PermaLiv

In principle, the best things are always built in tiny stages. Often there is the illusion of dramatic change, but even seemingly miraculous changes result from thousands of small steps. Taking small steps forward on a project lets us learn as we go and adjust. Big steps are risky. Small steps are sure-footed. Nature builds in very small increments and achieves very great things.  Practical Tip: Do things small before you do them big, on small stages before big stages. Make use of pilot projects, test cases, and trial runs. Make commitments incrementally. Proceed with many small steps rather than a few giant leaps. When your group wants to rush ahead asking, "What's the biggest step we can take to achieve our objective?" ask also, "What's the smallest step we can take?"  It is better to take a small step in what we know is the right direction than to take a large step in what might be the wrong direction. -  CraigFreshley ...

By John Michael Greer. Original post  here . That form came in for discussion in the same post two weeks ago that brought the issue of externalities into this blog’s ongoing conversation. Quite a few readers commented about the many ways in which things labeled “more advanced,” “more progressive,” and the like were actually less satisfactory and less effective at meeting human needs than the allegedly more primitive technologies they replaced. Some of those comments focused, and quite sensibly, on the concrete examples, but others pondered the ways that today’s technology fails systematically at meeting certain human needs, and reflected on the underlying causes for that failure. One of my readers—tip of the archdruidical hat here to Ruben—gave an elegant frame for that discussion by suggesting that the peak of technological complexity in our time may also be described as peak meaninglessness. On the lower side of the farmyard of my forefathers now stands this new pumpin...

By Christopher Alexander. Original post here . Published at P2P-Foundation on 12th April 2015. The elements of a generative code are “unfoldings” . Whether in the evolution of a neighborhood or in the evolution of a building, each unfolding is an operation which gets you from one stage or moment of development (whether conceptual or physical), to the next moment of development. The full sequence of unfoldings gets you all the way from the first stages of conception when a project is no more than a gleam in somebody’s eye, all the way to the final stages of physical, built completion and use. Haeckel. Unfoldings slightly resemble patterns, in that they are nuggets of information, which help you shape some part or aspect of the environment. However, unfoldings are vastly different from patterns in the way they work, and it is these differences which give them their power and effectiveness. Each unfolding has three key features which define its operation and its effect. ...

"1. Vi har mer og mer kunnskap, men mindre og mindre forståelse: Vitenskap og teknologi er kunnskapsproduksjon, og på dette området er det innkassert store seire. Aldri før har et samfunn forvaltet så mye kunnskap og lærdom, så mange høyt utdannede spesialister på ulike felt, så mye litteratur og så mange databaser av ulike slag. På den annen side har det aldri vært så vanskelig å ha oversikt over og forståelse av hva som egentlig foregår. Ekspertene blir mer og mer spesialiserte. Dermed blir forutsetningene for kommunikasjon mellom eksperter innbyrdes og mellom eksperter og publikum dårligere og dårligere. Det finnes ikke lenger noen felles referanseramme. Forståelse erstattes med informasjon. 2. Teknologi reduserer risiko, men er selv opphav til nye farer: Hovedeksempelet er miljøproblemene. Vi bruker i dag teknologi som innenfor en kort tidshorisont gjør livet enklere, bedre og mindre farefullt, men som på lengre sikt kan undergrave naturen og samfunnet. Et annet ...

Svært gledelig med en slik tilbakemelding til min KV-artikkel " Lommedemokratiet ". Kjære Øyvind! Mange takk for en opplysende og velargumentert artikkel! Boken "Elvetid" er en veldig fin påmin- nelse om den tenkningen Sigmund førte an i. På 1970-tallet skapte jo denne tenkningen grobunn for en 'grønn' politikk og åpnet for samfunnskritisk forskning og praksis. Med oljerevolusjenen – Norges industrielle revolusjon – ble denne 'bærebølgen' for 'kompleks' tenkning effektivt dempet, slik olje er kjent for å dempe bølger… Mens Sigmund fortsatte med sitt politiske arbeid, valgter jeg å satse på regissering av verdidannende læring i fri natur for studenter, lærere og ledere. Det gjorde at jeg utviklet et mer livsnært ordforråd ut fra tanken om at ordene er tankens redskap, er ordene sløve, blir tankene sløve. I 68-språket het det: "Språk er makt!". Med tiden kom jeg derfor til å kritisere den naturvitenskapelige te...

Jane Jacobs, the most important urban thinker of all times Read the whole story at PPS! - Jane Jacobs at 100 Roundup “We should honor Jacobs’s memory today by redesigning our cities as she might have. It’s not just a matter of livability or quality of life, but a long-term strategy for a denser urban future, one that is environmentally rational and economically vital.” —Janette Sadik-Khan & Seth Solomonow, in CityLab “For all the love Jane Jacobs has received from urban planners and policymakers since her first book was published, her greatest theoretical innovation seems to be largely disregarded. Cities across the country continue to centrally plan the minutiae of urban life, from obsessively detailed land-use regulations to impossibly ambitious comprehensive plans.” —Nolan Gray, in Strong Towns “Jane was anything but anti-development and anti-change […]. She saw government planners as too-often rigid freezers of development, and mocked regulations that prevented, f...

Øyvind, how come it's impossible to go from cars back to horses when it was perfectly possible to go from horses to cars, and there was a very elaborate and expensive infrastructure around horses and horse transport that somehow got replaced? The answer, of course, is that you're letting the myth of progress do your thinking for you. You don't make the transition all at once, any more than cars replaced horses all at once, and so the ordinary depreciation of the infrastructure that has to be replaced does much of the work for you. The only "high tech trap" exists in the minds of those who can't see outside of the very narrow tunnel of progress. - John Michael Greer Follow the discussion between me and Eivind Berge to his post " Can industrial civilization be saved? ". Is Gail Tverberg caught in "the very narrow tunnel of progress", in spite of that she foresees the rapid end of industrial civilization? Or is the "high tech trap"...

Denne kommentaren vil danne mal for min kommende Kulturverks-artikkel, med samme tittel som ovenfor. Artikkelen vil ta livet av all innbilt mening i vår meningsløse samtid, samt våre forflatede, kompliserte samfunn. Men først og fremst vil den stake ut visjonene for en ny tid. Gled dere! Ps! Trist at vi ikke kan kalle Norge et Setrengs Damanhur. Les Kulturverks-artikkelen som kommentaren er knyttet til: -  Nøkler til et økosamfunn Min kommentar: Selv om erkedruiden JMG neppe kjenner til Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng , hadde han forrige uke et strålende essay om "peak meaninglessness" eller toppen av meningsløshet, som en følge av at vi har nådd toppen av den teknologiske kompleksiteten. Men teknologi fungerer ikke i dag som verktøy, som en utvidelse av menneskelig potensial, men som ei protese, en innsnevring av menneskets potensial, hvor teknologien plasserer seg mellom mennesket og handlingen. Et eksempel er brødmaskina, hvor man heller ei brødblanding i ei maskin...

Read the whole essay by JMG here . At this point it may be helpful to sum up the argument I’ve developed here: a) Every increase in technological complexity tends also to increase the opportunities for externalizing the costs of economic activity; b) Market forces make the externalization of costs mandatory rather than optional, since economic actors that fail to externalize costs will tend to be outcompeted by those that do; c) In a market economy, as all economic actors attempt to externalize as many costs as possible, externalized costs will tend to be passed on preferentially and progressively to whole systems such as the economy, society, and the biosphere, which provide necessary support for economic activity but have no voice in economic decisions; d) Given unlimited increases in technological complexity, there is no necessary limit to the loading of externalized costs onto whole systems short of systemic collapse; e) Unlimited increases in technological complexity i...

Original comment and article here . Øyvind Holmstad Says: February 10, 2015 at 2:34 am Vera, I want to inform you that it will soon be published a book in Canada about the Norwegian eco philosopher Sigmund Kvaloey Setreng! His father was my father’s teacher. He is quite much philosophizing about generated contra fabricated complexity, and is fully aligned with the philosophy of Alexander. But he calls fabricated complexity “complication”, meaning it’s not real complexity, because it repeats itself. Generated complexity, or adapted, is TRUE complexity, as it NEVER repeats itself! Nature never repeats itself, so all complexity generated by nature has a true complex nature, or true complexity. This is why we MUST turn human structures away from fabricated complexity or complication, to generated complexity, or agile design. Because only generated complexity is RESILIENT! This is why I have as a slogan: RESILIENCE AFTER MODERNISM! Deep Ecology was founded by Sigmund Kvaloey...

How the same fractal pattern found in a tree is perpetuated throughout its home forest. Fascinating information for permaculture design. From the documentary, Fractals – Hunting the Hidden Dimension .

Følgende tekst er utdrag fra en diskusjonstråd hos podcast-showet Levevei.no: -  Episode 75: Peak oil – krise, mulighet eller begge deler? (del 2) Kom nettopp over et sitat fra SNL om den store økosofen Sigmund Setreng: I Setrengs filosofi er de to motsatte begrepene kompleksitet og komplikasjon viktige. Livsstrømmens historie gjentar seg aldri; den er alltid kompleks – ulik maskinen som er komplisert, problematisk, men aldri noe annet enn den var før. Naturen er kompleks; den er kvalitativt mangfoldig og er en strøm av hendelser som aldri gjentar seg. Den er altså prinsipielt forskjellig fra enhver maskinstruktur, fordi det grunnleggende kjennetegnet ved maskinen er at vi kan starte og styre den; den er nettopp det i verden som vi kan kontrollere. Naturen kan vi prøve å mestre så godt det er mulig, men vi gjør det bedre jo mer vi tar hensyn til dens mangfoldige foranderlighet. https://nbl.snl.no/Sigmund_Set... For meg fortoner dette sitatet seg som en åpenbaring av ny inn...

En innledning til mitt essay "Kapitalist-modernismen: eit fatalt feilsteg etter vegen mot ein varig sivilisasjon" Les essayet her: Kapitalist-modernismen: eit fatalt feilsteg etter vegen mot ein varig sivilisasjon På et vis er overskriften til dette innlegget feil, vi kan ikke velge mellom katabolisk kollaps og IGD, da katabolisk kollaps er uunngåelig. Katabolisk kollaps vil si en gradvis kollaps av vår industrielle sivilisasjon i løpet av de neste 100-300 år, med en tilsvarende nedgang i verdens befolkning, teknologisk utvikling etc. Begrepet forfektes i dag først og fremst av bloggeren John Michael Greer . I følge Greer har vi allerede entret vår sivilisasjons undergang, hvoretter vi går inn i en ny "mørk middelalder". Trolig vil det vare flere tusen år før menneskene igjen blir i stand til å danne en ny sivilisasjon, og en ny fossilbasert sivilisasjon som vår egen vil neppe igjen se dagens lys før om 100 millioner år, men da av andre intelligente vesener s...

Read the whole essay: -  Economic Growth: A Social Pathology (at Recilience) -  Economic Growth: A Social Pathology (at Humanity's Test) Some excerpts:   The theoretical and epistemological bases of mainstream economics, of which GNP is an artefact, are challenged by attempts to integrate economic and ecological considerations. These see the economy as being an open system, embedded within the closed system which is earth. In this picture the economy is reliant upon ecological sources for inputs (e.g. raw materials, soil, plants and animals, oxygen), and ecological sinks for waste product outputs (e.g. nitrogen run-off into rivers, carbon dioxide into the air). Mainstream neo-classical economics does not factor in the measurement of such things, generally treating inputs as infinite or infinitely substitutable, and the impact of waste products as unquantifiable “externalities”. As long as the economy was not large in relation to the overall ecology, such...

Kommentar hos Levevei.no. Artikkelen jeg har kommentert til kan leses her . Min kommentar: En ting jeg ikke tidligere har tenkt over, men som bloggeren John Michael Greer fikk meg til å innse i forrige ukes essay, er at det er stor forskjell på effektivitet og resiliens, at dette ofte er motsatte og motstridende størrelser. Hans essay har tittelen "The Flight to the Ephemeral" og kan leses her:  http://thearchdruidreport.blog... Dette var et essay som gjorde et sterkt inntrykk på meg, og som gav meg mye å reflektere over. Min konklusjon er at det går et skarpt skille mellom kompleksitet som fremmer effektivitet kontra kompleksitet som fremmer resiliens. Vårt samfunn fremmer en kompleksitet som har som formål å fremme effektivitet, ikke resiliens, noe som er både tankevekkende og skremmende. Personlig er jeg av den overbevisning at en resiliensbasert kompleksitet må fundamenteres i mønsterteknologien til Christopher Alexander, samt at den må forholde seg til de to sid...

Extract from: -  Pattern Language and Interactive Design Most of the known architectural and urban anti-patterns were created by Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier). Characteristic of all viruses, there is no completeness in the sense that we have an organism that metabolizes and interacts with others in an ecosystem. What we have is a nonliving informational code, or meme, whose sole purpose is to reproduce itself. For this reason, a mind-virus is given as a simple image, and not as a formula or solution to a problem. I have noted below some of the most destructive urban anti-patterns. These have infected the minds of people alive today, and work to displace patterns from the collective subconscious. This is the reason why it is extremely difficult to reintroduce Alexandrine patterns back into today's society. ABSOLUTE RECTANGULAR GRID SEGREGATION OF FUNCTIONS SHEER CONTINUOUS WALLS AT STREET LEVEL BUILDING SETBACKS EMPHASIS ON THE LARGE SCALE SEPARATED BUILDIN...

Excerpted from a recommended article by Dave Pollard: “ What If Everything Ran Like the Internet? ” “It is because business and government systems are wedded to the orthodoxy of hierarchy that as they become larger and larger (which such systems tend to do) they become more and more dysfunctional. Simply put, complicated hierarchical systems don’t scale. That is why we have runaway bureaucracy, governments that everyone hates, and the massive, bloated and inept Department of Homeland Security. But, you say, what about “economies of scale”? Why are we constantly merging municipalities and countries and corporations together into larger and ever-more-efficient megaliths? Why is the mantra of business “bigger is better”? The simple answer is that there are no economies of scale. In fact, there are inherent diseconomies of scale in complicated systems. When you double the number of nodes (people, departments, companies, locations or whatever) in a complicated system you quadruple the...