Tag Archives: ecoministry

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The G.M.O. on Fracking

Fracking,

somewhat alliteratively,

is fucking Earth dry

without invitation.

We also call this rape,

in other contexts,

and aggravating assault.

 

Rape,

in this context,

assumes we have our ownership rights,

as this ego self-centered

and short-sighted Species,

owns our Earthship in fractured pieces,

to whimsically repeat this rapacious assault,

we also call slavery

and using Mom as if She were The Bombed Whore.

 

GMOing Earth

simultaneously

neuters Her

because She’s only abundantly economized

as a fucking commodity anyway.

 

 

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The President’s EcoChaplain

Sr. Kathleen Brennan, of the Order of Positive Intentions, is the 11th Interreligious EcoMinister Chaplain to the U.S. Congress, where she has been unusually…useful, and apparently ubiquitous. President Fuller is suffering from 2nd-term despondence-syndrome. His Cabinet seems to be leaking, the House is total chaos, and, while the Senate is somewhat more bicamerally balanced, good intentions far outweigh sustainable outcomes. Fuller feels ironically emptier of hope, much less faith that this mess will reweave into a viable fabric within his life time, much less his remaining two years.

When Ms. Fuller, his wife, found him flirting with suicidal ideation, she rather firmly invited onto his schedule a pastoral visit with the Congressional EcoMinister. Although not exactly sure that this appointment would add up to a regenerative future, his not-so-little intuitive voice resonated hopefully with this suggestion because of Sr. Brennan’s reputation as somehow unusually…useful.

President: Sr. Brennan, good of you to stop by. Hoping you might be able to help.

Chaplain: In what way, Mr. President?

P: Well, certainly not that way. Just “Bucky” please. “Mr. President” feels much too heavy right now, like somebody else I never really wanted to be.

C: So presidential Bucky isn’t unfolding as you had hoped, or intended, somehow.

P: I see what you did there, that reference to your Order’s vocational formation. What does that mean, anyway, I don’t recall meeting anyone else from the Positive Intentions Order. Ironic, Washington is a veritable compost pile of good intentions that don’t seem to come together anywhere close to whatever it is you are doing with this Positive Intention ecotherapy, or whatever you call it.

C: You covered quite a lot of ground there, Bucky. Maybe it would be helpful to talk about this disparity between your good intentions and how you define Positive Intent.

P: Well, maybe that’s part of my problem, while I am painfully aware that the road toward good intentions has killed far more people than malignant intent, I can’t work out why, exactly.

C: I doubt you know anyone with malignant intent.

P: What would you call suicidal ideation?

C: I would call that an oxymoron, If you have a positive intent toward self-destruction, you cannot actually incarnate that potentiality without sacrificing the positive polarity of your intended trajectory toward a sustainably peaceful life.

P: My life has been to try to be useful, where most needed, as inclusively as possible. But, it is the inclusivity itself that seems so utterly impossible from this position in Universal Intelligence.

C: Which is…?

P: As I am sure you know very well, the Regenerative System Development Platform has advocated for a cooperative (0)-sum post-millennial Trimtab transition for optimizing global Continuous Quality Improvement.

C: Quite a circular mouthful. So, your positive-teleological position revolves around this (0)-PrimeMutual value system. Is that how you define our “good intentions?”

P: Probably, although I would certainly use a lot more words, and numbers, and generate many polysyllabic hybrids about natural-metric systems development.

C: That does seem to be where you lose your constituency, all the irrational words, numbers, and assumption of malignant intent within the belief systems of those who oppose you, those malingering “Nay!”-sayers.

How do you reconcile your faith that we are all in this mess together with this fear of some proactive, organized, Order of Malignant Intent? While I doubt you have met anyone wearing society’s imprimatur of “Hopeless Sociopath,” I have spent some time in your prisons. A bicameral system with addictive sociopathology issues explores homicide as vicarious suicide. It feels like naked-wild risk, with the prophylactic of clothed hiddenness.

My (0)-sum win-win faith, and positive teleological intent, are not compatible with the view that your constituency would elect representatives who are addicted sociopathologists.  In other words, I wonder if you are confusing Positive Intent toward a regenerative, and sociotherapeutic, economy with Negative Intent toward globally inclusive suicide, as a species, and personally, within yourself.

P:  While I would be vastly relieved to learn that I am confused about the Other-Side’s malignant intent, I just can’t get my data-crunchers to come up with that optimized sustainable outcome trajectory. I mean, for example, if the rich and powerful define Winning the Economy Game as continuing to grow their wealth deposits, then all our synthesized projections for the future show exploding global population of increasingly marginal poverty, to say nothing of what it is doing to the dimming prospects of any (0)-carbon air-bound/soil-bound balanced ecosystem surviving anywhere on Earth.

C: So, your global information system is telling you that we cannot play a Win-Win Sustainable Ecology Game using Win-Lose socio-economic strategies.

Try this metaphor. Imagine that your constituency is a population of lotus flowers, able to physically see each other only above the surface of our Earth-pond. Your Prime (0)-sum cooperative economic platform is the pond’s surface. But, when you plunge down, under the surface, you can see that our species’ (0)-sum ecological center goes deeper down to where we share an emergent root system reaching down, with diminishing, yet still positively-regenerative intentional structure, into Earth’s rich polycultured compost. This cooperative permaculture feeds our root system, so nutrients flowing up have a regenerative infrastructural trajectory for all the individual lotus flowers, and their seed-bearing future generations.

On the other hand, one of the lotus flowers decides that he and his neighbors are more important than some other weedy-kinda-flowers on the other side of the pond, so they start sucking up all the nutrients, watching their distant RNA-cousins wilt and suffer, under the mistaken belief that they are protecting their childrens’ future while they are actually strangling their entire economic and ecological root-systemic capacity. The apparent suicidal ideation of those wilting flower-cultures on the other side of Earth’s pond are a lesson to all of us: Don’t forget that we are all (0)-sum centered where information fully reflects our most inclusive root system. This deeper ecologically balanced plateau emerges endosymbiotic Win-Win cooperative economies for nutrient flow up toward the next generation of lotus flowers.

Your suicidal ideation is your poli-cultural teacher, reminding you that we are all in this together, regardless of all the push-back necessary to bring global peace to the surface of Earth’s pond. You have no more right to choose suicide, Bucky, than a bipolar sociopath has to choose homicide. Choose to regenerate inclusive, cooperative polycultures; avoid malignant competitive monocultural silos of us-v-them, and me-v-we boundaries.

P: Is that your spiritual advice?

C: That’s my eco-equity Continuous Quality Improvement permacultured advice, straight out of the Order of Positive Intent’s prayer book, for greatest effect with least dissonance. We used to call it the Golden Rule, but now we are learning to apply it somewhat more broadly, to how we treat all species, all information, all communication, moments, days, lives, learning, and generations, past, present, and future, as EcoSelf (0) = Grace of Thermodynamic Balance [+ = (-)(-), as Yang = Reverse-Yin diametric restraint, as P = NP]—not so much Self-Centric, and refusing to play nice.

P: I think I regenerate, theoretically, what you did there—and I’m feeling positive, even hopeful, about this analogical way of comprehending QBit spacetime, and bicameral in/ex-formating systems development, and comprehensive coincidentalism, and universalism, and integral intelligence, and sociotherapy, and bicameral psychotherapy, and bioethics, and….

Assuming this might go on for a few hours, Sr. Brennan, EcoMinistry Chaplain, excused herself; without any apparent interruption of Bucky’s positively regenerative, and inclusively analogical, string theory, traveling its regenerative pilgrimage toward self-perpetuating organic compost.

 

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Man/Sha Legends

Teacher of Metaphysics Ergetically Needed: Universal Regenerative Vocation Description for Homo-Not-So-Sapiens

Position Title: Interreligious EcoMinistry Chaplain

 

PrimeFunction: Assess the metaphysical systems development trends of

students,

families,

staff,

communities,

constituencies,

policies,

cultural norms,

pedagogy, and

other informative values, assets, nutrient fuels, and resources.

 

Formational under-story/Definition: Buckminster Fuller defines metaphysical as what is not Physical Universe.

 

If Physical Polynomial Universe (P) is –(P), and –(P) is Metaphysical Universe, then metaphysical information is in a reverse-binomial metric relationship with Physical Universe. There can never be one without the other as they are mutually dipolar, reverse correlatively

defining,

illuminating,

boundary-ing,

generative,

formative.

 

When we forget that there is no more, and no less, information value in the meme “Dark Matter” than there is in the meme “Not Dark Matter,” this may be a pathological symptom of Left/Yang hemispheric dominance, out of cultural balance with the Right/Yin hemispheric primal intuition, and nurturance, of a Positive Teleological Original Intent. This dyadically-rooted Original Relationship Intent may be articulated, borrowing from Fuller, and more contemporary Group Theory and Information Systems Development Theory, as

 

+ = Core Value Vector

OVER  [ 3-dimensionally AROUND, 1-dimensionally AFTER]

(-) = Core Vortex

YIELDS [in binary, bicameral, binomial information systems]

+1 = (-)0.

 

Where +1 = +0.50% P OVER +0.00% exformative, diastatic, cooperative prime relationship frequency Constant (C)

AND

-1 = -0.00% exformative aptic EcoSelf-Awareness [see Julian Jaynes on “aptic”] (-U) OVER

-0.50% NP

 

[Also see Max Tegmark, Our Mathematical Universe, p. 198, on information wave-function, bi-elliptical density matrix]

 

-U is not ergetic, so it is radiant reverse-flow, mutually antigravitational so mutually radiant, or grateful to notice each other, endosymbiotic flow trend. A mutually evolutionary “Namaste.” This is the reverse-bias trajectory in mutually redefining relationship with diastatic sustainability (C). –U and C are a Janus-faced revolving informational field.

 

+C/-U yields thermodynamic natural biosystemic balance; harmony.

 

Second Function: Facilitate students,

and their families,

and the human species to sustainably regenerate their own

biosystems,

bicameral information processors,

and/or positive teleological historiCultural assumptions

(also known as faith in several traditions and paradigms).

 

The in-formational, intended YIELD for biosystemic facilitation:

Awareness (seed), YIELDS

Perception (healthy mutually grateful, enthymematic compost), YIELDS

Understanding (developing trend toward mature systemic/organic plant), YIELDS

Comprehension (infusive, fertile, transformative insight event, flower), YIELDS

Positive ergetic information flow functions, optimally balanced for self-perpetuation, YIELDS

polycultured organic information Climax Community seeds of regenerating awareness.

 

Third Function: Story Teller and Designer for a binomially balanced Binary Information Network and an EcoSelf emerging polycultural system.

 

Requisite Formative Definition for the Third Function:

Buckminster Fuller (and Euler, defining the prime linear temporal core of any measurable—informed–universe) define Universal Intelligence as +.50% Yang (+2e) = Positive-Flow Energy = +(0)e² = Polynomial Time (P)

EQUITABLY BALANCED OVER

-.50% Yin (Negative Energy—entropy) = -(0)e² = Not-Polynomial Temporal Exformative Trend

 

Where Exformation is Dark, dysfunctional, dissonant absence of relatedness—chaos.

 

Space = E = +1QBit * e²-temporal function

OVER

Time = +/- e = {.50% Yang-flow}/{.00% Yin-flow (0) Core-Soul Vortex}

 

See Group Theory, especially Gregori Perelman’s (et. al.) (0)-Soul Theorem, as applied to a 4-based metric system and/or a 4 equi-normatively balanced dimensional space—without anomaly, smooth structured binomial equi-definitional map of information’s binary striction.

 

This thermodynamically and normatively balanced definition of our Space/Time Universe could be translated into Buckminster Fuller’s geometric paradigm as a synergetically regenerative Metaphysical Universe.

 

Corollary: Metaphysical (NP) flow systems are reverse-metrically appositional to Physical (P) binary information systems. No other Metaphysical/Physical Universe is cognizable by a bicameral mind. In other words, if NP does not equal P, in reverse-ergetic flow relationship, then only NP Universe. If you are able to follow the logic, and/or the analogy, then that might prove that Not: P unequal to NP; therefore, P = NP, in reverse.

 

Universal Intelligence is

 

1.00% QBit Prime Yang/Yin Balance—syntropic trending

EQUAL TO DENOMINATOR

-1.00% aptic dissonance, decay, chaos, dissolution, solipsistic negative, closed system assumption—entropic trending

 

For Fuller, translated through the lens of more contemporary Group Geometric and Biometric and Information Systems Development Theory, the paradigm “Physical Universe” ends where direct sensory reception ends, which is a much more limited definition of Physics than the term “Quantum Physics” would convey. Quantum Physics becomes rather oxymoronic, or behaves oxymoronically, or it means metaphysical theorems and conjectures about physical emergence, or precession, or development, or incarnation, or the incubation metrics for evolving regenerative self-perpetuating information biosystems. Theoretical Physics is about discovering the reverse trend information pattern binomial relationships and maps that have positive information pattern development consonance (flow harmoniously and consistently) with DNA/RNA—4-dimensioned, fractal, information development Codex.

 

Fourth Function: Regenerates stories, movement, rhythms, sounds, music, dance, linguistic and autistic and synergetic remembering, recalling, replanting and reharvesting, revisiting and regenerating, internally and externally, personally and communally, tribally and globally. Inclusively designs events, days, moments, fields, polycultures effectively intending to transform climatic dissonance into an inclusively emergent peaceful and just climate of positive mindfulness.

 

Formational development sequence:

Notice, then listen, then water with compassion, growers and facilitators, farmers and educators, students and leaders, practicing active hope and peaceful presence on behalf of themselves, their tribe, our Species throughout time, and Earth from proto-history through distant future.

 

Perceive, understand, then comprehend, with articulate, carefully-expressed and translated, gratitude:

beauty and goodness,

grace and wisdom,

suffering and loss,

dissonance and dismay,

entropic systemic flow-trends,

the misinformed, disformed, competitive anomalies pushing back

to strengthen our synergetic positive flexibility toward post-millennial bi-hemispheric balance.

 

Fifth Function: Mentor and provide support for Self Care and People Care during this era of transitional cultural, ecological, economic, educational, governmental, violent, climatically critical rebalancing tipping point trend, toward the Holistic Grail of trust as P = NP because +1.00% Yang normatively and equitably equals -0.00% (0) Core Vortex binomially exformed (-e)-function [as any good feminist-compassionate sociotherapist could verify quite a bit more intuitively and eloquently], gracefully spinning within a post-0-Soul Theorem, WWW-networked, Earth-based, bicameral cooperative communication and economic network.

 

Formational Heuristic Whole Bicameral System Assumption:

According to Julian Jaynes, and followers, this emergence of Left/Right thermodynamic, reiterative, regenerative balance was the Original Positive Teleological Intent of our RNA-structured precameral synaptic/aptic information processing system. In other words, there is no new knowledge here; or no new knowledge is intended. Regenerativity Theory only intends to increase the self-comprehension of our bicameral species’ most permaculturally ubiquitous wisdom:

  • Golden Rule applies to all species, all space, all time.
  • Prime Thermodynamic Principle is greatest internal synergetic effect derives appositionally through least external dissonance and loss of gratitude, mindfulness, nurturing, caring, balancing the equity-value of  feminist and otherwise marginalized Yin cultural influence.
  • We are all in this bicameral information processing string together, just as we are all in this binomial natural system external landscape together.
  • As within, so without, so as without, so within.
  • As below, so above, so as above, so below.
  • What goes up must come down, so what comes up, must have gone down before.
  • As before, so after, so as after, so before.
  • As decayed, so un-regenerated, so as regenerated, so un-decayed.
  • As fissioned, so un-fused, so as fused, so  un-fissioned.
  • As sociotherapy grows, sociopathology wilts, so as sociopathology grows, sociotherapy wilts.
  • As dissonance develops, so synergy exforms, so as synergy informs, so dissonance exforms. binary,
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The Taoist Doctor of Ministry Proposal

Greetings:
I hope you might let me know if you have any interest in a Doctor of Ministry project that would essentially blend M. T. Winter’s work in Quantum Theology with the positive teleological assumptions implied by Buckminster Fuller’s “Synergetics”, which he defined as equivalent to an ecology of love, and/or grace.
While this may be more appropriate to the Doctor of Philosophy program, I am personally more interested in its holistic and feminist applications to at-risk populations in Connecticut, than I am Fuller’s Theory of Regenerativity, as an obscure, but certainly holistic, metaphysical system.
Whatever you think best for Hartford Seminary, and opportunities to link this dissertation/research project with current Hartford Institute initiatives, is fine with me.
Synopsis:
There appears to be a moment in every religious tradition when human enlightenment comprehends why the threshold to paradise requires absolute ego-purgation. Two metric systems theorists who may exemplify this level of comprehension are Buckminster Fuller and Gregori Perelman, of Group Theory fame. Yet the underlying positive teleological assumption that we are, each and all, better as holonically related to an omnipresent and omnipotent Universal Intelligence is as old and culturally pervasive as the Golden Rule. Doing to Environment as we positively hope, with gratitude, Environment will regenerate me is predicated on a rational belief that each of us is systemically related to Environment. The Universal Intelligence Brahman and the CoCreator Atmanic “Ego-Self” are primally related as
  • Yang to Yin,
  • quarks to leptons,
  • Positive-Deviant +1.00% trend-analysis to Negative-Anomalous (+/-)0.00% Axial Binary Assumption,
  • In-Formation is to Dis-function,
  • Explicated Polycultural Nature is to this implicately (David Bohm) structured PermaCultured Design,
  • Polynomial  regenerative energy string algorithms are to Non-Polynomial dissonantly irrational information dispersion, or decomposition
(0)-soul Vortexed Binomial Universal Balance (see Perelman and the (0)-soul Theorem of Group Theory).
If this adage-meets-analogy way of seeing the prime relationship between natural and spiritual systems proves to be scientifically and metrically accurate, pastoral and sociotherapeutic implications abound. One example of the richly abundant wealth of this perspective is the interesting work within Permaculture Design’s “Interior Landscape” of self- and people-care, and this Design’s economic/ecological equity-normative value system. Nutrient flows through our constituencies may be positive resources and/or negatively dissonant and toxic when sustained, tending toward systemic effects that are increasingly volatile, climatic, chaotic, and, in some teleological perspectives, even demonic. Positively confluent deviance is the opposite perspective from that captured in Cognitive Dissonance Theory. The socio- and eco-therapeutic advantages of a Positive Teleological Assumption run rampant through
  • Positive Psychology,
  • the brilliant Positive Deviance Initiative’s missional effectiveness for developing sustainable, indigenously-resourced, well-being systemic change (www.positivedeviance.org),
  • the Ecology of inductive Grace as profoundly balanced with Natural Law and deductive Logic,
  • and may even offer a theoretical and dynamic explanation for the apparent strength of Feminist Psycho-Social Therapy (see Laura Brown, “Subversive Dialogues” as an excellent example).
Financial incentives for Hartford Seminary may be equally generous.
  • The proposed CT Youth ReGenesis EcoMinistry Project may fit confluently with the Association of Theological Schools’ “comprehensive initiative on global awareness and engagement,” currently funded by the Henry Luce Foundation.
  • An information systemic implication of Regenerativity Theory may be that Polynomial Information equals Non (or “Ex”)-Polynomial Information. A mathematically and teleologically satisfactory theorem proving this conjecture of metric equity could qualify Hartford Seminary for anywhere from one to seven million dollars in Clay Millennium Challenge awards, pending two years of juried acceptance. Research in this area would also be of interest to the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
  • Engaging the Hartford Institute as the research center for the proposed CT Youth ReGenesis EcoMinistry Project could attract both private and public-sector philanthropic and social-investor interest, and serve as an international prototype for synergetically developing interreligious communities of mindful practice and Appreciative Inquiry (www.centerforappreciativeinquiry.net). As an active member of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD), I am certain that there would be considerable interest in many academic departments throughout Connecticut and beyond. This proposal is essentially about dynamically balanced communities of spirit-nature discernment. There are global and national political, legislative, policy, and public governance “practice” implications.
  • Finally, I believe it may place in regenerative context the issue of growing and sustaining faith-filled communities, individuals, and culturally-informed species. In this light, all the current Hartford Institute research projects might be theoretically informed by Regenerativity Theory and its Positive Teleological Assumption.
When I last talked to David Roozen about the feasibility of entering the Doctor of Ministry program, I still lacked two essential resources to proceed.  One is capacity to pay tuition and fees–which remains problematic, although I believe I could generate far more than that through research grants and fellowship income should you be willing to take that risk with me. The other was a ministry site. Last week I was offered the part-time position of Chaplain at the Sustainable Farm School, entering its fourth year with a relocation to the 400 block of Farmington Avenue, West End, Hartford (your neighborhood). SFS is an interreligious parochial–but never provincial–laboratory for youth formation in Permaculture Design, both Interior and Exterior Landscapes.
Attached is my final paper for Professor Roozen’s excellent class on change-agency within communities of faith. In it I took some analogous liberties with M.T. Winter’s Paradoxology, which I hope will resonate; and not cause more dissonance.

 

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Regenerative Allies: Habitat and Transition Teams

I sent this to the Hartford, CT, Habitat for Humanity chapter, Habitat International and to http://www.transitionnetwork.org. About regenerative and strategic partnerships informed by Bucky Fuller’s Trimtab, greatest effect for least effort, leverage design.  But, also related to land use policy of “highest and best use.”

To the Board of Directors, Habitat for Humanity—Hartford:

 

Warm greetings and congratulations on 200+ low-income homeownership units during your first 25 years!  Perhaps searching for a new Executive Director is not everyone’s favorite way of celebrating a 25 year anniversary; but there is much precedent and I want to encourage you to take this as an opportunity to look at this transition toward a vision that will serve the next several generations.

 

I have been around Connecticut and affordable housing, economic, and (0) carbon-footprint development since 1991. During the early 90s I was on the Board for Habitat in New Haven and did some consulting with the folks in Americus that led to federal grants for property acquisition, designed specifically to fit with the HforH mission. Then I worked with the YouthBuild-Hartford program for several years and, in that context, brought the first youth-targeted Individual Development Account program to the State of Connecticut.  I also helped form Cheshire Interfaith Housing to retain its indigenous Cheshire leadership and autonomy, while also working on projects in partnership with Habitat-New Haven.  This is a model that I believe has been used elsewhere to avoid the inefficiencies of balkanization of development corporations while enjoying the strengths of local faith-community leadership within each municipality. This organizational structure may be worth considering if you decide to move forward with a project in Cromwell that I have referred in your direction; the Tanner property.

 

With that as personal introduction, please forgive me for ruminating, perhaps at rather too much length, about the strategic issues faced by Habitat for Humanity globally, but also in Hartford County specifically.

 

Twenty-five years ago we defined “inadequate housing” much differently than we think about “unsustainable habitat” today, in North America. Back in the “growth-is-the-answer-to-all-systemic-problems” days of community development, we rightly gave priority to ownership and to affordability when we used adjectives like “decent” and “adequate” and “revitalized” in reference to housing and neighborhoods. Ownership and affordability remain tightly linked to sustainability, but continuing commitment to Business As Usual in the construction industry, use and reuse of materials and resources, the environment, our financial economy, our schools, our aging neighborhood infrastructures, our soaring fuel and energy costs, our continuing despair over health and child and elder care, and growing income disparity is evaporating within the religious sector. A permaculturally rich global and neighborhood habitat for humanity is increasingly informed by an interfaith eco-equity value system that asks “What on earth is adequate housing in Hartford County” from a profoundly different millennial perspective than Millard Fuller asked in Alabama.

 

So I arrive at Hartford Habitat’s mission, to “eliminate inadequate housing” in a 33-town Hartford area, thinking more like a soon-to-be-Certified Permaculture Designer, as well as an interfaith theologian, wanting to understand how we are going to jump from less than 10 units/year, on average, to address the habitat adequacy challenges of approximately 350,000 households in Hartford County.  A truly strategic plan must confront that question with candor, integrity, drawing on the strength of experience during the first 25 years, but also recognizing that habitat issues have moved into an environmentally critical arena of systems analysis.

My work in affordable housing, community, economic, and now permaculture systems development, has often benefitted from what Unitarian Buckminster Fuller called the “Trimtab” leverage question.  How do we get the most effect with the least effort? In a Deep Ecology, and faith, context, we are asking, both within our congregations, and without, Given our eco-equity challenges, where do we discover our most abundant hope for metanoia, for transformation, for regeneration? What is our shared habitat vocation?

 

The Tellus Institute (www.tellusinstitute.org) takes this question into the 21st Century of computer simulation to offer us some comparative projections linking economic and ecological sustainability. We find the most abundantly sustainable trajectory in their Great Transition paradigm:

 

  • Reuse/recycle/incorporate materials and energy to increase the ecosystem’s regenerative capacity.

 

  • Strategically envision for the long-term (i.e., the “7-Generation” perspective of Native American cultures).

 

  • Increase inclusion and diversity in socio-ecological systems therapy.

 

  • Reinsert “humans” into our holistically inclusive concerns for sacred-nature equitable outcomes: optimized and sustainable solidarity, community, health and well-being for all individuals and species.

 

  • Enhance public choice-making to improve consensus (decrease polarization) and eco² [my own symbol for the combination of “economic” and “ecological”] sustainability.

 

  • Strengthen our eco² outcomes by folding in habitat-strengthening cooperative approaches to child care, education, health, pensions, elder care, nutrition, energy-production, acquiring both perishables and non-perishables, landscaping, self-care, employment as vocation.

 

  • Increase public and private investment in cooperative research and design, with specific priority for eco² sustainable well-being.

 

  • Develop and advocate new tax and financial institution regulatory policies and incentives to increase social capital investments. Grow a policy and investment infrastructure that reverses the trend toward economic disparity by committing our wealth deposits and property to a new cooperative-oriented economy of long-term sustainability.

 

  • Remember the Principle of Subsidiarity, and keep it holy, or holistic. In Whole Open Systems Theory, optimized abundant values matriculate up from integrated/confluent individuals and families, through neighborhoods, to communities, sub-regions, regions, and globally inclusive eco² integrity.

 

  • Re-member the PermaCultured Principle of Complementarity: The human-natural interior landscape and the exterior natural landscape inform, and mutually define, each other in a Deep Learning and Listening sacred process of sustainable regeneration. This is our Species’ interfaith hope; it is permanently encultured in all religious traditions and faith paradigms. It is our source of gratitude for Creation as a sacred gift.

 

Religious institutions, congregations, mosques, synagogues, ashrams, intentional communities, scientific communities, and think-tanks, even bionic intelligence, are discovering greatest effect for least effort by noticing the sociotherapeutic value of Deep Eco-Justice, Deep Learning, Deep Ecology, Regenerative Systems design and development. Faith communities that have worked on their “Interior Landscape Design” and their “Exterior Landscape Design” are emergently aware of synchronization around a slower cooperative economic-ecology of nutrient value abundance. As a Regenerative Faith Species, we long for nature balance, for goodness and beauty within and without, while retaining our values for effectiveness, optimized system function, fairness, freedom, inclusion, diversity, gratitude, hope, faith, love.  Vibrant communities of intent, and intentional families, and intentional individuals, are those who holistically practice eco-equity caring for self, other people, and our planet. These three habitats, journeys, pilgrimages, are an integrally Trinitarian conversation.

 

We are remembering the permacultured time when what was good ecologically was understood as what was best economically because they were the same agrarian-natural value system.  Prior to currency, this was obvious in the short terms of life and death growing seasons, and in the longer terms of a “7-Generation” hope for the sustainable future. Economic values separated from ecological values as we forgot that human nature is intrinsically tied to all organic nature. We share RNA back to a tap root much older than the “self” consciousness of our species.

 

I wonder how many Habitat volunteers and property owners identify themselves as global citizens more readily than members of a particular religious institution. If we are many, what can all of us global-habitat citizens from diverse faith communities, and neighborhoods, and families, do to strategically enrich our interior and exterior habitats?

 

 

The Habitat Hartford strategic plan does look for strengthening the Interior Landscape of the staff culture, and does aspire to strengthen the Exterior Landscape through developing ally partnerships. Both of these strategies could be envisioned from a Business-As-Usual perspective, or from a more Great Transition perspective.  At this point it is probably clear where I would put my time and money, but I want to conclude with a more specific resource partnership suggestion. Theology, theory, even computer simulated scenario projections to the year 2100 are all fine and well, but Habitat for Humanity core volunteers tend to like something closer to nuts and bolts, hammers and nails.

 

Perhaps you are familiar with the Transition Network (www.transitionnetwork.org), which originated in the UK, and now has a National Hub in California. I have no direct experience with being part of a Transition Team, although I know there have been some projects in New England. I recently accepted an invitation to comment on their new strategic plan.  Perhaps that is why they come to mind as a potential resource for incarnating HH’s Interior and Exterior Landscape improvement goals.

 

The Transition Network has a fairly well developed eco²-equity culture, and their mission is to help local volunteer groups, with emphasis on building adolescent and young adult leadership, improve their ecological and economic habitats. They have many on-line resources, project stories, and the intent to increase on-line communication and financial resource networking, including, perhaps, the capacity to link projects internationally.  So, for example, if HH wanted to take on a neighborhood improvement and house renovation project while building communication and financial linkages to a Habitat project in Haiti, the Transition Network could probably help you with that.  If a cluster of Cromwell faith communities wanted to organize and support a HH new construction project in Cromwell, linked to a new construction project in South America, or Africa, or not, the Transition Network (TN) resources and fundraising and organizing support system is as accessible as a laptop or smart phone.

 

TN as a Habitat ally, locally, and internationally, seems particularly compelling to me because there is great potential for participating faith communities to develop an inclusive interfaith permacultured eco-justice formation that could capture the imagination and momentum of high school kids and young adults.  This is the age group most needed for a successful Great Transition, for successful Habitat projects, for vibrantly growing faith communities, and it is the age group of priority to the Transition Network.

 

If there were an interest in developing urban neighborhood interfaith, and suburban community interfaith youth EcoMinistry Teams working on HH and TN Interior-Exterior Landscape Care Designs for Self, Others, and Earth, while that is rather a mouthful, I might be able to help with that. These could also be urban/suburban yoked for increased eco²equity—greatest effect for least effort might also include international yoking, if HH might have a Habitat affiliate, or a TN affiliate, or everybody affiliated with everybody. In terms of religious maturation, this is also the time when we may be losing kids from intentional faith communities because they are more interested in spending some time discovering how their own spiritual path is informed by the “Religious Commons,” what is held as sacred by all faith traditions. This is precisely why Habitat and each of the religious traditions invested in Habitat and eco-justice need each other.

 

Resilient learning development systems help us understand “self” identity most effectively in an intentionally diverse environment, with others who we may primordially see as not like me. This seems to be true in all regenerative economies, whether they be pedagogical, spiritual, financial, communication, or possibly even genetic information systems. A Habitat-TN youth EcoMinistry, intentionally diverse and interfaith, could be regeneratively powerful at the local, national, and global levels.

 

 

The Tellus Institute forecasts an emergent Co-Operative CommonWealth. Some things that might emerge from Solidarity Habitat Co-Operatives:

 

Neighborhoods self-organize to cooperatively build solar or wind infrastructure, compost, organize Community Farm Associations, design organic, edible landscapes and gardens, open neighborhood cooperative stores and libraries to ReHabitat clothing, toys, books, tools, seeds, organic fertilizers, mulch.

Neighborhood cooperatives could fulfill multiple functions: child and elder care, employment support groups, homeschooling (maybe even with a “school nurse”), food banks, tax assistance, classes in nonviolent communication, writing, entrepreneurial development, natural construction and crafts, permaculture design, interfaith dialogue, cooking, yoga, Tai Chi, meditation.

With Habitat support, neighborhood cooperative centers might facilitate the formation of residential cooperative ownership in partnership with interested (and often absentee) property owners.

 

Faith communities might help individuals invest in CDFIs, cooperative loan funds, and do so themselves, if they have not already committed any investments in this direction (although many have been global leaders in disinvestment from sociopathology and reinvestment in sociotherapeutic economies).

 

Faith communities could work within their neighborhoods to convert lawns to beautiful and edible landscape designs that are self-regenerating and require no long-term care.  The plants provide shade to each other so watering is seldom needed, if ever.  They cross-pollinate and bring balanced nutrients into the soil.  They self-mulch.  Then the faithful may learn to see that, with sufficient diversity and some re-sourcing ingenuity, we can often take care of each other in ways that are analogous to the ways that our well-designed ecosystems take care of each other.

 

Faith communities might host the neighborhood cooperative schools and stores and libraries, as so many already do.

 

Faith communities might further develop our eco-justice agendas to attend more fully to public sector policies and procedures that would decrease income disparity while enriching the new cooperative, and regenerative, economy.

 

Habitat for Humanity is well-poised to help us move toward a more nutritious and inclusive, more affordable with less effort, regenerative interfaith journey. The Transition Network might be a useful ally, and the locally planted Habitat infrastructure and culture could help TN with some of their own sustainability concerns.  Their all-volunteer, no paid staff, model does help keep the momentum on youth leadership, but young people have a way of going off to college, transitioning to new jobs in new locations. Perhaps the combination of Habitat for Humanity and Transition Network and interfaith volunteer networks is just what we all need to cross-pollinate and regenerate ourselves into the Great Transition.

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The Wealth Economy: Turning from Competition to Cooperation

Toward a PermaCultured Cooperative Financial Exchange Ecoministry

Just because someone is religious doesn’t necessarily mean that that person, or corporate person, doesn’t have an embarrassment of riches.

I look back over my 30 years in community building, 20 years as a grants and contracts researcher, writer, and manager, and have a profound discomfort with our philanthropic economy, with how it works as an economic system.  It is highly inefficient.  It has learned nothing about cooperative systems development theory; and seems to show no systemic value for the cost-effective benefits of returning to the community the wealth from which the wealth originated, as effectively as possible.

 I could probably write a book about cooperative economic theory; which no one would read.  So, let me give a specific example of an alternative model that has merit for consideration.

Today, if you are graduating from high school in the U.S., you can fill out one master application form and submit it to a central network for consideration.  I believe every college and university in the U.S. can acquire access to that information (not sure about information confidentiality boundaries, but let’s assume that this now becomes public information).  If a higher ed institution is seriously interested in having you join their student body, then they may ask you for a little supplemental info.

If a networked application system can work for individuals seeking a social investment in their personal contributions to society, then why on earth do we need 10 to 20 separate on-line sites for cooperative neighborhood and community, and regional groups to post who they are, what they have done to assess their shared values for the future, what they want to do, and what outcomes they expect, and how much money they need to do that?  Maybe diversity is a good thing in that regard.  Assuming that it is, why wouldn’t we want the stewards of our wealth to proactively harvest this information, organized so they could search for their specific social investment priorities and service territories, and consider these postings as applications for funding worthy of being treated like any customized application sent specifically to their overworked, tired, exhausted, frustrated grant officers who have a stack of applications sitting on their desks, most of which have only moderate synergy with what their Board of Directors wants to fund right now? I wonder how many grant officers have told me they feel like screening editors in a Publishing House, wading through stacks of material that they have to read just because somebody sent it specifically to them; not because it necessarily has anything to do with what they are hoping to support.

Perhaps the wealth deposit stewards could form a Cooperative Philanthropic Network that would help them figure out who gets to invest  how much in our intentional community vocations? The Ashoka Foundation comes to mind as one that has tried to blend their grants with a social investment format, but it is cumbersome primarily in its isolation from a broader network of opportunity.  And, the underlying economic assumption continues to be a competition between value outcomes that would work more optimally, and sustainably, within a cooperative economy.

The main beneficiaries of the current philanthropic system are grant writers and managers, foundation grant officers and senior executives, and the financial institutions that are managing the wealth deposits without (as a general rule) any consideration of value other than the accumulation of more capital, so the foundations can invest the interest only back into the community. But God only knows what permacultural crisis their stock portfolio is supporting in communities across our overheated planet.

Meanwhile fossil-fuel based wealth deposit growth is starting to slow down and our kids are increasingly recognizing that their adult reality will be lived out in a major realignment of social and economic systems, trending toward becoming information and communication-based. They will either re-learn how to live in a cooperatively balanced ecology and economy, or their kids will face some serious survival yuck.

If we have a shared vocation as a species to fix this, it seems like the prophetic voices are those who are participating in these stewarded public conversations.  Is it appropriate for the D&D practitioner community to profile our wealth management system as a shared social investment values problem? Do communication facilitators inappropriately step out of their role if they speak collectively as a community that has been listening to regular people talk about what they want and don’t want for their futures and their childrens’ futures, and what that implies about a better, more efficient and effective, system for social investment than what we do now?

I’m not trying to bite the hand that has fed me so effectively during my career, but I do wonder if our wealth investment system is cancerously leaking our own life blood.  And, it seems like it would be fairly easy to fix, if we wanted to.

One week later:

I am currently trying out a prototype survey to use with individuals, families, and project teams.  I need to be a bit more sure that this will be viable as a format to begin what the Mondragon educators refer to as personal development.
 I am waiting for a book I just learned about that is something about spiral and integral learning and communication development process.  It sounds like there might be considerable confluence with sociocracy.
I had a highly resonant reaction to the Mundukide Foundation’s mission statement and what it sounds like they are trying to do.  I am wondering if it would be possible to gather religious sector philanthropists into a collaboration with cooperative and permaculture/ecological network agencies at  national and international levels to rethink our philanthropic economy as one that could be based on direct meme-value, rather than capital value. It seems like we might need an incarnation of this collaboration at a regional level to draw on as a resource for a more global aspiration. In other words, if a permaculture cooperative network were learning how to invest in shared social value enterprises and vocations in the CT River Valley (its only obvious advantage being that is where I happen to live right now–not that there is any infrastructure in place that looks particularly promising) and beginning to sync and develop more cooperative efficiency and economic inclusiveness for marginalized populations, then we could tell that story as a way of helping each other think about what that might look like globally.
Both the research and philanthropic grant sectors are increasingly drawn toward cooperative enterprises for learning, and for providing services. However, both grant sectors still use competitive processes to attract and process proposals.  Even as enlightened an entity as the Buckminster Fuller Institute’s Fellowship program uses this model (and if institutional culture should understand the efficiencies of synergetics I would think it would be the BFI).  I was reading through a list of their 10 finalists in 2013, of which they were probably only going to actively work with one.  That is their structure.  But, there were 3 of those 10 that were basically the same idea (something to do with a new design to bring potable water to villages with dysfunctional wells, if I remember correctly), but the focus was on three different areas of the planet, and their design concepts were probably not entirely redundant.  Even so, if I could take a cursory glance at their list of finalists and see how much more bang for their buck we could all potentially get by helping those 3 finalists work together, well, you can finish that sentence for yourself.
Imagine what might happen if we had 10 seasoned grant writers actively scanning the 10 most active social investment websites for cooperative potential between proposed projects with similar missions and compatible outcomes.  These grant “brokers” are acting as a collaborative team, sharing information about emergent trends and shaping potential multiple partners into effective cooperative partners with a shared revenue resource. If this Cooperative Research and Philanthropy Team was connected to a network of philanthropists, they could act as a communication hub between the wealth deposits and a portfolio of synchronized cooperative ventures needing grants and, possibly, loans.
There are a couple of advocacy dimensions to this cooperative economic development proposal.  One is that religious and other “we are all in this together” oriented wealth deposit managers really need to talk to their grantor and social investor colleagues about their investment portfolios; encouraging more and more of them to invest larger and larger portions of their portfolios in community-value-driven vocations/enterprises, rather than financial bottom-line corporations that may be using our capital wealth for purposes that are not sustainable, potentially doing far more harm with the philanthropist’s money than the interest that they spend on grants does good.  Most religious sector philanthropists have divested of investments that are ecologically counter-productive. If this trend became normative for wealthy foundations and individuals all across the planet, then a capital-accumulation valued economy might begin turning around toward a cooperative development valued economy and ecology.
The second area of potential advocacy has to do with tax structure. If wealth deposit managers took the lead in talking to government officials and other people in the top 1% globally about the havoc their accumulation is causing to the entire ecosystem, perhaps we could arrive at some consensus that the top 1% of earners each year (after taxes) could afford to either invest maybe 80% of that after-tax net income in cooperative/environmentally sustainable enterprises/vocations/habitations or pay that amount in taxes.  In this way, the top 1% (subtracting last year’s income from last year’s taxes/social investments) would cycle each year.  It would be only the most cancerously growing, self-isolating, wealth deposits that would pay the ultra-high pay-back tax, or social investment, rate in consecutive years.
Then maybe we could think about doing something similar, but at a lower rate, for the top 2 to 5%, then the top 6 to 10%.  Reverse-trending wealth deposits toward a cooperative and inclusive economy might mean that the meme, or Information, value of currency would self-balance, if done globally and incrementally.  Maybe we wouldn’t need Community Currency barter-exchange transfer records if we re-oriented our wealth deposits to actually serve our sustainable socioeconomic and cultural values.
But, this all needs to be talked about, especially by people who are already invested in permacultured systems-analysis and design, cooperative workers and residers, New Economy and Natural Resource and Whole Systems thinkers, and the religious/spiritual sector.
My personal paradigm is what is emerging under the label “EcoMinistry.” The difference between human service and ministry is that service is something a provider brings to a client while ministry is something that two or more people do together, from a position of solidarity. Eco is short for ecology, but it also works for economy; as an ecologically informed economy.  So, in my sometimes not-so-humble perspective, we are an emerging species of ecoministers. This is about how we live sustainably together under the assumption that the Golden Rule always and inclusively applies to all species and all systems and all paradigms and all traditions and all memes, and all communication. It is a philosophy of mutually-assured nonviolence and affinitive hope.
 I believe I know of a handful of foundation people regionally and nationally who would like to have this agenda spelled out theoretically and then described in terms of project activities, development trajectory, and budgeting. That is the direction I am taking and I am actively looking for a core design and consulting team toward that end.
None of this is intended to distract from the primacy of working directly with small groups of marginalized kids and young adults, more or less following the Mondragon pedagogical model of personal development, leading to social development, leading to shared vocational teamwork and intentional community-building.  I find myself drawn to “deep listening” and “deep learning” models that are confluent with nonviolent communication and lifestyle paradigms. My 17 year old son and I are taking a University of Stanford MOOG starting on January 20th on the Deep Learning pedagogical model. We are also both taking a Permaculture Design Certification class. We are planning to apply what we learn with kids and young adults failing to thrive in the transition from poor learning environments into employment.  Our emphasis will be on developing core healthy relationships to build shared, sustainable, vocations. (which I will choose to think of as ecoministry, but I won’t scare everyone with that concept, I think; at least not the first day). Our local headquarters is called the Auerfarm 4H Education Center, an independent non-profit, but part of the Cooperative Extension Service here in Connecticut.  It is also a cooperative farm and includes some ingredients of an intentional residential community, with potential for more of the same.
I am learning to trust the process and let a big vision unfold in its own time.  If it is not built together, then it is not worth building.  The valuable feedback I am getting (and not always accepted with grace) is that I get too far ahead of myself, too impatient with development process, and too unrealistic about deadlines for implementing good public discernment and engagement design.  To be less driven by grantor’s deadlines, and more in control of what has internal design integrity.  If the design and theory and inclusive process are meant to be permanently sustainable, and revolutionary, then I must trust that money and other needed resources (nutrients) will be there when we need them. Whether it grows legs or not will ultimately not be about cash flow; it will be about good inclusive sustainable, permacultured design.
This feels like a highly promising opportunity to globally improve the effectiveness for health and well-being by working with philanthropic leaders to develop a cooperative grant information exchange network.  This, rather than continuing to ask for cooperative proposals while setting up competitive application processes that are highly inefficient at a global scale, if our species’ goal is to optimize sustainable well-being by increasing the effective flow of our rather too calcified wealth deposits.  No biological system can optimize nutrient flow and health when fuel-resources are hoarded for self-selecting subsystem nutrition, leaving the remainder of the planet to scramble for the crumbs.

We, the big WE, might benefit from inventing a variation on the stock exchange brokerage model that would be rooted in well-being value, rather than capital value; the exchange would be in the form of grants and low-interest loans rather than stocks, and a broker would be someone who works within a cooperative social investment ecoministry team, scanning on-line, internationally for cooperative investment opportunities that show high synergetic value (using something like Hubbard’s Whole Systems analysis, Spiral Development Theory, etc.), looking for resources to achieve significant permacultural optimization outcomes all over the planet, packaging these independent projects, adding a budget using cooperative synergy assumptions, and sending out the umbrella grant/loan package to appropriate philanthropists, within a religious, cooperative, ecological, peace, and public discourse investor network. A network of ecoministry (I think ministry can work in the British secular humanist way here) philanthropists to consider the umbrella investment portfolio collaboratively, each taking the piece most appropriate to their individual priorities, usually geographic.

There is something in here not only about shifting from competitive capital values to cooperative well-being values, but also to re-framing religious/spiritual ecology into its permanently encultured, proto-religious economic system roots; a regeneration of planetary information-transfer development systems. Not a species capacity before  the current evolution-potential of the WWW.

From one guy trying to learn his ecoministry vocation, hopefully to another.
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