What is happening is that I’m finding my natural Net rhythm, which is like settling into the orbit of Pluto instead of Mercury. From afar I’m seeing more and more spinning at the Internet’s center, and finding myself as if I’m in a centrifuge spun out to the edge. This partially explains the recent slower pace at Mediacology. For the moment I’ve lost the drive and enthusiasm I had when I first started blogging five years ago. Back then I was excited and energetic to post everyday, and was pretty prolific in the beginning. I also had dreams of blog fame and a second income. Having let go of these delusions (and hence the simplified design of my current layout), I’m feeling more comfortable letting things come when they are ready, and resting when I need to.

I’ve been a Web explorer since the early Mosaic days, which seems like a century ago in Web time (I think I first surfed the Web in 1993). I’m now starting to feel like the Internet’s Wild West is about to be settled by the telegraph, railroad and empowered sheriffs who have the might of international treaties to start clamping down and moving folks who don’t conform to the old paradigm of intellectual property onto reservations.

Not surprisingly, this mirrors many other struggles going on as the public good faces an amped up process of enclosure. For example, last week I facilitated a panel that looked at the neoliberal threat against the cultural commons and could see how similar the fight for the commons is across all sectors of society. Among us we discussed the enclosure of food and water systems, public spaces like parks, homelessness, and education. You cold add to the list DNA and GMOs. The theme was consistent: we have faced a radical turn in which more and more of our shared spaces are being privatized in the name of what Marx called “primitive accumulation.” The “state of exception” which allows democratic societies to violate their own principles in the name of wartime emergencies (such as excluding Native Americans from the same rights afforded to whites) is increasingly becoming the norm as rights are quietly whittled away in the name of national security and intellectual property.

In terms of the Net, my biggest concern is the use of anti-piracy/counterfeiting laws to privatize civil complaints. Rather than go through the legal system to request warrants and to file official complaints against so-called pirates, entertainment companies are requiring Internet providers to police their customers and to cut off access when violations are detected. The Economist reports that there is piracy detection software in beta that can identify a single frame of a copyrighted film. With such detection bots roaming the net, will they be able to distinguish between fair use and legitimate piracy? I think not. It’s a return to Napoleonic law in which you are guilty until proven innocent. And who has the might to fight Comcast or Time-Warner? A while back I posted a short clip on YouTube from Saturday Night Live that I wanted my students to comment on for class. YouTube pulled it because it violated user terms. To Google’s credit, they have an appeals process in which I could make a fair use claim. As a result, in the end the video was restored, but I imagine it took a human to intervene. What happens when we automate the policing of the Net, let alone the tracking of people’s behaviors and relationships? Facebook anyone?

I continue to use the Internet for teaching and often post copyrighted media for students to comment on. I’m thankful that this has made teaching more interesting and accessible to wider groups of people. In the past year, however, I have found it more difficult to do so. My YouTube channel has dozens of playlists with videos I use for teaching. Often I create playlists as I’m teaching a course, only to find out the following semester that half the videos I posted are no longer available. As a fallback position I use the Firefox plug-in Easy YouTube Downloader to get “hard copies” of the videos so that I have access to them for later use. This has saved me on several occasions. So though I appreciate the plethora of media available to me (far more than five years ago), I feel like the moment is very tenuous. I don’t know how much longer this will go on.

I’m also feeling agnostic about social networks. I have Twitter and Facebook accounts, but have not been able to develop the habit of engaging them. I’ve heard all kind of praise for Twitter, but it simply makes my eyes go cross. I understand and appreciate why people like it, but I think I’m too old school to really get it. Facebook is the same. I dip my toe in it here and there, but the stream mostly passes me by. Sometimes I like the linkages it makes for me, but for the most part I feel pretty disengaged. In all honesty, I’m not into getting poked all the time.

The same goes with the Web in general. For a writer, researcher, activist and educator it is, of course, invaluable. But I also find that I don’t use it that much except when there is something I need. Unlike the early days of the Web when surfing was a novel experience, I get overloaded very quickly. But then again, the same goes for museums and galleries. I can only look at art for an hour before my brain gets fried. Literally. Processing nerve stimulus takes energy, be it art or the umpteenth Website on ecological pedagogy (though when I’m less tired, I’m sure glad these sites are there).

Additionally I find that I don’t like to chat too much with SMS, though sometimes I find it very convenient. The thing is, when I’m on the computer I’m either reading or writing and I don’t like to be interrupted. For the life of me I don’t understand why people post their Skype names on their Websites. Who in the world wants to get so many phone calls? And when it comes to texting, I’m all thumbs.

As I’m writing this I get the sense that maybe I’m coming across as a bit of a selfish netizen. I’m aware of the spiritual precept that manifestation follows intention and attention. You get back what you put in. I certainly cherish the interactivity and exchange that has facilitated new friendships on the Net, many invaluable. It doesn’t have to be either/or, but this and that. Nonetheless, remaining centered in the cosmos is hard enough; maintaining an extended self in the Net is that much more to deal with.

Finally, I like walking and riding bikes without the electronic tether. I enjoy unpredictability and minor amounts of chaos that comes along with not knowing everything about everybody at every moment. Sometimes there’s a benefit to opacity.

I know I’m particular and of a certain age which makes me un-enamored with these digital tools. As an old punk, I tend to prefer zine making as an early form of Web publishing and blogging. What is different for me now is that I miss the tactility of tabletop publishing. I like getting glue and ink on my fingers, and cutting things with scissors and holding something in my hands. I admit that blogging and the community around WordPress does remind me a bit of the zine days, and there are times when blogging and networking does get me excited like the good ol’ days of Xerox lore. The thing I love about blogging is that I can instantaneously publish what I’m thinking about, which gives me a sketchpad for longer, more thoughtful passages that end up in long-form essays and books.

No one is telling me to do any of these things, though I do feel a little peer pressure that I should like Facebook and Twitter. I’m not trying to be a village atheist, but rather am finding a middle way in which the tool is here and available, but at the same time without attachment. This constitutes my current thinking about what it means to be a Net agnostic.

I don’t mean for this missive to be solemn or sad, just a respite from an exhausting information haul. I’m still here, I still care. I’m just taking my time, pacing a long walk, slowing down a bit so as to not get too caught up in the frenzied tornado of the Network Society.

BTW, if you read past the fold and got this far, thanks! I certainly no longer have the patience to read this far.

Photo by me

As we watched the events unfold at Copenhagen, many of us felt powerless to infuse wisdom into the process. It seems as if the globe’s political leaders cannot transcend their own momentum, and remain stuck in a reality that defines everything in the context of numbers. One thing that Jacques Ellus points out in The Technological Society is that a consequence of the technological mindset is establishing a set of perimeters on how to think about and categorize the world, and to make taboo human scaled relationships that result from organic processes.

Consequently, this year the theme that keeps knocking me over is to scale down. In my work and professional/activist ambitions I have felt the need, like many of us, to change the world as quickly as possible. The task often feels existential and too massive to contain– our system seems like giant robots trouncing the earth and often I feel like a Lilliputan trying to pin it down.

As a colleague reminds me, complexity theory shows that all system change happens at a local level. Perhaps in our desire to see a massive global political shift many of us have disregarded another option, which is to scale down our thoughts to the local level, and to work within the means that we have available to us. For me that translates to living a certain kind of low impact lifestyle, and also re-dedicating my work in the classroom where I have a lot of one-on-one contact with the next prototype of human, our youth. And of course spending more time with my family.

My sustainability education mentor, Pramod Prajoli, has the following guidelines for moving into the next phase of transformation:

1) critique to regeneration

2) ideologies to ideas

3) discourse to design

4) global thinking to local thinking

Some ideas I have for the coming year include editing a textbook for media educators that incorporates a sustainable framework, and to develop a green curriculum that can be used as part of media literacy work.

Meanwhile, I want to rededicate myself to eating well, relaxing more, taking it a bit slower and remembering to breath. Now is not the time to panic, but to become grounded and rooted again in our life work.

I’ll close with these thoughts from Tricycle Magazine:

Caring for Each Other

The Buddha has suggested that we are without a mother and father to take care of things for us. Mother Earth, once thought to be all-forgiving and capable of absorbing any abuse we could heap upon her, is not the infinitely benevolent resource we thought she was. As we learn of our own mothers at a certain point of maturity, Mother Earth can and does get worn down by giving and forgiving in the face of our persistent demands. And our Father who is in heaven, though perhaps immensely old and lord over a host of devas (as the Buddhists view him), is nevertheless subject to the laws of karma and is not sufficiently omnipotent to make it all work out for us in the end.

If we do not care for one another, who else will care for us? Who among us has the right to say of another, “He is of no use to us?” For better or worse, whether we like it or not, we are all in this together. Learning how to care for one another is a central part of the path and of the practice.

- Andrew Olendzki, Ph.D., “Medicine for the World,” from the Summer 2008 Tricycle. Read the complete article.

In a sense, the sensations and pain I have felt from delving into the shadow of Western civilization have became a mild kind of emotional violence. I think it’s important to acknowledge and feel that pain, but at some point I/we have to move on. This doesn’t mean abandoning critical engagement of the world, but it does imply more mindfulness and care. Words have so much power, and often we don’t choose them carefully enough. I’m hoping to climb out of this space, but it’s not a matter of waving the magic wand.

For now I can start by breathing through it. What follows remains to be seen.

* Update *

Thanks to everyone who emailed me with blessings and kind words. I’m happy to report that someone returned my wallet (though it was missing 90 euros). All in all, my “identity” has been restored.

A contrast in life’s inconveniences: Hangover vs. Sin Nombre

Somewhere between Rome’s train station and JFK airport my wallet was lost/stolen. This is a problem when plastic is the sole means of transaction inside nonplaces like airports, where only multinational corporations are granted the right to do business. So without cash or credit cards, I was unable to eat or stay in a hotel, minor problems compared to transient migrants around the world who’d love to have such a temporary inconvenience versus a lifetime of disenfranchisement.

In his book Earth Pilgrim Satish Kumar talks about experiences on various pilgrimages when he traveled around the world with no money. He experienced some lonely moments while on the road, sometimes finding himself cold and hungry because no one would offer him food or shelter. Though initially resentful, he also learned about his attachments and gratitude for when he was taken care of. I had similar moments when I walked across Spain, and feel this small misadventure was one of those learnable moments that can defamiliarize the normal routines of life.

It wasn’t until I finally got access to a public internet portal at my final destination that I was able to negotiate what I needed for personal security. My inability to eat or secure a safe place to sleep was ultimately solved by my Mac, Skype and the Internet, which enabled me to pay for services online. This one connection was a vital link to an abstraction that ultimately triumphed over the human trust I failed to garner in person, despite having a passport, personal checks and a valid credit card number(sans physical plastic card). It enabled me to call Italy to get vital information that I could then use to book a hotel room that a clerk would not do in person. The difference between a warm bed and street was a laptop and the technical skill to navigate the system.

Throughout this process I kept in mind the perspective of the majority of the world’s population who are disenfranchised from the symbolic order and who don’t have the resources I have to solve my “problem.” Thus I began to meditate on what it meant for me to be a “franchised” human:

1 : freedom or immunity from some burden or restriction vested in a person or group

2 a : a special privilege granted to an individual or group; especially : the right to be and exercise the powers of a corporation b : a constitutional or statutory right or privilege; especially : the right to vote c (1) : the right or license granted to an individual or group to market a company’s goods or services in a particular territory; also : a business granted such a right or license (2) : the territory involved in such a right (from Merriam-Webster)

Within the terminal zone of air travel (I write more extensively about this kind of “splace” in my book chapter about the TV show Lost), one is indexed by abstract documentation which marks citizenship, but that is only one part of the equation. The other is being a franchised human, one that is legitimated by the financial and technical apparatus that enables access to the privilege of food and shelter (among other things). This was brought into stark relief by one of the twists of this misadventure: my airline accidentally put my in first class, which offered a glimpse into a highly seductive realm of privilege and service.

This being the first time I’ve ever flown first class, it was a small window into the reality bubble of the global business person. For the privileged few that pay for this special treatment, it’s not hard to see how addictive it is to be so spoiled: a cornocopia of drinks and snacks, a quality meal, free movies and entertainment, champaign before take off… everything short of a foot rub and blow job.

The young man sitting next to me was an executive for a multinational pet supply company. When I told him I’m working on a PhD in sustainability, he told me that his company now has a sustainablity consultant. When our discussion leads to other countries outside the US (he had just done whilwind biz trip from Toronto, Tokyo, Sidney and New York), he complained that his company’s biggest obsticle is that so many other coutnries have too many family owned businesses that prevents his mega-corp from dumping box stores into their communities. He complained that the rest of the world lacked the American go-get-em acumen, and by inference the rest were not as wise or clever as “us.” He was a nice guy, but the entire time we talked he played a video game on his iPhone. I regret not asking what he thought sustainability means.

I watched two films on the flight: Hangover and Sin Nombre. Both are about misfortune, but each offer completely different visions of reality, though strangely complimentary. In the former case, the film is about four guys who go to Las Vegas for a bachelor party, but it goes horrible wrong. The film is very funny and entertaining, but the ultimate lesson is that good credit and gaming the system can solve all problems (which entails a level of privilege, education and franchisement). In typical bourgeoisie fashion, the temporary crisis is life altering to a minor degree– in the end the upside down world returns to normal. The system triumphs.

Sin Nombre, on the other hand is about an upside-down world that never gets corrected. In it the lives of two characters intersect: a Honduran teen seeking a better life in El Norte encounters a Mexican gang member on the lamb from his former homies. Much of the narrative features nonprofessional actors and takes place on freight trains and slums, harking to Italian neo-realism. Unlike Hangover, here the characters are the opposite of tourists who sample and dabble the fantasies of the consumer world. In Sin Nombre, as the film title suggests (“Without Name”), the characters are not quite pilgrims either. They are refugees from a greater historical drama that remains outside the purview of people sitting in first class on an international flight.

Oh, the irony.

Consider the settings of the two films: Las Vegas versus the transnational migration route from Honduras to the US-Mexico frontier. In both cases the trope, “What happens in _____, stays in _____,” applies, but in the former the protagonists are just tourists who can sample in fantasy worlds as a way to blow off steam from repressive techocratic normalcy; they are assured of a return to the mechanical womb of civilization after being purified of unnecessary angst. In the latter case, the migrant and gang banger reality are to stay “down there” so that we can maintain the illusion of the Las Vegas world without its socio-ecolgoical consequences interfering with all the fun.

The roots of the crisis that push people into the dark journey of Sin Nombre have their origin in our freedom– though “freedom,” as my little venture shows, is quite a limited illusion. The Mara Salvatrucha gang, of which one of the protagonists belongs, has its origins in the Salvadoran refugee communities that fled the US backed civil war of the 1980s. And the plight of many displaced Central Americans and Mexicans has been impacted by the transnational control of local resources and displacement caused by US-sponsored war and “free trade” agreements. Transnational immigrants are the negative side of the balance sheet whose reality doesn’t fit into the level of abstraction needed to keep the global economy moving, or to put a meal on the table for someone such as myself.

After watching the films I was confronted with another minor crisis: I discovered that my medicine bag full of prescription meds was missing too, without which I could die (due to severe bouts of asthma). It was at this point I became acutely aware of how dependent I am on the civilization that I criticize: my meds, caffeine, food energy and mobility are only made possible through my interaction with the apparatus of the global network of symbols that I can navigate and ply. Without access I would die. OK, maybe that’s a little overly dramatic, but the fear is the same as an addict: without my fix the world shrinks to a quivering hole. I am addicted to civilization, and to quote another film, I can’t quit you. I have franchised my humanity to the global system.

Postscript

Just in case it seems like I’m whining way too much, follow this last thread. In Italy I can walk into any pharmacy and pay 50 euros for my inhaler, or go see my doctor (for free) and get a prescription that makes the medication cost only eight euros. Today I had to go the emergency room to get a prescription (the urgent care clinic wouldn’t accept me because I have no American health care or money because of my lost credit and ATM cards). At the hospital it took five different people to interview me before I got the script. I have no idea how much they will bill me, but I’m sure it won’t be less then a few hundred bucks. Than I discovered that the inhaler I need costs $256 at Walgreens! Now, who are the real criminals, the petty thieves who nicked my wallet and meds, or the insane architects of this inhumane “health” system?

Abastract and article link.

To paraphrase a Native elder, any road will get you somewhere. The question for Native America is, where will the information highway take them? As Native Americans continue to face challenges from the legacy of colonialism, new media provide both an opportunity and crises in education. Standardized education policy such as No Child Left Behind and funding cuts in social services inadvertently impact Net access and Indian education, yet alternative programs and approaches exist. It is necessary that programs conceptualize new media learning strategies within a historical context by being sensitive to the political and cultural connotations of literacy and technology in Native American communities. By encouraging the use of new media as a tool for grassroots community media and locally relevant storytelling, this chapter asks educators to consider an alternative epistemology that incorporates non-Western approaches to ecology and knowledge.

What follows is a description and short essay exploring the ideas of the class.

Mediacology: Media Networks, Deep Ecology and the Dream of the Planet

The Course

Are we evolving an ecologically oriented global consciousness, or just a technologically efficient corporate brain? It depends on whether or not we can decolonize the future. Doing so means a deep interrogation of our current cultural trajectory. As such, ecopsychologists argue that modern Western civilization is the result of ecological schizophrenia. The vision of the global village is no different; it pits two worldviews against each other, one of a nature-inspired planetary dream (anima mundi), and the other of a mechanized corporate dreamworld, called the “invader dreaming” by Australian Aborigines. This course aims to give shape to these different visions in the context of Deep Ecology, ecopsychology and techno-Utopianism. The “dream of the planet” is one that is inherent to us all, and is part of the evolutionary heritage that ties us within an interdependent biosphere, but it must be separated from the corporate paradigm that currently dominates our social system. By identifying these different visions, we can imagine a just and sustainable future, rather than the corporate version promoted in popular culture. In this course we combine theory and practice through a unique combination of ecoliteracy and media literacy techniques that enable us to harness tools of media technology to fulfill our evolutionary potential and build a sustainable society. This course is open to anyone interested in global, evolutionary change.

The Vision

If you can’t imagine a future, you will live in someone else’s. That was the sagest advice a close friend-who was a Buddhist, anthropologist and ecological educator-once gave me. But imagination without sense of ecological justice is just as bad. So what future are we aiming for? As a fellow “New Edger” I believe that many of the ideas I’m exploring in my course, “Mediacology: Media Networks, Deep Ecology and the Dream of the Planet” will resonate with RS readers. Like you, I’m a believer in the big changes and challenges before us. In our process, many of us mix New Age optimism (and naiveté) with arts, culture, community activism and media making as we feel our way through humanity's current phase of evolution. Our quirky mix of spirituality, techno-Utopianism, ecological consciousness and Gen X skepticism makes us a diverse community-a necessary precursor for evolutionary shifting-but also one that overdoes postmodern thinking. In other words, we’re good at engaging a chaotic and confused stew of ideas that can make some actions seem perplexing. Thus, while I believe wholeheartedly that thinking is for doing, many of us do without thinking. That is, we follow our hearts without considering the implications of the kinds of futuristic projects that excite our imaginations. My course looks more deeply at the assumptions of our vision for the global future, in particular around ecological and media activism represented by the “global village.” A little DIY theory can go along ways towards clarifying the intentions of our movement and to critically engage the beliefs that drive the work we do.

My tool is to hybridize ecology with media-what I call “mediacology”- so we can shape an emerging form of communications that will push humanity’s next evolutionary leap in the direction of sustainability. Doing so means becoming DIY anthropologists and philosophers who understand media in its various forms as holographic projections of the “operating system” of our world and global subcultures. By mapping realities in order to devise strategies for survival, we can us a kind of pattern recognition long used by colonized cultures to identify dangerous strains of consciousness. Consider the following story as one example for understanding how this works. When the Hopi first encountered the Spanish they saw the crucifix as an indication of a mindset: intersecting linear lines represented a grid of materialistic space-time. With no circle accompanying the cross, the Hopi realized that the Spanish mentality-though good at reconfiguring the material world-would be disastrous for nature and Native peoples because it would be incapable of seeing the connections between material transformation and its impact on ecology and culture. They understood-as should we-that an unbalanced linear mind is not only disastrous for the environment, but when it projects itself into a global economic system it becomes a kind of codified insanity as well. This story is a simplification, of course, because not all Spanish colonists were pure linear thinkers, but the culture that sought to conquer the Americas for its gold and slaves had already placed the sacred inside the church, which by default defined everything else as secular, and hence available for exploitation. Having understood the consequences of thought patterns, the Hopi successfully resisted the Christianization of their people.

Indigenous people around the world have long understood that at the core of the conquest and its more recent manifestation as neoliberal globalization is a disembedded mind which views the body and nature as alien. Vandana Shiva refers to this mentality as monoculture. Australian Aborigines call it the “invader dreaming.” Monoculture is an industrial mindset that divides and isolates everything into parts while disregarding the connections between them. The modern roots of this go back to the mechanistic science of Newton, Bacon and Descartes, but we can go further back to the invention of the alphabet as contributing to the left-brain, abstract mode of cultural production that dominates our economics and politics. Initially the Hopi could recognize this mode of thinking because it was alien to them. We, on the other hand, live inside the reality bubble of the “invader dreaming,” and often find it difficult to recognize the mentality of conquest because it so perniciously embeds itself within our worldview. As agents for global change what is necessary is to “defamiliarize” destructive thought patterns in order to heal and repair them.

By identifying Western consciousness’ dominant mode of reality construction as “monoculture,” Shiva has given us an excellent, descriptive paradigm that works on multiple levels of reality. For example, with food production if you compare monoculture (single crop, large scale farming) to an integrative agricultural design like the Native American traditional practice of the “three sisters” (corn, beans and squash) grown in concert, you see a vast difference. In the latter case, the three plants compliment and support each other through a sophisticated, interdependent kind of process that is productive for the soil and the nutrients of the plants (and hence healthier for human consumption). By contrast monoculture divides these foods into mass produced crops, which leads to the crazy logic that it is OK to bioengineer plants to commit suicide and to become dependent on pesticides. Moreover, monocultural agriculture is petroleum dependent. By destroying soil and water supplies, monoculture deepens the crisis of climate chaos.

But monoculture is not just a metaphor for corporate agriculture: it is a manifestation of an unsustainable mindset, one that happens to dominate the world economic system. When Gary Snyder says, “‘She’s cultured’ shouldn’t mean elite, but more like ‘well-fertilized’” he is talking about the difference between a monoculturally conditioned person versus an “organic” one. Thus, one goal for global evolutionaries should be to identify where monocultural thought exists in our system (and hence within ourselves), so we can build organic cultural practices into our daily lives and social design. However, proponents of monoculture are insidious shape shifters, and are quite good at hiding their agenda, so much so that it is often made attractive and entertaining while masking its impact on our ecological selves and systems. The Internet, for example, is wonderful and promising, making our lives much easier by offering great tools for organizing and collective action. It also facilitates the destruction of land and oceans by enabling global financiers to reduce real places and people into charts, graphics and statistics in order to be traded and exploited for markets. Because the line is now blurred between consumer and citizen, with new technologies we often take on the role of consumers without considering the impact of new, sexy tools on democracy, ecology and our psyches. A monoculturally-oriented person would values the flattening of global cultures into consumers, whereas organically-oriented technologists advocate open-source, diverse forms of collective wisdom that come about through sharing and exchanging from the bottom up.

Many of us New Edgers are attracted to Utopian ideas like the global village, planetary consciousness and enlightened media networks, yet we also have to be on guard for how we internalize modes of thought that have built the techno-scientific world we live in. The danger is that in the process of doing our good work, we simultaneously promote the corporate dream world’s vision of the future rather than one that honors the dream of Gaia. We can’t simply expect technology to cure the problems of global chaos without changing the inner world that built these systems. If it’s true that we are in a process of evolution in which we can bifurcate into a more evolved social and planetary reality, then we also need to critically engaging current assumptions we have about the “global brain” and the rise of Utopian consciousness brought about by emerging technologies and culture. We need to critically evaluate terms like development, progress and evolution, and to disengage them from the neoliberal vision of globalization in order to how they play out in our culture.

The Inspiration

The spark to reconcile ecology with electronic media started several years ago when I was attending the Bioneers conference. There I met with a very influential and famous critic of media and technology. As a media literacy educator, I had been inspired by his panel on globalization and was eager to share with him how I thought media literacy could be a great way to educate people about the traps of globalization. After all, advertising serves as the frontline of global markets by softening cultures for neoliberal economic expansion. When I suggested that media literacy-understanding how media influence our belief systems-could help reveal the dangerous ideology of neoliberalism, I was shocked by his response. “I think media literacy is a good thing,” the bushy-haired sage of the anti-globalization movement said. “But I’m against it because it makes media more interesting.”

Most educators know that half the battle is getting students interested in the material, so it seemed strange that he would decry an approach that is both compelling and important for critically engaging the global economic system. But within my own community of media educators there has been an equally puzzling response to media education that deals with globalization and the environment. Ironically, many media lit folks often see their work as unrelated to the pressing ecological issues of our time, yet if you explore the main tributaries of media education, you would see that they are all intimately connected to ecology. Tobacco, obesity, violence, fast food, sugar, war, and corporate control are among many of the common topics explored by the media literacy agenda, and they all are connected to the ecological crisis of our age. So what gives?

I understand why many ecological activists distrust technology and how making it sexier could deepen our technological mindset, yet mass media also offer an excellent mirror for how the system “thinks.” But simple media analysis is not enough, either. For example, media literacy advocates are great at using their skill for deconstructing tobacco industry marketing tactics, but without applying an ecological perspective to the system of corporate agriculture, they fail to connect how the system that produces commercial tobacco also drives the production of bottled water, soda, industrial dairy and meat, refined sugar, and a host of other addictive products (walk into any 7-Eleven and the inventory gives a nice overview of the chief products of this system). If you dig even deeper, you also see that this constellation of industrial farming practices is dependent on globalization and oil. As Shiva notes in Soil Not Oil, industrial agriculture, peak oil and climate chaos are intimately connected. You cannot address one without the other. Nor can we address ecological consciousness without first deeply comprehending how media impact or belief systems. Just as Buddhists advocate a mindful approach to see how our thinking distorts reality, we must be “media mindful” in order maneuver and disengage those thought patterns that persist within media systems that promote a homogenized global village.

The Connection

As I have come to understand sustainability, what I have found is that there is essentially one underlying quality that defines it: making connections. At the root of global chaos and injustice is disconnection from the planet, from each other, from the cosmos and from our internal selves. In the case of environmentalists and media activists not seeing the interrelationship between their work, both suffer from a general condition of European-born consciousness: “disconnectionitis.” They are not seeing the relationship between mindfully engaging worldviews expressed in media and using that awareness to reconfigure a world based on sustainable principles.

Part of the problem is how we view communication. Despite the emergence of powerful new paradigms, many activists still operate from an outdated model of communications and media based on classical Enlightenment thinking: that ideas are objects that pass from one rational mind to another. The whole notion that a mind is merely a programmable devise controlled by socially generated memes would mean that a person’s consciousness could be downloaded into a machine like the latest hits from iTunes. But consider the implication of such thinking. A disembodied view of information and communication will fail to see that stories (as opposed to “information”) exist within environmental contexts and are always a kind of process that shifts according to the conditions they are conveyed in. Our thoughts and ideas are not “delivered” so that we can “get” them, but exist as a result of an interactive, open loop between people and environments communicating in highly complex and interactive ways that are not easily distilled into bytes of information that pass from one storage device to another. What communicators can learn from ecology is that whole systems require us to focus not on inputs and outputs, but on contexts. On this point cognitive science and Buddhism agree: our bodies are receptors of stimulus that is then translated into models of reality, not the other way around. Moreover, our bodies are not on Earth, but in Earth. If we take McLuhan’s idea that media are extensions of our nervous system, we should also take seriously the idea that our nervous systems are extensions of Gaia. How, then, will that impact the global media system?

It's important to acknowledge that all theories and models of reality are just stories. As “Westerners” we are caught up in grand narratives conditioned by terms like “progress,” “development,” “evolution,” and “nature” that act as centers of gravity defined by past assumptions. Our models of reality orbit around them for reasons we often take for granted; we engage in Utopian assumptions without realizing their historical contexts. Thus, words and ideas have histories that require unpacking. But that isn’t easy. So when it comes to the global village-a beautiful, Utopian idea that is often recycled without deep reflection-my desire is to move outside conditioned concepts and metaphors in order to take a beginner’s mind approach.

The Details

My course, “Mediacology: Media Networks, Deep Ecology and the Dream of the Planet,” attempts to identify modes of thought that are either beneficial or destructive for the next phase of human evolution. The tool of media literacy is a method that enables us to see how the “invader dreaming” manifests in the corporate propaganda system, and ecoliteracy helps us identify the forms of consciousness that are beneficial and co-evolutionary with Gaia. By exploring deep ecology in the context of media and ecoliteracy, this course will help us know more precisely the modes of consciousness that are leading us towards global catastrophe, and how to remedy these forms of dangerous thinking. I like to think of this in terms of the environmental concept of “remediation,” which is a process for repairing damaged ecological zones. In our case we are (re)mediating by repairing a damaged media ecology that promotes unsustainable cultural practices.

This is an “intro” level course (despite my penchant for fancy words), which means anyone with any educational background can participate. We’ll take a DIY philosophical and practical approach, drawing upon collective wisdom and dialog for emergent awareness among the course participants-I’ll do my best to “keep it real.” We’ll mix basic readings (along with recommended, deeper readings), online video, and optional exercises. Though I intend for this to be “seminar-like”-lots of discussion based on readings and questions-I will do some short presentations as well.

“Mediacology” is particularly relevant for people engaged in some kind of servant-leadership, such as community activists, media professionals, teachers, designers, and communicators of one sort or another. But I also believe that any concerned citizen can benefit from this course because everyone needs to understand in a deep way how the global system works and in what ways it impacts our view of the present and future. I believe these tools have consciousness shifting potential (done in conjunction with other personal practices like yoga and meditation).

In the six-week workshop we will explore the following themes:

• Defining ecoliteracy and media literacy
• Exploring the difference between the “world system” and “organic system”
• Ecological intelligence: monoculture vs. organic culture
• Technologies of the Western mind
• Consumer vs. citizen vs. creator
• The brain as computer vs. as garden
• Ecopsychology of the divided mind
• Communication as objects/things
• Media mindfulness
• The bioculturally diverse global village

Readings

I don’t expect people to buy every book on the topics covered in the course, so I will provide some different tiers of books for deeper exploration for those who wish to do so.

Required books:

Quantum Shift in the Global Brain: How the New Scientific Reality Can Change Us and Our World, Ervin Laszlo

Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century, Ed. Georg Sessions

Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World (The Bioneers Series), ed. David W. Orr, Michael K. Stone, Zenobia Barlow, and Fritjof Capra

Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind, Allen D. Kanner, Theodore Roszak, and Mary E. Gomes

Highly Recommended:

The Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology, Theodore Roszak

The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century (Communication and Society (New York, N.Y.).), Marshall McLuhan and Bruce R. Powers

Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology, Vandana Shiva

The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living, Fritjof Capra

Mediacology: A Multicultural Approach to Media Literacy in the Twenty-first Century (Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education), Antonio Lopez

The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, David Abram

Deep Background:

Tree of Knowledge, Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco Varela

Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, Peter M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers

Fair Future: Limited Resources and Global Justice, Wolfgang Sachs

The Dream of the Earth, Thomas Berry

Animate Earth: Science, Intuition, And Gaia, Stephan Harding

Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures, Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash

Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis, Vandana Shiva

A Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey

When Corporations Rule the World, David Korten

The Power of the Machine: Global Inequalities of Economy, Technology, and Environment, Alf Hornborg

Course keywords: world system, deep ecology, media literacy, ecoliteracy, global brain, evolution, technology, global village, bioculture, ecojustice, development, ecopsychology, monoculture, noosphere, consciousness, Gaia, sustainability

Here’s the teaser:

Chakaruna — bridgers — weave between the sacred realm and complex realities of global organizations, working as “servant-leaders.” From Buddhism, to punk, to corporate boardrooms, servant-leaders are necessary catalysts of the emerging evolution.

I hope you have a few minutes to read it and to give some feedback.

Here’s a link to the article.

But it wasn’t until ’89 when my Oakland apartment was destroyed–with me in it–that I really understood the terrifying power of Gaia. I had just gotten off work and was drinking a coffee while listening to public radio. The program host said something like, “Oh, there’s an earthquake. And it’s really bad…” at which point a thunderous sound unlike any you will ever hear in your lifetime violently roared through East Oakland. A wave of disintegration and rip of subterranean thunder sprung everything in the air propelling me to do only what my legs commanded, which was to run as fast as I could to get out of the building. My terrified roommate later recalled that he would never forget seeing me sprint out the door as ceiling chunks exploded on my head.

In the building’s hallway, which now stretched to infinity, time slowed down until an eerie quietude enveloped me. It was like one of those dreams when you’re running as fast as you can, but you’re moving through gelatin. In this instant, time sloped to a standstill. The building rocked and rolled; I was sure that it was moments from total failure and that I, too, would become a pile of splinters within a matter of seconds. Then the strangest thing happened. Tranquility permeated my being, while the proverbial movie trailer of my life played itself out in my mind’s eye. A voice as nonchalantly as a traffic cop handing out a speeding ticket says, “Oh well, better luck next time.”

Twenty year later the memory of that near death haunts me. Oddly, it’s the moment of assured destruction and total surrender that is the most beautiful. Afterward when the mind starts to make sense of the whole thing is when terror enters and stays there forever like an evil stepmother hiding in the mental attic. This is what ties me to those poor people who are now digging out of their life’s ruins in central Italy. It’s hard to convey to someone who doesn’t know the feeling, the sensation that at any moment Gaia will decide to open up and swallow you whole without a second’s warning. The trembling comes, and you wonder if this time is really it. When it passes, you wonder if somewhere else in the world civilization has ended. Every six hours I get this feeling again and again, a chilling, icy, chemical feeling when the brain’s survival mechanism is kicking in and all those illusions of control rattle away.

And you beg to return to that moment of near destruction which invokes oneness with the universe and a sense of peace once again.

I’ve written an extended essay about the conclusion of Battlestar Galactica. I hope you will click through and read the whole piece at Reality Sandwich.

Reality Sandwich | Battlestar Galactica Mystique:

Spoiler alert!

“Earth, a dream we’ve been chasing for a long time.”–Admiral Adama

So concludes one of the greatest epic runs of sci-fi on TV: Battlestar Galactica (reimagined). Ripe with sci-fi’s prime directive to comment not on the future, but the present reality, like its cult-like progenitor Star Trek, BSG was rich in allegory, philosophy, and literary references. A sure sign of this is the how BSG generated a cottage industry of fan Websites, books, podcasts, Webisodes, fan films, chats and wikis that manifested all the positives of the current convergence media environment. By leveraging the collective intelligence and participatory components of the contemporary pop commons, BSG illuminated a vast zeitgeist embedded in the historical tension between humans and their technological tools. The show was a kind of conjuring of the collective unconsciousness, with the producers acting as media alchemists distilling cultural properties like mad mediacologists hermeneutically absorbed by the world’s pop culture dream code.