Peer2Politics
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Peer2Politics
on peer-to-peer dynamics in politics, the economy and organizations
Curated by jean lievens
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Panarchy 101: The Cycle of Civilization — Panarchy 101, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Global Collapse

Panarchy 101: The Cycle of Civilization - Panarchy 101, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Global Collapse - Medium
An alternating cycle of growth and stability, characterized by punctuated equilibrium and driven by technological advance.
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The Capitalocene

The Capitalocene | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it
Confronting Fundamental Problems of the Human Condition and Pressing Problems of the Day
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The issue of identity (III) - Civilization as a meta-identity, Consumeristic Individualism

The issue of identity (III) - Civilization as a meta-identity, Consumeristic Individualism | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it
In part I of this series of articles, I briefly mentioned Consumeristic Individualism, as I defined the dominant ethos of our era. To be able to define it, we must start to talk about a part of our collective identities that we all know about, yet few of us recognise – namely civilization. So, the issue at hand is: What is a civilization, and what is a civilizationary ethos? And how can these forms of definitions aid our undertaking?
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The End of History?

The End of History? | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it
The short, strange era of human civilization would appear to be drawing to a close.
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This is more than an economic and political crisis: it’s a crisis of civilization

This is more than an economic and political crisis: it’s a crisis of civilization | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it

A large portion of European citizens hold the belief that our present consumerist society can (and must) “progress” into the future. Meanwhile, a majority of the inhabitants of the planet can only dream of attaining the same level of material comfort that we have. However, our level of production and consumption has been achieved at the cost of exhausting natural (including energy) resources and by disrupting the equilibrium of Earth’s ecosystems.

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Revealing the Patterns of Civilization

Revealing the Patterns of Civilization | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it
History is filled with patterns that can be studied mathematically.  The rise and fall of empires can be analyzed as a dynamic system to understand how groups of people can come together and achieve complex goals.
Eli Levine's curator insight, June 13, 2014 5:00 PM

I really really want to read this book.

 

However, judging from the review and what I'm aware of in our social world, I think we're honestly headed towards a separation of our own country and the possible devolution into civil war as conservative culture clashes with everyone elses' desires.

 

Unless something changes in the make up of our social world; unless the conservatives die off or get into treatment, I don't see a way for us to maintain a united society in the long term (which can be altered, depending upon what happens in the short term).  We're splitting as a society and I think that the majority of the society is going to, at least in the short term, go over to the conservatives.  However, I think that over time under the conservative's auspices, their society is going to breakdown and collapse while the bulwark of our common society will either come over to the progressive's side (if the progressives handle their political and technical affairs well).  I see the conservatives lashing out as their society collapses, thus hastening their defeat in the eyes of the general public through the illegitimate imposition of an increasingly radical and idealistic vision of how they think society ought to be (even though it's not the way society is or how humans, Americans or otherwise, work or want their world to be).  I can only hope, that the radicals of the left, the so called "progressive" extremists will either be gotten into treatment for their own delusions and psychiatric problems vis a vis governing effectively for their own sakes, such that a more practical, sustainable, and better functioning world can be brought into existence without their nonsensical bs getting the way of it happening.

 

I'm not liking the way things are shaping up.

 

However, unless something changes in the way we think about the conservatives, ourselves, and the state of our world, I see us falling into the trap of civil war, revolution and overthrow of the Capitalist State of America.

 

It was an unsustainable and unrealistic dream to begin with.  It's definition of success was and is too narrow and unrelated to what we need for survival, well being, health, and quality of life, and its methods for achieving these unsustainable and unrealistic goals were going to have to be too contrived and/or forced in order to make a significant difference in the content or make up of our social function and our social practice.  The United States, I think, is ultimately a progressive society who wishes all individuals can find their state of genuine happiness without infringing upon others' state of happiness.  We may have forced other societies to be as we are artificially, and that is more in accordance with our conservative side, even when it was the progressives who carried it out.  The intention in some of the cases, I think, was honestly good.  The methodology for carrying it out was and is ineffectual at realizing its objectives, and the end goal of any empire to make everyone be like or subjugated to the metropole is as unrealistic and unworkable as well.

 

Capitalism has failed.  The conservatives won't realize it until it's too late and we'll all be more likely to be dead because of the delay.  I really do not want the power to make everything be right with the world, nor can I expect to actually be able to make everything be right with the world.  However, I would LOVE to have the ear of the many people who can make a difference in the world, such that we're all able to live at peace with each other rather than in competition or in a state of subjugated and subjugator relations.  Most societies don't work on the principle of having an elite for very long, unless the elite humble themselves to the needs and problems of the entire rest of the social, political, and environmental worlds.  The top must bend down to help the bottom if it is going to expect the bottom to naturally want to rise up to help the top.  Hierarchy isn't necessarily a bad thing provided that the state of nature that it is occurring in is in the constant perspective of the people who live in that social system, nor is it something that's easily going to be avoided.

 

Therefore, a kind, responsive, attentive, and positive approach to leadership is necessary in order to get a society to bloom.  It requires the wisdom to know when and how to intervene and when and how to not intervene.  We don't have time to pussy-foot or listen to the non-rational and unreasoned excuses and problems from the conservative right or the ideological left.  It is time that we reunify as a society under our inherently liberal roots, or else, divide, and let us reunite under the terms of civil war and conflict with the non-rational and those who are merely scared of their little world vanishing in light of common reality (which it's going to do anyway).

 

This is it.

 

What's it going to be, America?

 

World?

 

Humanity?

 

Think about it!

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Could civilization collapse? NASA-funded study looks at framework for how, when

Could civilization collapse? NASA-funded study looks at framework for how, when | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it
A new study partially funded by NASA suggests heavy demands on the world's natural resources and extreme economic imbalances could spell a premature end for modern human civilization.
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From Big Gods to the Big Brother

From Big Gods to the Big Brother | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it
  I recently finished reading Ara Norenzayan’s Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. It’s an important book, which is also a lot of fun to read. However, it will be hear…
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Killing the Caterpillar: Competing Worldviews at the Chrysalis Stage of Humanity

Killing the Caterpillar: Competing Worldviews at the Chrysalis Stage of Humanity | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it

Whether one agrees with the vision of Terra Nova or not, it is clear that this is not just a story of utopia versus dystopia. The Western academic tradition and the Progressive movement (especially the climate change movement) have not been able to connect the deep truths about psychological motivations, community, love and our relationship with nature. As a result, they have been fighting a rationalistic, descriptive, Cartesian battle for the most falsifiable facts. They have not been able to articulate a holistic worldview, one that is both materialist and spiritual, which speaks to the hearts and ambitions of an increasingly apathetic majority.

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Scaling: The surprising mathematics of life and civilization

Scaling: The surprising mathematics of life and civilization | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it
By Geoffrey West, Distinguished Professor and Past President, Santa Fe Institute
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Predictions for the Year 2514: Dystopia That Feels Like Utopia

Predictions for the Year 2514: Dystopia That Feels Like Utopia | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it

Humanists typically look toward the future with extreme pessimism, assuming conditions of technological oppressiveness: Surveillance is rampant, the human being has been shorn of dignity, the state is overpowering, and individuality is a lost cause before the powerful onslaught of the collective. Zamyatin and Orwell are prime examples of this kind of extrapolation. There are also instances of humanist utopias (beginning with Thomas Moore and continuing with the socialist utopias of William Morris and Edward Bellamy), but they tend to be curiously bloodless, lacking the conviction and richness of the dystopias.

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Want to Change the World? Read This First

Want to Change the World?  Read This First | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it
If you want to change society—or are interested in aiding or evaluating the efforts of others to do so—some understanding of exactly how environmental circumstances affect such efforts could be extremely helpful.
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5 Ways Humans Might Get Wiped Out - Business Insider

5 Ways Humans Might Get Wiped Out - Business Insider | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it

In the daily hubbub of current “crises” facing humanity, we forget about the many generations we hope are yet to come. Not those who will live 200 years from now, but 1,000 or 10,000 years from now. I use the word “hope” because we face risks, called existential risks, that threaten to wipe out humanity. These risks are not just for big disasters, but for the disasters that could end history.


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Want to reboot civilization? What you’ll need - The Boston Globe

Want to reboot civilization? What you’ll need - The Boston Globe | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it
When you’re looking down the barrel of a civilization-erasing event, you have to plan for a world where humanity has lost everything. Canned goods might be nice, but you’d better have brought along a can opener—or know how to make one. What information should we leave survivors? And how do we store it so they can actually make use of it? In recent years, these questions have jumped onto the research agendas of a range of thinkers, from physicists to philosophers to agricultural engineers to librarians, who are considering how to curate and preserve caches of the most useful and important information, tools, and biological samples from today’s world.
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