[FRIAM] Power Laws and the Human Condition...

[glen]

Yeah, to some extent, we're already going that way. (See attached.) But I'm ignorant of how much of the wilderness is being paved over by city. I may have mentioned this in this forum already. But one of the recent arguments was about the epistemic status of the assumption that biodiversity in the wild is higher than that of the city. My adversaries, being [macro|meso]biologists, focus on big complex animals and plants, whereas my focus was on the rate of evolution in micro-animals and plants ... you know, where *we* are food and "hive" for some of those little guys. It just seems so obvious that rather than homogenize the wilderness, we should be diversifying the city. Hence bringing compressed air to the (residentially zoned) home seems regressive, not progressive.

Thanks. I'll look up Kimmerer and Hubville.

On 2/8/22 10:43, Steve Smith wrote:
> Glen -
> 
> No, I think you are spot on, and I can credit you with helping to have moved my perspective some over the many years you have been shadow-boxing at me (and others) on this list.
> 
> I am acutely aware that my 1800 sq ft home IS a mcMansion by many,many standards, and that my myriad microprojects are one of my ways of allowing myself some slack on living as remotely as I do when my instincts and semi-formal understanding of the power-law distribution challenge/opportunity.     If I am part of the 99% in this country (first world), it does me well to remember that I (we) are part of the 1% to the third world  (or pick another ratio if you think 2 orders of magnitude is too much/little).
> 
> I was hugely conflicted by Paolo Soleri's Arcology <https://www.arcosanti.org/arcology/#:~:text=Arcology%20is%20the%20fusion%20of,functioning%20as%20a%20living%20system.> vision when I first encountered it (I was in college 60 miles north of Arcosanti <https://www.arcosanti.org/>as it was being built in the 70s) and was drawn to the ideation of "right scaling" and "low impact" living for humans, but offended by implications that I *must* become /homo hiveus/ to be happy/healthy/survive.   I have visited Arcosanti every few years as an adult and befriended Tomiaki Tamura (architect/archivist at Arcosanti) after a number of us made the effort to do a digital 3D capture of the Paolo Soleri Amphitheater in Santa Fe when it was in threat of being bulldozed.   I still think it isn't the ideal Utopian vision it wants to be, but it provides some very good parallax in several dimensions.
> 
> Whilst in Stockholm 2 years ago with Merle, SteveG and I met the folks behind Hubville <https://hubville.org/>which is a Swedish project to try to re-envision mesoscale development... to fill in thoughtfully and efficiently at the scale of Village to relieve both rural and urban (esp. suburban) problems in development.... as the name suggests, to become (yet more of) a Hub or return to fill the scaling niche they filled when they emerged 100 or 1000 years ago.   They were not only working in Sweden but also with partners in Africa whose development challenges were somewhat complementary to those in Europe.
> 
> Your point about our processes being perverted by our "delusional identity as individuals..." and ".. delusional conception of private property" is also well taken, in spite of my being highly charged up with that conception and rhetoric both as a child and throughout my adult life (and ongoing).    I recently (1 year hence) read Robin Wall Kimmerer's book "Braiding Sweetgrass <https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass>" which addressed human society/nature from a more ecosystem point of view.  She is a trained botanist but also a Native American and manages (IMO) to balance those two perspectives very effectively.  She talks a lot about pioneer/frontier culture/species and succession growth in ecological recovery.   I was left with a strong feeling that we (/homo faber/) really need to recognize that we are a (highly effective) invasive species over most of the planet and that if what drew us to those ecosystems/niches is at all valuable to us, we need to back the hell 
> off and recognize that we need to yield to a more robust/stable order that comes with mature ecosystems, and be part of them, not the dominators of the landscape where they once thrived.   This applies not only to the biosphere but to the cultural milieu where we (Western Civ Heroes) colonized the hell out of those who *had* found a more mature balance.   I reject the literality of "/homo hiveus"/ as an aspiration, but acknowledge that we are not even a little bit "right scaled" in our participation in the human-sphere, much less the biosphere.
> 
> Kimmerer also introduced me to the idea of a Gratitude Economy which is the next step along a chain of evolution beyond Gift Economies.  I was raised with an ideal of "generosity" but more in the way a hardcore Liberatarian or even Republican might hold it (pride, ego, obligation, fealty).  This made it easy for me to embrace ideas like "Gift Economy" and "Pay it Forward" variants... but it was really poignant when she began to give examples of applying that "generosity" in a slightly different context of "gratitude".   I burn my firewood  and even bask in the sun with a very different perspective than I did when I felt like I *deserved* those things.  I'm less focused on getting a subsistence garden to grow than nurturing/expanding proto-food-forests  in existing the microclimates already in place in and around trees and shrubs that were already here when I came or volunteer (thank you birds!).
> 
> I only wish I had been more of this awareness when my daughters were growing up.  They benefited significantly from the Equal/Civil Rights movements of my era, and Hippy-cum-Yuppie ideals of the bulk of my professional/personal circle, but they are still stuck in rat races when (if your vision were more fully elaborated and generated) they could be living in a more peaceful/gratitude-filled "nest" or "ecosystem" ("Hive" still carries too much specialization/non-power-law for me).   We talk about this some when we get together, but it is hard when you are a rat trying to keep up in the race.   The elder turned me onto Kimmerer and I in turn turned her sister onto her...   Kimmerer's "Gathering Moss" wasn't as poignant for me, but for anyone who lives where moss thrives, it might be perfect.
> 
> In the spirit of gratitude, I definitely gain a lot from your oppositional instincts/style in this forum (and sometimes offlist).   I'm guessing your Saloon-Salon compatriots in Olympia groan (with gratitude) when you show up for verbal fisticuffs and beer.


-- 
glen
When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.
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