Robert Paterson's Weblog

Taking back our power - literally

Dave is on a roll again - so much good material and so thought provoking

It's time for us to get farmers and scientists working together to undermine the corporatist Ag-Bio stranglehold by creating an innovative, entrepreneurial, people-controlled, socially and environmentally responsible and sustainable Ag-Bio coalition, to bring the third part of Dyson's dream to fruition. We're winning the battle for free information, and we've turned the corner towards freeing ourselves from the Big Energy-controlled grid. But we need to do a lot of work on this third front, where we start now from a position of weakness. If we can succeed in this, we will have dealt a fatal incapacitating blow to the existing power elite, and created the foundations for a truly sustainable and democratic economy to supplant the one that now threatens us all.

Blogging and health

Because having a blog leads to an increase in autonomy and participation, I believe that we can say that blogging is good for your health.

Not just my fantasy. The most articulate researcher on the link between Autonomy and health is Sir Michael Marmot. Here is the lead into his NYT Op Ed on the day of the 2005 Oscars.

IT'S that time when the world holds its breath: the annual ritual when we wait to see which glittering and famous person will become even more glittering and more famous. But the Academy Awards are more than just a spectator sport. They are a matter of life and death. On average, the winners live four years longer than nominees who don't win.

The Oscar winners are a quirky example of a phenomenon that is remarkably widespread: the higher your status in the social hierarchy the better your health and the longer you live. It appears to be a global syndrome. Americans with more income or education have better health than Americans with less; a Swedish Ph.D. graduate has longer life expectancy than a Swede with a master's degree; a British civil servant at the top of the employment hierarchy has greater longevity than one not quite at the top; health has been improving for Russians with university education, getting worse for those without. The reason the Oscar winners are so interesting is that they give insight into what is going on.

We are used to thinking that poverty is bad for health. Indeed it is. Life expectancy in some sub-Saharan African countries is less than 40 years compared with 80 years or more for people in the best-off countries. By these standards even poor Americans are not poor, yet they have shorter lives, as much as 20 years shorter, than richer Americans. The unsuccessful Oscar nominees, or the Swedish master's graduates, or the second-from-the-top civil servants, are certainly not poor. Yet each of these groups has worse health than those above them in the hierarchy. There is a social gradient in health that runs from the top to the bottom of society and affects all of us.

A way to understand this link between status and health is to think of three fundamental human needs: health, autonomy and opportunity for full social participation. All the usual suspects affect health - material conditions, smoking, diet, physical activity and the like - but autonomy and participation are two other crucial influences on health; and the lower the social status, the less autonomy and the less social participation. By participation I include the positive feedback one receives from social recognition and being a valuable member of society.

Going Home - Our Reformation

I have been heads down this week writing my chapter for Todd's More Space Book
Well it is done and I can get my life back

Thank you Todd for allowing me the space to finally get my thoughts about what is happening to us out in the open.

This how it opens. You can read the rest if want in the follow on.

Going Home

“We have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero path.

And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the centre of our existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."

Joseph Campbell

I was in a meeting this week with a group of “educators”. We were talking about Communities of Practice. I mentioned blogging several times in the meeting. At the meeting’s end, one of the participants approached me and said, “Every time you mention blogging I get annoyed. It is only a fad and will never affect education.”

I believe that it is not a fad. I believe that Blogging, and its wider family of Social Software tools, will not only affect education but will shake our entire society to the core. I believe that our descendants will look back at its arrival the same way that we now look back at the advent of the printing press.

I believe that Social Software is a vector a return to an old culture.

When I say old culture, I mean the culture that fits the essential nature of humans and that fits nature itself. I imagine a return to the custom of being personally authentic, to a definition of work that serves the needs of our community, and to a society where our institutions serve to enhance all life.

I see signs that that we are going home. See if you can see what I can see.

Joan Brady's view of the world

Here is an example of my friend Joan's work and her view of life

Open Office

I am thinking of using Open Office .

Any advice for Apple (me) and for PC(Robin)?

The 3 big things that you wished you had known type of advice is what I need

Thanks - the best advice will get an iTunes gift

Who are we?

Am I only this middle aged man that I am today?

Are any of us just as we are or are we a composite of all our ages? I cannot help myself: sometimes when, I look at a child I see the adult to come or, when I see an older woman, I see the girl she used to be. Maybe every child has the adult in them and every adult, the child?

Cyn has some remarkable pictures of her aged about 6 on her site. I see the essence of Cynthia today in these innocent and open perspectives. Sometimes this sweet girl just pops out.

Here is the photo that I love the best of me that I hope expresses my own delight in play and adventure. It was taken on a family holiday in Cornwall in England. I am about 6 or 7 then. Do those of you know me see him now and then?

My mother is 77 this year. She is amazed that she is this old and sees herself about about a perpetual 30. As a girl she looked like Grace Kelly

When I get depressed about how frail she has become, I buck myself up, knowing that Rosalie Ann is in there somewhere and that she will come out again when her time is done here where time only moves one way.

Let he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone

From the CBC today

Sorry I am quiet these days

I have not been posting very much. The reason is that I am behind in my commitment for Todd's Book More Space

Here is my outline. I hope to be finished next week.

Ken Dryden - Child Care and a Deal

Predictably there is no deal today.

I humbly offer Minister Dryden some advice. The idea of getting agreement from all drives a process where we have to end up with such a poor compromise that we all lose. The previous agreement was just a cash grab by the provinces who spent the money on whatever. Why would we expect otherwise again?

I know that you want to do the best thing. So let's set up a process that takes us to the best that we can do instead of a process that must lead us to the worst.

Instead of trying to do a deal with everyone - why not put out the DNA of what you want. Not just baby sitting but development. Development that most can access. Attach say 2 Billion to this and say that the first 3 provinces that agree will get the deal as offered. You will then monitor the deal for 3 years and we will all learn what works.

There are 4 underlying points to this approach.

First is that offering an agreement to all will be to give all the power to all the provinces to do as they wish. Children have to lose and you will have wasted all the money.

Secondly - there is no point in struggling academically about issues until they have been tested. We do not know today what is the best approach and cannot until we have tried things. By having an official Beta process, we can learn enough to have a much better idea in 3 years time. Children win and you cannot waste any money because you will have learned so much.

Thirdly - such a beta gives you the foundation on which to build a new system that is secure. In 3 years time all will know that works and what does not. Then you will be able to increase the investment and bring in the rest with assurance.

Lastly - This process breaks the power of the provinces to water down good ideas for their own selfish reasons and changes how the Federal Government negotiates with them. It opens the door to movement on Kyoto, on Healthcare and a host of issues that are deadlocked so long as all have to agree.

Please think on this and have such a deal in your back pocket when you next meet.

Carly and hubris

Jim Collins in his excellent book Good to Great, leads off with a core finding of his research. That CEO's who confuse celebrity with leadership are dangerous.

The writing has surely been on the wall for Carly for some time. HP's greatest strength was its culture and she acted in every way to reject it. The Compaq deal was an act of supreme hubris and has been in effect a disaster as the family feared.

Another lesson for CEO's is that while many founding families no longer ruin the firm, they are not without influence. Cross them at your peril. Founding families tend to care much more for the culture and the long term than the hired gun. 

JC's excellent chapter on Level 5 leadership follows on if you are interested