Welcome to the Anthropocene

"Anthropocene is an informal geologic chronological term that serves to mark the evidence and extent of human activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth's ecosystems. The term was coined recently by ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer, but has been widely popularized by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist, Paul Crutzen, who regards the influence of human behavior on the Earth's atmosphere in recent centuries as so significant as to constitute a new geological epoch for its lithosphere." --Wikipedia

I've been almost halted in my tracks as of late with the perception of the incredible dysfunction and seeming corruption this planet, this world and nation are currently suffering.  Everything appears upside down with a grim trajectory imminent.  With the statistical research having prompted the video Wealth Inequality in America - YouTube  to go viral, pointing out the illusion of the public as to how bad the inequality is and the general consensus of the broad sampling, to be a country unlike its current state. This along with the ongoing, endless polarization and lack of sense (but a lot of maneuvering) exhibited by our government which will only negatively impact the already desperate poor, and the seeming lack of ownership of that responsibility (when one is oppressed, we're all oppressed).  My alarm isn't so much over the chaos (there will always be that) but the ongoing and continual fracture that continues to divide us, the smoke screen that keeps us passive despite a practically unanimous understanding (amongst the diverse sampling in the mentioned research) of what is fair and equitable.  There appears no awareness in the relationship of environment to health to inequality, to prejudice and manipulation; only a frenzied barreling toward divisiveness.  Where is the long view?  Where is the world community awareness?

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

--MLK  "Letter from Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963

After looking at the research for the above mentioned video (where from were the statistics gleaned, how was the research carried out, what was the sampling?), I was introduced to some material on Anthropocene and a study being done on alternative business practices created from a larger perspective.
 
"The Anthropocene calls to us to recognize that we are all participants in the ‘becoming world’, where everything is interconnected and learning happens in a stumbling, trial and error sort of way. In the spirit of this participation, many offer the experiment as the only way forward: the only way to approach such a period in which uncertainty is high and one cannot predict what the future holds, is not to predict, but to experiment and act inventively and exuberantly via diverse adventures in living." (Dumanoski 2009, quoting C.S. Holling)

"At the core of J.K. Gibson-Graham’s feminist political imaginary is the vision of a decentralized movement that connects globally dispersed subjects and places through webs of signification. We view these subjects and places both as sites of becoming and as opportunities for belonging. But no longer can we see subjects as simply human and places as human-centered. The ‘arrival’ of the Anthropocene has thrown us onto new terrain. Feminist critiques of hyper-separation are pushing us to move beyond the divisive binaries of human/nonhuman, subject/object, economy/ecology and thinking/ acting. The reframing of our living worlds as vast uncontrolled experiments is inspiring us to reposition ourselves as learners, increasingly open to our interconnections with earth others and more willing to intervene in adventurous ways. In this article we begin to think about more-than-human regional development and regional research collectives that have the potential to perform resilient worlds. For us the project of belonging involves both participating in the vast experiment that is the Anthropocene and connecting deeply to specific places and concerns."

"2013 ingredients of a new world-shaping movement: 1) assemblages that are experimenting with new practices of living and being together, 2) the ubiquity of these assemblages, and 3) the potential global compass of a new discourse of ‘belonging’ linked to a more than-human regional development imaginary. Our working definition of regional development is: how ‘we’ (that is, all the human/nonhuman participants in the becoming world) organize our lives (or how life organizes us) to thrive in porously bounded spaces in which there is some degree of interconnection, a distinctively diverse economy and ecologies, multiple path-dependent trajectories of transformation and inherited forms of rule."

Following are some examples of business practice in relation to this decentralized movement.

"Our first adventure is an experiment in regional development led by individuals and institutions that are motivated in part by an ethic of caring for place and environment. Capturing and democratizing wealth to care for people and environments in place.  The Evergreen Cooperatives are a set of new employee-owned businesses, based on the cooperative model, that hire local residents and contribute to environmental sustainability. In the Greater University Circle of inner city Cleveland, Ohio, investment flows easily into world renowned cultural, educational and health institutions that were originally established by philanthropic industrialists of a past era. Up against these well-endowed institutions are run-down neighborhoods housing some 43,000 residents whose average median household income is under $18,500 per year (Evergreen video 2010). Little of the massive institutional investment in salaries, procurements and real estate development stays within these inner ring neighborhoods. According to Bob Eckhardt (2009), senior vice president of the Cleveland Foundation, each institution acts ‘as if the world ended at its respective property line’. The Cleveland Foundation, established as the ‘world’s first community foundation in 1914, decided in the mid 2000s to concentrate funding and capacity building activities on the Greater University Circle to make sure that ‘as the big institutions grow and prosper, the neighborhood prospers as well’ (Ekhardt 2009). Its mission was to create jobs for local residents in green industries and to generate wealth that would circulate within and help stabilize the neighborhood."

"The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry was the first experiment to get off the ground. It is an ‘industrial-scale, environmentally advanced, state-of-the-art, commercial laundry providing services to area hospitals and assisted living centers’ (Yates 2009). A feasibility study showed that commercial laundries could pay reasonable wages if they were not under pressure to generate profits for owners and shareholders.  Making the employees owners through a cooperative meant that an employee-owned laundry could immediately offer jobs paying a little better than the going rate for such work, offer better benefits and also be a wealth-builder for employees over the years." (Yates 2009, 17) Gender, Place and Culture."

"We draw here on a video report on the rise of peer-to-peer exchanges by the Wall Street Journal’s tech reporter Andy Jordon.  Jordon presents a series of interviews that begin with young corporate executives who trade in Ven, a virtual currency used to ‘buy, share and trade knowledge, goods and services’ (Jordon 2010). Tamara Giltsoff, a sustainable business consultant, is one of the ‘urban influentials’ who are members of Hub Culture, one of many meshworks that have grown out of the social networking capacities of the internet. In selected world cities Hub Culture members flock to Hub Pavilions where they can book space to work, meet, trade non-tangible value and recreate (bookings can be made for a personal chef for 10 or more people, a personal trainer, or a reflexologist/reiki/polarity therapist). Giltsoff describes using Ven: ‘It begins to put a value on intangible exchanges, I guess. I have gained Ven by making introductions to other people or doing favours for people in the network.’ Dan George, a promoter for international music recording stars says: ‘With fluctuating exchange rates you know that if you have a certain amount of Ven you can, sort of, count on it when you are working between countries.’ According to the Hub Culture website (2010): The price of Ven is made up of a weighted basket of currencies, commodities and carbon futures and trades against other major currencies at floating exchange rates. Ven is the first currency to include carbon externalities in its pricing factor, making it the first environmentally linked currency in existence."

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.  -- MLK,  Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1964

These ancient/new assemblages that experiment with new practices of living and being together,  and the potential global compass of a new discourse of ‘belonging’ linked to a more than-human regional development imaginary is a relief to what we live with now.  It provides hope for a new paradigm of operating.  It gives breath to more of what matters than is currently acknowledged, in the markets and systems currently in place.  Both for health and well being, these sorts of changes are essential for putting into place justice and equality for the masses.

The world is changing.  Environmentally and health-wise it is not tenable for there to be the magnitude of inequities existent in the world (in this country), as there is.  Both the French and Russian Revolutions are historical indicators to this; the Occupy movement is a heads up in our own time.  The paralyzation of governments holding to this untenable way of operating, resistant to a more equitable shift of power, money and influence has only one cataclysmic outcome.