Ten Directions invites you to an exciting development opportunity with their anticipated Next Stage Facilitation Program. The 6- weeks online training goes live from April 20th- May 25th and is oriented for professionals who want to push their edge, take more risks and find more flow, ease and effectiveness in working with groups. This is perfect for anyone who is interested in taking the first step in the Certified Integral Facilitator ® path and is officially accredited by the ICF to provide 23.5 CCEU’s
Even better, in partnership with Ten Directions we are offering a DISCOUNT FOR NCDD members of 20% off the tuition until April 10 **** use coupon JOY2NCDD ****
To find out more and register, read below or navigate to the Ten Directions’ page here.
April 20-May 25 Next Stage Facilitation
This is the first step in the Certified Integral Facilitator ® path.
Integral Facilitator ® is focused on growing capacities for collaborative work – in communities, groups and organizations. Facilitative leaders, coaches, facilitators, and mediators, and change makers to transform how people and groups can accomplish more together, create thriving dynamic communities, and shape the kind of culture we want to live in.
Next Stage Facilitation is an advanced leadership program, designed to expand your perception of yourself as a facilitative leader, your impact in the room, and your potential for shaping group experience. It integrates deep insights from the fields of adult development, Zen Awareness and Integral theory, combined with core competencies of masterful facilitation.
This live 6 week online training is oriented to self-actualizing professionals who want to push their edges, take more risks, and find more flow, ease and effectiveness in working with groups.
In this training, you’ll refine your ability to:
– Rejuvenate a room by addressing what is exciting or even threatening (and often both)
– Go off-script to adapt in the moment, following energy to sustain engagement
– Make “facilitator moves” to increase trust and connection
You’ll experience hands-on practice and receive targeted personal feedback and coaching from the faculty team, alongside other high-caliber facilitative leaders, change makers and innovators engaging with courageous intentions and fresh outlooks.
Being in the room with a team of confident, adaptive, and insightful facilitators provides a rich and immersive container for experiential learning. In every moment, there is something we can learn from. Please share this with your colleagues so that they can take advantage of this opportunity – And – even better – here is a special DISCOUNT FOR NCDD members of 20% off the tuition until April 10 **** use coupon JOY2NCDD ****
Good afternoon, friends in Civics. Are you looking for some free self paced professional development in civics education? Consider enrolling in our The Civics Classroom Course Series! A certificate of completion, for 5 hours of professional development, will be issued for each course successfully completed. While the first course, The Prepared Classroom, is especially designed for Florida civics teachers, the courses are free and open to all civics and government educators throughout the country.
Are you already enrolled in any of these courses? That’s great! We have had over 200 people complete these courses succesfully! While we want to definitely encourage you to take your time in completing these courses (we understand your schedule!), please be aware that as of April 01, 2021 we will be removing participants who have not visited/taken part in their courses since last summer. You are of course free to re-enroll should you be removed. We believe that these can make a difference and support your professional learning and your students.
This course series provides educators with online, self-paced, professional learning that develops the knowledge and skills necessary to help students achieve their roles as participants in civic life. Each course will take approximately five hours to complete. While it is recommended that participants complete the courses in order, it is NOT required.
The awarding of a certificate for each course in this series is based on successful completion of the pre and post tests, module quizzes, post course survey, and a passing final grade in the course. Certificates are emailed by staff of the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship at the Lou Frey Institute within two weeks of course completion.
A Prepared Classroom provides teachers with an understanding of:
Course descriptions and the Civics End-of-Course Test Item Specifications,
How to utilize curriculum and pacing guides,
The value of strategic planning and preparing for instruction, and
Making informed decisions about instruction based on formative and summative data.
I have a bunch of colleagues who do serious work on stoicism, and, well, I don’t. (1) But I’m teaching moral psychology again this semester and there’s a lot of relevant insights from various debates that I think are stoicism adjacent. (2) So here’s a kind of typology:
There’s stuff-upper-lip stoicism (which I associate with Rudyard Kipling and pasty British imperialism) that engages in emotional compression in the name of power-wielding, declaims the passions as unmanly, and has this dangerous tendency to explode when challenged. It’s actually deeply sentimental in its denial of emotion—it puts emotions to work ordering the world towards a hierarchical goal, that requires the passionate pretend to dispassion. Kipling’s poem “If” captures it perfectly, (“If you can fill the unforgiving minute/With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,/Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,/And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”) but so does Henley’s Invictus. (“I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul.”) And to be clear I like both poems!
There’s the stoicism of the weak: don’t get angry or resentful even at outrageous injustice because these reactions are seen as challenges to powerful and punished. Nietzsche hated this kind of stoicism: it makes all kinds of external circumstances over into an unchangeable order of Nature, flattening mortality, morality, and mores into a single situation we must merely find a way to stomach. Of course this can be pragmatic but it denies so many possibilities in the name of survival. Ironically, a lot of Admiral Stockdale’s “Courage Under Fire” probably should be classified here, in large part because he embraces Epictetus over Marcus Aurelius, and because his main practice is in his incarceration rather than in his warfighting.
That said, I think a crucial precursor to all these ideas is David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Allen was a heroin addict and he transformed his drug recovery and New Age mysticism into a project management method for translating projects into discrete tasks, and allowing the careful management of those tasks to free oneself of anxiety. It’s all about preventing perseveration and allowing easy flow states—but it also suits automation and software replacement really well. That’s why Tim Ferris claims stoicism is “an ideal ‘operating system’ for thriving in high-stress environments.”
I sometimes talk about the way that doing logic sets—or programming for that matter—can feel like turning off your brain. That’s obviously not true: it’s “cognitively loaded” work, and confusing if you don’t know where to start. But it’s also mechanical and somewhat pleasant for its ability to give you direct feedback. The word “flow” seems to apply here: GTD is all about how to reduce big projects into discrete tasks small enough to develop that meditative flow while completing. And meditation holds out the same promise: to relate to your life with a little less attachment, to do your work with less friction, and yet still be very productive. The “Bayesian” rationalists sometimes promise a similar experience of mechanically updating ones’ priors as new information comes in—but I’ll note that one of the first metacognitive strategies of the Less Wrong rationalists is the Stoic move of separating the world into facts and beliefs, external realities and internal states. Once that is done there’s no reason to stress about it any longer: the goal is to make one’s internal states (of belief) match up with the external realities, and to bracket the various anxieties and hopes that often lead us into false beliefs.
What worries me about Silicon Valley’s mindfulness stoicism is the sense that it combines all the worst elements of world mastery and manliness with the stoicism of the weak: acceptance of injustice, the embrace of a hostile natural (and social!) world to which we must conform, and a quietism that locates our agency in that compliance while praising it as mastery. Ironically, some of the Bayesian rationalists are not at all quietistic. They create new things and institutions, organize communities, and protect their interests. There are social norms and trendsetters. But I think it’s pretty obvious that these activities fall outside of their principles, and that to a certain extent they are setting aside their stoicism when they do it. (That’s particularly obvious when they take non-rationalists to task for putative betrayals.)
There’s a lot more to be said about the intersections of buddhism and stoicism (and indeed about the intersection of Buddhism and Stoicism) but I have been pondering the role of the subject. The detachment of the stoic is hyper-individualistic in some ways: it counsels the precarity and fragility of others and the external world, but in the name of self-discipline, personal honor, and a duty to integrity. The detachment of the buddhists (and Buddhists) can’t be so easily incorporated here: embracing no-self and emptiness can be a lot more challenging and disruptive. So while Silicon Valley has adopted meditative practice without a care for the metaphysics that might be smuggled in, it may also be that these practices carry their own phenomenological lessons and insights. Perhaps the techbros are going to learn some things in spite of themselves.
Do you have good experience in marketing and social media and are looking for a good part time job (10-15 hours a week, potentially more if the situation requires it) that can use and build your experience? Do you care about civic education? We would love to have you join the Lou Frey Institute. Take a look, please! And if you have any questions, always happy to talk more!
The Marketing Outreach Professional provides leadership and support on strategy, communications, media relations, and ongoing process improvement for the marketing and implementation of Lou Frey Institute and Florida Joint Center for Citizenship programs and activities. This position will collaborate with relevant LFI staff in developing communication and outreach strategies for ongoing LFI programs while supporting community relations efforts of Institute leadership while also analyzing the effectiveness of relevant strategies. Responsibilities include: Implement new strategies to improve social media performance and engagement Assist in managing multiple social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin Track and monitor outcomes and statistics for website, social media, and e-communication Support organization initiatives with mass communications through social media Develop a social media content calendar and makes content web updates Assist with writing, developing, and strategizing online content Review communications from leadership to make sure messages are transparent and authentic Monitor Institute reputation Assist in marketing plan preparation, including budget and short and long-term strategy Apply various social media tactics in creating brand awareness and generating inbound traffic that strengthens company’s social media presence Produce marketing copy for our website
Take a look and think about working with a small and dedicated team to meet the needs of civic education in Florida and beyond!
Sponsored by Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life and the association “i-dijaspora,” Switzerland
Co-organized by Peter Levine, Tufts University, and Nenad Stojanovi?, University of Geneva, with academic collaborations in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Discussions about deliberative democracy represent one significant area of focus for the emerging interdisciplinary field of Civic Studies (Levine and So?tan 2014). Deliberative democracy is also a component of the Council of Europe’s Action Plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina and inspires ongoing work in the City of Mostar. An international group of scholars and practitioners will meet from 8 October (evening) until 10 October (midday) to learn about the deliberations in Mostar, to consider theoretical frameworks and their practical applications, and to discuss the value–and possible limitations–of deliberation. Participants will be asked to read selected texts in advance and will spend the time in discussion.
Approximately 20 participants will be selected on the basis of their backgrounds and expertise, level of interest in the topic, and diversity of perspectives. Postgraduate students, university faculty, journalists, and experienced practitioners from civil society and government are welcome to apply. Applicants are welcome from any country. There is no fee for participation, and meals will be provided. Limited subsidies will be available for travel and lodgings for some of those who demonstrate need. The language of the readings and discussions will be English.
To apply, please complete this form, which will include a request to upload your CV. Deadline: 30 April 2021
Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life will award a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Civic Science for the 2021-22 academic year (June 1, 2021-May 31, 2022). This postdoctoral fellowship is offered in partnership with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation in Dayton, OH and involves some work at Kettering’s offices in Dayton as well as full-time employment at Tufts in the Boston area.
The Tisch College Civic Science initiative (https://tischcollege.tufts.edu/civic-studies/civic-science), led by Dr. Peter Levine and Dr. Samantha Fried, aims to reframe the relationships among scientists and scientific institutions, institutions of higher education, the state, the media and the public. It also asks about the relationships and distinctions among those institutions, historically and today. With this context in mind, Civic Science seeks to…
Reconfigure the national conversation on divisive and complex issues that are both scientific and political in nature, thereby connecting scientific institutions, research, and publications to people’s values, beliefs, and choices.
Define and advance the public good in science, thereby finding ways for scientific institutions to better serve communities.
Explore the concept of knowledge as a commons (or common-pool resource), developing a line of work pioneered by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues
Develop curricula that simultaneously attend to scientific and civic issues and that teach students to understand and communicate both kinds of narratives together to a variety of audiences.
Develop approaches to democratic governance that are attuned to the role of the scientific enterprise in society.
Ask what it would mean to earn the trust of communities that have been historically marginalized by the institution of science, and what science would look like if this was a priority.
Intervene at institutional and grassroots levels, alongside a robust theoretical analysis.
A PhD is required. Applicants must also demonstrate a strong interest in investigating the intersections of science and civic matters as the focus of their postdoctoral year.
Civic Science is interdisciplinary, and this fellowship is open to specialists in any relevant field.
Qualifications
A scholar with a Ph.D. in any relevant discipline who is not yet tenured.
Desirable qualifications include, but are not limited to, the following:
A background, degree, or certificate in a STEM –– or STEM-adjacent –– field, OR
Work on strengthening, designing, or evaluating democratic processes, OR
A background in the Bloomington School approach to political economy and/or studies of common-pool resources, OR
A background in political science or political theory, OR
Previous work on the connections between community health and civic life, OR
A background in science, technology, and society (STS), OR
A background in critical theory, media studies, rhetoric, philosophy of science and technology, or science communication.
The ideal candidate may have more than one of these backgrounds.
The Postdoctoral Fellow will conduct research related to Civic Science, both independently and in collaboration with Peter Levine, Samantha Fried, and the Kettering Foundation. The Fellow may teach or co-teach one course to undergraduates in the Civic Studies Major. The Fellow will attend orientation and research meetings at the Kettering Foundation as requested.
A cover letter that includes a description of your research goals during the fellowship year (which must relate to Civic Science) and courses you would like to offer;
Your CV;
One writing sample;
Three letters of recommendation which should be uploaded by your recommenders to Interfolio directly; and
Teaching course evaluations, if available.
Opens March 17, 2021 and will continue until the position is filled, or May 20. Questions about the position should be addressed to Dr. Peter Levine, Associate Dean of Tisch College at Peter.Levine@tufts.edu.
Non-Discrimination Statement Our institution does not discriminate against job candidates on the basis of actual or perceived gender, gender identity, race, color, national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, or religion. Tufts University, founded in 1852, prioritizes quality teaching, highly competitive basic and applied research and a commitment to active citizenship locally, regionally and globally. Tufts University also prides itself on creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community. Current and prospective employees of the university are expected to have and continuously develop skill in, and disposition for, positively engaging with a diverse population of faculty, staff, and students. Tufts University is an Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action Employer. We are committed to increasing the diversity of our faculty and staff and fostering their success when hired. Members of underrepresented groups are welcome and strongly encouraged to apply. If you are an applicant with a disability who is unable to use our online tools to search and apply for jobs, please contact us by calling Johny Laine in the Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) at 617.627.3298 or at Johny.Laine@tufts.edu. Applicants can learn more about requesting reasonable accommodations at http://oeo.tufts.edu/.
Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
Tufts University, founded in 1852, prioritizes quality teaching, highly competitive basic and applied research, and a commitment to active citizenship locally, regionally, and globally. Tufts University also prides itself on creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community. Current and prospective employees of the university are expected to have and continuously develop skill in, and disposition for, positively engaging with a diverse population of faculty, staff, and students.
Tufts University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. We are committed to increasing the diversity of our faculty and staff and fostering their success when hired. Members of underrepresented groups are welcome and strongly encouraged to apply. See the University’s Non-Discrimination statement and policy here https://oeo.tufts.edu/policies-procedures/non-discrimination/. If you are an applicant with a disability who is unable to use our online tools to search and apply for jobs, please contact us by calling Johny Laine in the Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) at 617-627-3298 or atjohny.laine@tufts.edu. Applicants can learn more about requesting reasonable accommodations at http://oeo.tufts.edu.
Exciting news, friends! In the Spring of 2017, The Lou Frey Institute (LFI) and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida (BGCCF) established a partnership, designed to help implement and support the creation of a Civic Action Project (CAP) Program in BGCCF’s After School Zone for middle school students. This program was adapted for middle schools and after-school environments from the original Civics Action Project first developed by the Constitutional Rights Foundation. Since the launch of this effort, over 100 middle school students have participated in the CAP program, where they identify a community issue or problem of interest to them, research it, and propose a detailed plan for how to address it. In support of these students and their facilitators is the Institute’s Civics Instructional Specialist, Chris Spinale. Participating students attend a Civic Education Showcase on the UCF campus where they present their projects and findings to community stakeholders and policy makers.
Because of the hard work of BGCCF staff, site facilitators, CAP teachers, and their club members, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida’s Civic Action Project Program for the After School Zone was named the recipient of the 2020 Best Overall Program Impact Excellence Award for the State of Florida by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) and Florida Area Council.
CAP took home the prize for the State of Florida as the overall standout program among all the Boys & Girls Club programs in the state. Kelvin Curry, Director of Middle School Programs for BGCCF, thanked LFI for its partnership and all it has afforded their club members.
Both LFI and BGCCF are committed to continuing the hard work of cultivating a citizenry that is informed, engaged, and active. Questions about the program can be directed to LFI Interim Director Steve Masyada (Stephen.masyada@ucf.edu) or Civics Instructional Specialist Chris Spinale (Christopher.spinale@ucf.edu).
Good morning, friends in Civics! As you likely know if you are at all familiar with our work, the Lou Frey Institute is constantly looking to improve our work and ensure that our resources are the best that they can be. As the state has begun introducing new/revised benchmarks for K-12 civics (to be released for public comment soon) and ELA (the BEST Standards), we want to start revisions on existing materials and the development of new materials sooner rather than later. However, we want to prioritize what teachers feel they need most, and in pursuit of that, we have crafted a short survey for elementary grade band teachers to help us in our initial stages. This survey will simply ask you to prioritize the types of resources you would like us to address at the K-5 level, and also asks whether you might be interested in a compensated opportunity to be involved in the work. So if you have a few minutes and teach K-5 in Florida, please let us know how we can help you. Complete our short survey, and share with others who might have interest.
If you’re a good ancestor of the Enlightenment, you probably believe that “nature” is something entirely separate from us. We moderns live at a sanitized distance from messy biophysical realities, after all. Lately, this casual premise of ours has been taking some serious hits, however, with the acceleration of climate change, species extinctions, collapsing coral reefs, cataclysmic weather events, and more.
In recent weeks, I've noticed a big uptick in the number of creative overtures to the realm previously known as nature (a term that implies that humanity and nature are separate). I decided to bring together some of the more imaginative gambits that I've encountered.
What underlies each example, it seems, is our aspiration to treat “nature” as a living system of diverse elements, each with its own agency and imperatives. Or as Oren Lyons, a Native American Faithkeeper of the Seneca Nation, put it years ago: “What you people call your natural resources, our people call our relatives.”
So how do we get better acquainted with our nonhuman relatives?
A New Pronoun for the Natural World
Robin Wall Kimmerer, the celebrated author of Braiding Sweetgrass, suggests we should start with the idea of using a new pronoun when referring to nature. In a recent essay in The Ecologist magazine, she urges us to avoid the use of the pronoun “it” in such circumstances:
“Objectification of the natural world reinforces the notion that our species is somehow more deserving of the gifts of the world than the other 8.7 million species with whom we share the planet. Using 'it' absolves us of moral responsibility and opens the door to exploitation. When Sugar Maple is an 'it' we give ourselves permission to pick up the saw. 'It' means it doesn't matter….
"Singing whales, talking trees, dancing bees, birds who make art, fish who navigate, plants who learn and remember. We are surrounded by intelligences other than our own, by feathered people and people with leaves. But we’ve forgotten. There are many forces arrayed to help us forget – even the language we speak….
"In indigenous ways of knowing, other species are recognized not only as persons, but also as teachers who can inspire how we might live. We can learn a new solar economy from plants, medicines from mycelia, and architecture from the ants. By learning from other species, we might even learn humility.
Kimmerer informs us that the proper Anishinaabe word for beings of the living earth is Bemaadiziiaaki. Since that's a mouthful for we English speakers, she suggests shortening it to “ki” or “kin.” “Might the path to sustainability be marked by grammar?” asks Kimmerer.
Eco-co-operativess called Zoöp
In the same vein as a new pronoun for nature, a Dutch webpage called Zoöpis calling for a new type legal entity that recognizes collaboration between human organizations and multispecies ecological communities. The term “Zoöp” is short for “zoöperation,” which itself is a combination of the word “co-op” (short for “co-operation") and “zoë” (Greek for "life").
The zoöp concept is based on the idea that the profit-maximizing greed of capitalism is overriding most human and nonhuman lives, so a different organizational form is needed. The stated goal of Zoöp is to “strengthen the position of nonhumans within human societies,” to “contribute to ecological regeneration in a way that resists extractivist dynamics,” and to apply the Zoöp model “to a wide variety of organizations.” A Dutch law firm is “critically assessing the zoöp legal structure and developing the charters and documents required to establish actual zoöps,” the group’s website notes. I'm curious about how the self-imposed criteria are to be enforced.
The project explains that “its key methods were developed in a public research trajectory of Het Nieuwe Instituut that took place during the Terraforming Earth Labs (2018), the Neuhausacademy for more-than-human knowledge (2019), and the Venice Exploratorium (2020).”
The Idt Suffix as an Alternative to Inc. or Ltd.
In yet another innovation along these lines, the Community Economics Research Network – an international group of activist-minded academics with new visions for economic life – has proposed a new suffix to identify an organization as committed to interdependence. Businesses often have “Inc.,” “Ltd.” or “LLC” at the end of their names.
A CERN project called “The Interdependence” proposes that organizations add an "idt" to the end of their name if they “cultivate economic principles and practices that recognize our universal responsibility of mutual care, and strive to bring that understanding into the practice of everyday life.” The acronym idt would signal that the organization intends “to explore, experiment, share and learn together how to create ethical relations of interdependence.”
Already there are a number of enterprises that use the idt tag: Company Drinks idt., a UK community space and social enterprise; Brave New Alps idt., a participatory research project in the Italian Alps; Cube Cola idt., an open source soft drink in Bristol, England; and Trajna idt., a design collective that explores sustainable production in Slovenia that “works towards supporting multispecies livelihoods.” More about idt. in an Idt Charta statement.
Assigning Legal Personhood to Nature
Years ago the impulse to affirm our kinship with nature has manifested in the “rights of nature” movement. The tactic here is to assign legal personhood to mountains, rivers, and forests, and other elements of the Earth so that they can be properly “represented” in courts and legislatures. The states of Ecuador, New Zealand, Colombia, and India have already enacted laws giving specific legal rights to nature.
But now this bold move in jurisprudence have found a footing in North American law. In February 2019, the citizens of Toledo, Ohio, approved Lake Erie Bill of Rights Charter Amendment, which authorizes people to sue polluters on behalf of Lake Erie.
Self-Owning Trees
While nature’s rights as a legal doctrine is fairly new, the idea that nature is alive and sovereign has a long history, even in pockets of western culture. In Athens, Georgia, local lore celebrated the “Tree That Owns Itself for more than a century.
There is a huge white oak tree at the corner of South Finley and Dearing Streets in Athens that is said to have legal ownership of itself. A gentleman who lived across the street from the tree, William H. Jackson, bequeathed the eight-foot-wide tree to itself, circa 1832, with this legal statement: “For and in consideration of the great love I bear this tree and the great desire I have for its protection for all time, I convey entire possession of itself and all land within eight feet of the tree on all sides.”
The Tree That Owns Itself, Athens, Georgia
As recounted by Wikipedia, “The original tree, thought to have started life between the mid-16th and late 18th century, fell in 1942, but a new tree was grown from one of its accords and planted in the same location. The current tree is sometimes referred to as the ‘Son of the Tree That Owns Itself.’” The tree is recognized by National Register of Historic Places 1975, but almost certainly not by any court of law. (More about the tree here.)
Did law scholar Christopher Stone have this tree in mind when he wrote his famous 1972 law review called “Should Trees Have Standing?” His point – written in the fevered early days of the modern environmental movement – was to suggest that courts should recognize the rights of nonhuman beings in western courtrooms.
The Embassy of the North Sea
Another creative idea is to give distinct elements of nature political representation. Some folks in The Hague, The Netherlands, founded “The Embassy of the North Sea” in 2018 as a way for the sea to own itself. As the “About” section on its website explains:
“Diversity is in the interest of all life. Therefore, direct political representation of the sea and the life within it is necessary. The Embassy of the North Sea was founded on the principle that the North Sea owns itself. Here, the voices of plants, animals, microbes, and people in and around the North Sea are listened to and involved….
“The Embassy researches how non-humans, from phytoplankton to ship wrecks and cod fish – can become full-fledged members of society. We have plotted a route through to 2030, firstly learning to listen to the sea before we learn to speak with it. Finally, we will negotiate on behalf of the North Sea and all the life that it encapsulates.”
The Self-Owning Forest (via Digital Technology)
Even techno-solutionists seem to be jumping on the idea of sovereign nature, albeit through the narrow lens of their own high-tech vision. A Silicon Valley-inspired project called terra0 is proposing that blockchain software, artificial intelligence, and remote sensors be used to enable a forest to self-govern itself. In the capitalist/libertarian mindset, this means that the forest should have the capacity to manage itself as a business. Using a high-tech system (devised by humans presumably), the forest could selectively choose which of its trees are suitable to cut for timber, and then self-authorize the sale of those trees, based on algorithms that some programmer would write.
The idea is that the forest’s selective monetization of itself would allow it to "self-own" itself as a “digital autonomous organization” (or DAO). This is an idealized but elusive organizational form that many self-styled tech visionaries are striving to create. The “forest as a DAO” would ostensibly give it sovereignty over its future and even (if terra0 gets its way) generate a universal basic income for everyone. Terra0 describes itself as
“a group of developers, theorists, and researchers exploring the creation of hybrid ecosystems in the technosphere. Driven by a keen interest in remote sensing, machine learning, and distributed ledger technology, we develop tools for the management of natural ecosystems and resources via the creation of meshes of interacting decentralized autonomous organisations. We believe that these key technologies give us the opportunity to rethink existing and ineffective governance and regulatory structures and that they will play a crucial role in creating a sustainable, resilient, and biodiverse future.”
In more technical terms, terra0 describes the forest-as-DAO idea as “a scalable framework built on the Ethereum network that provides automated resilience systems for ecosystems.” For more, see also this TEDx Amstelveen video by Hilde Latourvideo by Hilde Latour(at 8 minute timemark).
Personally, I find the vision set forth by terra0 rather monstrous: a world “where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.”
How do machines confer loving grace on us? And who oversees the designers as they presume to re-program forests as business-like DAOs? There are surely many kinks to work out in humanity's laudable efforts to sync with the more-than-human world.
If you’re a good ancestor of the Enlightenment, you probably believe that “nature” is something entirely separate from us. We moderns live at a sanitized distance from messy biophysical realities, after all. Lately, this casual premise of ours has been taking some serious hits, however, with the acceleration of climate change, species extinctions, collapsing coral reefs, cataclysmic weather events, and more.
In recent weeks, I've noticed a big uptick in the number of creative overtures to the realm previously known as nature (a term that implies that humanity and nature are separate). I decided to bring together some of the more imaginative gambits that I've encountered.
What underlies each example, it seems, is our aspiration to treat “nature” as a living system of diverse elements, each with its own agency and imperatives. Or as Oren Lyons, a Native American Faithkeeper of the Seneca Nation, put it years ago: “What you people call your natural resources, our people call our relatives.”
So how do we get better acquainted with our nonhuman relatives?
A New Pronoun for the Natural World
Robin Wall Kimmerer, the celebrated author of Braiding Sweetgrass, suggests we should start with the idea of using a new pronoun when referring to nature. In a recent essay in The Ecologist magazine, she urges us to avoid the use of the pronoun “it” in such circumstances:
“Objectification of the natural world reinforces the notion that our species is somehow more deserving of the gifts of the world than the other 8.7 million species with whom we share the planet. Using 'it' absolves us of moral responsibility and opens the door to exploitation. When Sugar Maple is an 'it' we give ourselves permission to pick up the saw. 'It' means it doesn't matter….
"Singing whales, talking trees, dancing bees, birds who make art, fish who navigate, plants who learn and remember. We are surrounded by intelligences other than our own, by feathered people and people with leaves. But we’ve forgotten. There are many forces arrayed to help us forget – even the language we speak….
"In indigenous ways of knowing, other species are recognized not only as persons, but also as teachers who can inspire how we might live. We can learn a new solar economy from plants, medicines from mycelia, and architecture from the ants. By learning from other species, we might even learn humility.
Kimmerer informs us that the proper Anishinaabe word for beings of the living earth is Bemaadiziiaaki. Since that's a mouthful for we English speakers, she suggests shortening it to “ki” or “kin.” “Might the path to sustainability be marked by grammar?” asks Kimmerer.
Eco-co-operativess called Zoöp
In the same vein as a new pronoun for nature, a Dutch webpage called Zoöpis calling for a new type legal entity that recognizes collaboration between human organizations and multispecies ecological communities. The term “Zoöp” is short for “zoöperation,” which itself is a combination of the word “co-op” (short for “co-operation") and “zoë” (Greek for "life").
The zoöp concept is based on the idea that the profit-maximizing greed of capitalism is overriding most human and nonhuman lives, so a different organizational form is needed. The stated goal of Zoöp is to “strengthen the position of nonhumans within human societies,” to “contribute to ecological regeneration in a way that resists extractivist dynamics,” and to apply the Zoöp model “to a wide variety of organizations.” A Dutch law firm is “critically assessing the zoöp legal structure and developing the charters and documents required to establish actual zoöps,” the group’s website notes. I'm curious about how the self-imposed criteria are to be enforced.
The project explains that “its key methods were developed in a public research trajectory of Het Nieuwe Instituut that took place during the Terraforming Earth Labs (2018), the Neuhausacademy for more-than-human knowledge (2019), and the Venice Exploratorium (2020).”
The Idt Suffix as an Alternative to Inc. or Ltd.
In yet another innovation along these lines, the Community Economics Research Network – an international group of activist-minded academics with new visions for economic life – has proposed a new suffix to identify an organization as committed to interdependence. Businesses often have “Inc.,” “Ltd.” or “LLC” at the end of their names.
A CERN project called “The Interdependence” proposes that organizations add an "idt" to the end of their name if they “cultivate economic principles and practices that recognize our universal responsibility of mutual care, and strive to bring that understanding into the practice of everyday life.” The acronym idt would signal that the organization intends “to explore, experiment, share and learn together how to create ethical relations of interdependence.”
Already there are a number of enterprises that use the idt tag: Company Drinks idt., a UK community space and social enterprise; Brave New Alps idt., a participatory research project in the Italian Alps; Cube Cola idt., an open source soft drink in Bristol, England; and Trajna idt., a design collective that explores sustainable production in Slovenia that “works towards supporting multispecies livelihoods.” More about idt. in an Idt Charta statement.
Assigning Legal Personhood to Nature
Years ago the impulse to affirm our kinship with nature has manifested in the “rights of nature” movement. The tactic here is to assign legal personhood to mountains, rivers, and forests, and other elements of the Earth so that they can be properly “represented” in courts and legislatures. The states of Ecuador, New Zealand, Colombia, and India have already enacted laws giving specific legal rights to nature.
But now this bold move in jurisprudence have found a footing in North American law. In February 2019, the citizens of Toledo, Ohio, approved Lake Erie Bill of Rights Charter Amendment, which authorizes people to sue polluters on behalf of Lake Erie.
Self-Owning Trees
While nature’s rights as a legal doctrine is fairly new, the idea that nature is alive and sovereign has a long history, even in pockets of western culture. In Athens, Georgia, local lore celebrated the “Tree That Owns Itself for more than a century.
There is a huge white oak tree at the corner of South Finley and Dearing Streets in Athens that is said to have legal ownership of itself. A gentleman who lived across the street from the tree, William H. Jackson, bequeathed the eight-foot-wide tree to itself, circa 1832, with this legal statement: “For and in consideration of the great love I bear this tree and the great desire I have for its protection for all time, I convey entire possession of itself and all land within eight feet of the tree on all sides.”
The Tree That Owns Itself, Athens, Georgia
As recounted by Wikipedia, “The original tree, thought to have started life between the mid-16th and late 18th century, fell in 1942, but a new tree was grown from one of its accords and planted in the same location. The current tree is sometimes referred to as the ‘Son of the Tree That Owns Itself.’” The tree is recognized by National Register of Historic Places 1975, but almost certainly not by any court of law. (More about the tree here.)
Did law scholar Christopher Stone have this tree in mind when he wrote his famous 1972 law review called “Should Trees Have Standing?” His point – written in the fevered early days of the modern environmental movement – was to suggest that courts should recognize the rights of nonhuman beings in western courtrooms.
The Embassy of the North Sea
Another creative idea is to give distinct elements of nature political representation. Some folks in The Hague, The Netherlands, founded “The Embassy of the North Sea” in 2018 as a way for the sea to own itself. As the “About” section on its website explains:
“Diversity is in the interest of all life. Therefore, direct political representation of the sea and the life within it is necessary. The Embassy of the North Sea was founded on the principle that the North Sea owns itself. Here, the voices of plants, animals, microbes, and people in and around the North Sea are listened to and involved….
“The Embassy researches how non-humans, from phytoplankton to ship wrecks and cod fish – can become full-fledged members of society. We have plotted a route through to 2030, firstly learning to listen to the sea before we learn to speak with it. Finally, we will negotiate on behalf of the North Sea and all the life that it encapsulates.”
The Self-Owning Forest (via Digital Technology)
Even techno-solutionists seem to be jumping on the idea of sovereign nature, albeit through the narrow lens of their own high-tech vision. A Silicon Valley-inspired project called terra0 is proposing that blockchain software, artificial intelligence, and remote sensors be used to enable a forest to self-govern itself. In the capitalist/libertarian mindset, this means that the forest should have the capacity to manage itself as a business. Using a high-tech system (devised by humans presumably), the forest could selectively choose which of its trees are suitable to cut for timber, and then self-authorize the sale of those trees, based on algorithms that some programmer would write.
The idea is that the forest’s selective monetization of itself would allow it to "self-own" itself as a “digital autonomous organization” (or DAO). This is an idealized but elusive organizational form that many self-styled tech visionaries are striving to create. The “forest as a DAO” would ostensibly give it sovereignty over its future and even (if terra0 gets its way) generate a universal basic income for everyone. Terra0 describes itself as
“a group of developers, theorists, and researchers exploring the creation of hybrid ecosystems in the technosphere. Driven by a keen interest in remote sensing, machine learning, and distributed ledger technology, we develop tools for the management of natural ecosystems and resources via the creation of meshes of interacting decentralized autonomous organisations. We believe that these key technologies give us the opportunity to rethink existing and ineffective governance and regulatory structures and that they will play a crucial role in creating a sustainable, resilient, and biodiverse future.”
In more technical terms, terra0 describes the forest-as-DAO idea as “a scalable framework built on the Ethereum network that provides automated resilience systems for ecosystems.” For more, see also this TEDx Amstelveen video by Hilde Latourvideo by Hilde Latour(at 8 minute timemark).
Personally, I find the vision set forth by terra0 rather monstrous: a world “where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.”
How do machines confer loving grace on us? And who oversees the designers as they presume to re-program forests as business-like DAOs? There are surely many kinks to work out in humanity's laudable efforts to sync with the more-than-human world.
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