Silencing the Voice Loop

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Eckhart Tolle
Dutton, New York, NY 2005

One of the hot topics of this trimester’s Personal Leadership Development class has been ego, so I have been thinking a lot about how my ego is manifesting in my professional and personal life. Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth was either recommended by someone I met in the program, or could have been mentioned by one of the visiting speakers. I didn’t know that it focused on what Tolle calls egoic behavior at the time I picked it for one of my Personal Leadership Plan books. It is the perfect book for me to have read at this point in my life. It is the perfect book for me now. And now.

Tolle begins by recognizing and naming our inherited dysfunction: our collective mental illness, a veil of delusion. This delusion is that of suffering, or dukkha in Buddhism. Christians call it original sin. Tolle explains that in its original Greek, Sin means “to miss the point of human existence”, “to miss the mark, as an archer who misses the target”. The point of human existence is not to suffer, but to be who we are. We miss this mark when we feed our egoic behavior.

What Tolle proposes is that we have an opportunity now to have a “radical transformation of human consciousness”. This consciousness will help us to create a new Earth when we become aware and break free of the “triggers” that feed our egoic behavior. Triggers are the things that activate your ego and are caused when we identify with the “I”, the “Me” and the “Mine”. (That’s what George Harrison was talking about when he wrote that song way back in January of 1969: Paul McCartney’s ego.) By recognizing our egoic behavior we will begin to liberate and awaken ourselves, be Who We Are rather than who we think others want us to be. We will then silence the looping voices in our heads which keep us from living in the moment, and keep us suffering.

Tolle also shares with us his idea of the pain-body, our “accumulation of old emotional pain” that we carry with us in our energy field. Some of us are born with a “heavy” pain-body, some with a light one. The kind of pain-body you are born with doesn’t necessarily determine how much more pain you acquire in your pain-body over your lifetime. That comes from your experience as you grow, and whether you learn to face your pain in the present. Tolle explains how we can help our children reduce the amount of pain added to their pain-bodies as they grow, by teaching them to face their pain in the now. I can’t think of any better gift for a parent to be able to give your children!

I can already feel the difference that reading A New Earth has made in my life. I feel lighter and more able to accept the challenges in my life now. I am more aware of my egoic behavior, and that awareness deflates the power it has over me. I know this will be a constant challenge until I am able to be present and aware automatically, but Tolle says this will happen eventually. Until that time, I will practice being aware of my voice loop and the thoughts feeding my pain-body, and will endeavor to remember the feelings and thoughts that trigger it. And not take myself so seriously!

City Zoning circa 1979

City Zoning: The Once and Future Frontier
Clifford L. Weaver and Richard F. Babcock
Planners Press, Chicago IL 1979

I was pleasantly surprised by this book on city zoning policies and trends in the 1970s. I had believed it was going to be a very dull read. What soon became evident is that planners in the 1970s were the beneficiaries of the environmental movement of that same decade, who looked at the urban landscape as deserving of the same conservation efforts as the natural landscape.

Chapter 1 was of the most interest to me because it gave the clearest understanding of planning and zoning efforts of the period. It begins by asking the question: “For the last few decades, zoning has been the suburban toy, not a city tool. But is that state of affairs permanent?”(3). It discusses how the twin concerns of “degradation of the natural environment” and “affordable housing… have propelled the topic of public regulation of private land from a matter of limited interest to an issue of hot debate” (3). The authors suggest that zoning could become “a positive tool for change”, even though the trend in the recent past has been that “With rare exceptions, zoning has been neither a guiding, a controlling, nor an inhibiting factor in the development of the business and commercial centers of our major cities” (5).

The book goes into great detail regarding the effectiveness of neighborhood organizations. In this first chapter, and later in Chapter 14, the authors describe zoning as “accessible to the common folk; it is the one aspect of municipal government where citizen participation has long been mandatory”. The authors give two examples of this. The first details how the residents of a neighborhood in Chicago, after having developed a community land use master plan two years earlier, found themselves fighting McDonalds for the rights to a particularly desirable street corner. The alderman who represented the neighborhood and supported the residents, publicly thanked McDonalds for its local Ronald McDonald house which provided parents with a place to stay when their children were in the hospital. However, he goes on to say that the residents stand firmly against the fast food restaurant coming into their neighborhood. When all who agreed were asked to stand, the witnesses rose unanimously, and won the day.

The next example was of a Planned Parenthood which had received a permit to move into a neighborhood in St. Paul. The residents were so firmly against it that the city council “declared a moratorium on building permits for all abortion clinics” (183). This moratorium was eventually overturned “as that way lies the extinction of many liberties, which are, indeed, constitutionally guaranteed against invasion by a majority” (183).

Quite rightly, the authors point out that many land use problems “cannot be solved by the mere application of a new set of land use regulations… Reform of major federal programs, reform of local property tax laws, significant public expenditures on both social and physical infrastructures, fundamental redirection of transportation concepts, and… new approaches to the relationship between the public and private sectors” would help remedy the problems faced by the cities and suburbs of those times (14), but zoning remained a useful tool to protect historically, environmentally and aesthetically relevant areas.

Although this book is almost 30 years old, the language and concerns it discusses translate to today. In my work with city planners, placemakers and community builders I hear discussions about the same issues. I am beginning to believe that these issues and concerns will be with us for some time to come, unless we begin to find solutions to housing and environmental issues that incorporates all aspects of daily life into the design. I am very eager to begin reading books from the more recent past to see if we have begun to solve this puzzle.

Homo Reciprocans and Capitalism 3.0 -- Peter Barnes' Atmospheric Trust

In neo-classical economics, the selfish and self-absorbed behavior demonstrated in a capitalist society is termed homo economicus, or economic man. Samuel Bowles, Professor of Economics at the University of Sienna, defines the more realistic portrayal of the participant who comes to negotiations prepared to cooperate with others who negotiate in good faith, and retaliate on those who do not, as homo reciprocans. In Chapters 5 and 6 of Barnes’ Capitalism 3.0 he offers the first two of four solutions to upgrading the economy from version 2.0, taking into account the more realistic description of economic behavior of homo reciprocans. Barnes’ offers the Commons, our shared inheritance of natural and social capital and ecosystem services as the pool that homo reciprocans draws from.

Barnes’ first solution to capitalism version 2.0 is to address the overwhelming power the corporate world currently holds over natural and social capital, and ecosystem services. Barnes estimates that the common wealth of our nation, the air, water, habitats, ecosystems, science, technologies, social and political systems, language and culture cannot possibly be valued because most of it is invisible. Invisibility has led the value of these services to become external to the market, meaning that the degradation and loss of the future value of these assets is not computed into the real cost of these assets. Because we do not realize the real cost of these assets, we have allowed the corporate world (CW) to effectively take ownership of them. The CW, therefore, has benefited from the wealth gained in exploiting these assets with no responsibility to protect them, no consequences to destroying them. This public wealth, as Barnes’ calls it, is benefiting private business and results in no compensation being distributed to the owners of the commons: us.

Barnes’ suggests we expand common property rights to include more than municipally- or non-governmental entity-owned easements held in perpetual trust. He suggests that by creating a commons sector, the public can take back the commons. The commons sector would be managed by a set of non-political institutions, each specific to a particular asset, whose mission is to protect that capital, location or asset in a way that limits exploitation by the private sector, maximizes pubic access and preserves it for future generations. Income rights and usage rights will generate income that can be distributed using the one person, one share principle exemplified in the democratic process. The state will help to maintain the newly achieved balance of power by establishing a market where the private sector and the common sector constrain each other.

Another solution proposed by Barnes’ to create a balance of power between the private sector and the common sector is to create a “commons rent recycling program” through trusts, which he calls the Trustreeship of Creation. His suggestion is to create a commons trust that collects rent from everyone according to their commons use, and then distributes dividends to everyone according to their commons ownership. What Barnes’ calls the “macroeconomic phenomenon” that results is that, as pollution decreases the income to all citizens increases, because commons rent goes up as commons value increases. This creates a trustee relationship contributed to by all citizens which benefits future generations in every part of society. The balance of power inherent in this shared trusteeship would be the best way to reduce poverty, because people not able to make a living due to lack of education or opportunity would still benefit from their commonwealth dividends.

Commons usage levels would be set by the managing board of the trust. Pollution permits would be sold based on the amount of commonwealth preserved or protected. The government would assign the initial pollution rights. The revenue generated by the sale of permits (rental revenue) would be divided between the beneficiaries (us) and the direct preservation of public goods, such as ecosystem services.

Many may wonder how all political or corporate influence could be kept out of managing the conflict between current and future generations. The answer is that there is no absolute way to guarantee this. Full transparency will need to be incorporated into the trusts’ charter. The managing board must be held accountable according to strict conflict-of-interest rules, as managers of private sector corporations are now accountable to their fiduciary beneficiaries. The trusts’ beneficiaries are powerless and voiceless because they exist in the future. By shielding the trust from the private sector, Barnes’ plan resolves the imbalance of power inherent in our current economic system, and offers a more realistic economic system suitable for homo reciprocans.

Energy Market Manipulation Letter to the Editor, Conway Daily Sun

Dear Editor,

I would like to respond to Mr. Nash's letter regarding Congress' ability to lower consumer gas prices. This topic has been concerning me since the 3^rd of June, when I watched the hearings on the manipulation of energy markets available for viewing on CSPAN. I, like most others, had believed that the combination of peak oil and the windfall profits being made by oil companies is causing the sharp rise in gas, diesel and oil prices, affecting everything from transportation to food production. After watching the hearing, which featured testimony by energy market experts, I understand that it is the unregulated futures market which is driving up the price of oil.

At an earlier hearing, an executive from Exxon Mobil testified under oath that the price of oil should be $50 to $55 per barrel based on supply and demand fundamentals. In October 2007 the CEO of Marathon Oil, Clarence Cazalot Jr. said, "$100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the market". "It has to be speculation on the futures market that is fueling this." Enron played this game with the electricity market in California and an oil company named Amaranth played it with natural gas.

Goldman Sachs and other investment firms are playing this game now. When Goldman Sachs' energy strategist Argun Murti predicted that oil would rise to more than $200 per barrel before the end of the year, he was not demonstrating his talent for clairvoyance. As much as 60% of today's crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks like Goldman Sachs, and hedge funds. Companies are bidding up the price of oil to create profits. At the hearing on the 3^rd of June, Michael Greenberger, Former Director of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) testified that legislation passed in 2000 created an atmosphere of unrestrained trading where speculators influence oil and crude prices. In the middle of the night, right before leaving for Christmas break, Senator Phil Graham introduced the "Enron Loophole" legislation designed to allow unregulated speculation of oil markets. During a separate interview on CSPAN, Mr. Greenberger goes so far as to say that it is the traders from Enron actually working in the futures market doing these trades. There must be limits to what they are allowed to do. If the Justice Department were to begin an investigation tomorrow, Mr. Greenberger says prices would drop immediately.

Geopolitical factors are no worse now than they were a year ago and demand has changed little. Crude oil inventories are actually up. No matter how much supply enters this market, speculators have created an environment where we can drill and drill, OPEC can release oil, and prices will still go up. That is why OPEC refuses to increase supply to us. The OPEC secretary-general Abdalla Salem El-Badri blames speculators for the rise in oil prices which have "stripped his cartel of control over the global cost of fuel" (International Herald Tribune, May 22, 2008). Call your representatives and tell them you want to have the CFTC regulate the energy market.

Anyone interested in learning more about this should go to CSPAN.org and watch any of the videos featuring Mr. Greenberger. Call your representatives and tell them you want to have the CFTC regulate the energy market.

Cimbria Badenhausen
Chocorua, NH

Review of Wildlife Visionaries by Jim Dale Vickery

Wilderness Visionaries: Robert Marshall, John Muir, Sigurd F. Olson, Calvin Rutstrum, Robert Service, Henry David Thoreau

By Jim Dale Vickery

The term land use planning is commonly used to describe urban or suburban planning on a local or regional scale. The original conservationists, men like Thoreau, Muir and Marshall, used it on a national scale. Wilderness Visionaries allows us the chance to share the experiences of these men, all accomplished authors who used the spoken word to promote the protection of natural resources. As each passed the torch to the next the amount of land preserved for its intrinsic value, for nature’s sake, and for the sake of future generations increased. Each visionary spoke his message in the language of his generation. As the world gradually became more mechanized, population bases became more centralized and the wild areas became “civilized”, each reminded us to listen for the call of the wild.

I approached this book with some knowledge of John Muir and Henry David Thoreau, but the other visionaries' stories were unknown to me. I enjoyed very much Mr. Vickery’s voice, and the way he followed the evolution of wilderness preservation as it progressed from Henry David Thoreau’s time in the early 1800s through Sigurd F. Olson’s death in the late twentieth century.

Vickery chose to write about these particular men because of their influence on his life as a Minnesotan who loved nature, and their monumental impact on the conservation and preservation movements in the United States and in Canada. All six explored parts of the Minnesota wilderness at one time or another. Vickery began researching this book in the 70s. Over the next 15 years he canoed and hiked many of the routes these wilderness pioneers followed to better understand the forces that formed their visions.

While I admire all six visionaries, I will focus on Thoreau, Muir and Marshall because they most advanced land use planning in the U.S. Henry David Thoreau was born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts. Wilderness preservation and land use planning weren’t concerns in Thoreau’s time because people lived closer to nature, and there was enough land for all. Private property wasn’t as restricted as it is now. For instance, when Thoreau built his little (10' x 15') house on Walden Pond he was actually squatting on the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson’s farm. The land was there and Thoreau made good use of it. Emerson and he became fast friends until death separated them.

Thoreau is the first to speak to audiences both of his time and succeeding generations of the wild areas, their importance to humans and their "intangible" value. He believed “In wildness is the preservation of the world” (2). His message of conservation and preservation was picked up by the other visionaries as the importance of land use planning became better understood. John Muir and Thoreau never met, but the younger man was as committed to preservation as Thoreau ever was.

John Muir emigrated to the U.S. from Scotland in 1849 to homestead a farm with his father. Muir was a child of the 19^th century. When he came of age he roamed at will, taking jobs when necessary and exploring the wilderness whenever possible. The land was becoming more industrialized, and Muir was sick about it. His beloved sequoias were being harvested at an alarming rate. Too big to saw, they were dynamited, which created a tremendous amount of waste. “What happened in America’s East, the logging, plowing, mining and developing, now knocked on the door of the Pacific Coast, where some of the continent’s last forest sanctuaries soughed in eternal winds”(78).

As one of the founders and as the first president of the Sierra Club (until his death) Muir worked to preserve the sequoias by pushing to create the forest service. He especially worked to end grazing rights on public land. Muir believed that with “institutionalized stewardship” forests would be protected and preserved so they could be saved for future generations, and for their own sake. He was only partially rewarded when Congress passed the Forest Management Act of 1897. Instead of fully protecting forests, the act allowed “the nation to be furnished with a continuous supply of lumber” (91). John Muir would have been very pleased with the continued efforts of Robert (Bob) Marshall to preserve the wilderness of North America.

Bob Marshall only lived to the age of thirty-eight, but many say that by the time he died in 1939 he had done “as much, if not more than, any American to sound the alarm against inroads on our wilderness and to promote long-range scientific programs for its preservation” (129). Independently wealthy, Marshall was the primary financial supporter of the Wilderness Society, leaving it one quarter of his estate upon his death. As a founding member of its board of directors, and as the Director of Forestry of the Office of Indian Affairs (precursor to the Bureau of Indian Affairs), Marshall recognized that “As society becomes more and more mechanized, it will be more and more difficult for many people to stand the nervous strain, the high pressure, and the drabness of their lives” (142). Marshall worked tirelessly so that wilderness would be available for people to enjoy by “cutting all bonds of habit and drifting into the timeless continuity of the primeval” (143). By planning how the land was used, Marshall hoped to save it.

These visionaries were similar in many ways: they loved nature and the wilderness, they wrote prolifically and poetically to the audiences of their times about land use, and their words continue to inspire us to find ways to preserve nature for its own sake. These fathers of land conservation and preservation recognized the importance of keeping the wilderness experience in our daily lives. Their wisdom and vision lives on in their words, there for any of us who would listen, and act.

Vickery, Jim D. Wilderness Visionaries. Merrillville, IN: ICS Books, Inc., 1986.

Climate Change and Water

For our Exploring Sustainability course we were charged with reviewing a work relating to our chosen ambit. I chose water management issues for my ambit, and for this assignment I chose a documentary I found on www.videos.google.com entitled:

Global Warming:Change Begins With Learning - Four Part Series - Global Warming: Science and Society, Climate Change and Water, Rights and Runoff,Program Four featuring the Donald Bren Distinguished Professor of Corporate Environmental Manangement Dr. Gary Libecap, and Professor of Hydrology Dr. Christina Tague, moderated by Jon Clark from the CEC
Produced by the University of California Santa Barbara Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management the Community Environmental Council (CEC) February 12, 2007

I would imagine that some may find this documentary to be a little dry (no pun intended), but I found it very interesting. I guess I must be used to it, after watching the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation I’m eager to see how other states are handling water management issues. California has some tough times ahead of it, because its water rights are so intermingled with those of the Pacific North Western states, Arizona and Nevada.

It was not so long ago that water management was controlled locally. It is only in the last hundred years or so that water use has moved from a rural concentration to an urban concentration. With the advent of running water, the demand increased both in urban environments and in rural ones.

Global warming is being manifested in many different ways, which is affecting natural capital with changes in ecosystem services, biodiversity and water availability. These changes are having effects on all aspects of the environment. The media is bringing a lot more attention to this growing change in our planet’s ecology and we all wonder what this will mean in the future? It is this question that Climate Change and Water seeks to answer.

As the planet heats up, the hydrologic cycle is affected. Snow melts, glaciers melt, ocean levels rise. There will be a change in the seasons, with a change in when water is available to plants and animals. Species that have depended on and adjusted to a certain schedule will now find that they are off just enough to make life difficult for them. In California, plants are dependant on lots of water in the spring with late summer droughts. If there is a shortage of snow, or if the snows melt too early, there will be less water in August, and that will affect both plants and animals.

The ecosystems will be able to respond if we give them room. We have to accept that we no longer have a static climate, and adjust accordingly. One of the first things we need to address is food production. The agricultural areas in California have a choice of whether to sell their excess water downriver, and are doing that now, because they have enough. There are even some farmers letting fields lie fallow because it is more lucrative to sell the water than the produce. We've grown up in a society of abundance and now must rethink water management practices. We need to decide whose needs are best served by management practices. We will need to learn to grow food in urban landscapes (Don's urban farming!)
We need to put a dollar amount on natural capital, allowing that it is a valuable resource in its own right, taking into account its Total Economic Value. Urban centers actually don't use tremendous amounts of water in a hedonistic manner, as is thought. The cost to water in urban areas is actually what they're putting in the water, the damage they do to the ecosystem services.

The next steps, according to Professor Tangue and Professor Libecap are to look at watersheds as being much larger than we currently do. We need to look at regional management, not on the micro level. Water managers need to be trained in all aspects of water managers, not in specialties, as they are now. Water markets need to be developed, like the one in Chili. And we must begin to consider the total economic value of water. We can't afford not to. It is the gold of the 21st century, and if we can learn to manage water, we might actually learn how to heal this beautiful world.

Audio/Video/Blogs as Information Sources

In answer to an assignment from our Communication/Persuasion/Negotiation professor Bill Baue, I chose to analyze 3 podcasts posted by NPR: Climate Connection. This series is a terrific resource for people who love NPR and want to keep pace with current climate studies and projects. Podcasts are convenient and easily shared, but they have their limitations.

The pocasts I chase to listen to were:

Food & Climate: A Complicated but Optimistic View
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15747012
All of these stories originated on radio, so they carry the limitations of radio programs. One reason I love NPR though, is becasue I feel like I'm listening to a discussion happening just out of earshot. It's almost like if I step around a pillar I'll be able to see what they're talking about. Of course, when I really do want to see what they're looking at - I can't! That can be frustrating. Global food production and how it will be impacted by climate change is an important part of planning for a future with global warming as a central issue.

The interview with the guest took place with the sound of her discribing her work at NASA and crop models. We didn't miss anything in this podcast of a radio show that we needed to see to understand the story, which talked about Canada being able to grow agriculture while third world countries get too hot to produce food.

Hawaii Couple Reestablishes Ancient Plant Species
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17774504

This story is quite different. It's title immediately made me want to be able to view the topic of discussion: an ancient plant in Hawaii being established on the island where "urasic Park" was filmed Kawaii. The introduction designs a beautiful cave we're just dying to see. We can hear the birds, the breeze in the trees, but we can't see the cave or share the experience of the couple as they trail a set of footprints down a beach. It's clear, it's interesting, but it's limited to what they can communicate through sound.

and;

Crucial California Delta Faces a Salty Future
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18031391

This story talked about a delta and the failures of levies and peripheral canals. Flooding is a huge concern, and so is the availability of fresh water.

NPR does try to suplement the minimal visual satisfaction of radio by offering interactive sections of the page where you would access the podcast. They also have videos, slideshows, pictures and links to additional information. They do their best to satisfy our craving for visual information. These are the limits of radio. They still provide ease-of-use, convenience, and the ability to replay stories that you enjoy or want to share with others. Radio has it's limitations, but it adaquetly serves my curious nature and need to know.