Saturday, January 3, 2009

ANOTHER WAY OF KNOWING

Some good essays here, like Daniel Quinn's "The Great Forgetting" from The Story of B (which, sadly, I have never read).

Other authors include the site's creator, Oneida Kincaid, Jared Diamond, Richard Heinberg (!), and many whom I haven't heard of before. I don't find Derreck Jensen here, but he would be at home among these writers.

The idea that civilization itself is the culprit (along with its chief engine, agriculture) needs to be included in the Transition story, doesn't it? I think so, but it's tricky business (as we found out with exposing people to "What a Way to Go").

This reminds me of those who complain that they already understand peak oil and climate change, that they already understand the problems and want to get right down to developing solutions! I want to shout at them that they are absolutely clueless and misinformed, that they have entirely missed the point of what we're about. 

There is great value to exploring the idea that the dilemma we find ourselves in as a species is not a problem to be solved but the consequence of our own actions to which we now must adapt. And Al Bartlett's reminder that "The greatest source of problems is solutions." 

This leads to the scientist's worning that if we do not change our ways, we will find ourselves in a completely different world, and Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb's adamant response, "We live in a different world already." 

Taleb is also credited with a wonderful statement that will help inform Transition Times: "The world we live in vastly different from the one we think we live in."

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