thinking: relating- celebrating :-)

As in many countries, New Zealand has had several prime city locations occupied in recent weeks as part of the Occupy Wall St OWS movement.

OWS is an ongoing movement which aims to reset the economic agendas and local debates about equality of citizens and to try and re-balance some of the competing corporate and government agendas towards more balanced outcomes.

As in many protest movements there are other opportunists who seek to tilt the activities in a certain way but on the whole OWS is a consciousness raising exercise that everyone (especially corporates and government) would do well to take note of.

Like many I have been intrigued as to what this is all about in the local context and what (if any) connections there are to the Arab Spring protests and other consciousness raising movements around the world.

In my view there are definite connections between these movements and the rise of the NGO sector globally. Since the anti-globalisation protests in 1999 at the Seattle WTO conference there has been growing disquiet at the very far reaching implications of economic and political change around the world being driven by small elites at the expence of local and humanitarian interests.

The Canadian documentary The Corporation from 2003 captures some of the debate from many perspectives. Apparently there were 33 hours of video made and so the main documentary is a relative snapshot of expert views.

I was most impressed by CEO  Ray Anderson (from the Interface carpet & fabric company) who had his own wake up call towards developing his company along more sustainable lines. Ray mentioned an author called Paul Hawken and an earlier book by Paul called The Ecology of Commerce. Even more interesting to me is a more recent book by Hawken called

“Blessed Unrest, How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming published by Viking Press (New York) in May 2007, argues that a vast world-changing “movement with no name” is now forming, which Hawken believes will prevail. He conceives of this “movement” as developing not by ideology but rather through the identification of what is and is not humane, like an immune system. ”

I haven’t been able to get a copy of the book to read yet but the hypothesis sounds very plausible and it does fit in what we see around us in the politics and economic debates of many nations.

Last year I saw the documentary Inside Job which among many arguments makes the depressing point that President Obama has not fixed any of the broken financial systems and structures in the U.S. In fact he has re-appointed the very people responsible for causing many of the financial meltdowns back into new roles where they can continue abusing the trust of voters despite having blood on their hands.

And so we know for sure now that US politics is completely corrupt and broken to the point that a reforming president elect has been so completely dominated by the commercial interests he said he wanted to fix.

The other key point in the that documentary was an observation that many of the high profile economists and academics had their viewpoints deeply compromised by their own commercial conflicts. That is – they were part of the problem where financial sector lobbyists have / had around 5 lobbyists for every single congress person. Never mind the lobbyists for other sectors.

How and Where does this Affect Us?

New Zealand like many other countries is being pressured by huge corporate interests mostly from the US to accept commercially driven laws designed to protect globalisation and to undermine local sovereignty.

One example of this is that the debate over Pharmac and US TPP negotiations or should that be stand-over tactics.

Back in May this year the PM said of TPP and Pharmac

“Let’s wait and see – there are a lot of component parts here. We’re talking about access, through a free trade agreement, to arguably the largest economy in the world. That’s the prize if you can complete a US FTA, which is what TPP is,” he said.

More obviously though when the US sneezes we still tend to catch the cold. The US despite its downward spiral still dominates world trade thinking and any changes to such rules impacts greatly on smaller nations like New Zealand.

I’m with Kennedy Graham of the Greens on this issue.

“Graham said the Greens rejected the assertion a free trade deal was a massive prize for New Zealand, saying the massive prize would be the predation of New Zealand’s iconic agencies by American corporations.

If the US walked away from the negotiations because Pharmac was taken off the table “so be it”, he said.”

While looking for the Paul Hawken book  mentioned above I found and bought a copy of The Price of Civilization, Economics and Ethics after the Fall by Jeffrey Sachs. That is my holdiday reading. More on that next post when I finish it for now here is a video clip from him.

As Jeffrey says “The US is in a structural crisis”…

Update: viA PAS and Twitter 4:18pm

“Result!

Government announces delay in 92A enactment until March 29. If no agreement by then, it will be suspended.
Hat-tip: MsBehaviour on Twitter.

My reading is that this puts pressure on the owners’ lobby to deal.

Even if agreement reached, government to monitor first six months and review.” from Hard News

—

More progress podcast from Sean Plunket on Radio NZ  Sean Plunkett on Radio NZ talks to the Commerce Minister.

The Contents of this post have been restricted until Feb 24 to protest against the new New Zealand Guilt Upon Accusation law ‘Section 92A’ that calls for internet disconnection based on accusation.

Earlier background

Lessig Reviewed on Public Address

“Copyright must change”, was the main thrust of Lessig’s argument. Carrying on as we are is not an option. If change had happened 10 or 15 years ago, file-sharing could’ve made musicians millions. Instead, they’ve seen not a cent. Artists live through exposure, and fans want to share the love. Harness that passion, rather than trying to suppress it. Don’t raise the next generation under a mantle of oppression that seeks to mute their expression of “the songs of the day.” Creativity will flourish with or without changes, but right now the system is designed for a different time and different challenges. It doesn’t encourage, in fact actively discourages, new expressions.”

Later posts on NZ Copyright

Blackout Bingo

Mark Harris contains Background on select committee process and Official Information

Lawrence Lessig (38:45) was interviewed on Radio NZ by Kim Hill on 21st of Jan 2009 Podcast here titled Copyright and Corruption

Christmas is holiday time for many of us in the Southern hemisphere. Sun, sand, surf, swimming – you get the idea.

It also seems that when we get a chance to have more than a week away from our office and/or jobs a much higher percentage of us rethink our jobs.

Colleagues working in the recruitment sector tell me that this triggers a flurry of activity as people look for new jobs or look for changes to their work situation in some other ways.

I suspect changing jobs can bring with it a higher level of satisfaction on some parameters but the underlying dynamics will have more to do with personal awareness, as well as other conscious and unconscious choices we have made.

Many of us find that our intentions and our level of engagement are not always consistent with our work life. 

For myself I have days where I am totally “in the zone” or flow of my various projects and something about those times means that I am on exactly the right frequency or pitch to respond best to whatever the day brings. 

Other times it seems like I should really move to another project as it seems like there is no “flow”.  Luckily I work on multiple projects so I have more flexibility but that kind of switching doesn’t always improve the flow at all. 

Which suggests that it is not so much the content or subject but something about my approach to the task at hand that can transform “work” into something that energizes as part of the engagement process. 

As it happens two newly released  videos on TED visit some of these ideas in much greater depth and add alternative perspectives from the worlds of psychology and design.

Mihaly Czikszentmihaly presented on flow in 2004 but the video was only released in Oct ’08.

Mihaly  asks, “What makes a life worth living?” Noting that money cannot make us happy, he looks to those who find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities that bring about a state of “flow”. His view is that  ”creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives”

And in a partner presentation (21 mins) Paula Scher talks through some of the creative cycle ideas from a different perspective. Her presentation comes from a May 2008 design conference on serious play.

I’d be interested to know what readers think about these topics after having watched both videos and or other insights that you may have. (Mihaly alt video link)
  

Paula Scher looks back at a life in design (she’s done album covers, books, the Citibank logo …) and pinpoints the moment when she started really having fun. With a career that fuses rock and roll, corporate identity creation, and impressionistic geography. (Alternative Paula Scher video link )

It would be wonderful if we could all just switch jobs the moment they move from being serious fun to being solemn. So love the cycle idea but wondering how it might apply to most.

Also it does rather look like labelling stuff is a recurring theme in Paula’s work but there appears to be no self awareness or recognition of this at all which seems puzzling. That is  - I don’t think she is really changing too much about her content so it is not the subject matter that provides the “serious fun” but rather something else.

Mihaly’s and Paula’s presentations look like perfect companion pieces here. They use quite different approaches to talk about much of the same territory but (ahem) Mihaly would probably be the better dinner guest in my view.