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laodan

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laodan is a guy from Milford, Pennsylvania, USA

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THE WAY THINGS ARE: The meaning of life is to be found in thinking about what is reality and the beauty of reality is to be found in our DNA's memorization of all forms that have been successfully retained along the four billion years of evolution of the principle of life on Gaia our earth. In the end what I mean to say is that beauty is something objective and what we call ugliness is then simply our unconscientious feel of something evolution did not retain.
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  • The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

    Rated Sep 26 • 437 reviews • change, late modernity • storyofstuff.com

    The Story of Stuff
    on storyofstuff.com with Annie Leonard

    From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

    The Story of Stuff

    youtube.com/watch [youtube.com/watch]

    An excellent presentation. Everyone should watch that documentary. Pass it around... As Gavinski commented: "There's probably nothing in this 20 minute video that you don't know about consumer society already. BUT, I loved it, and it ties things together in a very clear way. I'd love to see this shown in every school."
    Watch this " 20-minute animation of the consumerist society, narrated by Anne Leonard, to view online or download. Includes footnoted script, credits, blog, ..."




    107K views
    The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

  • Culture Change - Time To Decide What Matters

    Rated Sep 14 • 1 review • environment, change, books, globalization • culturechange.org

    Time To Decide What Matters
    by Keith Farnish for Culture Change (the author has just come out with his excellent book Time's Up!, joining the Chelsea Green stable of works on sustainability.)

    Community is the antithesis of civilization for civilization thrives on the division of humanity into tiny, atomized, competing parts; but community is the form in which humans have always survived best. The choice is simple now: Civilization or Community; Progress or Humanity; Death or Life.

    Time To Decide What Matters
    Time's Up! An Uncivilized Solution To A Global Crisis FREE 281 Pages PDF ebook



    Some more goods words. But reality remains the same. Change will only materialize when humanity will be confronted with the necessity to change its ways. This means when humanity will be confronted with massive dislocation of its societal ways leading to barbarity, violence and death.




    13 views
    Culture Change - Time To Decide What Matters

  • Question: Can We Design The Next-Evolution of Community?...

    Rated Apr 22 2009 • 2 reviews • evolution, society, change • twine.com

    Question: Can We Design The Next-Evolution of Community?
    on Twine by Nova Spivek

    I've been thinking about community lately. There is a great need for a new and better model for communities in the world today.

    Our present communities are not working and most are breaking down or stagnating. Cities are experiencing urbanization and a host of ensuing social and economic challenges. Meanwhile the movement towards cities has drained the people -- particularly young professionals -- away from rural communities, causing them to stagnate and decline.

    Question: Can We Design The Next-Evolution of Community?
    My take on the question

    My personal take is that "The Next-Evolution of Community" is out of our hands. It will result as a new realignment or balance of the near infinite load of factors interacting in the "whole earth ensemble" or "whole earth system": climate, resources, species, humanity, etc. This in no way implies any determinism. We are faced with many possible outcomes.
    Our dreams and visions of a better tomorrow will eventually bring us to act as a nano-push on the unfolding balance between those many possibles.
    "I believe that what we do today depends on our image of the future, rather than the future depending on what we do today. We build our equations by our actions. These equations, and the future they represent, are not written in nature. In other words, time becomes construction. Of course, we have some conditions that determine limits of the future but within these limits are many, many possibilities.
    Therefore, since no deterministic prediction is likely to be valid, visions of the future--utopian visions--play a very important role in present conduct." (quote of Ilya Prigogine from an interview by NPq of Fall 2004 titled "Beyond Being and Becoming")

    Just read this piece in
    Scientific American concluding that "Engaging in rituals involving rhythmic synchrony might not only have bound us together in cooperative groups: they might have brought us together to practice the very skills essential to survival."




    1,848 views
    Question: Can We Design The Next-Evolution of Community? | Twine

  • Culture Change - Bill McKibben and the Technofixers...

    Rated Apr 02 2009 • 1 review • change, worldviews • culturechange.org

    The Technofixers' Tragic Myopia
    in Culure Change by Jan Lundberg

    Like all the global-warming commentators who between them get almost all the press that's not pro-fossil fuels, Bill McKibben is trapped in the faulty logic of the technofix. To understand the pseudo-green vision, read McKibben's recent essay "The Fierce Urgency of Now" that appeared in the Toronto Star and the Common Dreams website.

    The Technofixers' Tragic Myopia
    The fierce urgency of now

    As always the vanguard is being recuperated when the elites discover that there is no way out within the path of their traditional ways. When what was the norm does not work any longer the elites take over the reasoning of the vanguard while dressing it with its own sauce and that's how the vanguard's message is being turned on its head.

    This particular moment in history is no different.

    Green is now the buzzword. Anywhere one looks the marketeers have taken over the buzz... but recuperation sloganeering denatures. Green now means the continuation of the old ways through the use of technologies that were initially propagated by the ecological movance. What has changed is the economics. The ecological movance saw such green technologies applied locally in a communitarian fashion but the corporate take-over of the green buzz-word displaced the application of such green technologies from communitarian use value to corporate exchange value generating profit.

    This corporate take-over is also breaking the ecological movance in two.
    On one side are those who feel vindicated and satisfied with the corporate take-over.
    On the other side are those who SEE and understand that ecology is a systemic approach that integrates the various sub-systems of a societal approach based on communitarian use value. In other words those who reject the corporate take-over have a vision and idea of a future society that is no longer powered by the logic of capital.

    The logic of capital is a totalitarian concept applied on a global scale by the corporate elite while communitarian use value is a people's concept practiced on a local regional base.

    Communitarian use value does not reject long distance exchanges. Those are conceived as a mutually beneficial exchange between regions being totally detached from the totalitarian control of the logic of capital.

    Mutually beneficial exchange is thus the anti-thesis to the logic of capital.
    This for sure implies that corporate structures are being countered by regional popular structures! But this is another subject.

    On the same subject see:
    Facing Decline, Facing Ourselves by John Michael Greer in The Archdruid Report
    Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse new book by Carolyn Baker




    41 views
    Culture Change - Bill McKibben and the Technofixers Tragic Myopia

  • Op-Ed Columnist - Has a 'Katrina Moment' Arrived? -...

    Rated Mar 22 2009 • 1 review • economics, society, finance, change • nytimes.com

    Has a "Katrina Moment" Arrived?
    in the NYT by FRANK RICH

    What made Jon Stewart's takedown of Jim Cramer resonate was less his specific brief against CNBC's cheerleading for bad stocks than his larger indictment of the gaping economic inequality that defined the bubble. As Stewart said, there were 'two markets' "the long-term market that Americans earnestly thought would sustain their 401(k)'s, and the fast-moving, short-term 'real market' in the back room where high-rolling insiders wagered 'giant piles of money' and brought down everyone with them.

    ... why has there been so little transparency and so much evasiveness so far? The answer, I fear, is that too many of the administration's officials are too marinated in the insiders' culture to police it, reform it or own up to their own past complicity with it.

    Has a "Katrina Moment" Arrived?
    The A.I.G. Bonuses: A National Furor



    Those of us who follow closely the developments of this economic and financial crisis have known since the first days of the Obama administration that, while the president is a smart guy, he just does not get the economic and financial reality. As Frank Rich writes ...too many of the administration's officials are too marinated in the insiders' culture to police it.

    Now that populist rage has intensified dramatically will Obama come to his senses? It does not seems so. The title of Rich's article asks the right question. Obama does not seem to be able to act forcefully which drives his administration straight into paralysis.

    It seems to me that the present financial crisis could have been transformed into one of those rare opportunities toward radical action but the ineffectuality of Obama's economic and financial team is destroying that opportunity. This could very well, in turn, destroy any other initiatives of this administration. What a shame!




    12 views
    Op-Ed Columnist - Has a 'Katrina Moment' Arrived? - NYTimes.com

  • Canadian Military Units To Undertake “Domestic Security”

    Rated Mar 18 2009 • 1 review • economics, society, order, change • globalresearch.ca

    Canadian Military Units To Undertake "Domestic Security"
    in Global research Canada by Paul Joseph Watson

    "The Canadian military has embarked on a wide-ranging plan to turn its reserve soldiers into focused units trained and equipped to respond to a nightmarish array of domestic threats," reports the National Post.

    The militarization of law enforcement duties in the U.S., Canada and Britain is accelerating at a pace never before seen.

    Last week it was revealed that the British Army is on standby to deal with rioting on UK streets as a result of the economic crisis, according to a newspaper report, which states that MI5 is targeting political activists who could help create a "summer of discontent".

    Meanwhile, in the U.S., urban warfare training drills are taking place across the country as Northcom announces that tens of thousands of active duty troops will be stationed inside the U.S. for domestic purposes.

    The U.S. Army War College in November released a white paper called Known Unknowns: Unconventional "Strategic Shocks" in Defense Strategy Development. The report warned that the military must be prepared for a "violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States," which could be provoked by "cunforeseen economic collapse," "purposeful domestic resistance," "pervasive public health emergencies" or "loss of functioning political and legal order." The "widespread civil violence," the document said, "would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security."

    Canadian Military Units To Undertake "Domestic Security"
    Military readies reservists for threats to 'domestic front' Adrian Humphreys, National Post, March 04, 2009

    Is anyone shocked?

    If the powers to be go as far as to prepare for internal unrest it is because they know that such unrest is going to take place in the foreseeable future. This has nothing to do with the threat of external terrorism. It concerns instability emerging from within the borders of Western societies due to economic dislocations following, perhaps a financial collapse, perhaps skyrocketing energy prices due to "peak oil", perhaps a drastically diminished economic cloud following the realignment of economic forces in the wake of the present financial shock, or perhaps other scenarios not yet documented...

    So what to think? Those who detain power always try to keep it. Be it in a dictatorship as China or be it in Western democracies power is in the hands of a small elite. In China it is in the hands of the leadership of the communist party. In Western countries power is in the hands of the establishment that is comprised of the biggest capital holders in the banks, the media, the universities, etc. We better be informed about this very basic fact that those people are committed to do what it takes to preserve their power. So we the citizens, whatever action we might privilege, should only act in full knowledge of the fact that power seeks to guarantee its preservation.




    10 views
    Canadian Military Units To Undertake “Domestic Security”

  • Worldchanging: Bright Green: Living In The Age Of Stupid

    Rated Mar 17 2009 • 4 reviews • environment, change, society, late modernity • worldchanging.com

    Living In The Age Of Stupid


    The Age of Stupid is the new four-year epic from McLibel director Franny Armstrong. Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, looking at old footage from 2008 and asking: why didnu2019t we stop climate change when we had the chance?

    Postlethwaite's final monologue then really drives the message home:

    We wouldn't be the first life form to wipe itself out. But what would be unique about us is that we did it knowingly. What does that say about us?

    The question I've been asking is: why didn't we save ourselves when we had the chance? Is the answer because on some level we weren't sure if we were worth saving?

    Living In The Age Of Stupid commentary on WorldChanging
    The Age of Stupid the film
    video clips



    "... on some level we weren't sure if we were worth saving".

    This comment is devastating. Does it denote stupidity? I don't think so. Think about it. Are you really so sure that humanity is worth saving?

    From whichever viewpoint we look at this question the fact is that modernity and mostly late modernity are projecting a very ugly image of humanity. Late modernity acts as the most abject form of totalitarianism. Under the guise of rationality we justify the extinction of all non-modern societies. But our hypocritical consciousness only seems to know about Tibet. Why only Tibet and not the entire tapestry of cultures the world over? The same is true of languages.
    But there is more. Observe our own daily lives. We work always more hours and have always less time for ourselves. Industrialization took away our self-sufficiency, our gardens and livestock breeding, our house building and decoration, our clothes making and all that is necessary in our daily lives. While all this was taken away from us we discovered that we now were obligated to purchase all those same things...

    But the most abject, to me at least, is the latest scientific foray into the field of terra-forming. Now that we discover the potential threat of extinction some scientists and some ecologists want to impose on all human beings the idea of changing the configuration of the earth. Studies are already being undertaken financed with public money and the solutions arrived at will one day in the not so distant future be put in practice without any of us having been asked for our opinion. Totalitarianism in its most ultimate form.

    I absolutely believe that humanity in its late-modern societal form is not worth saving. Some believe that a collapse of late-modernity is the chance to foment the emergence of something societally new. But I think that the formation of the future is largely out of our own hands...




    2,891 views
    Worldchanging: Bright Green: Living In The Age Of Stupid

  • Readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative...

    Rated Jan 27 2009 • 3 reviews • science, art, worldviews, change • physorg.com

    Readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative situations
    via physorg, by Gerry Everding in Medicine & Health / Psychology

    A new brain-imaging study is shedding light on what it means to "get lost" in a good book suggesting that readers create vivid mental simulations of the sounds, sights, tastes and movements described in a textual narrative while simultaneously activating brain regions used to process similar experiences in real life.

    Readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative situations



    "... the conclusion that when we read a story and really understand it, we create a mental simulation of the events described by the story" that conclusion relates to the understanding of reality that is already present in our brain as a result of our brain having processed during our whole life the information supplied by our sensors: knowledge through the eyes, feelings and mood through the ears, smells through the nose, touch through our fingers tips, etc...

    This return of signs from the brain to our sensors is, it seems to me, causing us to understand reality at a superior level than the "first degree" our sensors habitually communicate to our minds. This basic fact is what unleashed the flurry of trials and mostly errors that the "avant-garde" in visual arts struggled with from the turn of the 20th century till today.

    My personal thesis (see my books and articles in Crucial Talk) is that this return of information from our brain to our sensors is unleashing new degrees of understanding about reality that leads us straight to the emergence of a new paradigm of reality that will be the substrate upon which a new worldview will emerge that shall be shared by all in the future area of post-modernity. And I believe that visual arts will play a central role in diffusing such a worldview for all to share.




    20 views
    Readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative situations, brain scans suggest

  • Crucial talk

    Rated Jan 14 2009 • 1 review • art, painters, society, change • blogspot.com

    What now in painting?
    in Crucial Talk by myself

    After a century of avant-gardism we artists are faced with the same questions that arose with the emergence of the avant-garde:
    - what to represent or what meaning to give to the content of the work of art.
    - what form to best dress the substance of our content.
    - what technique to best represent, in our time, our content and its form.
    The level of confusion in artists' minds is assuredly deafening but this does not eliminate the necessity to find answers to those questions that were first expressed nearly a century ago.

    What now in painting?







    My take on visual arts is twofold:
    - content of the work = the illustration of the worldview of the men of knowledge of the day for all to share. (vision is our most powerful biological sensor)
    - form = beauty... (see the last post on my blog)

    The trouble is that visual artists have been stuck since at least one century in the deepest of intellectual fogs. The link between visual artists and men of knowledge has indeed disappeared... or to be more accurate the link has not disappeared it is the men of knowledge that have lost their societal recognition. Our modern mass-production societies (or mass consumption depending from where one looks at it) have indeed abandoned the time-honored practice of "sanctifying" their men of knowledge who, as a consequence, have been left to fend for themselves on the "level playing field of the market" for ideas where they found themselves competing with all kinds of charlatans for people's attention and as a result nobody knows any longer for certain who is a man of knowledge today. But what has not been eliminated is the human need to share a common understanding with others... and as a consequence Western societies are now engulfed by a multitude of belief groups competing among themselves for "customers" in need of the warmth of a sharing community and in the process our societies have lost even the necessary societal cohesion to reproduce themselves. It seems to me that to sort out or grow out of our present societal predicament our societies will be obliged to recourse to more and more force to coerce their citizens to follow a common societal road of reproduction....

    In the midst of this cultural, economic and societal quagmire we artists are left with no other alternative but to build up our own knowledge base in order to grow a coherent worldview (view or understanding of reality). I firmly believe that those artists who will impact our societies in the future are those who will have successfully affirmed a coherent worldview representative of today's "reality", a worldview which visual signs can be shared by others... So to succeed to produce such shareable visual signs I believe the artist has to equip himself with knowledge. My friendfeed site is witness of the actionable knowledge I find along my daily surfs on the web.

    The experience of an emergent coherent worldview representative of today's "conditions" is the background of my visual signs. Will those signs ever be shared by others? I have no clue about that but what I know for a fact is that they surely can't be shared largely today. The realities founding those visual signs will only manifest themselves as evidence to all well later in time. So a large sharing by others of my visual signs can only be a thing of the future and there is no guarantee that such a sharing will happen at all. I could as well be totally wrong in my present vision but that is the price the artist has to pay isn't it? The condition of the artist, it seems to me, is to be the post-modern shaman and if this does not work out, well, we'll have nothing else but to accepting the qualification of non-normality.. ha, ha. Well I don't know if this is funny at all but what is reassuring is the certainty that we'll be gone by that time.




    460 views
    Crucial talk

  • Technology Review: Our Past Within Us

    Rated Jan 08 2009 • 2 reviews • history, humanity, change, science • technologyreview.com

    Our Past Within Us
    in Technology Review by Mark Williams

    ... if archaic Homo sapiens emerged as long as 200,000 years ago, why did our species need so many millennia before its transition, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, from the hunter-"gatherer nomadism that characterized all previous hominids to permanent, year-round settlement", which then allowed the elaboration of humankind's cultural efforts?

    Archaeogenetics Emerges. ... a grand synthesis of three approaches: scientific archaeology, which collects hard data through radiocarbon dating and similar technologies; linguistic study aimed at constructing clear histories of the world's languages; and molecular genetic analysis.

    ... we tend to be species-centric about the concept of humanity, the reality is that all organisms are temporary receptacles into which DNA pours itself, and inter-species boundaries are more fluid and tenuous than we've thought. In a sense, the idea of Homo sapiens as a distinct species is one more racial myth.

    Our Past Within Us. The new field known as archeogenetics is illuminating prehistory.
    Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind a book by Colin Renfrew. Modern Library, 2008

    The idea that "organisms are temporary receptacles into which DNA pours itself" is kind of consecrating this larger idea of "evolutionary direction forward." This concept does not imply "progress". "Not only did Cro-Magnons have larger brains than we do, for example, but the difference was big. "In the last 10,000 years, our brains have shrunk about 200 cubic centimeters," Hawks explains. "If we shrunk another 200, we'd be the equivalent of Homo erectus. One possibility is this represents greater efficiency--our brains using less energy, needing less developmental time, and signaling faster. Alternatively, of course, we're getting dumber." "




    174 views
    Technology Review: Our Past Within Us