for - stories - salience of adjacency- imagination - stories - futures - Ernest Becker - self - timebinding - symbolosphere - quote - Brian Eno - book - Citizens - Jon Alexander - Arian Conrad - citizens - not consumers

quote - Brian Eno

• The stories we tell
  • shape how we see ourselves, and
  • how we see the world.
• When we see the world differently,
  • we begin behaving differently,
  • living into the new story.
• When Martin Luther King said
  • “I have a dream,”
• he was
  • inviting others to dream it with him,
  • inviting them to step into his story.
• Once a story becomes shared in that way,
  • current reality gets measured against it and
  • then modified towards it.
• As soon as we sense the possibility of a more desirable world,
  • we begin behaving differently,
    • as though that world is starting to come into existence,
    • as though, in our minds at least, we’re already there.
• The new story becomes an invisible force which pulls us forward.
• By this process it starts to come true.

• Imagining the future makes it more possible.

• Sometimes this work of imagination and storytelling is about the future,

  • as in Dr King’s story.
• Art can play this role:
  • what is possible in art becomes thinkable in life.
• We become our new selves first in simulacrum, through
  • style and
  • fashion and
  • art,
• our deliberate immersions in virtual worlds.
• Through them we sense what it would like
  • to be another kind of person
  • with other kinds of values.
• We rehearse new
  • feelings and
  • sensitivities.
• We imagine other ways of thinking about
  • our world and
  • its future.
• We use art to model new worlds so that
  • we can see how we might feel about them.

comment - This is a really powerful writing from Brian Eno. - Storytelling is an exercise in - the imagination of alternative possibilities to our own reality. - Stories can become both - inspirational and - aspirational - They can paint a picture in our mind of - a fantasy - a world that does not yet exist - but that nonexistent but desirable reality can then serve as the goal for which we strive - Mapping Futures interventions is then, essentially an act of desirable, inspirational make believe, and mustering the resources to turn the fantasy into reality - Progress relies on design, the imagination of unrealities in vivid detail, - in order to turn them into realities - In doing this, it is not an act carried out in ivory towers, - but in the everyday life of every one of us - We are all engaged in desirable fantasies daily whenever - we decide what meal we will prepare or restaurant to dine at - which clothing outfit to wear today - what we plan to write or say next to another - Every decision we make as a choice between different future alternatives - When it comes to planning major future decisions, - we need to have as much detail as possible of the imagined future - The Town Anywhere project conceived by Ruth Ben-Tovin and employed in the Transition Town movement for many years fis an example of such a simulacrum - https://hyp.is/mqeCtAE_Ee-Yxleqg7GFww/docdrop.org/video/cRvhY4S94ic/ - It provides an artistic space for citizens to imagine a desirable fantasy that can be embodied, enacted and deeply remembered through the participatory and collective citizen act of creating a proxy of their future local habitat in the present, and exploring and momentarily inhabiting their simulacrum. - In this way, this compelling experience is like a branding iron, searing the memory deep into our memory, where it can help guide our actions to realize the desirable fantasy. - Couched within a citizen's FREEligion and FREElosophy we generically call Deep Humanity, an open source, open knowledge approach to universal raison d'etre for what it deeply means to be human, Town Anywhere can scale to fire up the imagination of citizens to co-create our collective future. - Town Anywhere, along with other citizen initiatives which I belong to that advocate healthy citizen power such as SONEC, Stop Reset Go, Deep Humanity, the Indyweb, Living Cities Earth and many, many others can emerge a human murmuration to drive the transition - https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fleemor.medium.com%2Fmesmerized-by-the-murmuration-on-human-potential-f4c9ffe06ffa&group=world - As Jon Alexander and Arian Conrad write here, we have to find the narratives that matter to us, where WE is the citizens. Other thinkers like Jose Ramos write along the same line: - https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-planet.medium.com%2Fdiscovering-the-narratives-that-matter-to-us-327958a2daec&group=world

A big part of the WHY that too many issuers do not address. Authoring metadata with the consumer in mind will give our Earners a competitive advantage.

The pelisse, a popular garment most recently revived through the iconic yellow model worn by Ana Taylor-Joy in Autumn de Wilde’s Emma (2020), might be included as a footnote in the twin history of fashion and ecological degradation.

By donning a pelisse, Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Thorpe, whatever their rivalries, were both at the cusp of early nineteenth-century fashion. Austen herself owned at least two pelisses, as historian Hilary Davidson has demonstrated. The pelisse, an overdress, was developed partly in response to the new Empire-period silhouette and partly due the “muslin disease” or influenza that ailed young women wearing fashionable lightweight fabrics in freezing weather.

In the colder months, pelisses could be lined with fur, so Mrs. Allen’s observation that Mrs. Thorpe’s lace is not as handsome would indicate that this scene takes place in the warmer months. The pelisse’s popularity led it to replace the fur cloaks of the earlier eighteenth century. Soon, though, pelisses themselves would be replaced with fur coats, which gained popularity throughout the nineteenth century, reaching a high point in the 1850s. Their popularity was in large part due to new methods of processing fur, which made it more supple (Fashioned 86). The consumption of fur and sealskin jackets, as well as feathers and cotton, throughout the period would lead to the devastation (e.g., India’s cotton industry) of ecosystems (71).

As we read these lines, then, we are reminded, of Austen’s critical eye for the consumer habits of her time. Although her critique here pertains to petty fashion rivalry, when reading about fashion items in her novels, we might find ourselves considering not only how little our fashion rivalries have changed but also how fashion and environmental degradation are historically linked.

For more on the pelisse, the spencer, and muslin, head over to Austenprose to read Hilary Davidson's post on Regency fashion in Emma (2020).

Works Cited

Jane Austen’s contemporaries, including everyone from the laboring poor to the royals, shared a belief in the restorative power of spring water and in the consumption of natural remedies. In the years when Austen was writing Northanger Abbey, the warm springs offered at Bath’s Pump rooms were a popular treatmentfor those suffering from loss of appetite, nerves (Mrs. Bennett!), gout, and ailments affecting the stomach, head, and vital parts.

In 1813, a guide to the resort claimed that the waters contained carbon dioxide, azotic gas, sulphates, muriate of soda, selenite, carbonate of lime siliceous earth, and a very small portion of oxide of iron (Guide 32). These properties probably gave the water a sulfuric aroma. As the opening of this chapter suggests, though, whether ill or healthy, the resort provided for all. For the healthy visitor, the prime activity was to consume in ways that are familiar to us: purchasing clothes or textiles, as Catherine learns to do from Mrs. Allen, window-shopping, and people-watching.

These lines express Austen’s awareness of the period’s rapidly growing consumer market, resulting from an unprecedented growth in the middle class, which in turn increased demand for domestic and foreign goods. Purchasing power allowed Bath visitors to pay about one guinea a month for access to the warm spring waters served in the newly renovated Pump Room, and to provide a handsome gratuity to the pumper serving water from the King’s Springs .jpg) (Guide 38). But they would likely also be paying to imbibe other popular drinks, including tea, coffee, and chocolate, which albeit pricey were increasingly affordable to the growing middle-class (Selwyn 215). As any Austen fan knows, the Pump Room continues to serve tourists today. Although bathing is no longer allowed, tea, chocolate, coffee, and warm spring waters can still be imbibed.

Walking the streets of Bath with Catherine as we read through Northanger Abbey’s first volume, we might keep in mind who teaches Catherine her consumer habits, and how the novel’s development may be commenting on these practices. We might also consider how the novel records a turning point in the consumption of natural remedies and other goods extracted from apparently distant communities and environments. How much do our current consumer habits differ from Catherine’s?

Works Cited.

A person who influences the purchase of a product; they don't only consume it, they convince others to buy it by consuming it themselves. e.g. a you-tuber who is sent clothing, wears that clothing in a video, and then links it in their video as a product for purchase and gets money for it.

By far the most important thing you need to know to make SECOR operate with Kafkaf

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