Cultural Intelligence – Page 540 – Public Intelligence Blog

The social systems we live in – cultural, economic, political, and the rest – often make it difficult to effectively care. Understanding better the systemic realities that block our caring can help clarify how we need to change our lives and our societies. Here I explore some of the dynamics involved with money, time, distraction, complexity, individualism, and public relations – and new directions being pioneered by many among us, noting their common roots in caring.

Moving beyond systemic blocks to caring

EXTRACT (LIST ONLY)

Here are some of the systemic forces that alienate us from the life in and around us and block our caring energy:

▪ Money – and the reductionist statistics, profits, interest, and speculation that have accumulated in and around our money-based economies.

▪ Speed, pace, lack of time, and lack of deep time.

▪ Distraction, addiction, consumerism, and jobs.

▪ Complexity of connection, systems, issues.

▪ The cult of individualism and separateness.

▪ …the rapidly developing power of marketing, public relations, and advertising

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2014/11/11

SchwartzReport: Slavery for Profit — Continues Today

07 Other Atrocities, Cultural Intelligence

[My past experience] left me with the conviction that the White narrative was a comforting lie. Now Edward Baptist has taken this mythology head on. Here is a taste.

“It’s symbolic annihilation of history, and it’s done for a purpose. It really enforces white supremacy”: Edward Baptist on the lies we tell about slavery

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Slavery for Profit — Continues Today”

2014/11/10

Elisabet Sahtouris: Cybernetics as Necrophilia

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

Cybernetics is an advanced form of mechanism, but it is still mechanism, which I consider a poor metaphor for any living system—a metaphor missing the system’s very essence. Guattari argues that cybernetic machinery, which introduced the capacity to collect all manner of feedback to increase control, has, with the advent of the Internet, made elite control more insidious and effective than ever. He is right that elites have learned to control society by deliberately working to construct society itself as machinery and teaching people to see it as machinery, because machinery can be controlled. That does not mean that psyche, society, and nature are machinery. All living beings can read feedback from their environments!

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2014/11/10

SchwartzReport: Nurturing an Ignorant Public

Cultural Intelligence

The uber-rich, and their corporate fiefdoms have figured out how to manipulate low information fundamentalist Christian voters. They play them like a clarinet, supporting their belief in the myths and oral traditions of the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, in return for getting them to join forces to gut education. On one side it is about promoting Biblical inerrancy, on the other it is rewriting history and teaching kids to doubt science, climate change and the negative impact of carbon energy particularly. Low information and misinformed voters are what the Theocratic Right wants. They may have different reasons for wanting this, but they have a common goal.

Thanks to Right-Wing Lobbying, We're Teaching a Generation of Kids to Doubt Science and History

Just to demonstrate that I am not exaggerating when I talk about low information citizens, and the failure of the education system, watch this video. A reader sent it to me, and after watching it this morning, I have been thinking about it off and on all day. These are college students. This is the top of the educational food chain.

Politically-Challenged: Texas Tech Edition

2014/11/082014/11/08

Berto Jongman: It’s Official — US an Oligarchy Controlled by 42 People

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

Six related headlines.

Princeton Study: U.S. No Longer An Actual Democracy (TalkingPointsMemo)

Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters.

Russia Declares US An Oligarchy, Warns Constitutional Republic Is Dead (WhatDoesItMean)

What this past week’s US election shows, however, the MoFA in this report says, are that all of the Republican and Democratic Party candidates for office (Federal and State) were funded by just forty-two people who were responsible for nearly a third of Super PAC monies raised, and only 666,773 wealthy individuals out of a nation having a population of over 319 million.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: It's Official — US an Oligarchy Controlled by 42 People”

2014/11/08

Jean Lievens: Copenhagen Crowd-Sourcing Sustainabilty Sanity

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

Why Copenhagen Can Become Europe’s Crowd Capital

The city of Copenhagen is making a public call to citizens, companies and government to make the transition to the new, connected and inclusive economy. With many great cities in the running, it is no mean feat that Copenhagen nabbed the top spot, for two years in a row, as Fast Company’s most innovative city in Europe. According to The Global Innovation Index 2014, Denmark remains one of the world’s top 10 most innovative countries. There is a deliberate attempt all around to model behavior, mindsets and infrastructure for a more efficient, resource -sharing, low impact lifestyle while maintaining a high standard of living which brings me to the question — are efficient cities more crowd dependent or cooperative? Or are crowd supportive cities smarter and more innovative? This isn’t a chicken-egg question but the result of a positive feedback loop underscoring the notion that collaboration breeds inventiveness.

2014/11/082015/03/12