The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Politics

Democracy and how we govern

  • Curitiba

    The brazillian city of Curitiba is a model of innovation. They have pioneered many solutions that at first glance seem almost too simple to work, but which have nevertheless helped create a city with a high standard of living and a high level of environmental consciousness. An example:

    Curitiba’s citizens separate their trash into just two categories, organic and inorganic, for pick-up by two kinds of trucks. Poor families in squatter settlements that are unreachable by trucks bring their trash bags to neighbourhood centres, where they can exchange them for bus tickets or for eggs, milk, oranges and potatoes, all bought from outlying farms.

    The trash goes to a plant (itself built of recycled materials) that employs people to separate bottles from cans from plastic. The workers are handicapped people, recent immigrants, alcoholics.

    Recovered materials are sold to local industries. Styrofoam is shredded to stuff quilt for the poor. The recycling programme costs no more than the old landfill, but the city is cleaner, there are more jobs, farmers are supported and the poor get food and transportation. Curitiba recycles two-thirds of it garbage – one of the highest rates of any city, north or south.

    I find this particularly interesting for two reasons: First of all this indicates, that developing countries can raise the standard of living without impacting the environment negatively.

    Secondly, the Curitiba initiatives are an example of what you can achieve with limited financial resources but with a high level of creativity and a willingness to try unconventional solutions. The man behind the initiatives, mayor Jaime Lerner, made all the projects small, cheap and participatory. My kinda thinking!

    This all came from an article at the Global Ideas Bank.

  • Slow city

    A kaospilot student told me about the slow city movement. As soon as I heard the term “slow city” I knew what it meant, and my first thought was “I wanna live there”.

    Of course, my second thought was “Naaah, what I really want is to live in a slow neighbourhood in a fast city, so I can have the best of both worlds.” A slow place to live with speed bumps in the streets so people drive slow. Lots of nature, little noise, no McDonalds’ or 7-11s, nice little caf?s that’ll serve you a good cup of coffee and neighbours you can actually talk to. And then a few blocks away, all the trappings of the fast city.

    According to the website, Slow Cities are cities which:

    1- implement an environmental policy designed to maintain and develop the characteristics of their surrounding area and urban fabric, placing the onus on recovery and reuse techniques

    2- implement an infrastructural policy which is functional for the improvement, not the occupation, of the land

    3- promote the use of technologies to improve the quality of the environment and the urban fabric

    4- encourage the production and use of foodstuffs produced using natural, eco-compatible techniques, excluding transgenic products, and setting up, where necessary, presidia to safeguard and develop typical products currently in difficulty, in close collaboration with the Slow Food Ark project and wine and food Presidia

    5- safeguard autocthonous production, rooted in culture and tradition, which contributes to the typification of an area, maintaining its modes and mores and promoting preferential occasions and spaces for direct contacts between consumers and quality producers and purveyors

    6- promote the quality of hospitality as a real bond with the local community and its specific features, removing the physical and cultural obstacles which may jeopardize the complete, widespread use of a city’s resources

    7- promote awareness among all citizens, and not only among inside operators, that they live in a Slow City, with special attention to the of young people and schools through the systematic introduction of taste education.

    More and more cities around the world are joining the movement and becoming certifiied slow cities, and I think this is an excellent development, and a nice balance to the increasing speed in many other aspects of todays global culture. Rock on – slowly!

  • Open Space political party

    On the open space mailing list, Harrison Owen wrote about some of the initiatives taken by the Dean campaign, and that got me writing. You see, I’ve been toying for a while with the idea of “the open space political party”. The idea alone sounds kinda interesting, huh?

    The way I see it, the organization of the party would be as grass-roots, bottom-up and ad-hoc as possible. And this would apply not only to the campaign phase but also for all relevant governing and policy-setting issues, once we’re in power :o)

    This party would not have a catalogue of fixed opinions set by the top brass, saying we’re for this, against that and for the other. Instead the party would have regularly scheduled open space meetings, and whenever the need arose to form an opinion on a topic (and this happens faster than any traditional political structure can handle these days), the party would put that topic on the agenda to clarify the members’ thinking on that issue. These gatherings should probably be geographically local, so it’s easy for people to participate, and should include a method of consolidating the regional dialogues (any good ideas how to do this?). Based on this, the party can in a reasonably short time examine any issue that may crop up.

    This would mean that any issue would be examined in all it’s complexity. That all arguments for and against would be talked about by a large group of spirited people before a concensus is found. This is in sharp contrast to todays political process, where a party’s opinions are set by the top leaders, often informed more by polls than by dialogue.

    This would also mean, that membership of such a party would not be based on how many of the party’s opinions you agree with, since many of these may not be formulated yet. Instead, when you join as a member, you sign up for two things:
    1: A set of values that unifies the members of this party
    2: The process. Grass-roots, bottom-up and ad-hoc

    And finally, a party such as this would be a hotbed of creativity, energy, disagreement, chaos, responsibility and fun. Just imagine how many novel and interesting solutions a group of people working to improve their nation could come up with in such a setting.

    I’ve looked at the political structure here in Denmark, and I’m convinced that this development probably will never come from any of the established parties (and we have enough to choose from in Denmark som 12-14 at the last count). The only way to bring this about is to create a new party.

    I have a deep conviction that it could work, and that this could be one way for us to take back some of the responsibility that we’ve left to the current political system.

    How does that sound?

  • Quote

    The radical, committed to human liberation, does not become the prisoner of a “circle of certainty” within which reality is also imprisoned. On the contrary, the more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can better transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or enter into dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit … to fight at their side.

    – Paolo Freire in Pedagogy of the oppressed

    I’m a radical and I didn’t even know it. I especially like the part about “committed to human liberation”. To me, this goes beyond liberating people from external oppression, and includes bringing people to the realization of their own, basic human freedom.

    The “happiness at work” project expresses this. We believe that if you want to be happy at work, you must first choose to be so. That choice will not make you happy, it’s not that easy, but if you do not start with that choice, no external factor (not even a good boss, nice colleagues and a fat pay check) can make you happy. And that choice is the first step to taking your happiness and your freedom into your own hands. The first step towards realizing, that all change must start with you and be based on what you can do, rather than on waiting for “them” to fix what’s wrong.

  • Self-organizing political campaign

    Howard Deans presidential campaign is different, and I certainly hope it’s an indication of how things will be done in the future. Wally Bock sums it up here. It turns out that the real difference between Dean and everybody else is that he treats his supporters like a giant, self-organizing staff of experts. The key to that is giving up control, reversing the great political campaign trend of the last decade or so.

  • Quote

    So anyone who claims that I am a dreamer who expects to transform hell into heaven is wrong. I have few illusions. But I feel a responsibility to work towards the things I consider good and right. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to change certain things for the better, or not at all. Both outcomes are possible. There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.

    – Vaclav Havel in Summer Meditations

  • Politics and the internet

    The future of politics is currently being shaped by the Howard Dean presidential campaign in the US: The results of self-organizing are not only more people, but more ideas about how to do local politics. The idea of sending 30,000 letters to Iowa at the last Dean Meetup came from the grassroots, and that has been reported. What hasn?t been reported is that most of the Dean flyers that people are passing out at farmers markets and summer fairs around the country are put together by grassroots organizers working through the Net. Independently of the official campaign, a Seattle group thinks of a flyer idea, which a New York group designs, which they circulate through the Dean listservs, which gets stapled to a Bulletin Board in Missouri by a group of Dean supporters who met through the Internet. A Georgia group designs ?Dean Cards,? which are now spreading around the country.

    This is from a post to Lawrence Lessigs blog where Dean Howard’s been guest blogging. Kinda makes me want to be american so I could vote for him.

  • Acts of hope

    One of my new friends, Filiz from Turkey, sent me a link to a very interesting article on activism. The main point that the article makes is that activism is for the long term. You can’t expect immediate results that clearly follow from your actions. You need to look at long term results,

    Also, you’re not saving the world. Here’s my favourite quote from the article:

    History is like weather, not like checkers. A game of checkers ends. The weather never does. That’s why you can’t save anything. Saving is the wrong word. Jesus saves and so do banks: they set things aside from the flux of earthly change. We never did save the whales, though we might’ve prevented them from becoming extinct. We will have to continue to prevent that as long as they continue not to be extinct.

    Brilliant stuff, read it!

  • Synergic rule

    I found a very interesting article by Timothy Wilken about synergic wealth and synergic rule. It examines the idea, that we would all be much wealthier if we pooled our resources instead of fighting over them. I can certainly agree to that.

    Then it goes on to explore synergic rule or synocracy. This is a form of rule that is not based on majority decisions. Instead matters are discussed by all involved parties, and no decision is made, untill everybody is comfortable with the decision. The key point is, that if a decision entails a loss to somebody, that loss should be acknowledged and shared by everybody.

    I find the idea extremely inspiring, and it repeats some themes from a few of my favourite books of late, namely Margaret Wheatley’s A simpler way and Tor Nørretranders’ Det generøse menneske. The former focuses on a new world view based on cooperation rather than competition, while the latter studies the origin and function of generosity in humans.

  • Participative democracy in Porto Alegro

    In the Brazillian city of Porto Alegro, every single citizen is allowed to contribute to deciding the city’s budget. There’s articles on it here and here.

    The decision process includes two huge annual assemblies and myriads of smaller special interest meetings – which sounds a little like Open Space. One of the lessons learned is, that everybody can contribute, including the poor and the less educated. They are given time and space to learn the process, by those who are more experienced.

    The results have been amazing. Since they started doing it in 1989, the number of houses with running water has gone from 75% to 99%. Housing assistance has gone from 1.700 families to 29.000 families, the number of public schools has increased from 29 to 86 and literacy is now at 98% (better than some parts of eg. the US). And of course, the benefit of having a population who feels part of the decision proces is hard to quantify, but impossible to ignore. And best of all: The process has spread to more than 100 cities in South America.