Proactivity & Humanitas as Ethos

To enact sustainability and viability, I hold an ethos of proactivity and humanitas in high esteem: Creative, solutions-oriented initiative with clear outcomes envisioned for the near and long term. The notion of empowerment and the idea that everyone can humanely make a difference in the world create the core of my understanding of "humanitas".

I find my bearings in that process of difference making through a spiraling cycle of humane education, empowerment, and engagement which I attempt to integrate into my presence at every event I attend or create. More specifically, I seek to inform, educate, empower myself and others to take relevant and significant action in the world and repeat with evaluation (which enters the next level of the spiral by informing and educating myself and others about what I've learned from the most recent action).

"In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught." -Baba Dioum

Our personal values and worldviews are fostered by what we learn. These values ultimately inform the kinds of information, problems, and solutions we tend to consider and pursue. In this regard, respecting and cultivating the dignity of others to learn and act through compassion make them crucial habits for social sustainability.

Social sustainability ultimately shapes our capacity to understand and act toward comprehensive sustainability. Social sustainability concerns everything from how we communicate with art, non-violence, education, compassion, love, peace, just governance, and democracy with a backbone in living the humane ethics we aspire to understand and share as individuals and collectively. In essence, when focusing on social sustainability, one strives to cultivate lasting and fulfilling relationships.

Trust, security, confidence in other people, in the land we live with, and any other beings we share the planet with are necessary for taking prudent action. To me, prudent action is the essence of economics.

For resolving complex socio-economic challenges and wicked processes like "the tragedy of the commons", people require trust before they can manifest quality collaboration across a diversity of stakeholders. I'll share the Russian phrase "doveryai, no proveryai", "Trust, but verify." I'll also add that love, even in a fairly definitive non-romantic sense, has its role in conservation (conservation in the environmental and economic sense toward sustainability).


To ensure tangible change, we must look to how our environment--social, economic, and physical changes in a result of our heartfully intended actions.

Being "completely wrong about GMOs": Scaling responsibility with technological escalation

In reply to this blog post by Torie Bosch of Slate about an advocate's change of heart toward Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) for meeting world hunger: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/01/03/mark_lynas_environmentalist_who_opposed_gmos_admits_he_was_wrong.html

Bosch's post was irresponsibly framed.  It misleads the public into thinking the challenges behind GMO practices are settled.  Maybe* (I'm very, very skeptical but will remain open minded.) there's a case for GMO methods in genetic/medical research and such in very controlled spaces, but when it comes to claiming they're necessary for world hunger, it's like trying to justify nuclear energy for meeting global energy demand when we have yet to guarantee a safe legacy of fuel extraction and waste disposal that doesn't compromise the health of others.  Alternative strategies and technologies exist that have fewer negative legacies.  Granted, a lot of it can be harmless, but we're operating on a level that's so profound that it can cheat the defenses of our evolutionary protections in ways that we're incapable of knowing until we've met its consequences.  It transcends our known responsibility to a point that we don't know how we're ethically accountable.

As acknowledged in the article, a fair share of anti-GMO advocates don't appreciate the monopolization of large chemical companies and their strategic business models.

Consider common approaches to Monsanto's GMO business:

1) Develop pesticide/herbicide/fungicide resistant crops so that farmers can use a lot of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides on their plots--as a chemical company that pioneers GMO techniques and patents cultivars/dna for pesticide/herbicide/fungicide resistant crops, it wins in two ways: people buy their seeds, and people use more of their chemicals.

2) Patent genetic sequences, allow the DNA to spread into the wild/neighboring non-GMO crop farmer land (this is a kind of negligence that the every day person has yet to find legal redress for),  let the crop cross-pollinate with untainted crops/wild plants, sue any cross-contaminated farmers.

3) Develop self-terminating "suicide" gene that creates infertile crops like corn,  allow the DNA to spread into the wild/neighboring non-GMO crop farmer land, once it's cross-pollinated, hybridized GMO plants (including those tainted in the wild or owned by non GMO using farmers) self-terminate after a season, create absolute dependency on the supplying GMO seed company in the region.

A prevailing concern with GMO work that isn't addressed is the uncertainty of outcomes when integrated back into the environment and living systems like a person's body.  If there are people willing to take the risk, fine, but it never ought to be done at the expense of those who cannot voice or choose to opt out.  GMO in food gambles with our evolutionary abilities.

Other things people might want to note about this "confession":

1)  An activist, while many are worthy of respect in their own right, isn't necessarily a scientist (which Mark Lymas acknowledged).

Just because an outspoken person changes stance on a complicated issue (this one's the kind that gets a technical classification as a wicked problem from complex system scientists), it doesn't mean the problems of the issue are no longer valid.  In stating he was "completely wrong" about GMOs denies many ethical problems that have yet to be understood and resolved.

I don't fear genetically modified food, I worry about its unintended consequences in other living things and the rest of the world.  Living things are relatively resilient, but we I don't appreciate a gamble that goes against what my evolutionary background prepared me for.  Most people don't even know about the things that I'd be concerned about.  Unless you've had vigorous scientific environmental and biological exposure and training, the things I would add as important arguments probably aren't heard and appreciated by the lay person on a regular basis.

2)  Science is different from engineering and industrialization.  It's also not the same as advocacy.  

Science is the process of discerning truth.  Advocacy is a change-oriented political act that summons the perceived truths ("facts") found by science to champion a hypothesis/claim (i.e. GMOs are good or bad).  Engineering and industrialization strive to maximize functions--productivity, efficiency.  Aside from science, none of these acts that people try to champion (i.e. we need more free enterprise so that small businesses can compete with the giants)--more doesn't always mean better.  What difference does it make if the majority of the small-scale GMO competitors also maintain unethical practices?  Quantity does not speak to quality.  Furthermore, none of these "civil virtues" (engineering and industry) are wholly accountable to comprehensive reasoning and justification for the sake of humanity.  While they behoove profit for those privileged to leverage them, they don't guarantee that people will respect the dignity of other beings as ends rather a means to their end.  Even people who truly adhere to Ayn Rand's notion of objectivism would find concern in that argument (there's a paradox to her definition of objectivism that I've found, so I see something bigger that's missing to her framework of objectivism).

3)  The world already produces enough food to feed everybody.  

I don't even need to dive into academic peer review literature to back this claim, see here (worldhunger.org), here (oxfam Canada), and here (The UN Chronicle).

If anything, the world's people need to learn how to live better within their means in ways that don't necessitate intensive land use.  Look up your estimated ecological footprint, if everyone lived the way I did, it would need about 4 and a half times the arable (farmable) land that our planet earth currently has to offer.  For an American living in the Metro-Detroit area, this is a fairly efficient footprint considering how much we tend to rely on automobiles and imported foods.  The average American's (footprint stands at 5), and it's really challenging to minimize further unless big changes in housing and infrastructure (i.e. transportation, substantive renewable energy as a primary source) are involved.

The world's people might not be good at figuring out how to innovate or discipline itself in living with, maintaining, and cultivating sustainable environments, but food shortage is best articulated as a local challenge.  I'll dare say food sustainability is inappropriate to reduce into a singular global problem to be solved with a large international monetary fund (even the IMF/Worldbank eventually tries to consider problems at a local scale) and technological wonder crops from exotic places or chemical companies that pioneer GMO methodology.  I might be lacking direct sources at the moment, but read to the bottom and you'll find a few things that give you leads into how I've come to this opinion (hint, college courses in sustainable ecology and agriculture).

4)  Also, let's have the death of environmentalism now.  

We don't defer all of our ethical behavior to ethicists, we let them inform us about better ways of living, but the responsibility remains our own.  Environmental issues don't affect environmentalists only, they matter to everyone, and everyone needs to find ways to exercise ethical actions that contribute to making the world a better place.  Nordhaus and Shellenberger have a better articulation about this in their essay called "The Death of Environmentalism", feel free to read that too.  The world doesn't need to be saved.  People need to save themselves in ways that don't necessitate the compromise of other living things' fundamental well-being.

So what should we do?

I'm short on time to spell out answers, but in the context of this post, I'd recommend getting vigorously acquainted with the principles of sustainable agriculture, ecology, and ethics.

Ask Dr. David Susko at The University of Michigan-Dearborn for his thoughts. teaches an excellent course on plant ecology.  His thesis work found ways for farmers to successfully (environmentally and economically) transition from conventional agriculture to organic practices.  The rest comes down to dialog.

Here's a place to start, though I'm not sure what their contents will cover yet, University of Florida's teaching it online for free:
https://www.coursera.org/course/sustainableag

Outdoor recess for k-6 and education

We have been asked to share our research with a community school district in Michigan and we want to hear your response. Why is recess important? What is the importance of outdoor recess vs. indoor recess? How often should recess take place for K-6. Please share your research, links, and comments. Your response could make the difference. - from the Michigan No Child Left Inside Coalition facebook page (Posted by The Michigan No Child Left Inside Coalition page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Michigan-No-Child-Left-Inside-Coalition/132659406774553 )

A brief anecdote about outdoor play from a different angle:  I used to play street hockey with friends in the summer.  I spoke with a hockey player earlier this autumn who realized that kids no longer play outdoor sports on his street either.  One of my neighborhood friends affirmed a similar observation.  Recess outdoors is important to me because it demonstrates that people can have fun without sophisticated facilities.  One challenge for working with an open area comes from making the rules for stimulating and fun low-resource intangible games (tag, etc.) accessible to generations whom may no longer be familiar with them.  While it's possible to have fun indoors too, I think people are inclined to rely on toys or games that don't beneficially integrate other aspects of a person's growth (especially the kinesthetic/physical).

The indoors, as a controlled environment, denies people the opportunity to discover subtle realities of their environment.  In turn, it can reduce a one's capacity to develop a better sense of the place they live in, and can deny them the opportunity to meaningfully engage with the world around them via self-motivated inquiry.  An authentic curiosity and sense of reverence for an experience ignited from of one's own volition--the "sense of wonder" as Rachel Carson would coin it--is important for opening the door to deeper learning.  Students in cities might notice something about their neighborhoods that most adults would not have.  Though the neighborhood tire clean-up case study from a place like the STARR Academy in Detroit wasn't necessarily motivated by recess, it's a good example of people developing their sense of place and an empowering example of people recognizing their capacity for efficate action in their local environments.  I also believe outdoor play is important for adults, but that's for a slightly different story.

This is a similar challenge for people interested in the No Child Left Inside movement who have an environmental education/nature background:  how can we help people empower themselves to develop a focused sense of what can be done amid almost overwhelming choices?  An empty yard or an empty field/vacant lot may look the same to the casual observer.

Natural history and systemic processes--the interesting stuff that many people eventually do find fascinating--behind the things we might take for granted are frequently unknown and intangible.  Yet  developing basic literacy for finding resources or recognizing natural phenomena also can inspire and impel a person (any age, not just k-6) to engage and appreciate whatever it is they find around them.  Perhaps students with some education in geology would actually want to examine the cement near the school for rocks they can identify?  Likewise, those who have some understanding of local flora and principles of ecology might be excited about seeing whatever weeds are growing up on the school grounds.  Animals (including insects) probably would have been a better example, but I think I've demonstrated the idea.  To quote Baba Dioum: "In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."  I suspect fleshing out connections in education that make any outdoor experience coherent will be an important step.

Albatross can sleep while flying!

Did you know that an albatross can sleep while flying? I first read about this from a weak advertisement as I browsed through a magazine and then researched it on the internet to confirm that the fact was true. Indeed it is; furthermore, I learned that the albatross is a rather large bird (that spends almost all of its life at sea or in the air). How large? Some, like the wandering albatross, have been reported with wingspans of up to eleven feet (11') long!

My first reaction was to wonder how, and the next was to dream about the sensation of sustained flight without using anything but the wind. My guess was that the bird stays aloft on major trade winds or they utilize some sort of phenomena in air that is near the ocean surface. I still don't know exactly, but this site from students(?) at Wake Forest University shows how an albatross can glide without having to flap their wings using just the current of the wind. This process is called dynamic soaring, and there's a short animation that depicts how it works on the link provided.

Furthermore, these birds live a potentially long life, as I have read they can live past 50 years of age. However, what most often threatens their lifespan today is a method of fishing such as "longlining" (using thousands of baited hooks trailing off of long lines behind a boat or set between buoys) can snag an albatross that goes for the bait and drown it or a hook may get fed to its chicks if it successfully removes the and gill nets; it can get to be a problem, and the Kiwi Conservation club in New Zealand, asks for people to write the Minister of Fisheries to request for better conservation and fishing policy.

I've become fascinated with the albatross since reading that tidbit, and I realize as I type that the advertisement did direct my interest to learn more about the bird rather than their product (something to do with software, though I doubt I needed it anyhow). If a company is going to put a fascinating fact up such as "albatross can sleep while flying," I would expect that whatever follows should be at the least equally interesting or significant. Not "they don't see where they're going" in big print and then somewhere at the bottom of the page write what their company has to offer. Or maybe follow up with something like "albatross can sleep while flying, and some pilots can too, but they know where they'll end up if they do".

Anyhow, I wonder what the albatross dream about when they sleep aloft.