Who do you choose to be?

Our mail arrived about 8:30 pm last night. There was no weather event to speak of. The local carrier, laden with real mail and "Amazon" packages, was running several hours behind a normal schedule because the previous day had been the third day of a holiday weekend. Was the U.S. Postal Service ever designed to provide a major package delivery function? Do mail carriers get paid overtime when their delivery load doubles or triples? If they don't, should they? We live in an increasingly complex and interconnected world and I've seen increased evidence that numerous contemporary systems do their best to offload what should be internal system costs and make them externalities. In any event, being kind and considerate to your mail carrier is probably the right thing to do these days. It's one of a number of choices we have available to us that, collectively, make the world we live in.

stone table top at the Open Book Building, home of The Loft

Photo by J. Harrington

Among the packages that arrived last night were two books I've been looking forward to reading. One in particular I wish I'd read when it was first published in 2017. I've previously read other works by Margaret Wheatley, in particular, Leadership and the New Science and A Simpler Way. It was when I recently began rereading the latter that I came across references to Who Do We Choose To Be? Facing Reality - Claiming Leadership - Restoring Sanity. Since I believe we are currently faced with an abysmal lack of leadership in almost every sector of society, and am convinced that the results of the 2016 election have resulted in a lack of sanity in the governance of the US, and find that the lack of substantial global action in response to climate breakdown is insane, I'm hoping that the book will provide viable strategies, and maybe even a few tactics, for how to best respond to the world in which we live.

Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

Perhaps, I realized, looking for global solutions isn't viable. Can a network of local solutions provide a network of paths through the deep, dark woods into which we've wandered? Given my familiarity with Wheatley's prior work, I'm hopeful I may learn enough to restore at least a modest measure of my optimism. She comes at systems issues through a slightly different lens than Peter Senge, Donella Meadows or Kate Raworth. I'll post my thoughts on her perspectives and suggestions here from time. For the foreseeable future, they'll no doubt make more sense than the evening news.

“You Will Never Get Death / Out of Your System"

Dana Levin

How old is the earth? I asked my machine, and it said: Five great extinctions, one in process, four and a half billion years.
It has always been very busy on Earth: so much coming and going! The terror and the hope ribboning through that.
Death, like a stray dog you kick out of the yard who keeps coming back—its scent of freedom and ruin—
             Some people love death so much they want to give it to everyone. 
             Some are more selective.
             Some people don’t know they’re alive.
                          —
Metabolic system, financial system, political system, eco-system—systems management, running around trying to put out fires—
Sodium nitrate. Sodium benzoate. Butylated Hydroxyanisole (to keep the food from rotting). Plastic (surgery). Botox, Viagra, cryo-chamber—
Voting backwards, into what
has already died—
Voting Zombie in the name of “change”—
And everywhere in fortune cookies, the oracular feint of a joke future—
where death is the trick candle on the victory cake.
                          —
Some truths are hard to accept. Especially when they won’t budge beyond a couplet.
Especially when they won’t tell you if they mean you well, if they herald freedom or ruin—
You! You and Death! Lovers who just can’t quit. That’s how we make the future.
The terror and the hope of that, as change goes viral.

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