If We Had a Better Story Could We Tell the Truth? Violet green swallow playing with a feather; photo by Chris Maynard Recently, to my surprise, it’s become more acceptable to tell the grim truth about our civilization.
Still not acceptable, mind you, but every once in a while when I do, I’ll notice someone nodding at me, giving me a sad smile, a quiet signal of comprehension and appreciation. tree swallows in aerial acrobatics; photo by Richard Seaman There are three (very large) groups to whom one cannot usefully or comfortably (or sometimes even safely) tell these truths: I have always found that, when in a crowd that I know contains members of one or more of these groups, or whose members I don’t know well, it’s usually unwise to talk about what’s really going on in our world. So it’s usually best to stay quiet, because telling the truth always begs the question: “OK lunatic/doomer/asshole, what are you doing about it?”
Once an imperial reality is created, real reality becomes sedition. But as long as we stay quiet, we’re complicit. Thinkipedia. Harlan T Wood. Cheap solar? UN Helen Clark re China. 27 Aug 2013 Helen Clark, UNDP Administrator Speech at the Launch of the 2013 China National Human Development Report On “Sustainable and Livable Cities: Towards Ecological Civilisation”, Beijing, China.
Your Excellency Minister Xie Zhenhua, Vice Chairman of National Development and Reform Commission Your Excellency Mr. Wang Weiguang, President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, I am pleased to be participating in the launch of this 2013 China National Human Development Report, entitled Sustainable and Liveable Cities: toward Ecological Civilization. In December 2011, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that at the national level, more than fifty per cent of the population of the country was now living in cities. Around half of humanity – some 3.5 billion people – now live in cities. While the transition to a predominantly urban population is not unique to China, urbanization here has two striking characteristics. This raises challenges on several fronts. TodaysMeet. Metamaps. Thrivability def. Life in the green lane moves pretty fast… right when you think you have something figured out, another product, concept or philosophy steps up to replace what you had thought was current.
A great example of this is the compact fluorescent light bulb… At the household level, we are often led to believe that CFLs are the solutions to our energy inefficiency woes. Truth is they are merely a gateway technology and will eventually be taken over by light emitting diodes. LEDs are significantly more efficient than CFLs, last longer, and don’t require toxins which are found in CFLs… all around a superior product. On personal, institutional, and global scales we’re often told that sustainability is the ultimate goal… universally defined, sustainability means ‘meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ Sounds nice, right? It’s also worth noting that we need to restore and regenerate to sustain. Ok, so sustainability has its issues, eh!?!
Metaconstructs.