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Saturday, April 19, 2003 |

The Map is Not the Terrain

I attended a concert of Turkish music at Fools' Paradise with Mahmut Genceli tonight. The music was beautiful, touching and varied. It also brought up something that has been in my mind for quite a while as it points to a gap between my views and actions.

I asked him if he had a CD with his music, upon which he reminded me that canned music is similar to canned food, or photography. It is all dead representations of what was an alive moment. An attempt to hold onto something that is no longer. A symptom of a culture of alienation, where we value the canned representations of interactions among people, and often do not engage in those interactions ourselves.

As he said, "the map is not the terrain".

Sunday, April 13, 2003 |

Books

Books I have read recently:

Ecoregion-Based Design for Sustainability - Robert Bailey
Ecoregions: The ecosystem geography of the oceans and continents - Robert Bailey
Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern formation in nature - Philip Ball
Patterns in Nature - Peter Stevens
Gaia: The practice of planetary medicine - James Lovelock
A Whack on the Side of the Head - Roger von Oech
A Kick in the Seats of your Pants - Roger von Oech
Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source revolution - Glyn Moody
Embracing Your Inner Critic: Turning self-criticism into a creative asset - Hal & Sidra Stone (Voice Dialogue)
The Tao of Democracy - Tom Atlee
Nonviolent Communication: A language of compassion - Marshal Rosenberg

Friday, April 11, 2003 |

Walnut Street Co-op

Jen and I moved into Walnut Street Co-op this last weekend. It feels right to live in an intentional community of people seeking deep and life-centered culture change.

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Culture Change

I attended the first day of the HOPES Ecological Design Conference at UO, and it renewed my exitement about ecological design and the wider culture change. At the dinner, I shared table with Stuart Cowan, Toby Hemenway, Jair, and at the end Mark Lakeman of City Repair.

These are all amazing people who's work is profoundly inspiring and exiting to me. They are among those who see and are manifesting the initial phases of a deep cultural shift that integrates ecological sustainability, social equity, a consistent partnership approach (no enemies), arts, open source ethics (freely sharing information), and fun!