Link Loving 15.02.11

• Andy Field has a beautiful, insightful, passionate piece on art, innovation and re-imagining the world.
• The Economist on the trials and tribulations of getting into a university and social mobility.
• Adam Ramsay on why he hasn’t joined the Labour Party as large numbers of his lefty friends have.
• I just can’t get enough of the fake twitter profiles. This one is quiz-shaped to test out your BS detectors.
• Jonathan Smucker has a fantastic essay unpicking the immigration narratives in the US – and a cracking example of a pro-immigration angle from Howard Dean.
• As South Sudan gets ready for independence, it decides to build a whole new capital city.
• Sunny Hundal on why the UK student movement has died before it ever really lived again. Depressing reading.
• Matthew Herbert on leadership in activism.
• Tom Baker thinks it’s time to say goodbye to the World Social Forum.
• The world’s largest game of dodgeball – with video – in 360-degrees!

Willful Blindness

I listened to Margaret Heffernan‘s interview on Start The Week with fascination.

She explores the idea of ‘willful blindness’, where we ignore painful or frightening truths, subconsciously believing that denial can protect us. She argues that these delusions make us ever more vulnerable, and whatever suffering we choose to ignore continues unabated.

She describes how we innately long for the familiar, so that, for example, there are a disproportionate numbers of dentists whose names start with ‘D’. Or when told they share a birthday with Rasputin, people often start to see him in a better light, rather than the mad monk we usually think him to be.

One quote I liked particularly,

“Money blinds us to our relationship with each other, because it appears to give us the ultimate freedom of buying and selling. We live in an age where everything is measured by money, and we are blinded to the moral, ethical and social consequences of who we are, and what we owe to whom.”

And as a post-script. My name is Casper, and I call myself a Campaigner, Connector, Creator. Oh dear.

The Thomas Beale Cipher

This is beautiful. And a detective story.

The film contains 16 hidden messages that hold clues to the characters’ secrets. Eight are fairly easy and require only a close eye. Six are moderately difficult using various encryption methods. Two are extremely difficult and will require a genius mind to decrypt.

h/t Ze Frank

Link Loving 14.02.11

• What makes success? Richard St John shares his secrets.
• Prince Charles takes pot shots at climate sceptics and challenges infinite growth. ‘Oh I just can’t wait to be king.’
• 172 BBC websites saved by a single geek for $3.99.
• Michael Silberman reviews the best writing about online organising over the last year.
• Salim Ismail explores the future of privacy.
• Basketball Schmasketball – but this slam dunk is something else.
• More evidence on how rapid changes in society are reliant on strong relationships of trust and clarity of purpose.
• “The uprising in Egypt is our theatre of the possible.” So says John Pilger.
• Eva Baker and Ctr.Alt.Shift enjoy an alternative Valentine’s Day – loving their global neighbours.
• For those of you who enjoy the West Wing, you’ll like this piece ‘Inside the Secret Service’ in The Atlantic.

Plouffe Is Back

You know David Plouffe is back when you see something like this. (Apart from the fact he’s in it, obviously.)

The White House is listening once again. It’s involving it’s base, it’s making people feel part of governing. That’s a hard thing to do – but this presidency was built on that promise, and it must deliver it in order to succeed again in 2012.

As soon as the ’08 campaign ended and Plouffe passed on his control to the administration team, the quality of outreach to supporters crashed and burned. For those of you also on the list of 13 million email addresses the campaign built up – you too may have been asked to ‘sign a birthday card for Obama’, or ‘buy a mug’. All this while Democrats were floundering as the healthcare bill got weaseled down.

Let’s hope it gets better from here on in.

His book on the ’08 campaign is worth a read by the way. Not as a good as this one, but an insight nonetheless.

A Vision

Describing a vision for the future is much more difficult than I thought. So I want to share this vision, from Margo Adair and William Aal from Tools For Change, as an example of what a vision can be.

We share this vision not because we expect it to be yours, but because vision ignites the imagination. You may want to read the next section slowly, giving yourself time to imagine what I am suggesting. Take a breath between sentences. Notice what visions arise for you and give them life. There is nothing that has ever been created that wasn’t first imagined.

If we can imagine it, we can create it. What if trust were to society what oil is to machinery? Imagine a world that runs on trust. Imagine a world where we have learned how to be honest with ourselves, and with each other—where the only safe way of being is to be honest. Imagine a world where intuition, spirituality, and emotions are all as valued as the intellect. Where our stories weave wonder into the world, where care becomes the currency of exchange.

Imagine a society that lives in synchrony with the cycles of nature, where human life is sustained on renewable energy as is nature itself, where the earth is cherished, and whatever is taken out is returned. Imagine knowing that there would always be a place for you and your family, a place for everyone’s family. Imagine being able to take it for granted that there would always be a place for your descendents, for all descendents, for humanity—a place on earth. Imagine how it feels to always belong—belong in a diversified community, for it is the diversity in nature that gives the web of life its strength. Imagine a time when everyone cherishes diversity in people because knowing diversity gives community its strength. Imagine being able to relax into our connectedness—into a web of mutually supportive relations with each other and with nature.

Imagine a world where what is valued most is not power but nurturance, where the aim is to care and be cared for, where the expression of love is commonplace. The dawn of each day is a blessing, reverence is in the air. We live as though life itself is an act of worship. Imagine a time when generosity is assumed. Creativity and laughter is everywhere.

Imagine a world, where it is understood that enough is good, and that more than enough isn’t, where there is a deep understanding of the difference between wants and needs. Imagine a world where greed, opportunism, coercion, and manipulation are all social crimes. Imagine a world where there is collective support in the overcoming of individual limitations, where mistakes aren’t hidden but welcomed as opportunities to learn, where there is no reason to withhold information, where honesty is a given.

Imagine a world where power without accountability was history. Imagine a world where bureaucracy, like the dinosaur, is extinct. Imagine a world on a human scale where work has regained its dignity. Imagine a time when work has regained its creativity, where you are part of the decisions that make a difference. Imagine a time when curiosity, inquiry and vulnerability are held sacred. Imagine a society that reveres patience rather than efficiency. Within patience there is respect, a deep trust—a knowing that in its own time the rosebud will bloom.
Imagine everyone taking pleasure in making their communities beautiful. Imagine the whole of humanity honoring the same sense of responsibility for maintaining the earth. Imagine a world where trust and honesty—not power and deception—are the oil that make society thrive. If we can imagine it, we can create it.

People make history. We can choose respect, trust, and mutual aid. We can choose life. We can choose to heal the earth. We can choose to heal humanity. We can breathe life into this vision.

In relationship, spirit comes alive. May vision-weaving be what we all do with our families, friends, and communities. May we bring vision into the center of public life, discovering what we are for. The Earth and all who live upon her are sacred. Vision and conviction are the fuel and fiber of action. Together we heal present time. May we all live into the changes we want to make. As we embody our visions in the present moment, it makes them manifest. Together we heal future time. Together we heal.

Recruiting

The UK Youth Climate Coalition is recruiting!

All details are here.

Best. Experience. Ever.

Link Loving 13.02.11

• After thoroughly enjoying Malcolm X’s autobiography last year, I’m excited by the prospect of his 1964 travel diaries being made public. If only his kids could get over their bickering. NY Times.
• A kilogram is no longer a kilogram apparently.
• Want to regenerate an urban space? Start a Facebook group. That’s the experience of Newcastle in Australia. TechPresident.
• An HIV strategy that invites people in. Vancouver leading the way.
• Raw Story – Lefty bloggers leave HuffPo after corporate buy-out. Plus ça change.
• FINALLY – what NGOs can teach the private sector about social media. McKinsey.
• How many times have you heard the head of a company say it’s successful because of its great people? Successful business’ dirty secret.
• A hilarious project where a man gets historians drunk, and asks them to tell their favourite story from the past. This one is about George Washington and Ona Judge Staines. Hilarious.
• New York Post freaks out over the Alliance of Youth Movements.

We Are All Connected

A wonderful short video, no?

WWF is 50 years old this year – and it’s exciting to see them use their half-centenary to talk about the idea of interdependence. Any reader of Margaret Wheatley will be all over this already, but for the most trusted environmental NGO brand to push this message out is great news.

We have to start seeing ourselves as part of a global biosphere, rather than the mechanistic, hyper-individualistic sense-of-self we’ve lived in for the last half a century. Is this is the next step in human evolution?

h/t David Willans

Link Loving 12.02.11

• Lawrence Haddad on why development needs to reimagine the future.
• My old Arctic buddy Ben Wessel wants to keep the National Mall as the host for the Solar Decathlon. (That’s a real event, I promise.)
• Owen Jones has some remarkably insightful ideas on how the left needs to change it’s language. Let’s start by never, ever again saying oil companies are ‘exploring’ for oil. They are depleting/extracting/emptying.
• George Monbiot with another corporate coup d’état.
• Paul Krugman likes Slow Food. Who doesn’t?
• Matthew Herbert has some useful – practical – experiences on implementing values-led campaigning.
• Who pays for peacekeeping? Seems we’re doing better than you might think, and Canada – less so.
• David Bosco on the differences between Washington D.C. and Paris on the G20.
• A reality check on youth unemployment from the Guardian video team. What is the solution to helping young men like this into productive work?
• Dean Baker looks at how Reagan’s administration framed the left as being pro-State, and the right as pro-Markets. Naturally, it ain’t necessarily so.