Here are three lectures that address some extremely important questions and issues. I encourage you set aside some time to avail yourself to this learning. There is some immensely valuable perspective and insight here:

Why Cities Grow, Corporations Die, and Life Gets Faster by theoretical physicist Geoffrey West.¹

Civilization Far From Equilibrium: Energy, Complexity and Human Survival by interdisciplinary researcher and complex system theorist Thomas Homer-Dixon.²

How to Feed the World in 2050? featuring highlight thoughts by MS Swaminathan, Renata Brooks, Sam Archer, Matthew Wright, and Brian Keating.³

1. The Long Now Foundation, Seminar on Long-Term Thinking, 07/25/11
2. Presented at the Equinox Summit — Energy 2030.
3. Recorded at the 2011 National Climate Change Research Policy for Primary Industries Conference

Most people seem to encounter the river only as an obstacle; an encumbrance to be overcome by bridges for vehicular traffic.

A few days ago I stood beside the river. A thought struck me: Nobody owns this river. I mean “own” in both senses: very few people assume any personal responsibility for it, and virtually nobody relates to it as if it is their own piece of property.

After all, I “own” my house. I don’t “own” the river. The house is mine. The river is not mine. Apparently, this is the way most people feel about the river. It doesn’t actually belong to any of us.

It makes me wonder if the whole notion of property ownership enables our lackadaisical attitude towards the commons? If I own my house, but I don’t own the river, the air, or the forest at the edge of the city, why the heck should I care about them? By encouraging people to own things (the genetic ethos of consumerism), do we not by consequence also teach how to not own things at the same time?

What is the outcome if nobody cares for the things that everybody needs?

A scientist is trying to find  something that nobody has found before — a pursuit that obviously cannot have any strict rules or procedures. Science, like learning, is a kind of paradox: you are trying to learn something that you do not know, which categorically means that you are not even sure of what you you are looking for! The scientific discovery, thought Polanyi, nullifies the idea that knowledge is gained by remote, objective detachment to an experiment. Scientific discovery does not owe its existence to systematized, categorized process (as important as it is), but to the human ingenuity that found a new way of looking and testing a scientific problem.

In other words, scientific discovery depends on subjectivity. Frontier science is driven by an artistic imagination and highly creative guesswork (essentially brainstorming). Different perspectives, angles, vantage points — science is highly intuitive “feeling around” and exploration, not a cult that worships one central methodology at the expense of all others.

Polanyi called this tacit knowing, an intuitive kind of knowledge that cannot be put into words. In the same way a good friend “knows” what their friend is thinking, or an artist “knows” a piece that is not yet realized, or an athlete “knows” the next play, so too is a scientist’s “knowing” unspeakable. All the great achievements of science are, according to Polanyi, rooted in this intuitive, tacit human knowledge that cannot even be put into words.

Polanyi used many examples of tacit knowing, such as swimming and riding a bicycle. For instance, even though you may be a proficient cyclist, you would probably have a very hard time explaining to a non-cyclist how to ride a bike. Furthermore, even if you explained how to ride a bicycle with explicit knowledge, it would not actually equip you with the tacit knowledge and skill to ride:

We cannot learn to keep our balance on a bicycle by taking to heart that in order to compensate for a given angle of imbalance we must take a curve on the side of the imbalance, of which the radius should be proportionate to the square of the 5th velocity over the imbalance… Such knowledge is ineffectual, unless known tacitly¹

That may help you sound like a hero at chess club, but it will not do much to help you ride a bicycle. Furthermore, a very young child who doesn’t have the foggiest clue about the explicit physics of cycling is no less able to ride a bicycle than a physicist. Everything we know, said Polanyi, is ultimately rooted in this kind of tacit knowledge.

When I think about the best writers, designers, and artists I know, I can’t help but appreciate the manifestation of tacit thinking. What I often fail to recognize is the similarity between good design and good science.

1. Michael Polanyi, Knowing and Being (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969) p. 144

After planting, one does indeed contemplate how one might petition the gods of germination, photosynthesis and squirrel plagues to do one’s bidding.

For me, the garden is just a hobby. But what if  my friends and family literally depended on this miracle? (“Miracle” here meaning that the tomatoes actual grow.)

Imagine the severity of this equation: if the plants don’t grow, we starve. To make matters worse, it is now totally out of anyone’s control. After planting, fertilizing and watering, there is nothing left to do but wait…and hope.

Inari, Kokopelli and Pan make “sense” to me. No, you won’t find me performing any sacrifices or ritual rain dances in the backyard, but I think I know why agricultural society and fertility deity worship were inseparable for so many millennia. Gardening to survive is scary. If my life depended on this, you had better believe I would be willing to worship/appease just about anything.

Also, gardening is sexy. It does not appear that the ancients had categorical divisions between their “farming lives” and their “reproductive lives.” Sustenance is required for tribal growth. All growth, literally. No food equals no babies surviving. Fertility in one “department” is required for fertility in the other. Only the very affluent can afford to think of them separately.

Just something to think about (and appreciate) on your next trip to the grocery store.

I first came across this paradigm through the work of theologian William Cavanaugh, who articulates this concept with cunning poignancy:

The detachment of consumer is also a detachment from the things we buy. Our relationships with products tend to be short-lived: rather than hoarding treasured objects, consumers are characterized by a constant dissatisfaction with material goods. This dissatisfaction is what produces the restless pursuit of satisfaction in the form of something new. Consumerism is not so much about having more as it about having something else; that’s why it is not simply buying but shopping that is at the heart of consumerism. Buying brings a temporary halt to the restlessness that typifies consumerism.¹

Want to be less consumeristic? Try becoming more materialistic. The first step to shutting off this chaotic rampage of resource throughput is to love and appreciate what you already have.

1. William T. Cavanaugh, Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), p. 35

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint… Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. ¹

1. Commencement Speech by Paul Hawken, University of Portland, May 3, 2009

But here is a bigger number: four billion. That’s roughly the number of global inhabitants who are still offline.

Perhaps we who wax eloquent techno-speak in our world of webs, wires, widgets and weapons could spend some time in thoughtful consideration of what our prowess with flat screens and fibreoptics means to the other two thirds of the planet.

1. Source: World Internet Usage Statistics News

Community works like the synapses of the brain:
the stronger the connections, the stronger everybody is.

Existence is symbiosis.

The question is not whether you will be a part of the relational ecology;
the question is: will you build or weaken your partnerships therein?

Social networking — the real kind — happens when I realize that
winning does not require that somebody else has to lose;
getting ahead does not mean that others must be left behind;
and my success does not require that another fails.

This is the shift from competition to collaboration,
from combat to cooperation.
This is the power of the network:
when I discover that your success directly correlates to my own.