Tag Archives | Community

Ikea Is Building Its Own City

By on April 11, 2012 in News 19

ikeaIf you’ve ever lingered in a display at an Ikea store, wishing you could remain there forever, now is your lucky day. The Globe and Mail reports:

The Swedes now want to place you and 6,000 neighbours into a neglected corner of your city, design an entire urban world around you, and Ikea-ize your lives. Ikea’s city-building ambition is in a triangle of post-industrial wasteland in the far reaches of East London. Their vision is to turn this grey netherworld into a tightly packed neighbourhood they’ll call Strand East.

This will be an all-rental private neighbourhood, run and overseen by a private company. And here is where living in an Ikea neighbourhood might come to resemble a long day in an Ikea store: The company wants you to be in a neat, clean, pleasant environment. And it very much wants you to have fun. Those things that normally just happen in life will be carefully managed from above.

… Read the rest

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E+SM Mix: Evolution for Your Ears

By on April 10, 2012 in News 5

MixlpHave you ever wondered what a planetary transformation of society and consciousness based on the integration of esoteric philosophy, shamanic practice, design science, dance floor grooves, and cutting-edge communications technology might sound like? We hope so, because we devised our first free E+SM Mix: Evolution for Your Ears, to satisfy this secret yearning.

At the Evolver Social Movement, we believe in the concept of free – of sharing, foraging, scavenging, bittorenting, and all forms of open-source opportunism. We are, therefore, delighted to offer Evolution for Your Ears to you gratis, as a gift, with positively no strings attached, ever. In fact, we believe that everything should be free, from now until the end of time or the death of God, whichever comes first.

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Baby Boomers Returning To The Commune

By on December 7, 2011 in News 7

then-and-nowAbout 100,000 people in the United States lives in so-called “intentional communities.” Via the Atlantic, as mainstream society atrophies, Anna Spinner looks at now-gray hippies migrating back to the utopian communes they left 40 years ago, to live out their days:

In late June of this year, Kathy, now 50, and her 62-year-old husband Bob drove with their 28-year-old daughter Joyce from Charlotte, North Carolina, to the Farm. Kathy visits about three times a year, but this was a special visit. It was the Farm’s 40th reunion, but it was also, more importantly, the visit when Kathy would finalize plans to build the home where she and Bob planned to spend the rest of their lives.

On the drive down, Kathy’s phone buzzed with texts and updates from the Farm Facebook group. Friends were posting photos and status updates. It was a big party and Kathy couldn’t wait to get there.

… Read the rest

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Living in Little Boxes

By on October 10, 2011 in News 8

Little HouseFor years, it has been reported that standard homesizes (with the US being the glaring exception) are shrinking. How small is too small? And what is the relationship between liveable space, architecture, community, and sustainability? In this article from the Independent, RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) “slams” the (non) architectural standards of suburban house building.

Architects have criticised the “shameful shoe-box homes” being built in Britain today, saying many are too small for family life. Research by the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) found the floor area of the average new three-bedroom home in the UK is 88 sq m, some 8 sq m short of the recommended space.

One-bedroom properties, at an average of 46 sq m, are 4 sq m smaller than the recommended size, the Case For Space study found. This is the equivalent of a single bed, a bedside table and a dressing table with a stool, the report said.

… Read the rest

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Learning Lessons From Occupy Wall Street

By on September 30, 2011 in News 4
Occupy Wall Street

Photo: David Shankbone (CC)

Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:

I dropped in on the Occupy Chicago demonstrators on Tuesday to check on their morale after spending mostof my Saturday with them last weekend. As the occupation of Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park begins to enter its third week, the small but spirited occupation of the corner of Jackson and LaSalle, mere feet in front of the doors to the federal reserve, enters its second.

Most of the people I found in front of the Fed were new, showing up in solidarity after hearing about the movement on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook or what little major media coverage has trickled out. The newer occupiers blended perfectly well with the ones who had been taking part since Friday morning, providing a much needed energy boost to a rain soaked and weary core in need of a good night’s sleep and a fully charged cell phone.… Read the rest

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Cleaning up the Religion Debate

By on September 27, 2011 in News 322

Lately there have been a few articles on Disinfo that eventually, either immediately or after a few days, spurred an argument that rears its head fairly often here. The debate between atheism and religion is one in which I usually enjoy taking part, and I like that it pops up on Disinfo with a certain regularity.  What I don’t like, what I suspect many of us don’t like, is that they often devolve into, if not begin as, something along the lines of:

Poster A:  religion is stupid

Poster B:  YOU’RE stupid

Sometimes it’s a little more eloquent, but this is the bare bones of it. Not very useful, nor very informative. This I think we can agree on.  So how does one go about creating a better, more informative dialogue? Can it even be done? One side believes the other to be irrational, delusional, utilizing a sort of maladaptive coping mechanism to either protect oneself from the harsh realities of life or as an easy way to answer the hard questions with which life presents us.… Read the rest

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On Bullying

By on September 8, 2011 in News 48

Bullying is taught in schools, churches and families throughout America. Bullying is a common practice in our military training. An extremely prevalent form of this teaching is “group punishment.” One person or more breaks the rules or is accused of not carrying his or her weight; and everyone is punished for the perpetrators’ infractions or inadequacies simply because they’re in that class or unit.

This incites the group to pressure the perpetrators into working harder or altering their behavior. This form of bullying is also very common in the work place and is an encouraged form of harassment. This pressure is “bullying” and it takes many forms: Beatings, hostile behavior and threats, ostracism, and many other forms of harassment. At Columbine the victims of bullies bullied back and only after that did people speak out against bullying on a nation-wide scale.

They formed organizations to prevent and stop bullying. All of their efforts are in vain until we stop the unjust practice of group punishment.… Read the rest

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Economic Inequality Promotes Self-Aggrandizement

By on September 5, 2011 in News 14
Richa and Poor

Rich and poor in São Paulo. Photo: Tuca Vieira (CC)

Via ScienceDaily:

Pretty much everybody thinks they’re better than average. But in some cultures, people are more self-aggrandizing than in others. Until now, national differences in “self-enhancement” have been chalked up to an East-West individualism-versus-collectivism divide. In the West, where people value independence, personal success, and uniqueness, psychologists have said, self-inflation is more rampant. In the East, where interdependence, harmony, and belonging are valued, modesty prevails.Now an analysis of data gathered from 1,625 people in 15 culturally diverse countries finds a stronger predictor of self-enhancement: economic inequality.

“We don’t know the precise mechanism, but it seems unlikely that it is primarily an East-West difference,” says University of Kent research associate Steve Loughnan. “It’s got to do with how your society distributes its resources.” The study — whose 19 collaborators represent 16 universities around the globe — will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

… Read the rest

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Douglas Rushkoff On Flash Mobs

By on August 20, 2011 in News 4
Doug Rushkoff. Photo by Paul May (CC)

Doug Rushkoff. Photo by Paul May (CC)

Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff explains why limiting access to social networks is not the answer to preventing riots, for CNN:

In the past, people seemed to require a massive “cue” to form a mob. The New York blackouts of the summer of 1977 resulted in citywide looting, not just because alarm systems were down, but because a whole lot of hot, angry, frustrated people had an excuse to act en masse. Likewise, the verdict on the Rodney King trial served as a spark, synchronizing simultaneous explosions of mob behavior in a dozen North American cities.

Media can certainly accelerate or even reproduce this process. Radio gave Hitler a way to unify angry crowds as never before, and it both inspired and facilitated the chasing down and murder of about 800,000 Tutsis by gangs with machetes in Rwanda. Radio broadcasters announced where potential victims were hiding, coordinating the violence via media.

… Read the rest

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