Ideaplants

There was a meadow and then people from all over came and the meadow turned into a bustling village. A month later the tents were gone and if he would not have seen it with his own eyes, he would never have known they were there..

photo by Flickr user: fireflies604

A few days ago on my way back home from vacation I sat next to another home-coming guy, who had just left 30 degree warm Finland, where he had spent close to a month at a Rainbow Gathering. What’s that?

Wikipedia describes it as follows:

“Rainbow Gatherings are temporary intentional communities, typically held in outdoor settings, and espousing and practicing ideals of peace, love, harmony, freedom and community, as a consciously expressed alternative to mainstream popular culture, consumerism, capitalism and mass media.”

Jean-Louis, the man from the bus, goes there every year. It’s back to a simple way of life for him and the place is full with good musicians. He told me that everybody finds a place in the community, be it entertaining or cooking or chilling or helping with other chores. Imagine a bunch of people preparing yummy food, being surounded by musicians and then when the meal is served a hat is passed around and you put in there what you like. Some will put 10Euros each meal others not a penny in four weeks. And it’s all good.

cheers, Sylvia

For more (detailed) info, here some links:
Finland Rainbow Gathering: http://eurogathering.rainbowinfo.net/
List of gatherings worldwide: http://www.roadjunky.com/article/2299/rainbow-gatherings-2010-in-europe-us-and-the-rest-of-the-world

I went to visit the Royal Botanical Garden the other day. The garden is only open to public for a short time every year. I am generally quite reserved when it comes to tourist attractions, but this garden is just amazing and you simply forget about hundreds of people that are amazed by the flower paradise around you.


If you get the chance go and visit the place. Not just a nice thing to light up your weekend – we cannot take enough opportunities to admire the beauty and variety of life nature has created around us. Let me know if you know of similar places that you can recommend .

Whilst the volcano Eyjafjallajökull in Island has impacted the lives of millions of travellers over the last days and cost airlines over 200 billion Euros per day. Non-volcanologists do not spend much time on considering environmental impacts of this event.


Experts confirm that this volcano eruption will not have any sever impact on our climate. However, I wonder if next to the airline crisis there is really no environmental impact of 140 million cubic metres of material spreading in the atmosphere.


About 1,900 volcanoes on Earth are considered active in the world. Something we certainly do not have on our radar in our day to day routine.


This might sound a bit philosophical: Since Vulcanos were there before us – shouldn’t they consider us as a threat rather than the other way around?


More seriously: As David Mc Candless points out in his blog Information is Beautiful, the amount of CO2 emissions that were prevented by the volcano eruption is significantly higher than the CO2 that the Volcano emitted.


As Michael McCarthy and Philip Boucher state in The Independent today, the erruption gave scientists the opportunity to prove the air pollution impact the aviation industry has around UK airports as figures dropped significantly during the last days.


We surely need to keep in mind that the root of climate change is not CO2 emissions but our demands (in this case for means of transport). This event hopefully makes some of us realize this connection > Let’s not forget that it is not a greener aviation industry and well treated passengers that will solve the climate change issue.


BBC News has developed a guide showing some of the world’s key volcanoes:

When was the last time you made a rational choice as part of a complex decision? Thinking about it seriously, I’m not even sure that I’ve ever made one.
How is it possible to consider all possible factors and anticipate what option might be best with our little brain that has a limited amount of knowledge?

The choice for the right study programme, the most promising job, the least polluting car, the relationship that will last forever or simply the greenest energy provider often bring us to the edge of our capabilities of making a rational decision.

James G. March wrote in his book ‘A Primer on Decision Making’ about the limitations of rationality. He identifies four factors that limit us in the way we make decisions while also considering challenges for organizations:

1. Problems of attention: Limitations in the time we can spend on considering all factors
2. Problems of memory: Capabilities to capture and process all the information we gather
3. Problems of comprehension: Capacity to grasp complex issues and interpret them correctly – this is especially difficult in complex situations that cover a wide field of knowledge areas
4. Problems of communication: Problems with sharing and communicating crucial information, factors that are not presented clearly and other limiting issues e.g. due to language and cultural differences.

All these issues make it quiet difficult for someone to make a decision that is solely based on rationality – this is probably not a good excuse for individuals and businesses, but it might explain certain behaviors and put off pressure of people that think they should always make rational and fair decisions.

Especially in organizations that have been around for a while decision making processes are extremely long and complex. In todays fast changing world, this limits and blocks the organization in making the right choices.

In today’s environment the biggest challenge is not anymore to make the right choice, but to adapt to the changing environment.

A lot of flexibility is demanded from individuals and organizations. It’s not a surprise that young organizations with less structure and processes seem to cope with this much better than multinationals that are following a model which is already many years old.

Dear readers,


I would like to invite you all to a multimedia installation that I’m putting in place with a group of artists.
E-tree is an interactive project that will take place at the Nuit Blanche of Metz and Brussels the 2nd and 3rd of October 2009.


Visitors and people from the web will be able to insert text to our system, which will make a tree grow and messages will be visible on Twitter.


You can join us online the day we make the performance and participate online on the growing of the e-Tree.


Join us and express your own ideas!
Wanna see what other people write? Please follow: http://twitter.com/e_tree on Twitter


Practical info:
Metz: 02 October 2009 20pm – 02 am CET Lycée Louis Vincent (Metz, France)
Brussels: 03 October 2009 20pm – 02 am Mont des Arts/near the music museum (Bruxelles, Belgium)


Let us know you are joining!
Everyone is welcome to sign up here for the event.


For more info on this project, please visit www.e-tree.eu



The project team:
Jesús Azogue
Mira Bangel
Inge Mestdagh
Thomas Popovits
Steven Ramsdonck
David Cammaerts
James Davy
…and many nice people that are supporting us


All the best, Mira

Einstein is said to have remarked: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The new Happy Planet Index Report indicates that something like this could be driving the religion of endless growth, one of the central pillars of traditional economic thinking.

Driven by evolutionary instincts, which the writers of the Bible documented so well by letting God state ‘go forth and multiply’, western societies still have the official goal to chase the end of the rainbow. Everybody knows we have only one Earth (for the foreseeable future), and everybody who cares can find out quickly and easily, what the inevitable result of exponential growth with limited resources is. Hint: it’s not pretty.

Continuous quantitative and compounding growth is always exponential.

Glass 1, 2 and 3 of that tasty Bordeaux brings great relaxation, glass 8, 9 and 10 misery and sickness. If we grow our consumption by 1 percent every week or month, we die a horrible death.

Surprise surprise: quantity does not create happiness. Ask Michael Jackson.

Do you care about quality? Do you care about happiness? Check out the report: Happy Planet Index

So, what’s the matter with this SUSTAINABILITY gibberish anyway?

How about this: sustainability is the issue which sets apart man and animal.

Animals DON’T CARE about sustainability above the level where they sustain their individual genes.

Ecological- or resource-sustainability issues don’t matter to them – as far as they are concerned, these issues don’t even exist.

Not even consciousness itself distinguishes us from animals in a comparable way. I think it is accepted fact in the science community that capacities for suffering and awareness are gradual effects, which emerge with growing complexity of the nervous system and brain. Thus, consciousness is not a black and white kind of thing: a cat, dog or pig may have less of it than a human, but they do have a lot more than zero.

So, animals don’t care about sustainability. That’s why animal species DIE OUT. Always.

As it appears, there’s a fork ahead in the road for mankind. Man and Woman will decide to care about sustainability – or else. Sustainability is just a POTENTIAL after all, not a given.

To be human means to CARE about that potential not being wasted. To strive to rise awareness of the human condition to the level where sustainablility of the species is recognized as a central and critical issue. To pursue focus-shifting from throw-away baubles to goals and products worth being CARED about by beings sporting a human brain with a pulse.

Sorry to spoil the idyll, but that Prius we bought for peace of mind and the compost heap at the back of the garden where we always deposit those soaked and delicious tea leaves which had been flown in from India for us, they are surely nice and impress the neighbors to boot, but they’re also mostly show business, reinforcing cosiness in PRESENT HABITS.

FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES are great inspirators, though. So let’s get a little dreamy about this for a while: man as a species has the POTENTIAL TO LIVE and not die off like every other worm which ever existed. Hmmm!

Pouring a little more of that nice warm tea.

What’s this RUCKUS now? Doesn’t anybody on this rotten planet respect a dreaming philosopher any more?

The irritated mob’s screaming at me, furiously red-faced: I’m no stinkin’ worm you headblock, I’m the pride of creation and there’s a nice pie up there in the sky which will cuddle and save me, if I make goo-goo eyes at it long enough!!! Me and my friends we are telling this to each other all the time, so it is true!!!

Ah yes. The stuff in the sky allright.

Let’s take a look: stuff in the sky