunget til å konsumere enorme mengder energi. Hvorfor? For å leke barnslige leker med å kopiere rike og energiuavhengige land? En klok regjering vil fremme et praktisk utdanningsprogram for å redusere energiforbruket, som en sentral faktor i programmet for bærekraft og uavhengighet. Det rette ordet her er å søke ”uavhengighet” fra globale industrier som kontrollerer energien, og å fokusere på mulige lokale løsninger. - Nikos A. Salingaros

Et annet poeng som taler mot det sentraliserte energinettverket er at det i løpet av nær framtid vil være umulig å vedlikeholde, slik at det kollapser og gjør oss alle mer sårbare for fremtida. Vårt nåværende elnett har ingen framtid!

- Eight Pitfalls in Evaluating Green Energy Solutions (se særlig i kommentarfeltet, hvor Tverberg flere ganger gjør det klart at det sentraliserte elnettet er dødsdømt.)

Kraftgater er lik blødende rifter i kulturlandskapet. Heldigvis er de dødsdømt.

Overview of recent initiatives by the Encounters newsletter:

(the original has all the links; ENCOUNTERS is an e-newsletter publication of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns’ Faith Economy Ecology Program)

Creating and strengthening local energy systems that are locally controlled is a key priority for communities preparing for a post-peak oil reality and all around the world we see this happening. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) recently released a report detailing the advantages of local ownership of energy production versus communities using out-of-state (or country) corporations. ILSR also documents a variety of community and state initiatives in local energy systems and other areas where communities are localizing their economies.

Interfaith Power & Light is a “religious response to global warming” that helps congregations of faith to reduce their energy usage and convert to renewable energy systems. Since the year 2000 they have assisted thousands of faith communities to understand their role as stewards of God’s Creation. Their website has an excellent compilation of resources on ecology from a faith-based perspective including sample sermons, prayers and other worship resources, study guides for groups, and religious statements on climate change.

The organization Go 100% has identified “eight countries, 46 cities, 52 regions, eight utilities, 21 non-profit/educational/public institutions, totaling more than 48.1 million people (and counting…) who have shifted or are committed to shifting within the next few decades to 100 percent renewable energy in at least one sector (e.g. electricity, transportation, heating/cooling).” Their website provides a wealth of concrete examples of communities uniting to remove fossil fuels from their economies, as well as detailed studies of how different communities could become 100 percent renewable.

The International Renewable Energy Agency also provides some inspiring case studies of cities “where local governments have successfully adopted measures to promote renewable energy and sustainability.”

A collection of civil society organizations in Ireland recently released their Community Energy Policy Position Paper, defining community energy as “a broad term that describes citizen and local ownership and participation in renewable energy generation, distribution and energy efficiency.” The paper describes the different barriers that such initiatives face and how government could facilitate the implementation of more community energy projects. As communities in other countries face similar barriers, the paper is helpful beyond the borders of Ireland. Erik Jan van Oosten provides a less technical explanation of the paper looking at the societal, technological and financial aspects of what needs to be done.

The British Columbia Sustainable Energy Association has a good four-part investigation of how the Canadian province could become a 100 percent renewable energy region, considering electricity, building heating and transportation.

Sweden has become a world leader in garbage recycling, currently recycling 99 percent of its garbage. It is so efficient that it has actually run out of garbage and now imports hundreds of thousands of tons of garbage from other countries to be used as a source of energy. But the program is not without its problems. Close to 50 percent of Sweden’s trash is burnt in incinerators that have a number of negative environmental effects including the release of dioxins that are especially toxic pollutants. The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) argues that a true zero waste program would not use incinerators, but other options such as extending producer responsibility for their products after their useful life, using clean production techniques to avoid pollution, moving toward circular production systems that create no waste, and comprehensive composting of organic materials. GAIA points to other cities and regions that are implementing true zero waste programs without the use of incinerators.

Are Small-Scale Renewable Energy Grids Already Starting to Replace Mega-Utility Corporations?

A situation overview by Encounters, the e-newsletter of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns’ Faith Economy Ecology Program. Also here.

Increasing efficiencies in energy storage and transmission combined with falling prices for renewable energy technologies are creating a profound transformation of energy systems around the world. Massive utility companies using fossil fuels are facing increasing competition from small-scale renewable energy producers ranging from farmers to community energy cooperatives. In more industrialized economies, especially the United States, this transformation is important to move away from dependence on fossil fuels and due to the increasing fragility of current energy systems; meanwhile, in less industrialized economies, this transformation is allowing countries to skip over dirty, concentrated systems and move directly to sustainable, distributed energy systems.

Det tyranniske stats/markeds-duopolet besegler sin makt over den norske landsbygda

Pål Steigan skriver:

– Vi er på vei tilbake til leilendingssystemet

Fjerne investorer kan heretter få tilskudd av staten til å drive gårdsbruk, besluttet regjeringen 19.12.2014, skriver ABCnyheter.

Regjeringen endret i dag forskriften om produksjonstilskudd til landbruket, slik at også gårdsbruk eid av selskaper uten tilknytning til bonden, kan få statlige tilskudd, advarer Norges Bondelag.

I den nye forskriften fra Sylvi Listhaugs (Frp) Landbruks- og matdepartement, er restriksjonene mot å yte tilskudd til andre enn bondeeide gårdsbruk, fjernet.

– Dette er dramatisk. Vi er på vei mot leilendingssystemet igjen, sier generalsekretær Per Skorge i Norges Bondelag til ABC Nyheter.

– Investeringsselskaper eller et slakteriselskap kan nå legge under seg betydelig antall driftsselskaper i landbruket, plassert på ulike gårder. Dermed kan de legge under seg store volumer, og få tilskudd fra staten, sier han.

– Det åpner for en vertikal integrasjon vi ikke har sett tidligere. Vi ser slikt i andre land, og det er naivt å tro at det ikke skal skje her i Norge, mener generalsekretæren.

Vertikal integrasjon innebærer at en og samme eier sitter på verdikjeden fra produksjon av råvarer (bonden), til foredling (slakterier, Bama) og salg (dagligvarekjeder).

Norges bondelag har lagd et høringssvar til regjeringa om de nye forskriftene.

Regjeringas nyliberale politikk vil føre til dramatiske endringer i norsk landbruk og i norsk bosetting.

Denne flotte totengården er snart fritt vilt for griske korporasjoner. Monsteret sikler av attrå etter å sette tennene i slike lekkerbiskner, det er som om jeg kan kjenne stanken av uhyret.

Min kommentar:

Det tyranniske stats/markeds-duopolet besegler igjen sin makt, dette griske rovdyret som var ment å være allmenninghetens tjenere, men som har vendt seg mot sin herre og river allmenningheten i fillebiter: http://www.kulturverk.com/2014/10/19/david-bollier-og-kampen-for-allmenningene/

Dette er et langt steg i feil retning, i stedenfor skulle vi gått motsatt veg og latt allmenningheten styrke sitt grep om landrettighetene: http://bollier.org/quilligans-%E2%80%9Cfailed-metaphysics-behind-private-property%E2%80%9D

Quilligan traces the consequences of the mind/body dichotomy and how it in turn has led to a corresponding separation of humans from nature itself. Under liberal political theory, humankind is meant to assert its mastery over inert, objectified nature; it has no need or obligation to enter into a subject-to-subject relationship with it, as most traditional and indigenous cultures do. That’s why the very idea of “nature’s rights” is nonsensical to western, modern societies — and why Bolivia, for example, regards modern development schemes and market exploitation as an egregious, irreverent crime against the cosmos. 

The epistemological foundation pioneered by Locke and others has enabled modern societies to develop science and technology, and a market economy that is capable of unprecedented material output. But it is also responsible for human societies that are quite alienated from nature as a sovereign force in its own right. That issue lies at the heart of so many of our environmental problems. We presume that we are separate from nature, and that nature itself is a passive object with no agency of its own. 

Another, usually overlooked result of this metaphysic, notes Quilligan, is that “nearly all autonomous rights to the commons are unconstitutional since state legitimacy is given almost exclusively to private and public property. Hence, common property has little foundation in civil law. Claims for the commons are largely dismissed as pre-modern ideas, superstitions, or excuses for anarchy and piracy. Both natural and social commons are viewed merely as a passive field waiting to be acted upon – a res nullius in legal terms – something to be claimed, contractualized and developed as private property.” – David Bollier

Hvordan går det i Tolfa, Steigan? Tolfa er jo en landallmenning til etterfølgelse for hele Europa! Styrker allmenningheten sitt grep der, eller er det tyranniske stats/markeds-duopolet ivrige etter å rive også denne allmenningen i fillebiter?

Det må være trist for deg å sitte i Tolfa og se hvordan dette monsteret herjer i Norge, lik en gal ulv full av rabies og alskens djevelskap.

Relatert:

• Tolfa in Italy: A Future Hub for the Commons in Europe?
• GRENDEKLYNGA – EN MODELL FOR FRAMTIDA?
• FLOK Society Research Plan

Meningen med staten og markedet er at de skal tjene og understøtte allmenningheten. Dessverre er det stadig færre i dagens Norge som forstår dette, og underkaster seg det rådende stats/markeds-duopolets tyranny. Les mer i mitt essay: Modeller for et post-kapitalistisk scenario?

Establishing the Main Center of the Neighborhood

By Christopher Alexander. Original text here.

Published at P2P-Foundation on 19th December 2014.

Assume now that a rough area for your neighborhood has been established, and its boundary is clear. The area may be part of an existing city, in need of new life or refurbishing. It might equally well be a green field site near a town, or on the edge of an existing town or village.

RULE 1.
Let us ask ourselves which particular place in the area dedicated to the neighborhood most inspires us by its life or potential for life, and also has the greatest capacity for becoming the spiritual and emotional heart of the new neighborhood?

In order to do this, we need to walk around many times, with others and alone, asking ourselves which place has the natural magnetism to pull us to go there, which makes us want to stay there, which has the power (potentially) to give us life merely from being there.

On a green field site, where a neighborhood does not yet exist, this feeling will most likely be generated by a view, by the form of the land which has a natural protected area, a declivity, or by a high spot which looks out. Great trees, are also capable of giving us such a place, naturally occurring water, the edge of a forest, the bottom of a cliff. It is impossible to predict with any general principles, what feature of a particular piece of land will have this character. Each piece of land is different, and will tell you, in its own way, what unique feature, on that land, is best suited to become the spiritual center of a future neighborhood built there.

On a site that is part of an existing neighborhood, or part of an existing town, the procedure is not very different, though it may turn out to be more complicated. ….

RULE 2.
Let us now ask ourselves how the place we have chosen as the most natural center, may be enhanced and made profound.

What we are asking here, is what kind of actions will support the essence of the place, make it convenient and natural for people to come to it, protect it from surrounding influences, so that it can have its own peacefulness and life.

RULE 3.
Let us now ask ourselves how this place, which has been activated (in principle) by our response to Rule 2, may also be made beautiful and tranquil, as a work of architecture.

The way to achieve this is to spend time, gazing on the land, at the place where the building is to be, or at the space itself, as a place and as a beautiful entity in itself. Ask yourself — standing there, and closing your eyes — how high it is, what line will enhance the place, where you would most expect to find the front edge of the building, if it is a peaceful and gentle place.

It will not be out of place, either, to ask childish things, of your inner eye. What color is it? When you close your eyes, what color do you see? What kind of windows does it have? When you close your eyes, what shape are the windows, what figure gives them inspiration, and makes the place worth being in?

CONCLUSION
As you see, these three rules are not rules in quite the usual sense. The rule does not tell us, magisterially, Do this! Do that!

Instead it is a rule, but the rule says to you, Ask yourself this, and this and this — and it works this way, because the rule knows that if you follow it, the vision of your own heart will answer the question correctly, and know what to do. And it knows, too, that when several of you do the same, together — that is, do what this rule tells you, in the way of asking yourselves these questions — then, for the most part, you will find yourselves in agreement with your fellows.

And that is where a lasting sense of unity and harmony within the neighborhood can come from: the results are not arbitrary, but found in the deepest place in your heart. It will last.

SUMMARY OF TASKS FOR THIS UNFOLDING:

• Define the area of this main neighborhood center on the ground and mark its corners with stakes.

• Transfer the positions of these corner stakes by direct GPS survey, via computer, to the topographic map you have.

• Try to decide what shaped space, how enclosed and how open, and what buildings around the space, will make it a beautiful spot.

It Will Probably be Deflation All the Way Now Until the System is Broken

Yes, the banksters will starve. And so will we. There is no happy ending to this. It will probably be deflation all the way now until the system is broken. Maybe the central banks can manage to turn it around to hyperinflation (why not try helicopter drops?), which will still produce the same result in the end, but I doubt it.

Notice that the powers that be don't even have a plan for degrowing the economy while preserving the most useful aspects of industrial civilization. They must have (correctly) concluded that it would be impossible, so they single-mindedly pursue growth at any cost until the whole system fails. - Eivind Berge

Eat well this Christmas. It might be your last Christmas on full stomach!

FC Journal is online: And I'm invited to write for them!

I just got this encouraging message from my new friend John Jacobi:

Hey Øyvind, I just wanted to let you know that the FC Journal is online. We have published four articles, and some more are going to be published in the coming weeks. You can check it out at http://thejournal.link. Feel free to submit any pieces of writing you think should be published (review the guidelines at http://thejournal.link/submit first).

I hope you are doing well!
--- John F. Jacobi

In addition I see they offer help to edit material from foreigners. This is very kind.

To see this new Anti-Technology website is really encouraging, as technology soon has destroyed every single piece of our once beautiful and silent Earth.

Visit this brand new website now:

- FC Journal

The anti-technologist John Jacobi

Please read Jacobi's essay "The Technology Problem".

The biologist Jared Diamond published in 2005 the book Collapse: How societies choose to fail or survive. He summarizes how native populations and cultures that have ‘advanced’ in technology, have, without exception, expanded above carrying boundaries, destroying their own foundation for life. And then they collapsed. There are no historical examples of native populations who cared about anything else than short sighted gain. Human cultures have in the past only been restricted by technological limitations in using up resources, not by their nobility. There is a clear boundary between those cultures who remained at a hunter/gatherer level, in which some still exist, and cultures which developed technology or grew their populations to change the ecosystems they depended upon. All the latter-mentioned cultures are gone, except for the one we live in today. The world’s earlier cultures, like ours today, are a history of how people used all available means to fight for, exploit and deplete the ecosystems they lived in. Regardless of culture, people of all eras struggled and fought for food, place, benefits and values that are connected to the two powers of selection: To get what’s needed to secure nurturing for children and family (natural selection), and to become an attractive partner (sexual selection). — The Biological Human Being, by Terje Bongard and Eivin Røskaft, page 239

Transition Technology: Three horse hitch winter logging in Swedish Lapland

This video gives an example of how we can transit to simpler technology as industrial civilization and energy production decline in the years ahead, combining new and old in an excellent way.

This graph shows the decline in energy production for the next 20 years, making it obvious we have to work in less energy consuming ways in the near future. Source: Tverberg

Please see my article "What You Can Do to Prepare for a De-Industrialized World".

Tidløse broer

At noe er tidløst vil si at det er umoderne, med dette mener jeg anti-modernistisk. Ingenting som er skapt i en moderne ånd er tidløst, fordi modernismen fornekter universet, som er evolvert ut fra de 15 transformasjonene for helhet.

- The Fifteen Geometric Properties of Wholeness

De følgende broene er skapt ut av naturen, de leder oss ikke kun over til den andre siden, men til evigheten. En absolutt nytelse, inkarnert visdom fra en tapt tid. Vil vi igjen noensinne krysse visdommens bro?

- 20+ Mystical Bridges That Will Take You To Another World

Låtefossen bro, en verdig norsk representant. Foto: Max Rive.

Vi ser i Låtefossen bro følgende transformasjoner:

- STRONG-CENTER (Broa er det sterkeste senteret i landskapet, samtidig som den styrker alle andre sentra i et stort enhetlig senter, eller "the I".)

- THICK-BOUNDARY (Både rekkverket og ikke minst buene over buegangene lager tykke omramminger.)

- LEVELS-OF-SCALE (Først og fremst i steinene mellom buene.)

- ALTERNATING-REPETITION (Buene, rommet mellom buene og vannet mellom dem veksler i en jevn rytme.)

- LOCAL-SYMMETRIES (Hver bue er bygd opp av to lokale symmetrier.)

- POSITIVE-SPACE (Rommet mellom buegangene er konvekst.)

- ROUGHNESS (En naturlig konsekvens av at man har benyttet naturstein.)

- DEEP-INTERLOCK AND AMBIGUITY (Broelementene har slått rot i elvebunnen, gråsteinene likesom stiger opp av elva.)

- ECHOES (De omkringliggende åsene reflekteres i brobuene.)

- INNER-CALM (Her er intet ego, intet ønske om å skape noe unikt, det eneste som gjelder er respekten for og samhørigheten med omgivelsene.)

- NOT-SEPARATENESS (Broa er en like naturlig del av naturen på stedet som elva, åsene og skyene er det, de er ett.)

Hvordan kunne en fattig snekker fra utkanten Galilea ende opp som en allegori for fremskrittsreligionen?

That’s the thing that drove the ferocious rejection of philosophy by the underclass of the age, the slaves and urban poor who made up the vast majority of the population throughout the Roman empire, and who received little if any benefit from the intellectual achievements of their society. To them, the subtleties of Neoplatonist thought were irrelevant to the increasingly difficult realities of life on the lower end of the social pyramid in a brutally hierarchical and increasingly dysfunctional world. That’s an important reason why so many of them turned for solace to a new religious movement from the eastern fringes of the empire, a despised sect that claimed that God had been born on earth as a mere carpenter’s son and communicated through his life and death a way of salvation that privileged the poor and downtrodden above the rich and well-educated. - John Michael Greer

Fremskrittsreligionen er tvers igjennom en allegori på kristendommen, som opprinnelig var troen og håpet for romerrikets utstøtte og fattige underklasse. Hvordan kunne dette skje?

Vi går nå inn i juletida, som ikke lenger er annet enn tomme gravsteinstradisjoner over en tapt kultur. Fremskrittsreligionen med sin kjøpefest og individualistiske atomisme er alt samtidskulturen består av. Den har intet av skjønnhet eller mening.

Underlig er det at vår fremskrittstro er et vrengebilde av kristendommen, en tro som opprinnelig var de utstøttes og de fattiges tro. Hvordan kunne dette skje? John Michael Greer har gitt mange av svarene i sin siste bok, som lanseres på nyåret.

Når jeg en gang får tid til å lese denne, og hvis jeg noensinne igjen får mulighet til å samle tankene, håper jeg å skrive essayet "Fra kristendom til fremskrittstro" for Kulturverk.

I mellomtiden er mange av mine tanker om temaet å finne i denne diskusjonstråden hos Kulturverk.

Alvebrød er ikke hverdagskost

Da er det en større utfordring at verken journalist eller de som intervjues synes kjent med bakteppet for Ringenes Herre. Få verker er mer gjennomsyret av kristen tro, symbolikk og typologier.  

Selv om de ikke er analogier, respresenterer Frodo, Aragorn og Gandalf ulike aspekter av Kristus. Gollum trekker tankene i retning av Judas. Galadriel har en posisjon som minner om Maria.

Og alvebrød - Lembas - som Frodo og Sam får med seg på veien mot Mordor er på én gang stridsrasjon og åndelig føde. Den styrker kroppen og sjelen. Den er gitt dem av Galadriel som representerer det opphøyde, det hellige, den som formidler det åndelige lys i mørket.

Det er ikke slik at en norsk prest nærmest etter innfallsmetoden har latt seg inspirere av Tolkiens alvebrød til å popularisere nattverden. Det var Tolkien som lot seg inspirere av nattverden til å skrive om alvebrød.

Skal vi først snakke om synkretisme, er det Tolkien som er ansvarlig. Det var han som flyttet nattverdsbrødet inn i hverdagen. Eller i det minste inn i den fantasyfortellingen som har vært mest tilstede i hverdagen hos flest - uten dermed å være hverdagslig.

At det også er en bok som egner seg mer enn de fleste i kirkerommet, er ingen tilfeldighet.

Selv om den ikke inneholder mange klønete formuleringer. Les mer...

Positive Space

By Christopher Alexander. Original article here.

Published at P2P-Foundation on 11th December 2014.

Space, especially outdoor space, is positive when you experience its embrace. You feel its inside, and its outside, you experience its boundary, you can feel its center.

It has definite shape, it has a character that arises only from the land itself and what is there, it is a comfortable place to be, it is in some respects “convex”.

What matters most, is that you feel the place has a heart, you want to be there, something is going on — it makes you feel a world of some kind, with its life, is happening there.

You can make space positive, one step at a time, by making corrections. This works very well, you can feel your way into it, and you can watch the effects of what you are doing.

Step by step, you make every piece of every part of outdoor space turn into something well-shaped and positive.

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TAKE THESE UNFOLDING ACTIONS

• Walk the site alone.

• Notice all the places and features which give it its character, and its uniqueness, its center, and its boundary.

• Are you clear in your mind where the boundary of this particular space ought to be?

• If the boundary needs emphasizing, try putting an additional bit of “something” to increase the enclosure of the place.

• A big piece of cardboard, a chair, a couple of chairs, a log, a couple of concrete blocks — any of these can be used, to help you to “see” whether a slight increase in enclosure will make it feel better to be there.

• In the same way, see if the space needs a center to embellish the feeling of being there. This center does not need to be in the middle. It could be a stone, a tree, a seat, a flowering bush, a place with a view, a place where the sunshine falls. If it needs it, you might try to embellish it, very subtly, by making something that makes the center feel more solid, something you can connect yourself to, when you are there.

• Above all, work to make sure that whatever you do there leaves the beauty of what is there now, intact.

• When you are done thinking about it, and testing it, take one small step which is a permanent or semi-permanent thing, which will affect the place in this way you have discovered, to make it more positive.

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Here is a second view of the Mhlongo farm. Now we see several positive spaces, not just the one we saw before. They are distinct, but overlapping. The positive spaces are made positive by a variety of elements, including fence, bushes, tree, woodpile — all useful, and all accumulated over time.

The Mhlongo family is a traditional Zulu family that lives on a small farm located midway between the townships of Esikhawini and Port Dunford near Richard’s Bay, South Africa. Their home is located about one kilometer off the paved road. Access is via a sandy pot holed road that winds out through a grove of eucalyptus trees across a pasture and then through a sugar cane field. 

Benard (pronounced ben-urd not “ben-ard”), the father, works as a gardener for a housing complex in Richards Bay where he earns 605 Rand ($81) per month after transport costs. Since he doesn’t have a car he takes a bus to work and back. He also grows a hectare(abt 2.5 acres) of sugarcane to supplement his income. They raise chickens, grow bananas, mangos, papayas, and tangerines, and have a small garden. Poor as they are in dollars, they are rich in beauty — and they have time, the will, and the intelligence, to make every space positive.

And the very same process can equally well be used for a great and magnificent place. Just as it can be informal, the process of creating positive space can also be formal and grand. Let us consider St Mark’s Square in Venice. It was made in about ten steps, over a period of a thousand years, each one roughly occuring every hundred years. The Square has a kind of L shape or hammerhead shape, and is composed of three main “containers.” Yet we also experience it as one container. How then, does this manage to be positive? It is, I think, because of the Campanile, built before the main space was shaped, and shown as a small black square in the right-hand plan below.

The campanile forms a virtual center at the corner which has the effect of generating three independent spaces, each with good shape (shown gray in the right-hand plan below), rather than being a single space with bad shape.

Click here, to watch a interactive movie showing the spaces and volumes of St. Mark’s Square unfolding over the period from 560 AD to about 1600 AD.

St Mark’s Square seen from the water

Snøfri førjulsstemning 2014

What You Can Do to Prepare for a De-Industrialized World

Published at P2P-Foundation on 8th December 2014.

"Prepper" is a negatively loaded word, raising images of funny people storing canned food and ammo. This is how a declining civilization likes to dismiss everyone questioning its fall.

Real preppers, on the other hand, are those who identify technological suits fit for a de-industrialized world, working for the installation of these and the knowledge needed to run them.

All this has immediate practical importance for those who happen to live in a civilization that’s skidding down the curve of its decline and fall—ours, for example. In such a time, as noted above, one critical task is to identify the technological suites that will still be viable in the aftermath of the decline, and shift as much vital infrastructure as possible over to depend on those suites rather than on those that won’t survive the decline. In terms of the charts above, that involves identifying those technological suites that will still be in category A when the lines stop shifting up and to the left, figuring out how to work around any bottleneck technologies that might otherwise cripple them, and get the necessary knowledge into circulation among those who might be able to use it, so that access to information doesn’t become a bottleneck of its own.

That sort of analysis, triage, and salvage is among the most necessary tasks of our time, especially for those who want to see viable technologies survive the end of our civilization. - John Michael Greer

So if you want to make something useful of your life, get up and identify post-industrial technological suits. Maybe you won't be able to implement much of them in the real world, as this is partially illegal and will be opposed by governments and believers in progress. But to identify these suits and to spread knowledge about these technologies is an important first step. As the decline of industrial civilisation gather speed, the existence of this knowledge will be crucial, and they can be installed when it's obvious to everyone that there are no alternatives.

If you are lucky you might be able to install some of these technologies yourself, or even better, making a demonstration lot for future appropriate technologies.

A are useful and affordable technologies. B are affordable but useless technologies. C are useful but unaffordable technologies. D are both useless and unaffordable technologies.

  

Currently a huge amount of technologies belong to category A

In the future only a few technologies will be found useful and affordable, diminishing sector A radically from the current state. Your mission, if you want to make a point of your life and not waste your life as a player for the current system, is to identify the technologies, and most of all the technological suits these technologies are part of, so that they can be installed for a post-industrial society.

Please read the whole essay by John Michael Greer:

- Dark Age America: The Fragmentation of Technology

Now, reading this, get out and get to work! The survival of your children depends on your actions now! For every useful technology you identify, and the steps you take to preserve the knowledge and skills for these technologies, and hopefully installing some of them, is of enormous importance.

A low tech washing machine that might become useful again in the near future

Har Kongressen vedtatt en krigsfullmakt mot Russland?

av Pål Steigan

Amerikanske kongressmedlemmer er ikke den delen av menneskeheten som har størst innsikt i internasjonale spørsmål. Med det de mangler i innsikt tar de igjen i makt. Denne forsamlingen av kjøpte og betalte representanter for Wall Street vedtok 4. desember 2014 et av de mest krigshissende dokumenter verden har sett på lenge.

Når verdens største atommakt gir fullmakt til krig på grensa til verdens nest største atommakt er det på tide å reagere

H. Res. 758

Dokumentet har den offisielle tittelen H. Res. 758 og er så stappfullt av historieforfalskning og aggresjon, at det hadde vært fullstendig latterlig – dersom der ikke var så farlig. Noen vil kanskje avfeie det som en politisk meningsytring fra en konservativ kongress. Men hvor dårlig slike dokumenter måtte være underbygd, så kan de danne den fullmakten en president trenger for å kunne gå til krig. Det er nok å minne om Iraq Liberation Act fra 1998, som jo la det formelle grunnlaget for USAs folkerettsstridige og katastrofale krig mot Irak i 2003. Read on...