Listen to Malcolm Gladwell talk about important insights from the food marketing industry. You may want to listen very closely to the last line. But I have a question, what has all this choice done to us, how much choice is enough?
Just watch this.
Overheard on CBC radio the other day about a group of young professionals who are working to create a better future for their community, Ottawa, modeled after The Awesome Foundation. Each of the ten co-founders donates $50.00 a month and they give out small grants of $1000.00 to people who apply to them. Decisions are made consensually about awards, and in addition to offering this seed money, they also offer their skills, it is not just about the money. Their belief is “anyone can do it”.
In this video, Daniel Kahneman probes human well-being, and the riddle of how direct human experience often varies from human memory, which is particularly important to story telling animals. We have two selves—the experiencing self who lives in the present, and the remembering self, that keeps score and maintains the stories of our life. Time is the critical variable that distinguishes the two selves, and has little impact on the story.
Following about my last post, it is critically important how an issue is framed, how it is constructed so influences our opinions, as shown in this TEDTalks on whether or not we are over medicalized.
June 25th, 2012
As the population of Canada doubles in size, one would expect the gross total household consumption of goods and services to increase accordingly. To be specific, Canada’s population has increased in the last 50 years from approximately 18 million to 34 million; thus, arithmetically speaking, households collectively should be expected to consume 1.89 (i.e., 34 divided by 18) more now as they did as in the 1960s. However, this is not the case.
Somebody has to do something, it is just incredibly pathetic it has to be us. (Gerry Garcia)
In asking ourselves what is important, what do we value and how is what we are doing affecting our well-being, sometimes pictures and music are worth a thousand words. Why do human systems always seem to trend to maximal scale? Sustainable systems should self-organize to a scale that optimizes economic prosperity while respecting ecological limits. We have an article on this topic published in Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, Spring/Summer 2009, Volume 5, Issue 1.