Seeds of Change - Heiner Benking's Blog - quergeist.info
Welcome to the NewsLog or Blog of Heiner Benking. A kaleidoscope of insights and impulses collected first in the DaZiBao (Rio) process Seeds of Change Viewsletter of the Club of Budapest since 1995, continually updated ever since. Now available for broader distribution and comments in this blog - enjoy, and come again !
1 Jul 2012 @ 20:21
What a weekend - we have the European Soccer Final tonight, but yesterdays Leibniz Day and Goethe Intitute's president Lehmann and Wikedia Academy's prize today are definitely more thrilling, at least for me.
The Leibniz Lecture from Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, head of the Goethe-Institute in Germany was my "star of hope". I expected much from his "Competence in World-Understanding" (Kompetenz in Weltverständnis- Was Auswärtige Kultur- und Wissenschaftspolitik leisten kann) [link] I feel "Competences" is a topic we really need to put more focus on ! Maybe I am too high in my expectations but I feel the competence and ability to share orientation and overview is so essential in our times, that I can not resist to insist and mention again and again... Here more for later: [link] but what I heard from Lehman was definitely not what I expected - I had hoped for - given all our talks on GOOGLE, classification and challenges .... to set a sign in the light of Goethe, Humboldt, . .. Maybe even Ritter !? See: [link]
More rewarding and interesting on Sunday afternoon was a prize award session for "Free Knowledge" by the Wikimedia Academy. The highlight in my eyes was the Zedler-Preis (Award) 2012 for Free Knowledge for the Austrian Monuments Cultural Conservancy in Category II: Community-Projects. Other prices for projects like “Fukushima” and “VroniPlag” need to be mentioned as well, but I feel the power of establishing community around common issues, may it even the documentation of cultural heritage, providing services no public agency is able to provide - and at the same time develop identification and awareness is definitely a very special project setting examples for future projects.
Check also: [link]
22 Jun 2012 @ 12:53
This afternoon I check again into TEDx in Berlin.
Join us ! STEPHAN BALZER has just kicked-off the new event. Check out the movers and shakers of this Berlin endeavour, the TEDxBerlin Steering Committee: [link]
I recommend these TAGS: Architecture Art Berlin Conference Desert Design Development Doha Engineering Future High Energy Ideas Life Music Nature Performance Red Onion Renewables Science Solar Energy Speaker Stephan Balzer Sustainability TED TEDx TEDxBerlin TEDxBerlin 2010 TEDxBerlin 2011 TEDx organizer TEDxSummit
and will come back a.s.a.p
I am presently listening to JACOB BILABEL Groove to save the world - The Green Music Initiative. He speaks about DOING - not THINKING
to make audience by thriving and "burning" and lighten - enlighten people - using Music - engaging the public ! - It makes me think about BURNING MAN... Well let us think about this and other forms of cultural expressions... and combining them not for single issue "shots".
Now Achmed Khammas is on ! check New and other forms of Energy creation, his Sustainable Energy - Throughout history and in future times !! and before we had Ken Yeang, speaking form my heart as I was hopeing for this in the late 70ies in town- and stateplanning. Meeting Ken will be my first priority ! check his talk !!
MORE to come....
A recording of "Peter Diamindis" Abundance is our future I fully agree with him - we should send it to Randers and Krull !! He speaks about handprints of 5000 - not just Footprints !! See MINDPRINTS - but we should make TA's Technology Assessments and not buy into any "quick fix" or single issue shot. Recommendations are here: GLOBAL CHALLENGES Nairobi, Africa Beyond Poverty, 1995 and for more on global change challenges: [link]
Werner Aisslinger's talk about his "Plantation Chair" - I feel it like ZERI Gunter Pauli and Cradle2Crade Michael Braungart and adding Design to it. Recommended ! I will check his roots soon !
Last is Gesine Schwan. She wants to Advance European Integration Through Good Governance ! Her story is like memory times and like a good professor always does teaches basics... but I hear/see no nugget, no news, little ways and means... telling us to do things together and check our lifestyles and mindsets.
She tells us to form a consensus society, something I see on the way, see Christakis and GLOBAL AGORAS and find in history of the Ages, see Wiredu and Oruka: [link]
- I definitely find our pitches at the Brandenburg Gate (also with google - see !?) check: Freedom of Expression - Speakers Corner the programme, Gesines contribution and maybe my "pitch": (YouTube) [link]
The next TEDx will be at the IFA the global innovation show. Maybe check by Facebook message as the title Future 3.0 or Futures 4.0 is a topic very dear to me as voting without meaning is like Witeling in the dark !! See the Errernous Priority Effect (EPE) and more on the 21stCenturyAgora.org - maybe also see these Interviews in Europe'sWorld.
21 Jun 2012 @ 21:16
What dense and deep days, these days.
I still did nt recover from "paradise" last weeked, nor the Stiftertag in Erfurt to discuss Rio+20 real and virtually ! serce to Humanity and Commons, but having to move on today for a very special symposium and prize award lecture. [link]
The Leopoldina awards the Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker - 2012 to Professor Jürgen Baumert [link] and the symposium is of the first and fines calibre we have in Germany, so a must specailly when it is on the way.. Check out an extraordinary programme on Physics, Philosophy, and Peace Research" Leopoldina-Tagung „Physik, Philosophie und Friedensforschung”.
Rushing in a nutshell, I am frustrated nothing new from these fields or from the gathering of Foundations in the light or on the scale we we have to cope with glocally.
I hope I find times to re-collect and collect for Futures to come...... and make some recommendation in the light of what we do in Toronto (CGI & IHTEC) and Geneva (GYC) since soo many years and have up-dated for Rio+20. Maybe someone still reads and puts it into context and makes efforts towards chaning not a singel issues, but takling the "Problematique" (see: 21stCenturyAgora.org and Özbekhan and Christakis in this blog).
Besides: I liked the Sustainability Islands at the Foundations Day very much. See the Icons below. But they should have been documented and connected. Like this is was a host of treasures in isolation and beyond the scope and interest of the typical foundations representatives. I hope to know - connect - transcend, but when real light-towers are presented the Experts condem as it is not their field and beyond their scope and interest. Much on this I wrote in Ignorance or Comapssion? (PDF) [link] another example !? Check the work and ICC of Ingetraud Dahlberg: here the Discussion in ETHICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES "Forum of Deliberation Culture", here discussion impuls "Nomenclature culture in the social sciences" and my contribution: [link]
20 Jun 2012 @ 21:53
Desperate again. Why did we sum up some Rio'92 intentions? in 94 after careful considerations. Why did we look into common frames of references?
Why did the UIA and UNU looked into Intersectoral Strategic Dilemma in the years before Rio '92? See the GLOBAL STRATEGIES PROJECT:
Commentaries from Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential 5.6 Strategic ecosystem: configuring strategic dilemmas in intersectoral dialogue
Why did the Civil Society prepare documents, side-events, alternative summits when the content can not contribute to the progress.
Instead I see simplicity, overclaims and oversimplifications like always. Final statements ask for single issue, single sector measures, when there was work for 43 years to look into the interdependence of issues and problems. Maybe this a good start to check what I mean: ABOUT ESSENTIALS OF DIALOG & DELIBERATION REQUIREMENTS & POTENTIALS:
15 Jun 2012 @ 22:03
I am in deep shock but also shaken and I remember happier times...
This can not be true, she was still so young and alive. What is on the verge to be born is a view and connection between the "other" old and new Commons, though embryonic, ... and now I have to understand and learn that Elinor has left this place. But the work - not the commonomnipresent show and entertainment - needs to go on !!!
In the middle of summing up her lecture at the TU-Berlin and full of extras pooring in since Stockholm and Copenhagen I have waited too long for giving a present and thanks back in return for Elinor.
She gave me courage and compassion in difficult times, encouraged me to keep on trucking, even when she told me - maimeutic processes take more than a generation to find new ears and new thinking - hopefully strongly building on the wisdom of the pasts.
I know her from the Lynton Caldwell times, she later took over his Bentley Professorship in Bloomington and Victor and Caldwell were very close - for me sometimes like twins. So I "inherited" as a contact a very noble, deep, wise, and friendly person, always calm and listening, subsuming and resonating well - just as I remember Ralph Siu - and definitely I only met few people ofthat "calibre". For Elinor’s and Lynton’s tribute I feel we should revisit the answer he asked his colleagues in 1998: "Is Humanity Destined to Self-Destruct?" and I feel their both answer would have been pondering deeply on how to make a difference and think differently. My token was the concern of how we think, conceptualize, communicate and present and how to avoid flatness and cognitive flaws. Maybe see later: Show or Schau?.
What I would love to share at this point?
maybe the slides we did with the Nobel Peace Laureates a month before she received the Nobel Price in Economics in Oslo, to hopefully bridge the "classes" "faculties" of Laureates, and help to outline Elinor’s achievements, mission and quest on the summary slide No. 3. More slides are available on slideshare as there we discussed challenges!
When study how the media covered her receiving the Nobel Prize and now how little attention is given to her departure I am getting very sad and angry. Is the education so poor and compassion not existent? then this is the real tragic.
#Needless to say that I fullheartedly agree with Tom and recommend his poetic writing style for an eulogy.
I also recommend:
The Woman Who Just Might Save the Planet and Our Pocketbooks
By Fran Korten and Elinor Ostrom, YES! Magazine
Posted on March 14, 2010, Printed on March 16, 2010
[link]More >
7 Jun 2012 @ 08:54
please join me June 15-17 in Berlin [link] We kick-off the SEALAND MULTIVERSITY [link]glocally!! (see cognitive spaces!!) and will have a great time with Arts / Culture / Society PARADISE and CHALLENGES explorations
And the first ever workshop "DIY+cc"-workshop of MULTIVERSITY, building islands glocally in some locations http//i-lands.info see also the ASAP ISLANDS [link] please see the 48 hours programme: and the Announcement in the ANNA LINDH FOUNDATION German Network:
21 May 2012 @ 00:44
I am working very late and hear in the news: Climate scientists solve riddle of rising sea - Channel NewsAsia [link] Source: AFP: massive extraction of groundwater can resolve a puzzle over a rise in sea levels in past decades, scientists in Japan said on Sunday. Global sea levels rose by an average of 1.8 millimetres (0.07 inches) per year from 1961-2003, according to data from tide gauges.
I get very alerted in the middle of the night: IPCCC or one scientist in Japan has solved the riddle !? I wonder who checked the headlines and allowed this to enter the public radio.
Is this "Whistling in the Dark" ? that finally we know what causes and closes the gap between modeled and real Sealevel Rise ? If you see the hundreds of scenarios and all the work being done, they forgot groundwater extraction !? By just adding the water pumped out from the aquifers we can solve the riddle?
This looks to me not like science but another estimate about our climate system. I remember when Professor Grassel told us 10 years ago that they thought and modeled that the icecap in the arctic and antarctic were solid and so they thought they could model sea-level rise, but unfortunately Glaciers are like Swiss Cheese, but with very long tunnels, so that they can melt and slide much faster ! to bad, it was necessary to make a "quick-fix" to bring together the model outcomes with measured "reality".
12 May 2012 @ 21:57
Ernest Callenbach pasted away - and I was shakened - a last "call" ? as some reviewers and messengers put out ?
Tom Engelhardt writes
EARNEST Ernst wrote the earnest and highly recommended "Epistle to the Ecotopians" which was found like a testament just on his computer. We should not only study his last words carefullys, but live it together and help others towards it!! I I encouage you to check the meaning of the word EPISTLE carefully: [link] This piece is typically for our late Earnest - Ernest - Ernst: calling for deeping thinking, sermon, articaulate wording, and shared reflection and action! Read Ernst's 10 Commandments: [link]
I learned only this morning the sad truth that Ernest Callenbach is not with us any longer, he passed away April 16, but has left us a message which was found on his computer maybe as an auto-eulogy?: His Epistle to the Ecotopians. See the link above.
I was a fan of him when I met him first in Berkeley in the early 70ies, his Ecotopia musing still "in the air", and you know how long it took to get "on air", and every since. In the late 90ies we had some more time together in Bremen at a conference, together with Rüdiger Lutz and Uwe Möller, SG of the Club of Rome, we shared a panel on the Concretion of Humane, Ecological Futures/Utopias and Community Building.
Why I mention ECUMENOPOLIS? We talked about it, as it defines a shared schema, maybe an invisible repeatable, explorable "grid". See Anthony Judge on the matter in his "Pointers to Possibilities" In my view and understanding Callenbach and Doxiadis where of the same “calibre”, but definitely can not be compared, as they were on sharing common realms and concerns. Technologies, cultures, regions, and mind-sets were naturally very different – as far as I can see.
Ernest has left a very nice paper, and epistle for us which I can only recommend strongly.
Here some headline-chapters: HOPE, MUTUAL SUPPORT, PRACTICAL SKILLS, How to ORGANIZE and LEARN TO LIVE WITH CONTRADICTIONS, IT IS NEVER EASY OR SIMPLE.
He writes about an America in Decline ..... see [More] More >
The Warnings and Goals of the Club of Rome? - all agreed upon ! But what next and how? The late Donnella Meadows and prinicipal author of the report from 1972 spoke about "leverage points! - where to intervene in systems". Before I go deeper even until in November in Hannover the VOLKSWAGEN FOUNDATION will "commemorate" / "celebrate" ? their contributions and maybe how and in which context the report came about. I will cover some backgrounds and contexts around these days in the late 60ies and early 70ies and what this could mean for possible, desired futures in these interviews for EUROPEsWORLD so let us be brief here and come direct to my concerns and points of necessary action.
To say the Apocalypse is on the horizon is not enough ! It is definitely closer now than 40 years ago - or 20 years at the times of the Earth Summit Rio 1992 preparations.
I am getting very concerned. See: [More] LATE NOTE but please do not forget to check Anthony Judge's view on the matter http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs10s/onto2052.php:
Engendering 2052 through Re-imagining the Present[link] - Transcend's page: [link] or an earlier view on the matter [link]More >
This is Heiner Benking's News Log, a private-public diary presenting events, symposia and happenings in Berlin and elsewhere - my farings, foci, issues and concerns.
PLEASE CONSIDER THIS PERSONAL BLOG an ARTISTIC and PERFORMATIVE MEDIA INTERVENTION !
The Log links to my work and interests and presents issues and special concern of maybe a very small group of "concerned, engaged generalist" - a Global Interest Group (GIG). This needs to be seen in contrast to the ubiquitous Specialized Interest Groups (SIGs), the "scientific" approach to organize subject areas and specialization and standardization and harmonization! of means, nomenclatures, and modes of thinking. My favorite stories in the WHOLENESS SEMINAR include:
BELA BANATHY: "GENESIS
OF GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY" and "IVAN HAVEL: Longing for Unified Knowledge" where a "specialist" runs into the founding session of the early foundations General Systems, mumbling "this is not my field" or where Ivan M. Havel expresses his search for other kinds of knowledge.
As a starter I also recommend to check my MINDPRINT site, where we add the need for HANDPRINTS and MINDPRINTS, as FOOTPRINTS are good to visualize and communicate numbers, densities or consumption per area, but are not sufficient to negotiate and "harmonize" across domains and communicate gains in different cultures, technologies, times,... in short: incompatible but relevant information and our work on dialog, peace, policy-making, and multi-modal, faceted issues and consequences.
What am I? This is a "well-packed" question for which I have not the or a single answer. Some called me an in-betweener, go-getter, facilitator, hub, marvel-hero, trim-tab, bricoleur, bricoleers??? - career designeer, .... Some even "hank" which I disliked or Story which I liked very much !!
I have no single answer as I feel we need to walk the talk and sing and dance Life ! in spectra and fields in multiple embodied spaces.
To nebulous an answer? I am sorry but I do not go for overclaims and oversimplifications, under-complex and over-simplistic approaches with clan-think mindsets about real issues in clear contexts!
![[Valid RSS]](/pic/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed"){kind=small}
1 Jul 2012 @ 20:21
22 Jun 2012 @ 12:53
21 Jun 2012 @ 21:16
20 Jun 2012 @ 21:53
15 Jun 2012 @ 22:03
7 Jun 2012 @ 08:54
12 May 2012 @ 21:57
8 May 2012 @ 18:10