What's Next?...

Naivety is charming in a child; sad (and disturbing) in an adult i.e any fully functioning person over the age of 45... wake up people - the oligarchy rules!

And if you accept that as a truth, what are you going to DO about it?  Accept it and live under its shackles, or reject, resist, overthrow?

Maybe it's too late to do anything about it... 

I think we are beyond the point of no return... 

My 'sense' of what's happening in the world is usually about two years ahead of the curve... and it's usually pretty accurate - say somewhere between 80-100%...

And what I've been seeing/sensing coming (for about the last six months), is societal breakdown on the back of planet degradation, financial collapse, food and water shortages...

I'm not alone in these views; indigenous elders have been warning about this coming for hundreds (if not thousands) of years, western mystics have foreshadowed it, and even hard-headed academics who are not necessarily in tune with 'energy' are stepping out into the open on this...

Some are calling what is coming the "Post-Industrial Stone Age"...

And why do I think it's going to get so bad? 

WE ARE LIVING IN A CLOSED LOOP.... 

ENERGY CANNOT BE CREATED OR DESTROYED - IT CAN ONLY BE TRANSFORMED...

SO, IF WE ARE LIVING ON A PLANET THAT HAS FINITE ENERGY/RESOURCES, IT IS COMPLETELY ILLOGICAL TO THINK WE CAN HAVE INFINITE GROWTH... it just does not make sense, no matter how you look at it...

We're literally trashing our planet, contaminating and killing the earth and the waters and the air, damaging and disrupting natural cycles like the weather, driving other life-forms to extinction, and with our uncontrolled population growth, we've been spreading like a viral plague...

It's been said that if we wanted all people on the planet to live as westerners do, we'd need the resources of at least four Earths...

Most of the planet's wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of less than 3% of the planet's population.   Everything's been commodified.   Now it's not just the Third World poor who can't afford food, water or shelter - millions in the west are in the same boat...

Here in the US, the housing market has not yet finished its downward spiral; each week foreclosures go up and house prices go down...

The real unemployment/underemployment rate is hovering around 30%; 44 million people receive food stamps and 25% of American children are living in poverty.

This in the richest country in the world, while trillions of dollars are being spent on senseless wars/fighting for control of far off places.... 

In one news story, they tell us that X number of jobs have been created last month... at the next news bulletin, they say that unemployment has climbed yet again... NEVER ONCE, DO YOU GET BOTH SETS OF INFORMATION IN THE SAME NEWS STORY, so that you can tell the number of jobs lost EXCEED the number of jobs created...

Things are worse now than during the Depression, but no one wants to call it that; instead, this time we're living through the Great Recession!

The worst the 'experts' will say is that it will take several years to climb out of this pit...

But our way of life (social structure, economic and political philosophies) got us into this mess, and continuing on with the same ideas and actions will never get us out of it...

And I believe the oligarchs know this... but knowing this, they continue to push us all down this path... they appear willing, determined even, to suck the very LIFE out of us and the earth, the mother who carries us all...

So what's next?   Where do we take this knowledge and build on it?

Maybe the best we can do is get together with like-minded people...

Get as far off the grid as we can...

Create connections and networks and ways of living that make minimum impact on the earth and her resources and wait it out...

While we're waiting it out, support each other and work together to come up with a different system of social organisation - perhaps "thrivalism" in small communities, perhaps a resource-based economy... 

Maybe a "Triple P" society, where the focus is Planet, People, Prosperity...

Where, before we make any decision and take any action, we ask ourselves:

Is it good for the Planet?

Is it good for all the People?

Does it bring Prosperity (which is different to profit)?

If the answer to any of these questions is "no", then we scrap whatever the idea/plan/action is...

What do you think?

The Occupation of U.S. Public Schools: Kids as Cannon Fodder & Consumers

 

"In November of 2009, 90 retired U.S. military leaders, including former NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark, 2 former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and 6 other 4-star generals and admirals, announced their plans to cultivate another demographic to fight future imperial wars — pre-schoolers. According to Rear Admiral Barnett, “Our national security in the year 2030 is absolutely dependent on what’s going on in pre-kindergarten today.”

Major press throughout the country printed the story, echoing the concern that so many 17-24 year olds are unfit for military service today and that in the future it could mean “a limited pool (of potential recruits) will hold back our military readiness and erode our national security in the long run.” 

 

Although it may be surprising that they are targeting tots, it’s probably not surprising that high-ranking retired military men have an interest in raising cannon fodder for the future and passing on the lethal legacy associated with their careers. But what may come as a surprise is that they are already well on their way with the aid of the Obama administration and U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, as well as congress, in pursuing an aggressive agenda, spearheaded by the Pentagon and corporate business interests, to alter the entire U.S. public education system.

 
To this end, Mission Readiness promoted the Early Learning Challenge Fund. It was included in the Zero-to-Five Initiative (that’s “zero to five” years of age) of President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Request. Congress was lobbied for support state-by-state and the House of Representatives passed the initiative in the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act last September; it currently awaits passage in the Senate. The money is not for actual program. The strategy is to shift who has control of public education beginning with children in the tender years and continuing through high school.

 

The Early Learning Challenge Fund is only one of a number of grant programs designed to “reform” the nation’s education system by militarizing and privatizing it. The so-called “education reform” movement was initiated by practitioners of a new form of private giving called “venture philanthropy,” which regards public schools as free-market terrain in which to exercise its own ideologies and agendas, away from the purview of public accountability and without cumbersome educator, local community, and school board input (the “reform” movement pushes for giving city mayors, rather than school boards, oversight for schools—although it will involve itself in school board campaigns when it isn’t possible).

 

Kenneth Saltman, Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Foundations in Education at DePaul University, stated: “Within this corporatized view of educational leadership found in venture philanthropy, military leadership is celebrated for its alleged link with corporate management—a focus on discipline, order and enforcement of mandates through a hierarchy at every level of public schooling.” (Kenneth J. Saltman and David Gabbard, Education as Enforcement: the Militarization and Corporatization of Schools, New York: Routledge 2003.)

  

Saltman calls the militarization of public schools with its focus on urban and predominantly African-American and Latino student bodies, “a ‘profoundly racialized phenomenon’” in that “these students are framed as suffering primarily from a lack of discipline which the military and corporation can supply.” 

 

Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad, who made a fortune through residential home building, and the insurance and financial products corporations SunAmerica and AIG, is regarded as the foremost practitioner of venture philanthropy in education reform. He created the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems to carry out its agendas—placing corporate executives and military officers who are not educators—in charge of public school administrations, and indoctrinating administers who are already in the school system into its methods nationwide.

 

By 2010, graduates from the Broad Superintendents Academy held 68 superintendent positions and 88 senior school district executive positions across the country. Last year, 43 percent of all large urban school districts that conducted external searches for new superintendents filled their positions with graduates of the academy.

 

It isn’t any wonder then that the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which operates these programs on school reform, sees things moving in the direction it desires. Its 2009/2010 report states: “The election of President Barack Obama and his appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, as the U.S. Secretary of Education marked the pinnacle of hope for our work in education reform. In many ways, we feel the stars have finally aligned. With an agenda that echoes our decade of investments—charter schools, performance pay for teachers, accountability, expanded learning time and national standards—the Obama administration is poised to cultivate and bring to fruition the seeds we and other reformers have planted.” 

 

Military infiltration and control of public schools figure prominently in this scenario. Of the 14 members of the Broad Superintendent Class of 2010, (They keep their current jobs and attend “class” training for ten months at specific times throughout the year.) four are high-ranking military: the former Chief of Operations, NATO Afghan Operations; the Director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis for the United States Military Academy; the Commanding General of the United States Army Human Resources Command; and the Director of the Human Performance Resource Center for the United States Army. The class of 2009 included the Commanding General of 10th Mountain Division and Joint Task Force of 25,000 U.S. military in Afghanistan.

 

 

The education “reform” movement has so permeated our national culture that it now forms the framework of discussions about education—often in glowing terms. Both the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Minneapolis’s Star Tribune referred to the selection of the new St. Paul School Superintendent for training at what they call the “prestigious” Broad Supervisor’s Academy. Although the new superintendent is an educator qualified for other reasons, the Pioneer Press called her experience at the Broad school “something the School Board could hardly overlook when they were choosing candidates.” 

 

Several top officials in New York City’s Department of Education were trained at the Broad program but a chemistry teacher complains, “My district can’t provide working heat, light, or running water for my under-equipped lab, but we pay hundreds of thousands to the consulting businesses he (Eli Broad) promotes.” She goes on to state: “The real drive behind his manipulations is the marketing plan for the useless ‘services’ and products provided (at public expense) for his for-profit entrepreneurial ‘partners.’ Edubusiness entrepreneurs hide under a layer of fake nonprofits set by ‘philanthropists’ like Broad and Gates.” (Gotham Schools at http://gothamschools.org)"...  from: http://www.worldwidewamm.org/newsletters/2010/0310/fodder.html

 
If this doesn't have you in complete outrage about what's going on in the US and in education, what will?

 

And if you do find this morally indefensible, what are you going to do about it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Its Been a While...

Well... its been nearly a month since I last posted... something to do with it being summer, birthdays (mine and my son's), daughter visiting on her way back to Australia from Istanbul, personal stuff, public education/school district activism and focusing on growing my business/practice - there's still the rent to pay, groceries to buy, utilities to keep from getting cut off, petrol for the car blah, blah, blah...

Why aren't we at the point described in one of the Star Trek movies where everyone's basic needs are provided for because we have the resources and technology to do that?   Buckminster Fuller talked about that in the 60s and Robert Theobald proposed a full unemployment society a decade or more ago.  

An NPR report today focused on the possibility of teleportation: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128910996&sc=fb&cc=fp

Don't get me wrong - I was so excited to see the report.   I thought - "wow, its about time" - because I've always thought that anything we can imagine already exists in some other place/time and if its all about frequencies, we only need to resonate at the same frequency to bring it into our here and now... Shamans and mystics have been doing that for eons.

But I also thought: if we're working on that, why can't we be working on a new socio-economic system that solves the problems we face in the world - population issues, health, education, housing, clean water, the environment, conflict, poverty, debt, sustainability, not enough work to go around, failure to treasure the arts and anything which doesn't contribute to GDP/GNP...

Its so depressing to think that until capitalism has completely sucked the lifeblood out of this planet, our mother, and all of her living inhabitants, until the skies are grey and the seas are black and the land is dry, devoid of trees and infertile - we will not find the will to live differently....

Would it be such a loss if our species went extinct?  Really, we're just fleas on an elephant's back.   The day we finally step irreversibly, irretrievably over the line, Gaia would maybe just do a huge shrug and throw us off.   Gaia would survive, repair herself and thrive, as James Lovelock thinks http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8594000/8594561.stm 

And because energy can only be transmuted, not created or destroyed, the individual and collective 'energy' that is each of us and all of us would surely manifest in another form somewhere else in this awesome creation called LIFE... 

 
 

Innovation: Competition versus Collaboration

I've been part of a discussion amongst social entrepreneurs about what drives innovation?

Many people are still stuck in the 'free market' model, thinking that its the only one that fosters true innovation.

I disagree that competition in and of itself drives innovation.   Innovation basically is problem solving, curiosity manifested in creating something new.   It doesn't only happen in a competitive environment.   I believe its an inherent drive within the human spirit to create something new/different; its an extension of our need to express ourselves and it has little do do with what's going on in the outside world/market.

I think competition restricts innovation because there is so much at risk in daring to think outside the box - profits, reputation, social position, livelihood. That's why we have so much of the same thing with only minor variations available to us as consumers - small (often only cosmetic) changes are hailed as being highly innovative.

I think true innovation happens in an environment which is supportive, where there is no economic/political attachment to the outcome.   Innovation is an organic process.   Think of children being creative - how many children can think freely when they are under time or other constraints?    How many artists or authors can come up with their best work if the clock is ticking and their publisher is pushing them to meet a spring deadline because another popular author has a new book due out then?    How well do you do, if someone is standing over your shoulder, demanding that you produce something entirely original by a particular day/date, meeting highly defined criteria, using a tightly controlled set of resources?   If you can't do it, you and the process are termed 'failures'.

How much more likely is innovation to occur, if you could talk/collaborate with all the other people working in the same field, no matter what they're doing and for whom they work?    Imagine the incredible outcomes that might spontaneously present themselves out of the synergy of working without boundaries?

I come from a space where I'm not interested in competing with anyone.    There is no need - there's enough to go round (its an issue of ownership and distribution) and competing sets limits, boundaries, conditions and chokes off the ability to be innovative, expansive.   

I'm interested in collaboration and cooperation.   I'm into 'synergy' and 'synchronicity'.   I'm a natural networker - information and people cross my path, I keep tabs on who's doing what and where I see synergy I connect people and resources.   They go off and 'make wonderful music together' and I keep on with my own interests. 

I do this informally (because I would get bored and feel fenced in, and it would spoil the INTENT and the organic spontaneity of it) usually without any recompense or ongoing stake in the outcome - which some would say is foolish, naive, self-sabotaging and will keep me poor!

One of the major reasons I do this in just this way is because I see the spectrum of wealth-poverty we have in the world, even here in the West, and I think the imbalance we have going now is shockingly immoral and indefensible.   

Doing business as a social entrepreneur, using the existing competitive business/economic model, does not do enough to redress that basic imbalance - in fact, one could argue that it enables and perpetuates the imbalance.

I don't think things will change until individuals (as well as corporations) recant their involvement in competition and in the drive for personal wealth - when is enough enough, on a personal and societal level?   How much money can any one person spend in a lifetime, and how much stuff can you fit into your coffin? And who/what really paid for all those beautiful things we beautiful people surround ourselves with?   What was given up/lost so that we could enjoy the kind of life we do?

Social entrepreneurship is a laudable pathway IF we take it down to the personal level and consider our own, individual, daily lives part in the equation.   If we don't do that, then we're pretty much being hypocrites, aren't we?