Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 259 – Public Intelligence Blog

2007/01/282009/12/04

Review: The Great Turning–From Empire to Earth Community

6 Star Top 10%, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Censorship & Denial of Access, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Catastrophe, Complexity & Resilience, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Information Society, Justice (Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Religion & Politics of Religion, Science & Politics of Science, Security (Including Immigration), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

People are the new super power–local resilience, global community,

January 28, 2007

David C Korten

I have mixed feelings about this book. It is unquestionably a five-star work of reflection, integration, and focused moral intent. On the other hand, while it introduced a broad “earth-friendly” literature that I was *not* familiar with, it does not “see” a much broader literature that I have absorbed, and so I want to do two things with this review: feature the highlights from this book, and list a number of other works that support and expand on the author's reflections for the greater good of us all.

Early highlights include the continued relevance of Dennis Kucinich and the emerging value of the Case Foundation and Revolution Health as funded by Steve Case, founder of AOL. The author posits early on the choice we have been a great unraveling and a great turning. He describes all our institutions as failing at the same time that we have unlimited potential. He concludes, as have many others, that centralized authority is not working, and suggests that we must confront that which does not work and devise new constructive alternatives (“for every no there must be a yes”).

In the middle of the book he describes the five levels of consciousness as magical, imperial, socialized, cultural, and spirirtual. I would have put socialized ahead of imperial, since the industrial era used schools to socialize us into both factory workers and conscripts for the armed forces. He concludes this section with a commentary on moral autism, which of course reminds us of nakedly amoral Dick Cheney.

The author moves toward a conclusion by pointing out that people are the new super-power, with the Internet and its many new features as the foundation for bringing people together and making people power effective.

A large portion of the middle section is a historical review of America, with its genocidal, slavery, and unilateral militant interventionist nature, and its extreme inequality now, which the literature on revolution clearly identifies (the latter, concentration of wealth) as a precurser to almost inevitable violent revolution).

The book ends with four strategic elements:

1) Awakening of cultural and spiritual consciousness
2) Resistance of the imperial empire's assault on children, families, communities, and nature
3) Form and connect communities of convergence
4) Build a majoritarian political base.

In parting notes he points out that the status of our children is the key indicator of our future, and that today one out of every two children is born into and lives into poverty (one reason why the High Level Threat Panel put poverty above infectuous disease and environmental degradation).

He ends by calling for local living economies at a human scale.

If you have the time to only read one book within the broad literatures of imagination, corporateism, and constructive prospects for the planet, this is probably that book. Below I want to a list quite a few that support this author's thesis, and for which I have provided a summative as well as an evaluative review within these Amazon pages:

The Corporation
WALMART-HIGH COST OF LOW PRICE (DVD/FF/FR-SP-SUB)
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids
Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

See also:
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'
“The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past”
Imagine: What America Could Be in the 21st Century
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems
Deep Economy

There are many more should you wish to explore via my categorized lists, but the above both lend great credence to the author of this single book, and expand considerably on the reflections that he has distilled into this one book.

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2007/01/282009/12/04

Review: One from Many–VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Consciousness & Social IQ, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Public)

Innovative Capitalism,

January 28, 2007

Dee Hock

Edit of 30 Dec 07 to add comment and links.

New comment: something big is happening, in both politics and business. Moral green open transparent memes are in overdrive. See links.

I read a lot, a solace and a life line out of the madness of today. I finished up my week-end with this most unusual gem, and it is with some emotion that I put it down and take the time to write this review.

In my lifetime, there have been fewer than four individuals able to understand me and manage me, and Dee Hock now joins that number, sight unseen. This is one of the *good guys*! If he and Bill Bradley and Jim Turner (Transpartisanship) can come together, we can remake the world.

The book benefits from a Foreword by Peter Senge, who notes that VISA as it emerged was a disruptive concept that threatened traditional powers. Senge also notes the importance of distinguishing between enabling technologies, such as the Internet, and what is enabled, such as democracy or equitable wealth creation and sharing. Finally, Senge observes that global complexity requires distributed democracy, to which I and the author would both be quick to add: “and moral capitalism.”

The book is at root about the failure of all of our instititutions, and the need to find a third way between over-bearing centralization and anarchic decentralization. The author coins the word “chaordic” to deswcribe an even-handed and often-changing balance between the two.

Dee Hock is a philosopher-king, and I am reminded of “Voltaire's Bastards” and “Consilience” as I read his denouncement of the Western concept of separability and his own understanding that complexity is about never-ending and alway-changing relationships. In one example with the US Army, he explores how rules-based organizations waste 45-85% of the time and value of their employees. He specifically notes that human ingenuity is the ultimate resource and is abundant, but too often constrained if not crushed by schools, armies, corporations, and so on.

The author's morality shines forth as he describes non-monetary exchanges of value as the best possible foundation for what others call reciprocal altruism. At one point he observes that “leadership is not necessarily constructive, ethical, or open.”

The entire book is about the creation of an organization in which participation is the primal element, agreement is dynamic, and trust and tolerance are the prevailing values. He states that organizational heaven is purpose, principle, and people. Purgotory is paper and procedure. Hell is rule & regulation.

He realizes early on that fraud and theft are major challenges, and that information is, as he quotes Gregory Bateson, “a difference that makes a difference.”

I have a big note: this is a smart, ethical, practical, inspiring person–one of the good guys!

The author is deeply and empathetically aware of the discord between our industrial era understandings and perceptions, and the bio-cultural realities of the Earth and all its processes. He sees clearly what the “true cost” or natural capitalism literature seeks to teach.

A line jumps out, in which the author is lamenting that we have such a wealth of information, yet have drifted into “collective madness.”

He clearly sees that our current form of predatory immoral “bandit” capitalism specializes at the socialization of cost and the capitalization of gain, which is fancy wording for looting the commons and stealing the profit. He also points out that we are putting the debt on to future generations.

He clearly describes the current form of corporations as inimical to the commons.

The book concludes strongly, lionizing the will to succeed when joined with the grace to compromise, placing VISA on a par with the Internet and LINUX as an organizational model for the future, and noting that growth comes from failure.

On page 284 he lists the following ten attributes from a living organization in Spain that represents the best of the chaordic model:

01 Open membership
02 Democratic organization
03 Worker sovereignty
04 Instrumental subordinate nature of capital
05 Participation in management
06 Wage solidarity
07 Cooperating between cooperatives
08 Social transformation
09 Universal nature
10 Education (he might have added, life-long, unconstrained, free of the prison-rote we now suffer, and teaching sharing as well as learning)

He ends with the story of his recall from his wanderings in the wilderness, to explore examples, models, the intellectual foundation, and organizations by which we might save the Planet and our species, to include the necessary means of mind-crafting for the future.

I actually had goose-bumps as I put this book down. I felt, very strongly, that I had been within the aura of a great leader, a gentle person, a world-class humanitarian, a capitalist Dalai Lama if you will (don't laugh–this author strikes me as quite amazingly special).

I cannot say enough about this book. It joins the very short list of books I have posted on moral leadership through open source intelligence, and it places Dee Hock up there with Buckminster Fuller, Margaret Wheatley, Robert Buckman, and a tiny handful of Senge's and Druckers.

I hope I meet him one day. Right now, he joins Bill Bradley as one of just two people I'd be willing to leave my mink-lined bunker to follow into battle. This book and this author's mind and clarity of communication have simply blown me away.

See the two images I have loaded here to illustrate concepts that I share with this author. You can see other images at Earth Intelligence Network, where you can also use the Amazon Base Page to get access to my 30 lists of books for each of the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers. I am also creating Amazon discussion pages for each of these.

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2007/01/272009/12/04

Review: Low Carbon Diet–A 30 Day Program to Lose 5000 Pounds–Be Part of the Global Warming Solution!

5 Star, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design

Buy Ten Copies–Create Energy-Smart Neighborhood,

January 27, 2007

David Gershon

This book is about more than reducing the carbon foot-print of your home, it is tailor made for creating a good neighborhood by giving busy neighbors distanced by suburban sprawl or urban anonymnity a really fun and rewarding focal point for coming together.

There are twenty-two specific things that one can do in their home or in relation to their local school or community (most have to do with the home).

I see a real opportunity for a third party developer at Amazon to create a niche business–what I really need as a busy professional is a single Amazon URL where I can go and select all of the low-cost products needed to implement this book's recommendations (e.g. the water-saver showerhead with the instant off-on lever), have them charged to my Amazon account, and delivered to my front door.

I'd also like to see a way for people to register their homes the way we register Wildlife Habitats–completing this check-list should allow registry of the home and count toward the appraisal value.

I recommend the book be bought in lots of 10, used to bring together the other 9 houses nearest you, and then passed on down the neighborhood.

The resource section at the end is helpful, and I was especially struck by the disaster resilience recommendations. I know a lot of otherwise mainstream folks that are starting to sign up for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Red Cross courses on disaster relief, earning the green hard-hat and body covering. Something is happening at the grass roots level–a combination of innate fear that the federal and state governments will fail us as they did with Katrina, and a more constructive sense of responsibility, with more people realizing that resilience starts at the local level with specific individuals planning and preparing so as to prevent local disasters from becoming catastrophes.

For related reading on the psychology of what prevents people from preparing and reacting, see my review of “Catastrophe & Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster.” Disasters do NOT have to become catastrophes, we make them so through denial before, during, and after.

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2007/01/272015/01/05

Review: The Change Handbook–The Definitive Resource on Today’s Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Democracy, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Philosophy, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Utterly Phenomenal: *The* Book for Living Life to the Fullest,

January 27, 2007

Peggy Holman

EDIT of 9 Feb 09 to add links (capability not available at the time) and to commit to attending NEXUS II in Bowling Green, OH 30 Mar – 1 Apr 08.

I could spend the rest of my life trying to learn, use, and share each of the methods in this book, and never finish. When it was first published in 1999, it was before its time. Now, in 2006, this is a book made for our times, when Burning Man is now Green Man, Al Gore is a rock star, and even the greediest Wall Street CEO is starting to realize the party is over and we have to get real, real fast.

I have been an admirer of Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) and a champion of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), and have gradually learned about other “opens” that are coming to the fore: Open Spectrum, Open Access, Open Culture, Open Innovation, and of course George Soros' Open Society. From this book I now add Open Circle, to complement the Open Space concept I learned recently in Seattle's Town Hall while listening to Paul Hawken talk about the World Index for Social and Environmental Responsibility.

I have to confess that this book is over-whelming, and I can barely scratch the surface. This is more of a book where you should read one author, one segment, each night, and fall asleep thinking about how to implement that one small section, how to embrace someone else and engage them with that one method.

Having three teen-agers, all three of whom have completely rejected the prison/child care format and the rote learning objectives of the current school system (even as good as it is in Fairfax County) I will go so far as to say that this book, combined with serious games/games for change, is a complete one-to-one substitute for our current educational process.

Everything in here is what we *should* have learned in school, what we *should* be practicing in fulfilling our civic duty (what we *actually* do is described in “The Cheating Culture,” “Confessional of an Economic Hit-Man,” and “Rogue Nation”).

I am moving quickly and heavily into the intersection of Collective Intelligence (see my reviews of “The Tao of Democracy,” “Smart Mobs,” “Wisdom of the Crowds,” or my longer list; and Natural Capitalism with its “true cost” meme. See my reviews of Paul Hawken et al, “Ecology of Commerce” and “Natural Capitalism,” of the varied books by Herman Daly, and soon, my reviews of “The Great Turning,” the “Omnivore's Dilemma,” and others. For a broader sense of the possibilities, check out “Earth Intelligence Network” online.

I still have the 1970's operating manual for spaceship earth someplace in my lower library. This book is the manual for spaceship earth for our children and those of us recommiting ourselves to the joy of learning and changing in our later years. It's not over until *we* decide its over.

See these other books that have also inspired me and given me hope:
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen
Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy

My lists are also a fast path to collections covering the ten threats, twelve policies, eight challengers, and various other aspects of saving humanity and the Earth from outselves.

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2007/01/272009/12/04

Review: Innovation Happens Elsewhere–Open Source as Business Strategy

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Information Technology, Strategy

Guide to the Value Created by Free/Open Source Software,

January 27, 2007

Ron Goldman

This is not the book I was expecting, but that's my fault. I was expecting something beyond “The Innovator's Dilemma” focused on management. What I ended up with was in fact much more useful, an elementary but essential and easy to read guide to Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS).

This book is a real gem, and for any manager thinking about how to explode out of their tired old proprietary software architecture, joins “Wikinomics” and “Infotopia” as essential reading.

This book is well-structured, comes with credible and extensive references and appendices, and also offers an online version for preview or later quick search at [ …w.]dreamsongs.com/IHE.

I'm still waiting for Sun and RedHat to create a skunkworks where we can quickly test-drive and adapt open source softwares addressing each of the 18 functionalities that the Central Intelligence Agency has known it needed since 1986 but still does not have precisely because the CIA is the anti-thesis of open source (see image I have added above).

Earth Intelligence Network is going to put CIA out of business–it will be based on open source software, and everyone will benefit. That is a good thing! The sub-title of this book is on target: it is a primer on open source as business strategy. To that I would add what I have recommended to the organizers of OSCON, that managers be very aware of the others opens: Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), Open Spectrum, Open Access, Open Culture, Open Innovation, Open Society, and Open Circle/Open Space. There are others emerging. Open is now a meme as well as a culture, and this book helps us to understand why that is and why that matters.

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2007/01/272009/12/04

Review: When Corporations Rule the World

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Pinnacle of the Negative Consequences of Corporate Impunity,

January 28, 2007

David C Korten

Others have done well at addressing the strengths of this book, what I can do is bring to bear a few links to other books that deeply support this author and his views.

We must begin in the 1970's, when Richard Barnett in Global Reach and others first began to understand that corporations were amoral, disconnected from communities, and beyond what Kirkpatrick called “human scale.” Joining the authors focusing on multinationals as a unique new breed of corporation were authors such as Lionel Tiger, whose book Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System remains a standard. The industrial era disconnected kinship and community from the manufacturing process, and trust was a casualty (a thesis confirmed in the 1990's when a Nobel Prize was awarded for a man who proved that trust lowers the cost of doing business).

Now we have an entire new literature on how corporations have abused the personality status intended for freed slaves, and been largely freed from all accountability and transparency. Books like The Informant: A True Story and Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story and the books about Wal-Mart, Enron, and Exxon, all support the concerned premise of this author.

Corporations have created a global class war (see the books by that title), and have compromised virtually all governments. Corporations have bought the US Congress (see Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders and The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy); they have compromised national, state, and local social safety networks and standards, they have enhanced the power for 45 dictators world-wide, and they have bribed or created and then bribed elites in virtually every country on the planet so as to loot the commonwealths of those nations with the permission of the elites and against the public interest of the larger population.

Corporations do not rule the world, they are killing the world, and as one wag whose name I cannot recall has said, those doing the killing have names and addresses. Hence this book is a natural lead in to the author's latest work, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community (Bk Currents) which I am also reviewing today.

There are *many* books on the evil of unfettered corporations, if I were to recommend only two, they would be Barnett's “Global Reach” for historical context, and this one for the current threat. I also recommend the DVD, The Corporation

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2007/01/252009/12/04

Review: After Iraq–The Imperiled American Imperium

5 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Iraq

Ethical Sanity, Sensible Guidelines,

January 23, 2007

Charles W. Kegley Jr.

I am in Boise, Idaho, where I came to hear Al Gore deliver the single most sensational and sensible lecture I have ever heard in my lifetime. The DVD and the book titled “Inconvenient Truth” do not do him or his message justice.

It was in this context that I discovered that Boise, Idaho is a hotbed of ethical sanity. The Frank Church Institute (sponsor of Al Gore's visit to Boise) and these two authors, one of whom is the Frank Church Professor of International Relations, the other the Corporate Secretary of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, have all of the moral credibility and legitimacy that the Bush-Cheney regime lacks.

I bought this book while visiting Boise State University, and I believe it may well be one of the most important works relevant to recovering from the enormously mis-guided, inept, and corrupt practices that Bush-Cheney have forced upon all of us. As a moderate but estranged Republican, I heartily embrace the solid reasoning of these two authors.

The most important part of the book is the final section that I have marked very heavily. The authors highlight the number of military interventions the US has undertaken, making the important point that Bush-Cheney are not the first to abuse military power, but perhaps the first to do so in such an outrageously ill-conceived manner.

They draw respectfully on historian Niall Fergusson's summary of American interventions and this is worth repeating here:

1. Impressive initial military success
2. Flawed assessment of indigenous sentiments
3. Strategy of limited war and gradual escalation of forces
4. Domestic disillusionment in the face of protracted and nasty conflict
5. Premature democratization
6. Ascendancy of domestic economic considerations
7. Ultimate withdrawal

There you have it. The authors go on to outline “Rules for Rivals” and I will not summarize those–buy the book. The most important observation made by the authors is that if one pays attention to an idea new to me, the Composite Index of National Capabilities (CINC), then one can quickly see that the US pales in comparison to China, and simply does not have the capacity for sustained global warfare in the conventional sense.

The authors outline several characteristics of the emerging collapse of US foreign policy and credibility and effectiveness, not least of which is their proper emphasis on the failure of American education.

This is a very important book, and it deserves to be noticed by the varied book sections, especially the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.

As one who can be bombastic at times, I especially admired the manner in which the authors made their case in an even-handed relatively neutral manner. Boise, Idaho is a very sensible place! America would do well to absorb and act on the common sense thinking they are doing here.

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications
Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble