Cultural Succession

Journaling the meme that Healthy Human Cultures Naturally Regenerate through distinct phases, similar to how a Forest Regrows after a major disturbance (X). Native -X-> Agricultural Civ --> Industrial Civ --> Cultural Creative --> Digital Native

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Education & Cultural Mentoring throughout the Phases

Primary Culture: cultural mentoring - "Curiosity-&-Respect-based education," youth mimicking adults, one on one tutoring, all ages looking out for younger ones, rites of passage

Agricultural Civilization: lords & ladies tutor their sons & daughters in reading, writing, & math for better administration; religious organizations create institutions and pathways to learning for disciples; peasants remain mostly in primary culture, though apprenticeships become formalized.  After 10,000 years of this, private educational institutions develop to the university level (10 oldest universities founded 859-1222 CE) Industrial Civilization: public schools become widespread, educating the masses in the basics of reading, writing, math & science.  Class sizes of 20-30 become normal.  Standard curricula developed for K-12 education.  Highly efficient at introducing symbolic thought and rational methodology into here-to-fore illiterate populations.  Creates "interchangeable parts" education, due to standardization.

Cultural Creative: many approaches developed to synthesize & integrate the best educational and mentoring techniques from community mimicry, family tutoring, church education, apprenticeships, and public mass education.  Home-schooling, Un-Schooling, Free Schools, and Waldorf schools serve as examples.

Digital Native: The classroom no longer has walls.  Library resources are everywhere.  Cultural Mentoring may be the de facto method of education again, with curiosity and respect for elders driving learning.   Much more self-directed education is possible by integrating this digital access to information.  What once was HISTORY, hard-and-fast and one single story written and approved by the dominant paradigm can now be "MY LINEAGE HISTORY" - the story of each student's ancestors can be learned alongside a general history, to reinforce personal connection and add depth.  Science may be learned through Making & Doing with online & in-person tutorials.  Climate chaos may prove to be the toughest teacher, forcing all people to adapt quickly and learn & implement on the fly.

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Before I go into this post, I'd also like to add a secret 5th option that doesn't exist yet: the option to choose the reward of special promotional offers from local businesses & retailers.  Think Groupon but exclusive to LOCAL & SUSTAINABLE businesses and the arts.  For example: BOGO nights from stays at Boutique Hotels, drink specials with purchase of brunch at Honey's, tickets to concerts/museums/VIP events, deals on classes or SEPTA passes, etc. etc. The idea is to put to good use the otherwise un-utilized rentals and extra-capacity of hotels, transportation, equipment & classes to serve as incentives for social good volunteerism.

Okay... so in this conceptual design of a Permaculture Financial system for Philadelphia, service opportunities could be created and voted upon by netizens.  Integral to this system would be the initial project planning to determine number, type, and skill-level of "volunteers" and the self-ranking of skill level (something akin to Master, Journeyman, Apprentice).  Apprentices might be able to join any team, learn skills and be rewarded with appropriate levels of currency.  This could open up pathways to greater employment, and greater enjoyment by seasoned volunteers from mentoring opportunities.   Achieving increasing skill-levels at different tasks would open up different levels of rewards.  Retrospectives after accomplishing work-contracts could yield opportunities for collective and individual performance review, and tweaking of the needs for the next iteration. This system might work well for transforming PHS Community Landcare projects into neighborhood assets through design-build charrettes: installing edible parks, art installations, urban campgrounds, rainwater ponds, playscapes, skateparks, and food forests, among other possibilities. Additionally, these community-backed currencies could choose to partially or completely fund different projects or different elements of different projects.  For example, building a large #Bio-Shelter to grow tropical fruit and veggies year-round on a vacant lots or school rooftops might require a fair amount of "unskilled labor" to construct simple wooden trusses for double-layered greenhouses and to haul bags of lightweight soil-mix to the roof  Utilizing a complementary currency scheme, the project's budget for Federal Reserve Notes could be dramatically reduced to the bare necessities of materials and a living wage for designers and administrators by rewarding them and the volunteers with Time4Time Hours, EqualDollars, and Philabucks.

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PSU Prof to develop Time-Banking App to trade hours of service #glocal #econ partner w/ Betterfly.com?  Next step: integrate w/ local currencies to provide choice in accepting Hours, Currencies, Goods, Opportunities/Deals/Coupons.

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What if we designed prisons to reduce the re-offending rate?  This is exactly what Norway has done and they've achieved the lowest re-offending rates of any country in Europe.  Read about what makes these "Permaculture Prisons" so effective at instilling a sense of personal, community, and ecological responsibility.

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Cultural Creative Gavin Newsome discusses the new relationships involved in the Self-Governance Platforms that will be used by Digital Natives in Participatory Democracy Online & In-Person... and Colbert "doesn't get it," haha.

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Cultural Creatives pulling together entrepreneurs, technologists, and educators to charter an edtech scene to better ed outcomes and experiences through tech

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Via SecondMuse "Every country on Earth, at the moment, is reforming public education." "Why?" "It's crucially about the culture of our institutions: the habits of our institutions and the habitats that they occupy." Great video going into depth telling the story of what's happening in education as we move from an Industrial Civilizational Phase to a Culturally Creative Phase. Sir Ken Robinson hints that we can move forwards by going back to a unified classroom experience for folks of different ages, to allow skills and interests to flower in their own time. I, too, can see schools more like Village Hubs of FabLabs with rooftop meadows surrounded by Permaculture Food Forests and Aquaculture.  Learning the stuff of life as it's happening, creating together, learning through observation, and being mentored into greater responsibility and play.

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Willie Smits' "Green Village Box" provides water, bio-fuel & education to empower traditional rural villages by processing sugar palm juice produced by sugar palm oriented food forests. Cultural Creatives empowering traditional Native societies with Digital technology and micro-bio-fuel-processing plants.

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Repurposed High-Voltage Tower into Temple... Afterculture Art by Michael Green - if spirituality trumped the analytical mind in the balance of trinity, Michael Green supposes that instead of turning into Digital Natives, we'd become Natives again.

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'Civilizations are not terminals but wayside camps, pitched at sunset & broken at dawn so we can travel on again' --Laurens van der Post Afterculture Art by Michael Green

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"You Can't Know You're Resilient Until You've Been Knocked Down" ~Rise of The Eco Warriors Cultural Creatives depaving a path for Digital Natives to follow.  Exciting!

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What is the “Disturbance, X” that caused human cultures to change from Indigenous to Agricultural, anyhow?  Watch this video, featuring Toby Hemenway, author of the excellent easy permaculture read “Gaia’s Garden” to find out! 

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#PhillyCouncil Supersedes the Fresh Unified Zoning Code, Outlaws Culturally Creative Land-Use

If you sit on the Philadelphia City Council, let me first thank you for your dedication to our city and your exemplary public service.  If a fifth of Philadelphians participated in the political process just 1% as much as you do, we’d be blessed with a very vibrant, thriving, non-stop political party.  Let's work towards that day.  Also, gratitude for your positive spirit, compassionate heart, and elegant mind set towards serving us good people, this good place, and the good process. Today I write about the Bill 120917, passed today by #PhillyCouncil that effectively supersedes years of work on the city’s freshly updated Unified Zoning Code.  Together, this bill essentially reverts the modernizations made to the old code and requires residents & developers seek public approval for 15 otherwise commonplace and formerly pre-approved uses, including Gardening, Market Farming, Light Arts Industrial, and Art Studios. I am not certain what all of the 15 uses are, since the linked PDF of the text of the bill on Councilmatic came up with an error message* but the above use-restrictions basically make it a crime to be a cultural creative in the city of Philadelphia.  Additionally, Council has included a ban on Animal Services, so if you love your dog or cat (or dream of raising a tiny pygmy milking goat or miniature pig like me) and would like them to have adequate veterinary care, it will be harder for new offices to open, since the approval process will add cost and time to any such venture. Basically, if you want to open a new business, besides getting the appropriate licenses to operate and registering with the state, you now need to make your case before a planning board and likely pay some kind of fee to legally be allowed to operate on real estate in the City of Philadelphia.  This forces Cultural Creatives to share their schemes with neighbors & government for approval and pay for it. Also, if you happen to be a fan of Smart Growth, New Urbanism, Walkable Cities, or just enjoy the feeling of warm sunshine on your face, the masterminds behind this bill also decided to include the ability to raise the maximum height for new buildings to 20 feet higher than before.   But there’s more!  Since City Council passed this bill, the “Yes” votes don't just rile up single young up-and-coming technocrats, either.  This move is also a slap in the face to every single one of the many, many people involved in this historic first “comprehensive rewrite of the zoning code in more than 50 years. The new code is the result of a thorough civic engagement process led by the City’s appointed Zoning Code Commission (ZCC), and including neighborhood groups, government, business, professional and civic leaders who worked together to make it happen. The new code will also enable the City Planning Commission to move forward on implementing recommendations of Philadelphia2035, the City’s adopted comprehensive, or physical-development, plan.” says Zoning Matters, The Official Site of the Philadelphia Zoning Code Commission.  So by also going against recommendations of the Philadelphia2035 folks, I guess that means Mayor Nutter's disgruntled, too.  AND THE NEW CODE had only barely hit the ground.  The first phase started August 22 of this year, instituting a conversion map that simply updated the name of each district: (R1 became RSD-1, C1 became CMX-1, and so on).  In some cases the zoning standards in a given district changed as a result of the automatic conversion to the new code, though from my understanding the changes mostly loosened former restrictions.  If you want to look it up, the Zoning Code Commission released a document detailing how the exact changes affect each district. Philly Shark writes, “The second phase of the zoning map revisions will be the individual remapping of each district, a five year process carried out by the Planning Commission.  The remapping began last summer with the West Park and Lower South districts.  The process includes holding community meetings to solicit land-use recommendations and, subsequently, crafting ordinances for City Council to act on.  Remapping is ultimately intended to bring the zoning regulations of each portion of Philadelphia into line with its current built environment and the development desires of its residents.” Wow!  That plan sounds quite progressive, properly paced, engaging, and empowering!  …not much at all like the bureaucratic bill passed today by City Council.  Council has effectively quashed public trust in this process and insulted the efforts of all these citizens' active goodwill participation in their city’s governance.  So this is a call to everyone who’s got a stake in our City, with the bravado with which City Council passed these two bills superseding years of work by many people, activated citizens mustn’t shrug, shrivel, and say, “Darn!”  It's time to Opine: Speak, Tweet, Blog, Share, YouTube, and somehow Instagram your voice in City Council.

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“The outcome of our work is not about what our political masters want. It is about what is demanded of us by 7 billion people. I appeal to all, please, no more delays, no more excuses. Please, let Doha be remembered as the place where we found the political will to turn things around. Please, let 2012 be remembered as the year the world found the courage to find the will to take responsibility for the future we want. I ask of all of us here, if not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where?’” - Naderev Saño, head of the delegation for the Philippines, makes an urgent and emotional appeal to the global community at UN Climate Change Summit in Doha, Qatar Please share and learn with us. - Kapwa Collective watch video clip:

Philippine climate negotiator breaks down as he makes a plea for a climate deal after typhoon kills 500 and displaced a quarter of a million affected population.

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From Democracy to Peer-2-Peer Governance: Look to London

How might we transition from Nation-State Democracies to Open-Source Global Peer-2-Peer Governance? I believe we can look to the UK to see how they handled the shift from Monarchy to a Parliamentary Democracy. "While the transfer of power from the English monarch to Parliament was a gradual process (stretching from the High Middle Ages to the Modern age), the English Revolution is often cited as the event that decisively and permanently ensured that Parliament held a major share of national political power. Indeed, mere decades after the English Revolution, Parliamentary authority was once again brazenly violated by the monarch. Parliament demonstrated that this was no longer a feasible option by replacing this monarch via the Glorious Revolution." LINK The important part, not mentioned here, is what the British Parliament DIDN'T do.  They didn't murder the monarchs and the nobility.  They didn't defile them and depose them.  They didn't throw them in jail or exile them. I believe this is crucial for the Occupy movement to embody.  As us netizens step into roles of planetary mutual support, not just with monetary donations like with the Earthquake in Haiti in 2010, but with in-person organization and service such as through efforts like Occupy Sandy, we need to maintain positivity, respect, and honor to existing governance structures and organizations. We desire respect, honor, and appreciation from these officials, and need it in order to grow up, through, and over the existing structures to nurture them in the time of their decline, as elder-systems.  Through giving this honor, we open ourselves up to receiving it. Still, we do need to prosecute war crimes, financial system abuses, and human rights violations, since to honor these women and men would tarnish that given to all others for their service.  I am not quite up to speed on what's been going on in Iceland, but I know they've ousted their Banksters from Financial institutions and changed laws to stop such abuses from continuing - and this might be a model for the world to follow on this particular Justice front, in order to make the honor worth something.

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A beautiful, though dissenting view on the Cultural Succession model.  Notably, Curtis leaves out the massive and equal importance of learning to become "Native" again, which would understandably lead to a bleak interpretation!

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Cultural Creatives experimenting with gaming and play as a basis for human society, instead of government, religion, and business, like their Industrial Civ parent phase.  "Carpenter believed that what he had created was a model of a society where there was no hierarchy. Where everyone made their own decisions without guidance.  Yet because they were linked by the machines, out of it came a stability and an order. [...] They formed a kind of a subconscious consensus." Later, they'd come to open-source not just the play, but the coding driving the game, too.