Culture & Behavior

Words which matter to people

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I wish to argue only this: that the end of all our questioning will not be a set of universal abstractions that transcend the messiness and peculiarity of the local cultural concepts with which we find ourselves. That abstract technical concepts, however usefully they serve within their own context, will always lack the power of living language. And that, if we wish the qualities that we may associate with resilience to take root in the places where we live, we would do well to look for concepts and stories which embody those qualities, and words which matter to people.

Gender roles and descent

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All of us will need to work cooperatively to become more self-sufficient as we restructure of our culture post fossil fuels, which requires more time at home, making the juggling all the harder if we refuse to give something up. And women are not good at giving things up, as evidenced by our current quandary of too many roles to play.

The Triumph of Fantasy over Science, Part 2

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Right now “economics” means “neoclassical economics,” especially in the halls of government and business boardrooms. At the same time, ecological economics remains an under-appreciated and under-utilized sub-discipline of economics. To reverse this situation, such that when people talk about economics, they’re talking about ecological economics, we need to address the three factors described in Part 1 of The Triumph of Fantasy over Science…

Deep roots of community resilience

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Victor Hugo once wrote that “Religion, society, nature: these are the three struggles of man. These three conflicts are, at the same time, his three needs”. The literature and history of countries around the world seem to provide plenty of evidence to back up Hugo’s words. But in Japan, where prevailing Shinto and Buddhist beliefs are inextricably tied to nature, and traditional society was shaped around harmonious human-nature activities in satoyama landscapes, these three factors seem to have grown together and may provide some explanation for the tremendous resilience that communities in Japan’s Tohoku region have shown in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011.

Work Bees

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Are you old enough to remember community Work Bees? Or, did you come along after most of the homestead “work” got out-sourced to “professionals?”

I’m old enough to remember Work Bees. And, I’m interested in reintroducing them. We’re living in a period of the Great Forgetting and part of reclaiming resilience is becoming reskilled in many of the practices that were native to our grandparents’ lives.

Why Things Bounce Back

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Is there a way to mitigate the current volatility of our social and economic systems by designing built-in coping mechanisms? We’ll explore the possibilities this hour with Andrew Zolli, director of the global innovation network Poptech and co-author of the new book “Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back” (Free Press, 2012).

How cascading failures in the global finance system could mean TEOTWAWKI

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I’ve met David Korowicz and he is a thoughtful, deeply knowledgeable, highly analytical, caring man who worries that the global system we now labor under is headed for what might be called the ultimate crash. To Korowicz, a physicist turned risk consultant, that system resembles nothing so much as a house of cards waiting to be blown down by the next financial hurricane that comes its way.