The High Price Of Materialism

Great video from the Center for the New American Dream.

Link Loving 05.12.11

• The UK Youth Climate Coalition brings us up to speed on the climate negotiations in Durban using hand puppets.
• Why is British public life dominated by men? Kira Cochrane.
• This made me cry.
• Amazing Commencement Speech at Kenyon University by David Foster Wallace. Part 1 and 2.
• Utah Phillips on non-violence. What a man.
• Who’s holding us back? Great Greenpeace report looking at carbon-intensive industry is blocking climate action.
• Wildly hilarious – Youtube’s Pronunciation Guide.
• How academics have been “seduced” into using business-speak to defend higher education. Jack Grove.

Campaigning With Common Cause – Social

Come to the Campaigning With Common Cause Social on Wednesday 14th December at 6.30pm.

• Are you a campaigner?
• Want to explore what values and frames mean for your campaigning?
• Want to meet others asking the same questions?

This is an informal session for campaigners interested in working with values to share their questions, build community, and learn about organisations going through transition to become more aligned with their own values.

There’ll be some light facilitation to help everyone start meaningful conversation, though the emphasis is really on getting to know each other and share our learning.

Looking forward to seeing you!

When: 6.30pm on Wednesday 14th December.

Where: Bank of Ideas, just behind Liverpool Street Station.

Moment Of Clarity

This taken from ‘Virtuous Circles: Values, Systems and Sustainability‘. 

“There are two basic reasons underlying the food, energy, water and climatic crises:

1. The systems that have evolved to supply us with our basic needs are totally dependent on fossil fuels; the inevitable consequence of this is large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as solid waste and water and air pollution. It is especially unsustainable given that the era of cheap energy, crude oil and natural gas in particular, is about to end

2. Our current way of providing basic needs – be they food, water, waste management or energy – involves industrialised systems that are linear, centralised and globalised. In the linear approach, it is assumed that at one end of a system there is an unlimited supply of energy and raw materials (which there isn’t), while at the other the environment has an infinite capacity to absorb pollution and waste (which it hasn’t). The inevitable result is resource shortages on the one hand and solid waste, climate change and air pollution problems on the other.”

Defacing Beauty

A Victorian on advertising..

“Shall woodland aisle and flower-paved pasture plead,
For loving head and reverent touch in vain,
But every unclean huckster may profane
Heaven’s sylvan shrines with sacrilegious greed?
By lust of gain divorced from Nature’s heart,
And quitting primrose brake and babbling brook
For sordid joys of meretricious mart,
Now they return, invade each shady nook,
Each fair seclusion, and with impious art
Deface the innocent Beauty they forsook…”

Former Poet Laureate Alfred Austin

h/t Guy Shrubsole

Link Loving 04.12.11

• Design for Social Sustainability: a framework for creating thriving communities. The Young Foundation.
• Must leaders be nice to succeed? Jena McGregor.
• Kathryn Schulz: Don’t regret regret.
• London police have built the Berlin Wall in London. And then taken it down again.
• A collection of life lessons. Amazing learning shared by Chris Corrigan.
• Make them ‘in’ on the joke. Seth Godin.

Power Is Less Self-Sufficient Than Passion

“In all its might, power is less self-sufficient than passion; passion generates its own power. Passion is in itself a kind of power that is by its very nature a kinetic force.”

Fantastic piece in the New York Times by Aung San Suu Kyi.

h/t Charlotte Millar.

Link Loving 03.12.11

• Caroline Lucas is named the most influential MP of 2011.
• Genuinely astonishing. An Illinois man could be sentenced to 75 years in jail for filming police.

Link Loving 02.12.11

• The Otesha Project is hiring a Strategic Director.
• European social democrats have now lost 19 out of 24 elections since the fall of Lehman brothers. Olaf Cramme.
• 18 ideas that will shape 2012. Arianna Huffington and Chris Anderson.
• Interested in campaign strategy/social movements? Make sure to read Daniel Vockins‘ new blog.
• How inequality fuelled the crash – and is halting recovery. Clifford Singer.
• How about some new environmental narratives. They don’t all have to be The Lorax. Michelle Nijhuis.
• How do you get more than 20 million AK47 assault rifles out of Africa? Finance their destruction through the creation of a luxury brand. Naturally.

The Council Of Elders

The Council of Elders is  a newly organised, independent group of leaders from many of the defining American social justice movements of the 20th century. They’re exploring every possible, helpful way in which they can connect together the continuing flame of the democratising movements of the 20th century with the powerful light of the emerging movements of the present time.

Here they are supporting Occupy Wall Street.