Vision Other Resources

Core Readings Vision Social Contract

Who shall live for how long?

• Maynard, Brittany. (2 November 2014). "My Right to Death with Dignity at 29." CNN Opinion. Link 3pp., 5 min

Brittany Maynard, a 29 year-old woman with incurable brain cancer committed suicide and made a statement for right to death with dignity.

• Emmanuel, Ezekiel. "Why I Hope to Die at 75." The Atlantic. Link 19pp., 20 min

Ezekial Emmanuel, a highly respected physician, writes about the duration of a good life, and extended morbidity consequences of medical care aimed at prolonging life. On the basis of this article officials of the AMA initiated a process to revoke an award they'd earlier given Emmanuel for medical ethics.

Who shall reproduce in what numbers?

• Engelman, Robert. (2011). "An End to Population Growth: Why Family Planning Is Key to a Sustainable Future." Solutions for a Sustainable and Desirable Future. Link 20 min

Engelman performs a careful and well-supported analysis of the possibility and promise of ending population growth short of the 9 billion so many consider inevitable.

Who shall do what work and reap what reward?

• Norton & Ariely. (2011). "Building a Better America−One Wealth Quintile at a Time." Perspectives on Psychological Science. Link Read the abstract and look at the graphics. 5-10 min. Alternatively, watch this 6 min video

The authors report that Americans from across various age, background, and political spectra want greater equality, and imagine current inequality to be less than it is. (We included this reading when we addressed Society: Conditions and Trends. If you've yet to read it, please do so now.)

To what ends shall we collaborate? - Eudaemonia, Martin Seligman ⁃ Fulfillment at each level of Maslow's hierarchy for all. 5. By what mechanism shall we shape and evolve the contract? - Steady State Economics, Hermann Daly ⁃ Inclusive consultation based upon science and recognizing differences in demonstrated competence, past contribution, anticipated life expectancy.

How many people?

• "Condoms Fight Climate Change But Nobody Wants to Talk About It" Link 4pp., 4 min.

Woodrow Wilson Institute scholars describe link between population and climate change and difficulty of publicly making it.

For How Long?

Drawing upon what natural material inputs? Converting them by what processes?

• "Zero Carbon Britain." Link 6pp, 6min. (I consider this an evidence and reason-based response to MacKay's near-insistence upon using nukes. Link 1p., 3min.)

The creators of this site have a fairly detailed plan for bringing Britain's carbon budget into balance without reliance upon fossil fuel or nuclear fission. This summary is dense. Skim it to grasp the main ideas. Mark Jacobsen of Stanford and colleagues have developed similar proposals for each of the 50 States.

• Crabb, Peter. (2008). "Technology Traps." Link. 2pp, 5 min

Peter Crabb asserts that technology is a trap into which we've fallen, and that we're avoiding a fundamental issue of how to satisfy human wants with available resources.

• Gunter, Linda Pentz. (2013). "Pandora's False Promises: Busting the Pro-Nuclear Propaganda." Link 1p., 2min

Read executive summary. Look at whatever else you want. Yes, counterarguments are many; however, we anticipate that those who reap narrow benefit from nuclear fission power will continue to inundate us with these, and we want to expose you to a viewpoint less readily accessible.

• Monbiot, George. (2014). "The Impossibility of Growth." Link 3pp., 3 min.

Monbiot describes why collapse is inevitable and necessary.

• Rowan, Michael. (27 February 2014). "We Need to Talk About Growth." Persuade Me Link (I'm asking you to read sub-headings 1. and 10. Read more if you like.)2pp, 2min; 20pp, 20min

Australian Michael Rowan discusses the necessity for an end to growth, quoting people from Adam Smith to Sarkozy to support his case, and calculating both the consequences of various scenarios in which we continue growing and prospects for prosperity in its absence.

• Jackson, Tim. "Prosperity Without Growth." Link 9pp., 10min.

Summary of Tim Jackson's book, "Prosperity Without Growth." Look especially at Box 1 on last page. Those of you who've been asking as we moved through the quarter, "How shall we deal with all this?" may find in Jackson's proposals basis for individual and collective action.

• Alpervitz, Gar. "The Next System Question and the New Economy." Solutions. (Volume 4, #5, October 2013) Link 2pp, 3 min

Alpervitz makes a case for systemic, rather than superficial change, and gives examples of how we've already begun. The creators of this website have collected and generated much thoughtful work about where we go from here.

• Rocky Mountain Institute. "Reinventing Fire: Electricity." Link 5pp., 5min.

Writers at organization directed by Amory Lovins describe how to implement transition to a distributed electricity generating system with broad social and environmental benefit.

• Shwartz, Mark. "Stanford scientist unveils 50-state plan to transform U.S. to renewable energy." Stanford Report. (26 February 2014) Link 5 min

Mark Jacobson of Stanford has devised 50 plans for 50 states to convert to 100% solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, and hydro power by 2050. I hope he's right.

• Anderson, L.V.. "What If Everyone in the World Became a Vegetarian?" Mother Jones (1 May 2014) Link

Anderson presents a rough yet useful analysis of the mixed effects of a universal shift to a meatless diet. 5 min

To what ends?

• "Weaving the Community Resilience and New Economy Movement: Voices from the Field." Post Carbon Institute Link 26pp., 30 min.

Almost twenty people representing organizations working to these ends collaborate to outline lessons learned and directions they're headed. I found useful their lists of approaches and common ground elements. People looking for meaningful livelihood may find these suggestive.

• Smith, Richard. (2013, November 14). "Sleepwalking to Extinction: Capitalism and the Destruction of Life and Earth." Link 17pp., 15min.

An historian frames our times as part of a much longer human story, decries our delusion and denial, and notes signs that we may awaken to realize an "eco-socialist vision" and preserve future possibilities we very much want. Excerpt: "But we can’t stop because we’re all locked into an economic system in which companies have to grow to compete and reward their shareholders and because we all need the jobs."

• Schor, Juliet. (2011, September 2). "Less Work, More Living." Yes! Magazine. Link 5pp., 5min.
• Kaplan, Jeffrey. "The Gospel of Consumption." Orion, September/October 2008. Link 15 min

How we've come to be obsessed with working and buying, making historical reference to an early 20th century experiment with a 30-hour week by workers and managers at the Kellogg company.

• Harmsen, Peter. (2014, May 29). "Swedes Test Future: Less Work, More Play." AFP. Link 5 min

Swedes are experimenting with a 30-hour work week.

With what information?

• Jensen, Derrick. (2004). "Reading, Writing, Revolution." Orion Magazine. Link 3 pp. Jensen urges us to look deeply within as we contemplate what to learn and how to use it. He cautions that much education is of little worth in learning to live and die well.
• Konnikova, Maria. "I Don't Want to Be Right." The New Yorker. (19 May 2014.) Link 9 pp., 10 min

Konnikova reports on research about resistance to changing inaccurate beliefs and ways to overcome it. Hidden take-home message: people who feel worthy are better able to see self and world more accurately.

• Mooney, Chris. (2011). "The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science." Link 16 min
• Speth, Gus. "Change Everything Now." Orion, September/October 2008. Link 6pp., 6 min. (For more essays from the Orion series, "Change Everything Now," follow links at Link

Co-founder of Natural Resources Defense Council and former Dean of Yale School of Forestry calls for mass political action to fundamentally restructure corporations and society.

• Lehrer, Jonah. "Why We Don't Believe in Science." The New Yorker. (7 June 2012.) Link. 5pp, 5min

Learning to override arational mental predispositions with thinking based on fact and reason is a teachable skill. In its absence we rely often on naive "intuition" and previous belief, however counterfactual (cognitive biases). Lehrer also reports on research showing that often learning accurate information entails unlearning contradictory, much of which may informed by genes or early experience which we accepted uncritically and with which we are now identified. I read this as more reason to question deeply.

• Sachs, Adam. Grist. (24 August 2009). "The Fallacy of Climate Activism." Link 6pp., 6min

Sacks calls global warming one of many symptoms, declares the fight against it a failure, and calls for radical truth and radical change. To change other behavior we'll change discourse, speaking "truth" to power.

• Wikipedia. "Dunning Kruger Effect." Link

When we're ignorant and incompetent we think we know and perform better than we do; when we're knowledgeable and competent we think we perform less well. This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect (cognitive bias). Although the Dunning–Kruger effect was put forward in 1999, Dunning and Kruger have noted similar historical observations from philosophers and scientists, including Confucius ("Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."),[3] Bertrand Russell ("One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision", see Wikiquote),[12] and Charles Darwin, whom Dunning and Kruger quoted in their original paper ("ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge").[2] Geraint Fuller, commenting on the paper, noted that Shakespeare expressed similar sentiment in As You Like It ("The Foole doth thinke he is wise, but the wiseman knowes himselfe to be a Foole." (V.i)). 2pp., 2min.

• Graeber, David. "Give It Away." Link 10pp, 15 min

David Graeber of Yale reviews the concept of "gift economy" described by Marcel Mauss in a landmark essay, and details why he thinks Mauss and his modern day intellectual heirs are profoundly radical and pose a threat to key economic ideas in the dominant narrative.

• Pizzi, Ed. "Shallow Analysis: The Los Angeles Times Water Footprint Visualization." (28 May 2015). Los Angeles Times. Link - 7pp., 7min.

Pizzi offers a thoughtful critique of a nominally "scientific" analysis of water required to grow different foods. I consider this an excellent example of how to practice science to read and qualify material published in the popular press.

Interest Readings

• Wikipedia. (2014). "Basic Income." Wikipedia. Link 10-20 min, depending on how much you read

An excellent summary of arguments for and against and world-wide experiments and advocacy.

• Foulkes, Imogen. (2013, December 17). "Swiss to Vote on Incomes for All - Working or Not." BBC News. Link 10 min

Foulkes describes upcoming Swiss referendum on guaranteed income.

• Jesse, David. (2014, March 19). "Pay It Forward: Plan Would Allow Michigan Students to Attend College for 'Free.'" Detroit Free Press. Link 10 min

Jesse describes proposal to fund higher education for all from earnings of high-income graduates.

• Wheeler, David R.. (18 May 2015). "What If Everybody Didn't Have to Work to Get Paid?" Atlantic Monthly. Link 5pp., 5min.

Wheeler writes of the international movement for guaranteed basic income, citing examples of crowd-funding now underway that demonstrate alternatives to waiting for people in government to act. Who among you will seize this idea and act on it?

• Wikipedia. "Second Bill of Rights." Link "FDR's second bill of rights" 5 min

Roosevelt imagined us shaping a government designed to ensure social welfare to an extent greater than that enjoyed Western European peoples today. His vision stands in sharp contrast to our current reality, and may be useful to current youths in developing perspective about changes is US politics during the last half-century or so.

• Krugman, Paul. (25 May 2014.) "Europe's Secret Success," NYTimes. Link 5 min

Krugman accuses US media personnel of systematic misrepresentation to discredit European welfare states, and notes their successes in employment and well-being.

• Daly, Lew. (7 July 2014)."Our Mismeasured Economy." NYTimes. Link 3pp., 3min.

Lew Daly of Demos analyzes the often unacknowledged economic benefits of public spending/investment.

• The Yes Men. (2008). "Special Edition of The New York Times." Link 7 min

Includes stories describing a future in which we held Obama to the values he espoused while campaigning: single-payer national health care, abolition of corporate lobbying, maximum wage for CEOs. (Please note that the site has been corrupted making much of the first page redundant; however, clicking through to any of the pages in the box on the upper left of the front page will bring up a multi-page PDF with the rest of the paper as published.) See this link for more

• Sapolsky, Robert. (2006). "A Natural History of Peace." Foreign Affairs. - Link 15 min

Sapolsky describes social structure in primates with an eye to explaining cooperation and competition.

• Graeber, David. (2014). "Why America's Favorite Anarchist Thinks Most American Workers Are Slaves." Link 5 min

David Graeber calls for a guaranteed income. The Making Sen$e program of PBS Newshour, of which this is one example, includes a number of other proposals for reducing inequality in wealth and income.

• Palet, Laura Secorun. (13 September 2014). "A Cheerful Mortician Tackles the Lighter Side of Death." NPR Books. Link. 4pp., 5min.

Interview with Caitlin Doughty, author of Smoke Gets in your Eyes and Other Lessons of the Crematory. A thesis of the author is that we need to have more contact with death and dead bodies, to get more familiar and comfortable with our own dying. She is trying to reduce embalming and caskets, in favor of at-home wakes, burials in a mere shroud, and cremation ceremonies attended by the family, where a family member gets to press the button to incinerate the corpse.