Humanize the Earth!

Better Use of a Parking Spot

Via the carfree email list and then by web search:

Citywide parking space art event
The only requirements are that you:
1. Use a parking space with a meter
2. Don’t engage in any activity that would be illegal in and of itself

You will “rent” the space(s) by paying the requisite amount for the time. This payment should authorize and entitle you to use the space in any way you choose. Why should cars be privileged? Why should so much space be devoted exclusively to automobiles?

The purpose of these citywide action/performances is to interfere with the monolithic and unimaginative uses of urban space.

– Jenny Roberts

On car-freedom

Nice quote from former SFBC president Dave Snyder about the importance of car-freedom (via west north):

Our transit system cannot be oriented to just serve commute trips, because then you still need a car to live a full life. Because you don’t just work; nobody just works… And so what we’re saying is that in order to live a full life as a member of our society, you need to incur the costs of operating and storing and buying that car. For purposes of social justice, it should be easier to live a car-free life… It’s not some radical ideology that ‘cars are bad, and they cause wars and pollution, and therefore they’re evil and no one should ever drive them.’ It has to do with the quality of life and economic and social justice.

Kisses Aren’t Contracts

An excerpt from Zoe’s blog:
Kisses aren’t enough to create
A relationship, a friendship.
Sometimes, they are just enough
To stop pain from somewhere else.

opening space

The circle was walked.
Space more visible.
In lieu of a nap
neighborhood walked.
Upon return,
work underway

Still breathing.

Picked up cups.
Topics on a wiki page
for something to do.

Nothing more
to be done.
Feel it.
Smile.

intention

Recently I was having a conversation with someone (can’t remember who) when “intention” came up. I told this person I’d send a link to this photo. Seems like this is the best I can do for now (click the image to make larger).

Upward Spiral

A couple of week back, I wrote about seeing the Upward Spiral by Paul Krafel I’m showing it again at my place this Thursday at 8pm, if you’d like to see it. Or let me know and I can send one to you (or buy it yourself from Paul’s website). In a conversation about the film at omidyar.net, Arthur Brock made this comment that’s good enough I’m reproducing it here whole:

Paul seems to be asking himself “If the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is right, and energy winds down to less and less usable forms… How is it possible that life exists? From a planet of rock & water, how is it that more and more complex forms of life have evolved? Isn’t that against the rules?” 

His answer: “Sunlight.”

It was really a planet of rock, water & sunlight. The second law provides for particular energy levels to go up, when they’re harnessing a greater flow of energy going down. That’s how we drive our car to the top of a hill (creating greater potential energy for it to roll down again). We harness millions of little explosions of gas to turn the engine and push it up the hill. More energy is expended in the little explosions than the car gets by rolling down the hill.

Life has evolved by taking the energy of sunlight and converting to the energy of life. Now it happens that life needs some other important ingredients as well, such as water.

The thing that is most striking to me, is how EVERYTHING WE USE TO SURVIVE is built on the 2nd solution. For millions of years, life has been making deposits of energy into earth’s bank account and we’re all trust fund babies that are cashing in big time!

All of human civilization is built on harvesting natural resources - schools of fish, hillsides of lumber, fields of rich soil, etc. Our whole modern economy is fueled by sunlight energy that life stored up - oil, coal, biodiesel…

Now taking his very simple principles of flow - if inflow is greater than outflow, things accumulate; outflow greater than inflow, the level diminishes. Are we consuming these resources faster than are being replenished? Is outflow greater than inflow?

Duh.

In just the past few hundred years since the industrial revolution we have managed to spend much of the principle that it took millions of years for life to build up in earth’s energetic bank.

So how do we shift that balance? When our politicians and businesses want to continue to over-fish our oceans, clear-cut our forests, deplete our soil, poison our rivers, and pollute our air… When the very design of our economic system requires constant growth and the core building materials for this growth is MORE natural resources.

He points out how difficult it is to block the flow once its power has become concentrated in the gullies, but it is possible to make small changes to stop it from getting there at all then natural forces team up with you to help fill in those gullies.

My observation is that money is one of the tools for concentrating power. The very design by which it’s issued ensure this. It allows for just enough exceptions to the rule for us to carry that banner of the American Dream of making it to the top.

One of the most critical leverage points is taking back our ability to facilitate our own flows, our own exchanges, our own sharing of resources. Once our interactions are mediated through dollars we’re already in the gully.

For example, today we’re struggling with issues around being able to afford elder care and child care. These are new problems because we used to address these things inside of shared responsibilities in the community. Now that we have to PAY for child care and PAY for elder care, it puts a huge drain on most people’s ability to earn enough to simultaneously meet their own basic needs. And of course, staying home to take care of kids or grandparents doesn’t register as value in our economy. It only counts if you PAY for it.

Similarly, if we started caring about being efficient with our resources and decided that 40 houses in a neighborhood don’t actually need 40 different lawn mowers, but could get along sharing one (if we handle the scheduling problem for them). From the perspective of resource and energy consumption this is a 40-fold improvement. But it would be disastrous for our economy, because our economy relies on those 40 purchases and the planned obsolesce of them needing a new one every few years when it becomes more expensive to pay for 2 hours of skilled labor to repair/tune it up than to buy a new one (with the 20 hours of sweat shop labor, transport across the ocean, pillaging of metals, spewing of toxins in making the plastics, etc.).

If we can’t create our own means to do something as simple as share a lawn mower and have to mediate it all through the market economy, what are the chances of shifting this balance?

To me, that’s exactly where building the tools for the gift economy come into play. The gift economy is primarily about the 2nd solution – investing for our collective (rather than individual) benefit. Open Source software is a brilliant example of how this approach can even out-compete the 1st solution approaches.

If you’re interested in digging deeper, you can listen to a discussion / presentation about gift economies from the BALLE pre-pre-conference in Burlington, VT. (I recommend the shorter version where I cut about 45 minutes of the discussion which wandered off topic.)

Link between income and happiness

Is anyone surprised that Princeton University researchers have found that the link between income and happiness is mainly an illusion? An excerpt from the article:

“Despite the weak relationship between income and global life satisfaction or experienced happiness, many people are highly motivated to increase their income,” the study said. “In some cases, this focusing illusion may lead to a misallocation of time, from accepting lengthy commutes (which are among the worst moments of the day) to sacrificing time spent socializing (which are among the best moments of the day).”

hot dog sutra (or one with everything)

From Rob Brezsny in the Nov ‘05 Sun Magazine:

“Make me one with everything,” the Buddhist monk said to the hot-dog vendor who was hawking food near the temple.

The vendor made a frank with mustard, ketchup, relish, and onions.  The monk took it and handed over a twenty-dollar bill.

The vendor stashed the cash in his apron and turned his attention to the next customer.

“But where’s my change?” the monk inquired.

“Change must come from within, my friend,” said the vendor.

tinctures and community assets

My friend Nance is an amazing asset to the Little Village community of Chicago.  Several weeks ago she hosted a dinner conversation in her garden about The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.  She showed us around her garden suggesting items for the salad, and then let us forage our collective dinner.  She calls it foraging because she doesn’t plant things in specific spots.  She’s more interested in seeing where they come up.  Where do they want to live?

Anyway, very interesting conversation about the tradeoffs between shipping organicly grown food long distances (lots of fossil fuels for transport) and closer-to-home, yet not organic.  We also talked a lot about food as conversation, as relationship.  If something is grown in the backyard, even if not organic, we have a relationship with that plant, or with the people that grew that plant.  This matters.

This past Saturday, I foraged some more in Nance’s garden, this time for herbs to make tinctures.  We learned about a lot of different herbs and their healing properties, and how to harvest the flowers, leaves and roots and convert them to a usable form using alcohol, glycerin or vinegar and time.

Good stuff and very inspiring.  I want to grow more!