MEMO (Mass Extinction Memorial Observatory) is building a memorial on the Dorset coast, made from local Portland stone, to commemorate plants and animals known to have gone extinct in modern times. They describe it on their Web site
Amulet Online Magazine recommended by Norah Cedarwind & Joanna Powell Colbert
Tiny House movement takes hold
Earth Vows by Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle
Earthing Institute: A chiropractor advocates for touching the earth with your bare feet as a healing path:
Positive psychology for a Better World a video about sustainability
Important excerpts from the Niki Harre book
“What it comes down to, is if you are too focused on the view that sustainability is a particular kind of problem you’ll be vulnerable to the latest argument suggesting it is something else all together. The problem will continue to shift and the solutions will always be contentious. People will mock you and prove you wrong. If, on the other hand, you see yourself not as solving a problem, but as helping to create a viable alternative to our current way of life, the meaning of what you do changes. Of course it will involve dead- ends, mistakes and even actions that turn out to do more harm than good, but your role is not to avoid these. As a sustainability advocate, your role is to take a position that says to others: “I am with those who think a better world is possible, and I am willing to take risks, including the risk of being wrong and looking naive or moralistic or well-meaning, to work alongside others in creating this world”.
“The sustainable society cannot and will not be dull. Instead it must provide intensely enjoyable and satisfying experiences for happiness- hungry humans.” (p 31)
This reminds me of the wonderful paper my friend Carrie Lanza sent me a few years back
“The Use of Joyfulness As a Community Organizing Strategy” by Ben Shepard (2005)
Here is the opening paragraph: In the last decade, there has been a resurgence in organizing for global peace and economic justice. Many of the innovative strategies propelling the new activism are borrowed from the activist project born between the birth of ACT UP and the protests at the Republican National Convention in 2004. A cornerstone of this approach is a rejection of the hair shirt, anti-pleasure Left. The result is a new generation of activist groups struggling to oppose war and corporate influence while offering a compelling image of the democracy which honors difference in its countless forms. A respect for the interrelations of joy, justice, pleasure, and a use of culture as an organizing tool is at the core of this approach. The new organizing offers fresh approaches to organizing diverse communities while struggling for justice for all. Three specific elements of the new community organizing—humor, culture, and carnival—are considered.
The most glaring implication of all this is that what we see people doing matters. However, no person or society is static. The capacity to copy that keeps us doing what we do now can be utilised for the opposite purpose, to encourage new patterns.
So the first action suggested is this: if you want to encourage sustainability, be visibly sustainable yourself and leave behind as many behavioural traces as you can.
I love this conclusion and it reminds me of the motto of my Living Love Revolution Media stream: “If you are not generating as much media as you are consuming, you are in trouble” Antero Alli Before takin this class, I was down to only reading mainstream media outlets once or twice a month and watching an occasional episode of The Daily Show or Rachel Maddock with my housemate partner Mark who loves watching things on the computer.
The Greening of the Self by Joanna Macy essay
Here are some of the amazing resources I have been finding for the Cascadia Holistic Peer Counseling Class. If you have not been introduced to Gabr Mate then you are missing out. See some of his videos here:
What are the essential elements of beginning a path of recovery?
The Consequences of Stressed Parenting
A radio program on the connection between illness and Capitalism
The Power of Addiction and the Addiction to Power
Dr. Gabor Mate’ On getting to the source of people’s pain
Who We Are when We Are Not Addicted We must look within and deal with the nature of our egoic minds