Globalization, a Millenia-Long Process

"Globalization isn't a recent policy; it's been in place among us for thousands of years."

This one's obvious, but for whatever reason, often escapes the awareness of those bringing it up in a discussion. Globalization sounds to many like a process no more than maybe twenty years old because it wasn't discussed so much before then. That doesn't erase the processes of transformation that dispersed humans across the globe and the very incendiary processes that dispersed the culture borne of the Agricultural Revolution 10,000 or so years ago. Daniel Quinn's writing in Ishmael helped me understand this simple concept years ago, and I especially liked how he put this in If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways.

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Freedom Summer 2009, After All?

I just received the greatest forwarded email ever. Maybe. Most of the text is copied from the web hub for the Summer of Solutions, but it also has a very vague blurb about manifestations of this ambitious summer project in my favorite city, Omaha. I'm not too enthused about the root of this wide-reaching grassroots effort in the global warming crusade, by the vague approach, and such, but I'm still very impressed that this has been brought to my attention since we murmured in Prosem not too long ago about how to rally together a Freedom Summer 2009, trying to think up the most important issue(s) to put our weight behind. I came up with lots of new twists on my crazy visionary projects after our discussions, and I certainly imagined cores of activity in all major cities across the nation. Might this Summer of Solutions be such a vehicle, such that we don't have to start from scratch?

I realize there is suddenly lots of activist organizational energy in the air, riding hot on the heels of that ubiquitous Obama-mania, but what the heck? Isn't the point to reach critical mass, to work with the greatest outcome for the least effort, and wouldn't this be one way to do so? Individual projects can always branch off from the global warming-obsession core of Grand Aspirations, the umbrella organization for the Summer of Solutions (I know I'm a lone wolf with this nonchalant perspective, and that's okay; It's not that I don't think things will start changing soon or dramatically -- I just have no problem with a cataclysmic brand-new Ice Age getting us to reconsider and restructure, reshape our priorities, our luxuries, and our lifestyles. La!), just like the wealth of energy poured into Common Ground Relief in New Orleans in '05-'06 and beyond generated many unique initiatives. I sometimes feel guilty I did not return to contribute more to Common Ground's project, but the most important thing my February 2006 winter break in New Orleans taught me was how pervasive the real issues wrapped up in the level of devastation of Hurricane Katrina were all across America (with similar or related problems existing almost everywhere in the world at this point, but you already know my opinion on the history of that tumorous globe-absorption!).

I especially like the first paragraph, with the way it frames its project in the holistic environmental-social justice way I'm always going off about (I have some quibbles with the second paragraph, but if it seems pressing enough, I'll bring it up again later). The vocabulary of "solutionaries" is certainly intriguing as well, though I'm not sure what I think of it. First impression of it is that it sounds kind of cheesy, childish, quixotic, but perhaps that kind of childish, unfettered energy and outlook is one of the attitudes we're most desperate for in our milieu?

Here's the text of the email (with necessary basic proofreading provided by yours truly):

"We need to take steps, however small to begin with, towards creating a local sustainable economy that enables us to work, eat, and take care of our families, bring the neighbor back into the 'hood, and slow down global warming." – Grace Lee Boggs

In the face of a failing economy, an energy crisis, fragmented and inequitable communities, and the growing threat of global warming, people are coming together to create and implement solutions that address all of these challenges together. These people are solutionaries - community leaders who work as innovative organizers across issue lines to build the green economy as an engine for local opportunity, climate and energy solutions, and social justice.

This summer, youth will gather in communities across the nation for a Summer of Solutions - a training ground for its participants and a launching pad for a new solution-based vision of community. With the support of local partnerships, forged from a national network of fellow solutionaries, participants will create self-sustaining projects that will have a direct impact on their communities and that will serve as models for others to build on.

In Omaha, we hope to create connections between diverse groups of people by hosting a completely open conference focused on how citizens can work together to help create self-sustaining communities. This conference will be run in the vein of "open space technology," a way of facilitating dialogue that encourages open and honest discussions on relevant community issues in Omaha by welcoming all attendees, ideas, and outcomes. This conference aims to shape not only the direction of the Omaha Summer of Solutions program but also include the future of climate action and community activism in Omaha. By working in the broader metropolitan community, we hope to promote a strong platform that creates a renewable and affordable energy economy in Omaha neighborhoods. This would include building a Sustainable Community Model in a neighborhood where we would work directly with citizens to demonstrate how local food systems and local economies can be set up and operated while developing a stronger sense of community.

Summer of Solutions: Omaha is a grassroots, volunteer-based, people-powered program, and we rely on people just like you for just about everything – from the project expertise, to the local partnerships, to the financial support for the young people dedicating their summer to build the solutions. We are hosted by a student-led group called Grand Aspirations, which is fiscally sponsored by Global Exchange.

Thoughts?

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Local? Global? How Should We Live and Interact?

Written March 10, 2008, especially for Proseminar, on a topic both of interest to me and of relevance to the program. Not my most stunning writing, but decent enough in its clarity and simplicity...Nevertheless, this essay ends on a note that is very much central to a large component of my upcoming thesis work, gauge-ing various degrees of sustainability across the gamut of human societies (as much as possible, of course). Also, we discussed regionalism today in politics (hoorah!)...

“Now, it’s feeling like a small town with six billion people downtown at a little sidewalk fair in Earth Town Square. There are Germans selling Audis filled with gasoline from Saudis to Australians sipping Kenyan coffee in their Chinese shoes; Argentines are meeting Mongols over french fries at McDonald’s, and the place looks strangely tiny when you see it from the moon…” – “Earth Town Square” by Peter Mayer (singer/songwriter)

Community! As social creatures, we humans cannot extricate ourselves completely from our social surroundings. We come to know the world through them, and there is strong evidence to support the claim that we leave this world by severing our ties to our society. We cannot live alone with any degree of safety comparable to that enjoyed by, say, a band of foragers. We may define our community in different ways, yet the integral role of other people to our prospects for survival defines our relationships as essential to our lives. Could this also possibly be a sufficient way for us to define home?

Let us define community as a group of people living in close proximity and interacting with each other and their surroundings. This definition stresses interconnectedness, a concept borrowed from ecology, which, after all, applies to us humans as much as to other creatures. Our focus now shifts to the question of the community’s surroundings. Where does the community end and the external world begin? How large is the purview of the community? How large can a community grow before it ceases to be a community?

In other words, the question is how should we define local? By miles? By regions? National or physical geographic borders? Population? At this point, I become unsure. Much writing has recently been released on the benefits of local-scale economies and the scourge of their global-scale counterparts. Still another set of writers continues to vouch for the advantages of globalization, a world in which “Australians [sip] Kenyan coffee in their Chinese shoes; Argentines [meet] Mongols for french fries at McDonald’s.” This is the part where an exploration of the various texts, for and against globalization, would be quite useful. I would like to research the various arguments and see which ones make the most sense and which ones fail to address critical considerations. There are many related questions I would like to address— How global is globalization? If two countries are trading with each other and nobody else, does that really count as global? Should different regions maintain strong communication and contact, or should localization involve greater degrees of isolation? Should communities or regions struggling to maintain a local focus create a network amongst themselves? How much does interconnection affect the outcome for each individual community or region? To what degree should we trade outside of the local system? Does local entail being completely self-sufficient? What does remaining incompletely self-sufficient mean for everyone involved? Who is the self remaining sufficient? Local government? The family? The individual? And how will we define or measure sufficiency anyway?

William McDonough once stated his design standards in a TED Talk, “Our goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world, with clean air, water, soil and power – economically, equitably, ecologically, and elegantly enjoyed.” I would like to examine how local and global focuses could contribute to the development of William McDonough’s standards. Would a local focus be in danger of becoming overrun by the tyranny of the majority? Would a global focus inherently counter the ideals?

Discerning the advantages of local or global systems is an intriguing question and very relevant to our time. How should we live? What will provide the best results for people? How should we interact? How does communication modify the course a local or global system takes? The questions proliferate. Because community has a crucial role in our lives, it makes sense for us to ask in what form or forms the community is most effective to us. The next question then becomes, “What are the primary functions of community?” How else would we define effectiveness if we did not understand what was supposed to be effective? In any case, questions about the way to define community, local, home, or global, and the way (or the extent to which) those systems should interact, are increasingly important in our contemporary world, where our sustainable behavior or lack thereof will reflect themselves in our own future. A final question, then, makes us wonder, “How does the concept of ‘our children’s future’ correlate to change? Can it be an effective inciting force, or is it an abdication of responsibility?” It seems we might find some direction in exploring the nuances of all these questions.

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