Ecojoy as a Trim Tab

I see a lot of people on Twitter looking to make money. I want to see the world change. The world is undergoing major transformation, and I hope to help turn things in the right direction.

The elevator of an airplane (the little wings in the back) are what point the nose of the plane up or down, adjusting the attitude. On the back of the elevator, the trim tab is an even smaller movable flap which adjusts where the elevator rests when you are not pushing or pulling on the controls. By simply adjusting the trim tab, you can control the attitude of the entire plane. I want ecojoy to be that trim tab, adjusting the attitude of our cultures.

John Chambers: transformation from Command and Control to Collaboration and Teamwork

In this interview, Cisco CEO talks about, among other things, the transformation from command and control (hierarchical linking|dominator linking) to collaboration and teamwork (heterarchical linking|partnership linking).

Twitter a Medium for Hierarchies of Actualization

Twitter, the social network site, is a medium for the creation of hierarchies of actualization, as discussed by Riane Eisler in many of her writings, like The Chalice and the Blade and The Partnership Organization.

an interview with Eisler

Leading With Love

How to Change the World with Ecojoy

Actually, the world is already changing due to the effects of Internet communications. But we can all move it along a little faster by using the 3 parts of ecojoy:

1. For motivation, find the joy in the things you do, and help others find the joy in the things they do.
2. Make the links with the people around you heterarchical - equal-to-equal, partnership. Interact with your children, your boss, your employees, your readers, even people who disagree with you with respect and appreciation.
3. Learn about and help to develop our understanding of cultural transformation, and share the knowledge with others.

Is Google Rewiring Our Brains?

Is Google Rewiring Our Brains?

This article supports the McLuhan and Ecojoy idea that media not only deliver content, but, independent of content, they "rewire your brain". The effect on culture is cultural transformation.

(Thanks to Tim O'Reilly)

The Importance of Now - Every Day is a Gift

My life partner - my wife is Danielle. In 2001, she had a hip replaced. I took time off work (thanks to the Family Medical Leave Act and my employer - the UW-Madison!) and nursed her in our living room. We watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center with our adult son and grandson. We wondered what the future would bring.

In October of that year, I lost my sister Nancy due to leukemia.

In November of '01, Danielle was diagnosed with breast cancer. In '02, she had two lumpectomies, a mastectomy and chemotherapy.

In '04, Danielle had another instance of breast cancer, another lumpectomy and another mastectomy.

Since then, she's had the other hip replaced.

Throughout these times, we've learned we had many true friends, that every day is a gift that we can't take for granted, and the importance of now. Don't put off problems for another day. You don't really know if you'll make it.

Dave

Ecojoy and Abortion

A clinic in Madison has announced plans to perform second-trimester abortions...

• Protesters Rally On Abortion Issue


• Surgery Center's Board Oks Abortion Clinic Plan

How does ecojoy help understand the issue?

Anti-abortion or pro-life thinking is influenced by binary or single-dimensional thinking - something is either back or white, right or wrong. Taking life is murder. The circumstances do not change the outcome.

Support of abortion, or pro-choice thinking is influenced by multi-dimensional thinking - things come in shades of gray, and the rightness or wrongness of a thought or act have multiple dimensions and values.

Po-life thinking is dominator thinking. With dominator thinking, the locus of control is external. Moral leaders determine the morality of abortion.

Pro-choice thinking is partnership thinking. With partnership thinking the locus of control is internal. Since the fetus is growing inside her, it is the pregnant woman's right to choose abortion based on her own life circumstances, her spouse, and information from her doctor and from moral advisers.

Pro-choice thinking involves heterarchical connections between the pregnant woman and her spouse, her doctor, and her moral advisers.

Pro-life thinking involves hierarchical connections between moral leaders, the community, her spouse , her doctor, her moral advisers and the pregnant woman.

Neither one of these ways of thinking is inherently right or wrong. They are consistent within their own way of thinking.

We are in the midst of profound cultural transformation from dominator thinking to partnership thinking. This transformation is being fostered and encouraged by the effects of communications media. The dominant medium of our time is the Internet.

Our culture is changing from a position that abortion is murder to a position that it is a woman's right to chose to end a pregnancy based on her particular circumstances.

We can help ease the negative effects of the cultural transformation by education. We can reassure dominator thinkers that individuals don't need dominator thinking to behave morally, and that partnership thinking is not chaos.

If pregnant women and mothers and their children have community support (safety, food, shelter, information), it is likely that the rate of abortion would be reduced.

The End of Alone

The End of Alone - The Boston Globe

At our desk, on the road, or on a remote beach, the world is a tap away. It's so cool. And yet it's not. What we lose with our constant connectedness.


By Neil Swidey
February 8, 2009


Don't get me wrong. I love technology. It's magical how it makes the world closer, and more immediate. Take, for instance, the real-time way we learned about the plane that skidded off a Denver runway and burst into flames in December. One of the passengers on Continental Flight 1404 used Twitter to share everything from his initial profanity- and typo-laced reaction to making it out of the fiery jet ("Holy [bleeping bleep] I wasbjust in a plane crash!") to his lament that the airline wasn't providing drinks to the survivors who'd been penned into the airport lounge ("You have your wits scared out of you, drag your butt out of a flaming ball of wreckage and you can't even get a vodka-tonic.")
(more at link above)

This is an example of how technology is fostering and encouraging cultural transformation. The concept of alone - like a single person out on the Oregon Trail back in the 1800s - the idea itself of alone - is changing in light of the fact of handheld electronic devices and the Internet. Even if the battery goes dead and you really cut-off from communication with the outside world, your concept of alone has been forever changed.

Reason or faith? Darwin expert reflects

Darwin's birthday is coming up on February 12. This just came to me in Wisconsin Week: Reason or faith? Darwin expert reflects
I first became of Professor Numbers was when my daughter and his daughter were childhood friends. I really value living in a community where there is such stimulating thought and discussion.

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

from Dr. Michael Wesch:

presented at the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008. This was tons of fun to present. I decided to forgo the PowerPoint and instead worked with students to prepare over 40 minutes of video for the 55 minute presentation. This is the result.
more info: Digital Ethnography at Kansas State University

A Change to Ecology of Joy

I had an insight this morning about the Ecology of Joy web page. I changed the third point from Media and Technology to Cultural Transformation.

Media and Technology foster and encourage the transformation, but transformation is the outcome.

Ecojoy and Objectivism

The current economic crisis is due in part to a failure of the philosophy of Objectivism to accurately reflect the world.

Alan Greenspan, strongly influenced by Objectivism, now concedes his error on regulation

Ecojoy recognizes we are all linked together. Our individual success has little effect in isolation, but a community working together in harmony benefits everyone.

The Prison Ministry Project

For some years, the phrase law and order has been used as a keyword to denote an emphasis on fear and to frame political discussion in dominator thinking. There is binary thinking that people can be divided into good and evil, or honest citizens and criminals. From a partnership analysis, people break laws when they believe the risk of consequences is low, or when they believe they have no other viable alternatives.

Rev. Jerry Hancock started The Prison Ministry Project at the First Congregational United Church of Christ to help prison inmates gain insight and knowledge that can help them transform themselves, and can help victims come to terms with their losses.

The Rise of Open-Source Politics

This is from way back in 2005.

The Rise of Open-Source Politics | | AlterNet

Thanks to web-savvy agitators, insiderism and elitism are under heavy attack. The era of top-down politics is over.

Putting this in Ecojoy framing, the medium of the Internet (the web) is fostering and encouraging a change in politics from hierarchical linking to heterarchical linking.

Study: Tolerance Can Lower Gay Kids' Suicide Risk : NPR

Study: Tolerance Can Lower Gay Kids' Suicide Risk : NPR

"All Things Considered, December 29, 2008 · Gay, lesbian and bisexual teens and young adults have one of the highest rates of suicide attempts — and some other health and mental health problems, including substance abuse. A new study suggests that parental acceptance, and even neutrality, with regard to a child's sexual orientation could have a big impact in reducing this rate.

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found that the gay, lesbian and bisexual young adults and teens at the highest risk of attempting suicide and having some other health problems are ones who reported a high level of rejection by their families as a result of their sexual orientation."

Family Acceptance Center at San Francisco State University

What's in a Word?

What's in a Word? Plenty, if the word is "marriage." By George Lakoff, AlterNet. Posted February 18, 2004: "The gay marriage issue is not just about same-sex couples. It is about which values will dominate in our society"

Excerpt:

When conservatives speak of the "defense of marriage," liberals are baffled. After all, no individual's marriage is being threatened. It's just that more marriages are being allowed. But conservatives see the strict father family, and with it, their political values as under attack. They are right. This is a serious matter for their politics and moral values as a whole. Even civil unions are threatening, since they create families that cannot be traditional strict father families.

This gets back to one of the important points of Ecojoy: How can we change people' thinking from dominator thinking to partnership thinking? The gay marriage movement has the same question: How can we change voters to vote down marriage amendments and support gay marriage? The answer is we can't. We can only create an environment where conservatives or dominator thinkers have the room to grow and adopt partnership thinking.

Added 1/1/09:
Lakoff explains things very clearly. The strict father family model describes hierarchical linking.

"Marriage amendment strategy backfires on GOP"

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Posted: Nov. 9, 2006: Marriage amendment strategy backfires on GOP - JSOnline:

It sounded like a good idea at the time.

Get the proposed same-sex marriage constitutional amendment on the November ballot to drive up the Republican vote while driving Democrats out of office. The plan worked for President Bush two years ago, particularly in Ohio. So why wouldn't it do the same in Wisconsin this year, the GOP brass reasoned.

Welcome to the real world.

'The timing ended up backfiring,' said U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Menomonee Falls Republican. 'I think the opposite worked out this time.'

The controversial amendment easily passed Tuesday, with Wisconsin voters approving the ban by 59% to 41%.

[more at Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

So, to make this perfectly clear, the main reason that Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature passed this measure was to draw conservatives out to vote, in hopes of getting more Republicans elected.

Wisconsin Marriage Amendment

I'm starting a series of posts about the Wisconsin Marriage Amendment, passed in November 2006. I'll put together background, and then give an Ecojoy perspective. I'll put Wisconsin Marriage Amendment in the labels, to make it easier to pull these posts together.

Ecojoy, Obama and the Pastor Rick Warren Controversy

There is a controversy about Barack Obama's choice of Pastor Rick Warren to give the Invocation to the Inauguration. And this helps to better understand Ecojoy.

There are many dominator thinkers in the world. We can't change them but we can foster and encourage change. First, establish a heterarchical relationship with the person in question. That means avoiding ranking. Also, avoid binary thinking (blue state/red state, liberal/conservative). Another way of thinking about this is creating a space which people feel safe from personal attacks. Note that a vigorous debate on issues is not a personal attack.

By inviting Pastor Warren to give the Inaugural Invocation, President Elect Obama is establishing a heterarchical relationship with Warren, bringing religious conservatives into a more mainstream discussion. Some on the left (yes, binary thinking on my part) decry Warren's involvement, but true change can't happen if that point of view is ignored.