tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2121564167816529957.post2271783617715959698..comments2014-09-17T10:36:05.188-04:00Comments on The Fifth World Design Diary: The Fifth World Movies: OriginJason Godeskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10068631538184332192noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2121564167816529957.post-16387471227614609012009-09-12T20:23:48.359-04:002009-09-12T20:23:48.359-04:00Just had a look at the site, slightly overawed at ...Just had a look at the site, slightly overawed at the level of specificity! I'm only at the start of constructing my ambitions, so it's lovely to see someone a bit ahead of me making such progress. I'll probably pop some comments on there too when I have something useful to say! But likely less synoptic.Josh Wnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2121564167816529957.post-59663488530623626282009-09-12T19:38:47.632-04:002009-09-12T19:38:47.632-04:00Hmm, to be honest, "the city" is a big p...Hmm, to be honest, "the city" is a big part of my personal understanding, not least because I love <i>my</i> city, and here my ambivalence with online self-revelation hits square into the success of my grounding within my locality! As a result of this trade-off some of this may be inappropriately general:<br /><br />In my experience, though someone can hold only a small number of people, the very same empathy you mention in the context of hunting allows us to switch that community. I have confidence in other words in our ability as people to achieve a multi-layered identity, existing simultaneously in communities over the internet and in person, or rather shifting between them and mixing them into each other. It is this ability to become modal that hopefully allows the city to exist in a sane way!<br /><br />The ability to be multi-cultural, to layer ways of thinking and networks of relationships on top of each other gives us immense power as problem solvers, and that can be our gift to the rest of the natural world. Can we find a density that achieves this while keeping us healthy and happy? I hope so.<br /><br />Now this is in all honesty too utopian, without including what others may consider the supernatural. In the Christian tradition "the city" is central to the peacemaking of the entire natural system, it is a place from which peace flows (a little different to now aye?). My interest is in a humanity that "gardens" in a way that is far above what we have done before, instead of moving from our own crisis to crisis, and stomping our effects onto the surrounding landscape, or moulding it into a humanised falsehood of itself, we instead enable the world to be more complex and stable than it ever was before, providing a guide to the flowering of it's own self-directed complexity, towards a greater use of the entropic gradient of solar energy, and to who knows what else.<br /><br />Basically I hope that I, and other people, can be a gift to this earth by forming a part of an extra-human pattern that includes the desires of millions of people human or not, my desire for an ecological city is a subset of that.<br /><br />Now I could rattle on like a poet, but some conversations are better done through other means! You'll notice I've included none of the mundane stuff like "no unsolicited adverts" and "subtle use of local energy" or "integrating building fabric and habitat" or whatever else, because if it takes this long to say a wink of my intuitions, how long will it take to explain it formalised into the traditional language of engineering! I'm sure you know the feeling.Josh Wnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2121564167816529957.post-60640722964623491032009-09-11T12:14:56.303-04:002009-09-11T12:14:56.303-04:00And prairie dogs! I can't believe I forgot pra...And prairie dogs! I can't believe I forgot prairie dogs. Some animals <i>do</i> seem very well adapted to cities. But humans don't. We seem very well adapted to bands. Cities, as the link above details, make us a little bit crazy.Jason Godeskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10068631538184332192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2121564167816529957.post-2447815830425448162009-09-11T12:13:44.407-04:002009-09-11T12:13:44.407-04:00Josh, actually, I LOVE the idea of using this game...Josh, actually, I LOVE the idea of using this game to explore what a really sustainable city might look like! Though personally, I'd really want to press on what a <i>really</i> sustainable city might look like. You called the city "the quintessential human habitat," but I disagree. Bees and ants make cities, and they make them work. Humans only recently started experimenting with cities, and we have yet to create one that <a href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_your_brain/" rel="nofollow">doesn't drive us insane</a>, to say nothing of destroying our ecological foundation. That said, I just last night made <a href="http://twitter.com/tobyspeople/status/3903314991" rel="nofollow">a</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/thefifthworld/status/3903343545" rel="nofollow">few</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/tobyspeople/status/3903355108" rel="nofollow">tweets</a> about festivals and cities. I think I'll need to write something about this subject soon on my other blog, geared more towards the deep ecology/rewilding/bioregionalism end of things (as opposed to this blog, where I work out game ideas), called <a href="http://tobyspeople.com" rel="nofollow">Toby's People</a>. Synopsis of my thoughts at the moment: Paleolithic festivals took the "flash mob" approach to "city life," "city life" does not mean the same thing as "life in cities," and in the future, we can get the things we value from cities from festivals without the bad parts about cities that we get from, well, <i>cities</i>.<br /><br />That said, I want this game to serve as a way to share different dreams about the future, so if you can dream of a sustainable city—one that not only strengthens the ecology rather than depletes it, but also fits into the psychological and social needs of a human animal that can only barely handle a society with much more than 150 people or so—I'd love to see it!Jason Godeskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10068631538184332192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2121564167816529957.post-82159145302183436012009-09-11T09:41:01.702-04:002009-09-11T09:41:01.702-04:00My understanding is very close to yours:
Imagine ...My understanding is very close to yours:<br /><br />Imagine a man who camps by the side of the river, and he looks out at night and sees in the darkness the light of a tent, on the far side of the water. He tuts to himself about a human being polluting the natural environment by his presence, spoiling the wilderness. On the far side of the water, the other camper things the same thing looking back.<br /><br />Human beings and nature can never be in balance as if they were opposing forces, only if they produce a mutually beneficial relationship.<br /><br />We have moved from the earth as something to take value from by our actions, an exploitable frontier, to understanding it as something that has natural value before we act. The answer is not to destroy action but to see what we can add, how we can by our action supplement rather than replace that natural value.<br /><br />"Carbon neutral" or "zero energy" is not enough, we need to benefit the world so that it becomes something greater it could never be without us here. The city, the quintessential human habitat, can it be made a place open to nature?<br /><br />More strongly, can we merge the city and the rainforest, in a way that strengthens both?<br /><br />I know your game focuses on the village as the true balanced human community, and that is probably best considering the complexity load on setting creation otherwise, but I reckon that same thinking can lead to a very different direction, providing that forest/city aspiration is actually possible.<br /><br />Hmm actually, perhaps when this game is done I will be able to mod it to fit the mindset of living in archology-type cities!Josh Wnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2121564167816529957.post-36990807975054256212009-09-10T14:55:27.596-04:002009-09-10T14:55:27.596-04:00D'oh! Sorry, I guess you actually did say that...D'oh! Sorry, I guess you actually did say that!Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12740093744523637705noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2121564167816529957.post-88837189848096891762009-09-10T14:54:31.395-04:002009-09-10T14:54:31.395-04:00Don't get me wrong, I get the whole "movi...Don't get me wrong, I get the whole "movies as inspiration" bit, but, seriously, what about music? When you work on 5W, what do you listen to? Do you ever listen to a song and find yourself automatically turning your mind to 5W?Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12740093744523637705noreply@blogger.com