Robert Paterson's Weblog

Turkey, Brazil, Prism - what is going on? Cultural Global Civil War

Marko Djurica/Reuters

I am sure that you , like me, have been wondering what is going on as seemingly small issues such as bus pass prices or a development project seem to spark such massive social movements. 

As I walked the dog this morning it was what filled my mind.

Might it be that many many people have lost faith with the idea and the practice of government?

They don't want Bread and Circuses as in Brazil. They want government to do what government used to do - operate good schools and healthcare.The government seems bought off by FIFA and the IOC and the developers. The government fails most of the people. 

They don't want developers to rule in Turkey and urban Turks do not want a theocracy. The traditionalist government is supported by the rural vote. The urban Turks cannot go back but the rural Turks cannot go forward.

In America we also see a split between the Coasts and coastal cities and much of the old Confederacy. Neither side feels that government represents them. No single government can! Instead it seems clear to most now that the US government serves only the elite. 

I think that we are seeing a 3 way split. There is a conflict in values between the new and the old and the Elites have taken the prize.

Might it be that many nations are split in their values between "traditionalists" who look to external authority and to a growing group of people who are "participants" who need to be actors in their own lives. Who look to their internal locus of control?

I see these groups in every nation.  The traditionalists all want the same thing. So do the Participants. The problem is that they are locked into one nation and so into great conflict. This feels to me like the time of the Reformation. There was no middle ground for those who wanted the Pope to act between them and God and those that wanted to relate to God directly.

What I see that is new is the role of the elites. Then the elites themselves were split along religious lines. Now the elites are using the anger of the traditionalists to keep their power. There are no elites on the side of freedom and of self. 

Which brings me to the web and to Prism and the NSA.

The great force that is driving the new reformation is surely the web. It is the fire than fuels the new. It is where each of us can find out what we need and to connect to others like us. It is like when Luther translated the Bible into German. It was why Printers were burned at the stake. The Traditionalist do not want people to form their own views.

The elite has launched the Inquisition. They have used Terror as their excuse and to get the Traditionalists onside.

So how do Traditionalists define "terror"? It is surely any person that does not take the party line. It will be anyone who objects to the Elite and how they run things. Don't like the pipeline, you are a terrorist. Offer unpasteurized milk, you are a terrorist. Don't like the banks, you are a terrorist.

THIS is why what is going on in the US is so dangerous. The Traditionalists have been weak on the web. They cannot use it for themselves. But they can and are now controlling it.

I don't know how this will turn out but I do know my history. We are seeing a schism in human society that can only get worse I fear. People die and kill for these deep beliefs.

So far the Participants have been naive. There is no naivety on the other side. The Elites know who their enemies are and they know that this is a life and death conflict.

Summer Solstice and the Journey of Life

I find the longest day both happy and sad. Summer is on its way. For the next 3 months we can sit and eat outside. We work in our garden and we see our friends and family. That's the happy. But in a place like Canada where the summers are so short, the way the days get shorter is also a harbinger of the winter to come. That is my sad. 

Isn't this like our lives?

I see June 21st a bit like when we reach 35. We are on the cusp of young and mature. With luck we have birthed our kids and the long haul of raising them has begun. Our bodies are not what they had been and as for our bodies, it is downhill all the way into the future!

No wonder December 25 is celebrated as the birth of Jesus. It is that darkest time when life stirs unseen in the womb. 

March is surely when we are sexually mature. The birds and the bees and all life is busy nesting and mating. Life is bubbling up and life is ahead of us and full of promise. No wonder we rejoice.

September, where I think I am now, is a look back at the joys of summer. With luck to see our job done in raising our own kids and maybe the joy of seeing them raise theirs. With luck to look back on your life's work and feel good about it. To remember the year behind you. For surely September is a time of gratitude. It hopefully is a harvest time when what we have sown in life comes to fruition. It is also sad. For time is now so short. Every day of sun is precious. All around us the plants give up their colour and start to die. Decay advances. We pay attention to life more than we ever have before.

And in December, as life renews itself, we say good bye to all we know. In the end we say goodbye even to ourselves and join that eternal cycle of birth, life. decay and death. Hopefully we have had a life. It is too late then if you have not. 

No wonder the ancients payed such attention to these solstice dates. As do we still. Christmas is still the celebration of renewal. Easter happens also to be the next equinox. Christians celebrate life then. In Canada and the US we celebrate Canada day  and July 4th. In Quebec this weekend we celebrate St Jena Baptiste day. These times are when we celbrate ourselves. In September we celebrate Labour day. It is also harvest festival.  We celebrate what we have done

When I think of the great festivals of the sun and our lives, the old meaning makes more and more sense to me.

Am I just an old man in my September, or do these times touch you too? 

Related articles

My place in Eternity - What my son's birthday means to me

The Zombie Princess - Coming to your Kindle this fall

My daughter (34) loves Zombies. She is part of a huge crowd that shares her feelings.

My grand daughter (aged 4) loves Princesses. It seems that she too is part of  a huge crowd.

As I talked about this with my daughter a couple of months ago, a crazy idea for a book emerged.

What if there was a Zombie Princess? What if the story of Sleeping Beauty was utterly modernized?

This is a world where kissing the Princess is no easy matter. What caused her to be a Zombie? What terrible reason would cause a boy to kiss a zombie? An enthralling world has emerged for me around these questions. Castles with a past; Russian Oligarchs who ignore their son; Mystery Guardians; Mystery Seekers; A clash between the human spirit and the mind; Dreams that are real; Eternal Dogs and Horses; Swords and Glocks; Magic that could be real; Honour and Betrayal; Courage and Sacrifice; History and Today; Time as a window.

In spite of my work and other commitments I find myself 15,000 words into this now and hope by the end of the summer to have a short book finished. I just cannot stop. It is pouring out of me. A 3 part series is emerging from the story too.

Would you like to know more?

 

Canada House Prices - What next?

I have been saying for some time that Canada will have to adjust - but the housing market keeps going up. (Link to Paul Krugman)

This picture still makes me very nervous? And you?

The Crowd in Turkey Raise $108,000 in no time for ads - The Crowd can get the $

For the right issue, the people can raise the money now. I find this exciting - do you?

Related articles

Turkish protesters raise $55,000 for full-page ad in New York Times

Turkey Protests Continue. Erdogan Administration Loosing Support as More Protests are Expected

Turkey Protesters Crowdfund Public Awareness

What an airport at Bromont might do for the Estrie?

In the new new economy, people can leave the big city and live rurally if they have a good internet connection. It helps to have a good air connection too. On PEI where I used to live, it took 15 minutes for people who lived near Chatlottetown to get the airport. The 6am flight to Montreal meant that you could be in Washington, New York or Toronto by 10am. You could hop to Halifax and be on the evening flight to Europe.

Now for the Estrie, Montreal YUL is close - an hour 30 minutes if there are no accidents on the 20. But an early morning flight means a 3am wake up. If you live in Sherbrooke you have another hour. 

Bromont airport can take a 737. It is 30 minutes from most of the Estrie. An hour clear from Sherborooke. What might be the appeal if say Porter had a daily morning and an evening flight to Toronto? I suspect that the flights would be full right now. And what would this mean for the Estrie? I think that more and more people would consider moving here from Montreal. In time there would be enough demand to offer a weekly  New York Flight on Mondays - maybe a weekly Icelandair flight on Fridays to Europe?

Alfie getting a Biome Booster at the Farm

Note the presence of lots of poo and the suspicious stains on his mouth!

The research is clear. Kids who are exposed to animals when young - poo and all - have better immune systems and few allergies.

When in doubt - more dirt!

Related articles

Our Biome - the next step in understanding our health

My place in Eternity - What my son's birthday means to me

Who are the "New Rurals?" - the smart folks who are leaving the city and moving to the country

This is Knowlton - where I live today.

150 years ago my great grandfather left the family farm and walked to Montreal - where the jobs and the opportunity were. He was early in the powerful trend from rural to urban. Many think that this trend still continues. In the developing world it does. BUT there is a trickle back now that might become as flood as the Job world dies. 

Are you going to be one of these new rurals? In this post you will find the profile. You may find yourself!

This is 30 seconds from the heart of downtown. 

We look at trend in the context of where I live - in Knowlton in the Eastern Townships in Quebec - we are an hour's drive from Montreal. 

The new rurals are not really a retirement group. Nor are they rural folk. They work and they come from the city. 

• 60% of the new rurals used to live in Suburban Montreal
• 92% lived in an urban setting for a significant part of their lives (19+ years)
• They are very well educated - 74% have a university degree
• 83% of the new rurals are 40 years old or older. 17% are young adults between 25 - 39 years of age
• 56% are retired or semi retired - 41% still work
• Among those who still work 68.3% are self employed
• 83% of the new rurals migrated to the country because of the attraction of rural life.
• Access to the web is another key issue

My great grandfather had to put up with a very poor quality of life when he first arrived in Montreal. His main goal was to find work and opportunity and that only existed in the city. 

But today, IF YOU HAVE THE RIGHT SKILLS, you can work anywhere and the opportunity depends on your network - that may mot be in your city but all over the world. For instance, my son who lives in Montreal is in Minneapolis this weekend  at a conference of his peers. His peers congregate online or at conferences. They do not live next door to him in Montreal. 90% of his peers do not live in Montreal. His work does not anchor him in the city. I think being 33 does - for now!

I live 30 seconds walk from the Marina on a street where the dog and the grandchildren can run around with no fear of being run over. 

Now you can make the quality of life the main issue.

For instance, I met a couple on the trail this week. They had just moved from Old Montreal. They told me that they had not had a proper night's sleep in the 5 years in their old place - it was so noisy. They had made the choice to have a better quality of life. Their dog, mine and another all met on the trail that day. For us it is often the dog and not the child that provides the entree to a new relationship. They are musicians. 

Most new rural migrants work for themselves. They don't commute to Montreal for work. Though they might go to town for fun.

Check us out. What have you to lose? Your life?

(This data comes from a research paper - Nouvel population dans La Quebec rural - Le cas de la municipalitie regionale de comte (MRC) de Brome- Missisquoi 20018 by Guamond, Lauri, Simard and Myriam)

Does big change ever happen from the bottom up? Why you will fail if you try there first

I received an email from a student today asking me to comment on the power of transparency and citizen engagement in the revisioning of Detroit. Many people today believe that this bottom up and fully open way is the only way to start a project now.

My response to her was that this is not how big change really starts. The masses are vital but they enter the game late in the war between the 2 systems. This is the time for transparency. It is their support that drives the Tipping Point. Here is the classic diagram used by Rogers in his book on Diffusion - the science behind The Tipping Point.

The bottom chart - the distribution chart - shows when the masses join. It is around the Tipping Point and not before. 

This is how major change starts. Not with the mass but with the Innovators and the Early adopters. It's all trial and error: for real change is a complex process where the final end state cannot be known. Only people who are comfortable with complexity can do this early work.

The barrier to the new is that the masses need the known. So it is no good asking for their opnion at the outset. They can only see what they know. All they can know is what is now

It's a Cynefin situation.

I think we can lay the population along this spectrum.

The Innovators are comfy with Chaos. This usually means a failure of the old system and a crisis. A crisis such as Detroit no longer works as a city. They act, sense and respond. They use an evolutionary process to discover the new from a hypothesis. This might be that we can grow food in the middle of the city. But the unknown is how to do this in practice. There are no mass of urban farmers yet who have all the rules.

The Early Adopters are comfy with Complexity. They probe sense and respond. Patterns appear and rules start to appear in retrospect. They see what works as an result.

Then come the  Early Majority are comfy with the Complicated. They dig deep and settle the rules when they are hard to understand. They start to make the complicated more simple. With a clear set of rules for what works, it is possible for the next layer to join in. This is when the Tipping Point takes place.

Then the Majority or the mass can play.

This is when you need transparency and mass engagement and not before. If you go too early all you will do is annoy the people who cannot deal with Chaos and Complexity - which is most people!

Isn't this just like evolution?

Here is the detail of what I see as a universal process. 

• You need a crisis - I have found that real change rarely happens until a person or a place gets to the bottom - vis addiction etc - Detroit is the leading urban contender for that in the US. The old system has to have a failure point. You don't get off the Titanic unless it is sinking!

• You need to stop looking out there for a saviour - The next part of this is that people have to give up hoping for "Them" to fix it or them - they have to see it as their own role or no one

• Most people cannot act - they are trapped by inertia and by their mindset or they are attached to the old system and cannot let go.

• Many people have their status and living embedded in the old and will attack the new - even it this means their own "death". We see this so clearly in media where the old guard will fight against the new. We see this in cities that will close down home gardens.

So even though Detroit is at THAT place - most people cannot participate at ground zero in making it a new one. Bottom up mass participation AT THE OUTSET is a fantasy - I can think of NO example of this taking place in history or in nature. We like to think that it does but as Rogers shows, that is just not how real change happens.

So what is the process that does work? Here we look to the process of evolution

• There is a crisis - It has to be clear that the old does not work anymore. This offers the space for the new to emerge. Think of a forest that had had a fire. If the old system is still vibrant, the best that can happen are a few experiments. If Detroit had been vibrant, there would be no space for gardens or tiny businesses. The costs would be too high. The old system would be too vigilant.

• Start small - A small group of people who are not trapped by inertia who can see ahead for a period of years and who can imagine what they have never seen - Think Columbus - Think Pasteur - try some small experiments. When and if they fail, they modify them - they keep on. 

• Experiment - Several of these start to work - we see for instance in Detroit that urban food systems are working - micro farms - using land and buildings that are derelict - micro businesses in derelict or abandoned buildings or in space that is next to being free

• These successes attract attention. In some cases bad attention where the authorities use old bye laws to stop this. In many cases good attention - here is the evolutionary part - others tell the story and others copy them. The meme starts to spread.

• NOW the next layer of people start to see what they could not see before and they might get involved. Not as founders but as members and users

• Now the official part of the city has to get aligned. This is where Detroit is now. All the old laws that govern the city often work against the new. They impose too high a cost on the tender new. The question now is will the new admin kill the baby?

• There will be a fight - Often the old forces still have more money and resources than the new. The desire to raise tax revenues might kill the new off. 

• This is where the larger group of people need I think to be engaged - now it is possible to show them the choice of the old or the new

Think of this process in the context of how America was founded.

• The masses did not get on the boat until 1880 when the place they went too had been built and the way there - though hard - had also been built

• The early explorers were nothing like the people who came in 1880 - they also came to a place that had yet to be built - many experiments were tried - most failed - Innovators and Early Adopters - America was still Chaotic and Complex

• The early towns and states were the expressions of the success of the early adopters - the probing and senseing

• They then had to break with the old to expand properly - the War of Independence - a democratic act - but recall that 1/3 of the people did not want this and there was in effect ethnic cleansing - the Empire Loyalists went to Canada - the old had to be beaten back

• Now the big expansion west began - they had been locked in the East before - the same process all over again - Explorers, pioneers and then wagons and then trains

• Then Civil war between the culture of the old and the culture of the new - The new never seems to win without a bloody fight. This happens late when the leaders of both sides have access to their own mass movement. 200 years of religious wars in Europe are an example. 

• With the war done - the new was on the front burner and the west was opened up and the state ethnically cleaned the native population in the way. In that case the old had no power. Now it was simple for the masses to come to America and the masses came - all 50 million of them between 1880 and 1914.

The same process works in all fields - look at medicine

• Until 1860 the big idea in medicine was that disease was spread by smells - the Miasma theory - made a kind of sense but was wrong and meant that as millions came off the land and moved to the city, as a result of the agricultural revolution in the early 1800's, they were mainly condemned to die of cholera and typhoid. Life expectancy in London was less than 25. But no one questioned this: even though the situation got worse - Just like today, when no one questions our own approach and the epidemic of chromic illness grows exponentially

• In the 1860's ONE doctor, John Snow proved that cholera was spread by something in water. Even though his proof was conclusive, and he was the Queen's doctor, the official theory held

• The London sewers were built to stop the smell after a crisis that affected the elite - the Thames stank so much that the MP's could not use the House of Commons

• But while the sewers were being built people like Pasteur were discovering germs

• In the meantime, the system persecuted doctors who suggested that infection was not caused by anything other than by smells - Dr Semmelweis etc - Ideas have immune systems - it takes great bravery to step outside the norm - the people who hold onto the old are not stupid they are trapped in a system and they will fight to the death to defend it

• Whet changed the system was that MOST people could now see for themselves that the new was better - THIS again is the time when the mass of the people count

• The sewers + Pasteur + Lister = success that all can see so all can now change the system - the old guard have to go along

 

Related articles

Rebuilding Detroit by tearing it down

Detroit Rock-Bottom City (Apethetic Destruction)

Our Biome - the next step in understanding our health

In the 18880's we discovered germs. We saw them as universally bad. Now we are starting to understand that we are in reality a huge ecosystem of bacteria. It may be that the health of this ecosystem is the most important aspect of our health. A healthy Biome = a healthy me.

This is where Paleo hits science. The aim is to eat what makes our gut healthy.

I follow this with Michael Pollans's NYT article that will tell you more.

Here is the lede: (Full Link Here)

"I can tell you the exact date that I began to think of myself in the first-person plural — as a superorganism, that is, rather than a plain old individual human being. It happened on March 7. That’s when I opened my e-mail to find a huge, processor-choking file of charts and raw data from a laboratory located at the BioFrontiers Instituteat the University of Colorado, Boulder. As part of a new citizen-science initiative called the American Gut project, the lab sequenced my microbiome — that is, the genes not of “me,” exactly, but of the several hundred microbial species with whom I share this body.

These bacteria, which number around 100 trillion, are living (and dying) right now on the surface of my skin, on my tongue and deep in the coils of my intestines, where the largest contingent of them will be found, a pound or two of microbes together forming a vast, largely uncharted interior wilderness that scientists are just beginning to map."

I end with a link to a short book that has the whole story up to now. This short book is very easy to read and is short. You will know a lot in an hour. 

Here is the blurb

"To paraphrase famed biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky, “nothing in nutrition and health makes sense except in the light of the gut microbiome.” In Honor Thy Symbionts, the lens of our evolutionary past is focused on modern issues of obesity, GMO foods, diabetes, the rise in C-section births, ecology of our gut microbes, our African microbial origins, government dietary recommendations, probiotics vs. prebiotics, food poisoning, and more.

This collection of 21 short essays is not organized as a single book – with a beginning and obvious end. But a collection of musings ranging from 600 to 2,000 words in length. Though a wide range of topics is covered, a microbial thread connects all of the essays. This decidedly Darwinian (evolutionary) perspective is a nod to the reality that ninety-percent of the cells in the human body are not even human, but microbial. This makes humans super organisms – however, more microbe than mammal. This biological truth is reframing the scientific and philosophical conversation around Who are we? The ultimate questions of health and disease in our modern world will hinge on the speed at which we discover and accept that we have always lived in a microbial world and much that ails us is in fact discordance with the once symbiotic relationship we coevolved with these tiniest forms of life.

Jeff Leach is the Founder of the Human Food Project."

Related articles

Humans: 10% Human and 90% Bacterial

Some of my best friends are germs

Say Hello to the 100 Trillion Bacteria That Make Up Your Microbiome - Michael Pollen

Microbes: The trillions of creatures governing your health

Say Hello To The 100 Trillion Bacteria That Make Up Your Microbiome