Love & Work
A notebook about how we work, learn, love and live.
Being able to dream provides solace. That comfort in turn helps me find the courage to persevere.
Happy Friday.
Futures Thinking, Solarpunk
How the aesthetic, utopian yet pragmatic movement of Solarpunk reimagines a future without a climate catastrophe
Futuristic concept of cities in the middle of the ocean (Camillo Pasquali, aka millisworlds)
In the early 70s when I was a very idealistic young man, science fiction like Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke, and hopeful sociological observation like The Greening of America, by Charles A. Reich, provided springboards of optimism that allowed me to imagine and believe in a new and different way of being.
So, I am thrilled to discover Solarpunk. Thank you Jamie Wolf for the reference. You are so right. Imagining alternative futures that are not dystopian has profound power.
"By its simplest definition, Solarpunk is a literary and art movement which imagines what the future could look like if the human species were actually to succeed in solving the major challenges associated with global warming, from reducing global emissions to overcoming capitalist economic growth as the primary motor of human society. These seemingly titanic tasks are actually pragmatic necessities dictated by scientific knowledge. We know, for example, that it is simply impossible to have infinite economic growth on a finite planet. And yet, this impossibility is exactly where we are still heading towards as a species." - Joey Ayoub
Article: What if We Cancel the Apocalypse?
How We Work
What the workplaces of the future might look like
The “aula modula” apartment block design by Studio BELEM
The pandemic has forever changed our perception of how and where we work. Time Magazine has curated a good survey of some possibilities. All are so much more attractive than the cube farms of old.
Article: The Office of the Future Is Greener, More Social, and Might Even Include Childcare
Local Economy, Ecological Systems Thinking
An Indigenous-run business is using regenerative ocean farming to clean up a Long Island bay and create local jobs.
Kelp farmers Donna Collins-Smith, Danielle Hopson Begun and Waban Tarrant. Credit: Cameron Peter.
"In 2019, Tela Troge, an attorney who has represented the Shinnecock Nation in federal land rights cases, was looking for a way to create jobs and clean up (Long Island's) Shinnecock Bay. That’s when GreenWave, a nonprofit that promotes regenerative ocean farming, approached the community about starting a kelp hatchery.
"Troge and five other women from her community formed the Shinnecock Kelp Farm, the first Indigenous-run farm of its kind on the East Coast.
"Greenwave’s model 'so closely matched our skills, our expertise, our traditional ecological knowledge,' Troge said. The Shinnecock practiced regenerative ocean farming long before the term existed; they farmed scallops, mollusks, oysters and clams — all natural water purifiers — together with seaweed.
"This system of kelp removing nitrogen near the surface while shellfish do the same down below creates powerful water filtration, said Charles Yarish, an emeritus marine evolutionary biologist at the University of Connecticut. It’s an ancient model. 'If you go into Chinese literature, even to ancient Egypt, you will see examples of those cultures having integrated aquaculture,' he said.
"Kelp feeds off excess carbon dioxide, nitrogen and phosphorus. The last two are pollutants responsible for harmful algal blooms that have killed off plants and animals in Shinnecock Bay, said Christopher Gobler, a marine scientist at Stony Brook University on Long Island. Kelp blades are lined with cells containing sulfated polysaccharides, essentially chains of sugar molecules that give kelp its slimy texture. These polysaccharides bind with nitrogen and phosphorus, pulling both out of the water and dissolving the nitrogen into a compound called nitrate. The dissolved nitrogen is what makes kelp a potent natural fertilizer."
Article: Can Kelp Farming Bring Back Shinnecock Bay?
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Design Activism
"The past two years of pandemic and protest have seen intensifying calls for meaningful change — indeed transformation — in design practice and education."
"By now these calls are familiar. They might center on the field’s capacity to respond to the interlocking wicked problems that define our time: climate crisis, decarbonization, habitat loss, unaffordable housing, rapid technological change. They might focus on design’s relationship to public policymaking, or to communities served (or not) by public projects, or to the accelerating decline of the public as both physical realm and social ethos. The key issues might be pedagogical: the decolonization of the canon and the redress of racist, sexist, settler-colonialist histories within the disciplines. Or they might concern the challenges of pay equity, hiring practices, and labor relations in professional offices and on university campuses.
"For this narrative survey, educators and practitioners share perspectives on the issues they consider most urgent, and offer ideas for specific actions and practical interventions."
Series: Field Notes: Design Activism
Economy
"The goal is people over profit, community over consumption, and resilience over recklessness."
"We live under the illusion of progress: as long as GDP is going up and prices stay low, we accept poverty and pollution as unfortunate but inevitable byproducts of a successful economy. In fact, the infallibility of the free market and the necessity of endless growth are so ingrained in the public consciousness that they seem like scientific fact. Jon Erickson asks, why? With the planet in peril and humanity in crisis, how did we get duped into believing the fairytale of economics? And how can we get past the illusion to design an economy that is socially just and ecologically balanced?
"In The Progress Illusion, Erickson charts the rise of the economic worldview and its infiltration into our daily lives as a theory of everything. Drawing on his own experience as a young economist inoculated in the 1980s era of "greed is good," Erickson shows how pseudoscience came to dominate economic thought. He pokes holes in the conventional wisdom of neo-classical economics, illustrating how flawed theories about financial decision-making and maximizing efficiency ignore human psychology and morality. Most importantly, he demonstrates how that thinking shaped our politics and determined the course of American public policy. The result has been a system that perpetually concentrates wealth in the hands of a few, while depleting the natural resources on which economies are based."
Book Summary: The Progress Illusion Reclaiming Our Future from the Fairytale of Economics
Gathering
Priya Parker suggests that we practice intentional guesting by asking "Is this gathering right for me?".
"While the pandemic has prevented us from doing things we love, it also temporarily removed social obligations. For a few years, there was a built-in reason to not attend the extended-family Thanksgiving or ugly sweater party or softball league gift exchange or fill-in-the-blank occasion.
"Now, as many folks are gathering again, it's easy to slip back into going through the social motions. But just like a good host considers the why behind their gathering, an artful guest thinks deeply about what they actually want to attend.
"As we enter end-of-year festivities, I invite you to consider practicing intentional guesting.
"What is intentional guesting, you ask? It's the act of choosing whether, why and how one attends a gathering." - Priya Parker
Article: The Art of Guesting During Festive Season
Poetry, Learning, Feminism
Defiant poems that express a stubbornly passionate optimism
“Things have been hard for a long, long time—historically—for so many people, and some periods add even more to that load than others. This is one of those periods,” said Melissa Studdard.
"The poems of Houstonian and Tuscaloosa, Alabama-born poet, author, podcast host and professor Melissa Studdard have been described as both “light and heavy, all at once”—likened to paintings and magic tricks. Her poems reimagine both the ordinary and the tragic as an extraordinary surrealistic scene, much the way ribbons, washes and spirals of luminous, flickering green and/or purple and/or red that we call the Southern Lights transform any landscape.
"Studdard has been compared to Neruda, Whitman and the Romantic poets such as Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley. Her defiant poems embrace magical realism and fearlessly break contemporary literary taboo with their dream sequences and stubbornly passionate optimism." - Chivas Sandage.
Article: Melissa Studdard on the Power of Poetry to Create the World We Want
One-Liners
Article: Blue Whales, earth’s largest animals, are singing in ever-lower tones, and nobody knows why.
Article: Mindfulness worked as well for anxiety as drug in study
Article: Can indie musicians afford to keep their shows on the road?
Article: No strong evidence for universal gender differences in the development of cooperative behaviour across societies
Article: Low-frequency sounds that are undetectable by the human ear can make people dance more, a new study finds.
Playlist
It is so cool having kids who have great taste in music. This week on our family text thread Sayre shared this:
Watch that baritone sax player. Not only is he honking some very funky tones out of a very large and heavy horn, he's busting some smooth dance moves while doing it.
Then Devan said: "Love this. I've been following Leo the baritone sax player for years. I don’t think he plays with Lucky Chops anymore. He’s got a trio called Too Many Zooz that has also made a bunch of viral videos."
Music will make you move. Music brings us together.
Image of the Week
BRANCHING OUT. On either side of a highway, gullies formed by rainwater erosion span out like a tree in Tibet. © Li Ping
"The Nature Conservancy is pleased to share the top images selected by our judges for the 2022 Photo Contest. Grand Prize Winner, Li Ping, China"
Article: 2022 Photo Contest Winners
What's Love & Work?
Love & Work is the weekly newsletter by me, Mitch Anthony. I help people use their brand - their purpose, values, and stories - as a pedagogy and toolbox for transformation.
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