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Friends, Colleagues, Allies, Comrades, and
Detractors,
It appears that the author of the Doors of
Perception Report has been reading the wrong people. In general, by which
I mean without exception, he is discussing bad ideas. It would take too
long to start at the beginning, go to the end, and then stop. For now, I
will be content to note that I would have been better off in the development of
the notion of dematerialism if I had
identified materialism
with the notion of resource dominance from evolutionary biology. Thus, we
don’t need tools for survival, design festivals, school designs, conferences
on change, sustainable mobility, wikinomics, or sustainability lists. If
we don’t find a way to change the political system in such a way as to
eliminate resource dominance, all of these activities are guaranteed to do more
harm than good. To borrow an analogy, it’s like rearranging the
deck chairs on the Titanic. John Gray represents my only serious opposition,
which is summarized very briefly at http://www.dematerialism.net/#_Toc172928972
without mentioning Gray.
Tom Wayburn,
http://dematerialism.net/
http://dematerialism.blogspot.com/
http://dematerialism.wikispaces.com/
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Dematerialism
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?TomWayburn
http://energybulletin.net/23259.html
“Every revolution is hopeless until the night before it
occurs.” [attribution
forgotten]
From:
the-commons@yahoogroups.com [mailto:the-commons@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of eric.britton
Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008
5:54 AM
To: The-commons@yahoogroups.com
Cc: John Thackara
Subject: [The Commons] Doors of
Perception Report by John Thackara January 2008
OF DOOMERS AND BOTTLE-FILLERS
In Sao Paulo before Christmas someone referred to me as a "doomer." I
had not heard the word before, but was told that it describes sad,
train-spotter-
change, the instability of financial markets, the impending food crisis,
and what John Michael Greer calls the "catabolic collapse" of
industrial
civilisation. [snip]
TOOLS FOR SURVIVAL: ST ETIENNE DESIGN BIENNIAL
Imagine that you have the attention and presence of 80,000 designers and
architects. Which five tools, business models, platforms, or
applications, would you badly want them to learn about - and use? Tools
for Survival is such an opportunity. [snip]
SCALE DILEMMA (1): DESIGNS OF THE TIME (DOTT)
Doors is still working with its partners on the legacy of Dott 07. [snip]
SCALE DILEMMA (2): Eco Design Challenge FOR SCHOOLS
Dott's Eco Design Challenge is a good example of the scalability
dilemma. More than fifteen thousand school students used
custom--designed calculators to measure their school's eco-footprint
during 2007. [snip]
THE ASSETS OF AFRICA
As Saki Mafundikwa aptly stated, "
have a lot of money." If
does it have?. This question, posed by Mugendi Mrithaa to conference
chair Ezio Manzini, has persuaded us we should participate in the Change
the Change conference in
SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY
There are two ways to reduce transportation emissions: reduce emission
rates per vehicle-kilometer, or reduce total vehicle-travel. [snip]
FREAKY WIKINOMICS
Don Tapscott's new book Wikinomics gallops along at a heady pace. "The
knowledge, resources, and computing power of billions of people are
self-organising into a massive new collective force", it gushes. This
marvelous news is tempered by the suspicion that either I, or the Web
2.0 world, is afflicted by a severe reality deficit. Wikinomics promises
us an internet-powered business utopia, but the words climate change,
peak oil, and catbolic collapse, are notable for their complete absence.
A better text for CEOs is John Gray's Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion
and the Death of Utopia. "The pursuit of utopia must be replaced by an
attempt to cope with reality" writes Gray. Warning that "an
irrational
faith in the future is encrypted into contemporary life", the
laugh-a-minute philosopher recommends a diet of Spinoza and Tao-ism for
those whose new year resolution is: Get Real.
NO NEW LISTS!
My own new year's resolution is to stop writing sustainability to-do
lists. [snip]
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