Not raising hogs

We need more highly skilled small farmers in more places all across America — not as a matter of nostalgia for the agrarian past but as a matter of national security.

For nations that lose the ability to substantially feed themselves will find themselves as gravely compromised in their international dealings as nations that depend on foreign sources of oil presently do. But while there are alternatives to oil, there are no alternatives to food.

This quote is from a Michael Pollan article entitled "Farmer in Chief," published in the New York Times. Pollan raises some interesting points about the importance of elevating the conversation about how we feed ourselves. Have a read.

Have we passed the tipping point? It's difficult to say. In July 2007 I quoted a biodiesel article that, in terms of energy, says we have 400 times more output than input. A simple analogy would be to say we're spending more than we're earning...only rather than money (one store of energy), we're talking about sunlight. Even with Pollan's ideas, I'm not convinced that the rate of energy consumption can be brought back into something resembling a sustainable balance.

Then again--if we keep doing the same old thing, can we really expect something different to happen?

stimulus response

"...stick out your tongue at a newborn, and the infant is likely to stick its out in response."

The Slate article where I found this quote isn't about newborn behavior per se. But I still find the quote fascinating.

What I find fascinating is that the newborn has some ability to translate recognized behavior into self behavior. I don't mean that the infant has some internal conversation... "Hey, he's sticking his tongue out at me, I have a tongue too don't I?, I should return that gesture, maybe there'll be milk in it for me..."

The child is prelinguistic. That's what fascinates me, the mimicking behavior outside the realm of language. The mysterious "they" say that the majority of communication is non-verbal. Makes me wonder if sometimes language doesn't hinder more than help.

Makes me also wonder what goes on in the imagination of the child.

Frightening

I have a friend who is perpetually concerned with what the neighbors think. It doesn't matter how things are actually going. What matters is what things look like from the outside looking in, what people think is going on. Perception trumps reality.

I think some groups and organizations work in this way. Managing perception. Damage control. Big stuff anytime, more so during an election year.

I'd like to see more truth telling. We spend so much time trying to maintain the image of a united front that we forget the value of dissent and diversity. We're so afraid of publicly having problems that we keep secrets, and pretend to pass as functional groups or organizations.

Ghosts and goblins got nothin' on human systems. Happy Halloween.

Hard Work

Usually hard work is highly valued. That's how I grew up...on a farm, where hard work was just something everyone did, and it happened to be fortunate that maybe someone would pay you for that work. But if they didn't pay you, you'd do it anyway--because hard work is just what one does.

Sometimes, I've noticed, hard work is a sign, an indication that things are not well. I've been in relationships where I'd think to myself, like Boxer in George Orwell's book Animal Farm, "I will work harder."

Almost invariably working harder wasn't an answer to a problem, but rather a sign to be listened to. Something in the structure of my life isn't supporting things being easy. They're not easy, they're hard. I know they're hard because they require hard work.

Usually my ideal answer isn't working harder, it's doing something different. Stopping work and taking inventory. Sitting still. Being quiet. Doing something entirely different. Working less. Most important, not repeating the same behavior and expecting different results.

Maybe what I'm getting at is this: doing something different is hard work.

Gustav, Looting, Energy Theft

My wife and I were talking a bit about looting. The context of looting arose from hurricanes Gustav and Katrina--specifically the forced evacuation this year and the looting that occured during the Katrina storm in 2005. We wondered if looting would be a problem this year.

To me, looting seems to be one method of wealth redistribution. It's against the law, of course. And it makes me kinda mad if someone thinks they should be able to come into my home and take what they please.

But from a few steps back, I started to wonder: what's the difference between the criminal looting individual homes and the machines of our culture looting the world? Logging, fishing, mining, oil drilling, water, land, and so on. All of these (and much more) are storehouses of energy in some form. Just as the things in my home are storehouses of my energy in some form.

At the microscopic level of someone taking my stored energy (i.e., property), I get pretty peeved.

At the macroscopic level of someone taking stored energy from the commons (i.e., salmon), that doesn't seem to bother me in the same way. It just seems different somehow. Doesn't it?

Attention & Communication

At friends' family picnic, I noticed some things about attention. The first example was easy to see--a baby, less than a year old. She smiled and handed her grandmother a book. Grandmother smiled, vibrantly read a page, and handed the book back. The child smiled and laughed, and again offered the book. Grandmother smiled, vibrantly read another page, and again handed the book back. This continued for several minutes.

Later, when tired, the child was fussy. She would fuss or cry, and someone would pick her up and offer her attention, food, and ultimately, rest. If the child didn't sleep after a time, an adult would return to the child to see if something else was needed.

The second example was also easy to see--a kitten, an unexpected guest of the party. When lively, people would play with the kitten with bits of string, carrying the animal around, stroking and petting it. Being cute and playful went a long way. When tired, adults would put the kitten down for a nap. When the kitten was done napping and wanted attention, it would start yowling. Within a minute or two, someone would go to the kitten, remove it from its kennel, and play with it or offer it food.

These two examples have something in common. Obviously both the child and the kitten were infants. More interesting than age is that neither could use language and both had a limited repertoire of behaviors that could elicit attention.

How is it that infants, one human one feline, can be so successful in their non-linguistic communications, whereas many of us adept with using language struggle greatly to make ourselves understood?

By Design

Two articles on the subject of design are in my thoughts.

Want Different Results? Stop Fixing and Start Designing

This first one speaks to the benefits of vision--first seeing where you want to go, and then figuring out how to get there. This method of working is what author Jan Thomas calls design thinking. The article describes the benefits of non-linear, associational thinking for solving complex problems.

The Human Future: A Problem in Design

This second one compares evolutionary design to human system design. The author Daniel Quinn argues that, in human systems, we often mistakenly try to do more of what doesn't work, whereas in evolutionary systems, what doesn't work has a tendency to remove itself.

...

Both articles speak to the importance of design in structuring human systems. The thinking is, if you change the design of the structure, different behaviors become possible. And both articles emphasize a future orientation--a shift of focus away from the past and present, and focusing on the vision of what we'd like to see more of.

Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey

I dropped the ball last month. No blog entries. Unfortunate, too, because I had a clever one brewing for April 15th, tax day. Had something to do with plucking a goose. It'll have to wait for next year.

Last month my dog Annie got sick and passed away, and my wife and I moved to a new house in Omak, Washington. Lots of big changes going on. That's what's kept me from the keyboard.

Today I've been thinking about directions. It started with a conversation with my wife over my childhood confusion about the saying, "righty-tighty, lefty-loosey." I guess I never understood why turning a faucet clockwise meant turning it to the right. It seemed to me that it depends on where on the faucet is your frame of reference.

If you pick any point on the top half of the faucet and you turn clockwise, that point indeed moves toward the right. But if you pick any point on the lower half of the faucet and you turn clockwise, then that point moves to the left. Whether the faucet turns right or left depends entirely on your frame of reference. Because we tend to orient to the top and left (as when we read...left to right, top to bottom), "righty-tighty" tends to work as a mnemonic for remembering how to turn off a faucet. But really, that faucet is turning left as much as it is turning right.

Want more complication? Left-right is only one axis: add another axis (call it up/down, even though technically it may not be moving "up"), and you can invent your own mnemonic: "uppy-tighty, downy-loosey." Or would it be the other way around?

Another example: I've learned that tornadoes north of the equator turn counterclockwise most of the time. (The tendency is due in part to the Coriolis effect.) I ask: counterclockwise to whom? If I'm a pilot in an airplane far overhead the tornado...would I see it turning counterclockwise? If so, then if my twin were on the ground, in the proverbial "eye of the storm," looking upward--he would see it turning clockwise.

Now...if my twin on the ground looked up to see this clockwise movement, and then was swept up into the tornado...and the wind lifted him to the middle of the thing (that is, mid-way between the sky and the earth)...what direction would he be travelling--clockwise or counterclockwise? Does it depend on whether he's looking up or looking down? What if he's looking sideways?

A final note: I discovered the word widdershins when I Googled tornado direction. It means going in the direction that's opposite from what's generally accepted.

The Product is You

Last November I wrote about the four horsemen of the Internet: education, community, employment, and democracy. The four great promises. I asked if these promises had been fulfilled. Perhaps they have. I have a sneaking suspicion there's more going on.

I like Google. Over time I've noticed a change. When I used to search, I would sometimes get some oddball personal pages. Like Joe-Bob's Creedence Clearwater Revival lyrics and appreciation page, complete with Southern Flag and "CCR ROCKS!" icons. Today all I get are commercial sites. The kind that want to sell me something, or point me to something that sells me something. Used to be I'd see lots of personal pages. Most of the search results at the top of my list today aren't personal, they're commercial.

I think the Internet is taking the same turn that magazines took, and ultimately television and radio as well. That is, a move away from content and toward advertising. In Conscientious Objections, Neil Postman wrote about the relationship between advertising and the magazine industry.

...the nineteenth-century magazine made another important contribution to American culture, a contribution from which we have not yet recovered and perhaps never will: magazines created the advertising industry. Although magazine advertising was not unknown before the 1880s, the situation changed drastically when Congress passed the Postal Act of March 3, 1879, which gave magazines low-cost mailing privileges. As a consequence, they emerged as the best available conduits for national advertising (p. 60).

...[magazine publisher Frank Munsey] made two discoveries. First, a large circulation could be achieved by selling a magazine for much less than it cost to produce; and, second, huge profits could be made from the high volume of advertising that a large circulation would attract. (p. 61)

In other words, magazines quit selling content to subscribers and instead began selling subscribers to advertisers. The folks from Adbusters put together a 16-second YouTube video that describes this phenomenon. In summary: in any transaction, there's a (A) seller, (B) buyer, and (C) product. When this video says, "The product is you," I believe they mean that (A) the seller is the Television network, (B) the buyers are advertisers, and (C) the product purchased is human attention sold to advertisers.

I think the clever people at (A) Google have realized that the most lucrative (C) product is access to human attention, which can be sold to (B) advertisers. Does it change your perception of the Internet knowing that you are the product?

Life Changing Events: Stories Wanted

I'm seeking interviews with people who have experienced life changing events. If I can collect enough stories, I'd like to put a book together.

I'm talking about the big events, AHA! moments, experiences where time stops or slows, things that change us forever and leave a defining mark. Perhaps the birth of a child, the loss of a friend, health, sickness, war, peace. Could be mundane or extraordinary, sudden or gradual.

The kinds of events that define us, that change us irrevocably, and that re-align our sense of purpose and remind us of what's really important. The kind of events that result in lasting change. I can't know what a life changing event might be for someone else. One friend I interviewed told me about her cancer diagnosis. Another told me about his near-death experience.

Do you have a story you're willing to share? Or know someone else who might? Contact me and we can set up a time to talk.

Valentine's day

I watched a video on the Internet today and wrote down a quote that stood out.

"What would it be like if we set aside all of our good/bad, right/wrong judgments of each other...and just listen?"
--Ben Wong, The Haven Institute

That seems an appropriate thought for Valentine's day.

How Much is Enough?

My wife and I are researching homes. At one Web site, I learned a little about how square footage is calculated. Standardization around calculating square footage was a requirement for Fannie Mae, the government branch that grants, bundles, and sells mortgages.

Buyers and sellers also use price per square foot as a metric for comparing homes and their values. Measuring standards originated from an attempt to commodify housing markets--bundling mortages and selling them for profit. In short, standardization allows us to compare apples to apples.

I'm also reading a little about the Savings and Loan crisis. And also about the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis. (Both remind me of the Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. Steward played George Bailey, who ran the Bailey Building and Loan.)

I cannot possibly summarize all I've learned. And I know that what I learned in a few online articles cannot rival what specialists know about this domain of knowledge. Nonetheless, I do see a few patterns emerge.

We label symptoms as root causes while we ignore how the structure of the system itself contains the seeds of its own downfall. We lose local control and systems of checks and balances in exchange for efficiency, standardization, and profit. Only too late do we realize that, because too many took too much, there is nothing left to sustain the old system. We experience, again and again, a tragedy of the commons. Generally, I see the following patterns recur:

• I see a tendency toward growth--at any cost.
• I see organizational and systemic forces that pressure individuals, organizations, and governments toward furthering growth, again at any cost.
• I see the predictable and inevitable consequence of growth at any cost, in any system, as collapse.

These patterns don't seem strictly linked to housing markets. They seem more culturally broad, the desire for short-term gain at the expense of long-term health and sustainability. To me it looks as if these patterns permeate our culture.

These patterns beg a question about growth: How much is enough?

What do you do?

The question on my mind today: "What do you do?"

It's a polite way of asking, "So, how might I know how to stratify you in the socio-economic hierarchy?" And it's more polite than asking direct questions, such as:

• How much money do you earn?
• What kind of house do you live in?
• What type of car do you drive?
• How should we relate?
• How do you compare to me?
• How do I compare to you?

My friend Gabe tells me that in England, the question isn't what you do, but "Where are you from?" Evidently, in England, where you come from is of greater importance than what you do. Although the questions differ, their purpose is the same.

About the question, author Robert Fulghum writes, "Making a living and having a life are not the same thing....A job title doesn't even come close to answering the question, 'What do you do?'"

A friend passed me a quote from author Annie Dillard: "How we spend our days is, of course, how we live our lives."

I find myself less interested in talking about how I spend my time making a living, and more interested in talking about how I spend my days living a life.