reminders from a keynote address

This morning saw keynote address by Hunter Lovins with panel discussion, from Bell Conf, sponsored by Cornell's Sustainable Global Enterprise and World Resources Institute.

During her address, Lovins focused on a project of rebuilding that she is currently involved in at Afghanistan. She discussed it as an example to illustrate the possibilities in channeling resources from richer parts of the world to the less privileged parts. The latter part of the address and the panel discussion following focused on how this is possible for individuals and groups in various political positions who, given various affiliations, are tied to different interests, risks, and mindsets. Questions also arose regarding how communication is possible between these individuals.

Inspired, I make the following notes:

My interest lies predominantly in -
Whether and how the distributed resources of [expertise, information, and funds] in the privileged society can be coordinated, such that resource-channelling to the less privileged occurs logically, respectful to individual and cultural freedom. that promoting the potential to define and pursue each own goals becomes foundational.

There exists many issues that should find a beginning in being addressed this century. Some for-instance's : widescale environmental problems brought on by the use of problematic technologies, the social restructuring in the globalizing world, urban and infrastructural renewal in postwar or ongoing war settings, and simply - food and shelter for many. I term "a beginning" because if we recognize that these problems are manifold and are situating within a changing and complex system, ie. the human enterprise within its natural and cosmological context, then we would see that their solutions would not be reached in a day. Further, if we wish for these solutions to regard and motion towards particular specified states on the long term (over and beyond our own generations), then the planning and implementation of solid foundations for sustaining development and maintenance would be a realistic way to begin.

Lovins talked about "adopt a community and be adopted by one". The community I am interested in is the one right here.

All through my college career, everybody I have spoken to is interested in change. These people have ranged from university administrators to faculty members, to my peers in undergraduate and graduate students, to alumni and graduated professionals, to even the gardener at my house and the people I meet at parties. They have been interested in different items in this world; a few have made commitments and efforts in respective directions.

Why only a few? Every person, when conversation had made space, has communicated desire to personally participate, and simultaneously, understood that any action necessarily situates within a complex system. The issue that is often raised despite of the desire is the one that is raised here again, in this discussion led by someone who has done so much already.

The problem for the individual regards how to proceed, with only isolated supports, circumstantial risks, few means of political communication, and also, extending from these issues, how to contextualize one's interest and define a way to effectively participate. This is tied in to the issue of large-scale communication. In the discussion, someone asked, "This is great optimistic stuff about Afghanistan, how can we get this on CNN?"

Change occurs at various scales, some examples -
> the individual's own mentality ;
> the individual's immediate political environment, eg. workplace, geographical community ;
> passive mass media, eg. television programming ;
> participatory mass media, eg. "internet" ;
> mediated political environs extended by large-scale political entities, eg. an organization, a corporation, a city/nation state
> peers

A possible reference frame to look at the "big problems" and how they interact with one another meaningfully is the big one - ie. "the human enterprise" as a whole. There have been discourses posited by various individuals that assume this scale of consideration. Unfortunately, by itself, this reference frame is of little meaning to individuals who are not in the position to leverage the enterprise as an entirety.

Another possible reference frame is that of the acting individual. Participation always contextualizes a bigger picture.

If we take this further, we can investigate how participation may be reflected within a larger-scaled context of cause-and-effect. Doing this would be like integrating the former large-scale reference frame with the individual reference frame. The value of rendering such an integration, a third reference frame, would be its possibilities for recognition to be attributed to the distributed efforts by individuals. Such could promote an unfolding of efforts towards a state in which any one effort becomes political grounds for the individual to pursue another, whether the next effort is of immediate or mediated relation to the first. We can also then investigate how information generated in one location may become basis for efforts by others in the future.

The second reference frame, it appears, is assumed already by many who are actively involved in addressing the more prominent issues. There also already exists channels of publication and communication, albeit not so much through widely availing media. Perhaps if we consider how what we have can be augmented, linked, and even, by some context, integrated, we can move towards something that reflects and amplifies the energy and diversity of various present efforts...