A message Edwin just sent to his campaign list...

First of all, my apologies for not emailing earlier - anyone who has been following the Kenyan elections is aware that the Presidential election has been mired by controversy and currently things have taken a tough turn with President Kibaki being sworn in, and the opposition refusing to accept the results, claiming rigging in the President's favor. This has led to serious tension, violence skirmishes across the country that understandably have taken away most of everyone's focus.

That said, as strong supporter of my campaign it is important to update you on the Kieni race. The 10 days leading up to the polls were very eventful to say the least. In that period, we not only saw the strong following we had, but also unfortunately came face to face with the ugliness of our current politics.

On Dec 20^th, on the way back from a major meet the people tour, one of the vans carrying supporters and campaign team members was hijacked. An armed group of 8 young men forced everyone out of the van, randomly beat them then made away with all their personal effects. Fortunately no-one was seriously injured but the team was clearly shaken.

On Dec 21^st, a gang of 30 rowdy youth spent the night going round my village, knocking on doors and demanding the two things one needs to be able to vote: a voter's card, and their national IDs. Here too, fortunately no-one was hurt but individuals who were my strong supporters became disenfranchised, not being able to vote in the National Elections a few days later.

On Dec 24^th we were not as lucky. While in transit to a major meeting on the last day of campaigning, one of our vehicles rolled, leading to the loss of one life, and 4 individuals being hospitalized. We do not have conclusive evidence that it was planned but coming in the wake of previous events above, as well as an overhead conversation that suggested I was being targeted, it is hard to ignore.

In spite all these and many other challenges, we soldered on. The determination of our team and supporters would not be held back. All 4 individuals who were in the hospital recovered incredibly fast and were able to cast their votes on the 27^th. Heavy negative propaganda by opponents as well as significant sums of monies being given to entice voters took their toll but we refused to respond in kind, remembering that principles are only sentiments until they are applied in the face of pressure. In the final tally we came in 3^rd, behind the front runner who garnered a commanding lead, and Murungaru who despite spending an incredible amount of money the night before buying voters only managed just over 2000 votes more than we did.

While we were clearly disappointed not to win, we were very encouraged by our strong showing in a crowded field of 14 candidates, most of whom had run previously, many of whom had resources in the multiples of what we had. Our message, ‘Leadership not Politics' resonated strongly. At the grass-roots level, we inspired others into action, fundamentally changing lives. Nationally, some of the initiatives discussed have gained significant traction and are being actively debated. Overall, a successful effort despite not winning.

Let me take this time to thank you for your support through the last 10 months. We could not have gotten this far without you and your continued support became an integral part of the campaign. Thank you again.

Before signing off, one final request: please keep Kenya in your prayers. This is an incredibly difficult period and there is potential for it to spiral out of control. While those who can continue to agitate for peace, calm and level-headedness, blood continues to be shed and angst against fellow Kenyans grows. Whatever you can to do to maintain peace and tolerance at the local, national or international level, I appeal that you do so.

God bless Kieni. God bless Kenya . God bless us all in this New Year.

cheers

edwin

An epiphany is the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something.   Though powerful and often life-changing, it is experienced in an otherwise ordinary moment.

I have always liked this areligious connotation of the word that sits atop my birthday.  It has always made me feel like I have some magic secret insight; that It has always made me feel like I have some magic secret insight; that my intuition will lead me to some special truth about the world.  (The irony, of course, is that the deepest revelations are often those that dwell in plain sight all along).

Joan of Arc is one of the billions of people with whom I share my birthday.  It is interesting to be called, once a year, to stare into the face of that little coincidence to divine some meaning or significance.   Her example is both exhilarating and cautionary.  She was a woman of vision (visions plural, to be precise) and she herself became the vision for a seemingly-lost cause, leading a desperate army to victory.

Annnnnd then she was burned at the stake for heresy.  (Can't win 'em all, hmmm?)

What does this say to me, about following my own dreams and ambitions? I have just gotten to a stage in life where I have enough confidence and trust in myself and my intuitions to follow-through big in addition to just dreaming big.  This is wonderful, this is scary.  But I need to remember that I am nowhere near a stake yet, since my skills for manifestation are nowhere near completely fledged.  I am not, like Edwin, putting my life on the line, or even a career. This is still a time of play and experimentation.  I need to remind myself to dare to fail (or is that dare to succeed?).  Don't be afraid of your own boldness, kid.  Reach out and try.



Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, fabulous, gorgeous, talented? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You're playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that's within us. It's not just in some of us. It's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we automatically give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others.
--Nelson Mandela

Here is something about me.

Not an atomic bomb of a reveal, but a small thing I've never written "out loud" before.

Every day, plus or minus one hour from 9pm, I take one 40mg capsule of Citalopram for the treatment of low-grade depression and anxiety.

My decision to go to a psychiatrist was precipitated by an episode of depression during spring break of my 1L year of law school, 2006.  My parents were in the midst of divorce, and I had just gone through a long-distance breakup from the most healing relationship of my life.  1L year was taking tolls on me that I did not fully recognize until afterwards, and at that point I still had no idea whether I would be able to scramble together a job for the summer.

That spring break I was practically immobile: oversleeping, going on crying jags, feeling too paralyzed to do more than a fraction of my work, or to do anything else.

So I sought out a psychologist and psychiatrist at the university health center.  The psychologist, though kind and well-intentioned, was not a good fit for my personality, so I did not continue with her beyond that semester.  But I liked the psychiatrist and tried the prescription.  First, for a long time, at 20mg (half-dose) then eventually 40mg (full dose). The psychiatrist offers every so often to up the dosage if I need to, but I'm a person who likes to err on the side of less medication.  (Even with aspirin, I debate with myself about whether to take one pill or two; I was always a bit aghast at runners who would take 6 or 12 a day to compensate for their injuries.  Sooo not sustainable).

The truth is, it probably would have been worthwhile for me to try medication earlier.  I certainly had some level of depression throughout my teenage years, and my mother has a pronounced anxiety disorder that I mostly transcend, but still has an influence on me.  I have had episodes of more severe depression as bad as, and once or twice worse than, the one that finally led me to take action.

Occasionally I wonder to what extent the Citalopram has been responsible for the progress I've made the last several years.  For the most part, I think it just helped make a difficult time less worse, and has made my mood more consistent.  Maybe it has done more; but I have to confess I attribute most of the change to my own hard work-- with the support of a few crucial people (esp. aforementioned last relationship and Siona, my own personal transpersonal psychologist and essentially alternate self) and the happy confluence of entering a more autonomous stage of education and finally having some concrete opportunities arrive on the horizon. 

Anyway.  Anyway anyway.

One change I am very glad to see is that I no longer feel paralyzed when facing long periods of time at home by myself.  I have two weeks until classes start.  In past years I might have booked more plane tickets to race around to visit different places and people to keep myself on the go and distracted.  Now I don't feel a void of nothing looming when I stand still.  I have many projects on my mind, and I have a sense of flow.  I'm not just taking in input; I'm able to generate output as well.  Projects, or just writing journal entries like this.

However it happened, I am glad to notice myself here, with this new frame.

I just came across an article that poses the intriguing questions: "[W]hat if we were to imagine a society in which our purpose was to act as good citizens of the Earth as a whole? What might a governance system look like if it were established to protect the rights of all members of a particular biological community, instead of only humans?"

The article is worth reading in its entirety, but I wanted to copy the opening anecdote here:

IT WAS THE SUDDEN RUSH of the goats’ bodies against the side of the boma that woke him. Picking up a spear and stick, the Kenyan farmer slipped out into the warm night and crept toward the pen. All he could see was the spotted, sloping hindquarters of the animal trying to force itself between the poles to get at the goats—but it was enough. He drove his spear deep into the hyena.

The elders who gathered under the meeting tree to deliberate on the matter were clearly unhappy with the farmer’s explanation. A man appointed by the traditional court to represent the interests of the hyena had testified that his careful examination of the body had revealed that the deceased was a female who was still suckling pups. He argued that given the prevailing drought and the hyena’s need to nourish her young, her behavior in attempting to scavenge food from human settlements was reasonable and that it was wrong to have killed her. The elders then cross-examined the farmer carefully. Did he appreciate, they asked, that such killings were contrary to customary law? Had he considered the hyena’s situation and whether or not she had caused harm? Could he not have simply driven her away? Eventually the elders ordered the man’s clan to pay compensation for the harm done by driving more than one hundred of their goats (a fortune in that community) into the bush, where they could be eaten by the hyenas and other wild carnivores.

The story, told to me by a Kenyan friend, illustrates African customary law’s concern with restorative justice rather than retribution. Wrongdoing is seen as a symptom of a breakdown in relationships within the wider community, and the elders seek to restore the damaged relationship rather than focusing on identifying and punishing the wrongdoer.

What a beautiful way of re-framing the world, hmm?  And there's a sharp point made later on, that we give corporations personhood (and civil rights) but deny standing to environments that are damaged or polluted.  It is amazing how tradition and culture can make arbitrary decisions seem manifest and sensible, until they are examined a bit more closely.

Anyway. Now that you've had a taste, go read the whole thing!  :)

And oh yes, future Gaianz, it talks about the Gaia hypothesis too.

In the last few years, after a decade-plus hiatus, I've started reading science fiction books again.  My interest was reignited mainly by the themes of reimagining gender (Ursula Leguin's Left Hand of Darkness), collective intelligence (Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End) and the future of communication and the nature of self-identity as communications allow our presences to become ever more distributed and multiple (David Marusek's Counting Heads).  Things that are relevant to understanding ourselves now, and to better grasping where our energy may lead us in the near future.  There are still times, however, even when I read sci-fi books I like, that certain tropes and clichés cause my interest to flag and make me wonder if it'd be better to switch back to something about *this world* and *these times* and becoming more awake and engaged with the world rather than "escaping." But of course, good scifi can serve as a reflection of our present world and societies.

Anyway.  That was a bit of ramble.  What I wanted to post was an excerpt from Dawn, by Octavia Butler (the first black woman to become an internationally recognized science fiction writer).

Alien to human: "You have a mismatched pair of genetic characteristics.  Either alone would have been useful, would have aided the survival of your species.  But the two together are lethal.  It was only a matter of time before they destroyed you."

Human: "What [are] they?"

Alien: "You are intelligent. That's the newer of the two characteristics, and the one you might have to put to work to save yourselves.  You are potentially one of the most intelligent species we've found, though your focus is different than ours."

Human: "What's the second characteristic?"

Alien: "You are hierarchical.  That's the older and more entrenched characteristic.  We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic.  When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all... That was like ignoring cancer.  I think your people did not realize what a dangerous thing they were doing."

It's interesting that the author conceives as the urge to hierarchy as a genetic inclination.  Maybe so; but humans are far more adaptable to different systems than other species are, and so I think have more potential to transcend hierarchy.

And I invite you to consider with me for a second.  Beyond, possibly, genetics, where does hierarchy come from in our lives?  Until I participated in Community Building workshops (and Open Space workshops) I didn't truly appreciate how much my upbringing, especially through our institutionalized school system, had ingrained in me an assumption that hierarchy was necessary to "get things done."  And not only a visible necessity, but an invisible default strategy to be turned to even in situations where, with a little consideration, it would become obvious that more collaborative strategies might have worked better.  What would society be like, if we had regular opportunities to practice solving problems by ourselves, collectively, from a young age?  If we learned to trust group processes rather than fear them?

{This is why I am intrigued and encouraged by democratic "non-coercive" schools or even more mainstream projects such as multi-year classrooms, where children learn to teach each other.}

But let's bracket our early bruising.  What about right here and now?  Have you perpetuated hierarchical thinking lately?  How so? I know there have been times that I personally have coopted the techniques of bureaucracy (perhaps the ultimate expression of hierarchy?) that have been aimed against me in the past and used them on others where it was convenient or seemed necessary to avoid conflict: speaking as an impersonal organization rather than as an individual, claiming recourse to "policies" that are written nowhere but the vapor of the moment, etc. etc.  I try not to do that, and I tell myself I do it less and more fairly than those who have bureaucratized against me; but I know that, at least sometimes, my rationales are only justifications.

Another thought: isn't hierarchy the natural precursor of capitalism?  Surely the more we think hierarchy is the natural means of ordering our social lives, the easier to believe it is the natural ordering of our economic lives as well...

So, I just switched books for a moment-- to Presence, a book that Siona has been recommending to me for approximately forever-- and in the opening pages came across a passage that dovetails with the last post:

"The species of global institutions reshaping the world includes non-business organizations as well. Today, for example, it's possible to enter an urban school in China or India or Brazil and immediately recognize a way of organizing education that has become completely taken for granted in the West.  Students sit passively in separate classrooms.  Everything is coordinated by a predetermined plan, with bells and whistles marking time, and test and plans to keep things moving like one giant assembly line throughout each hour, day, and year.  Indeed, it was the assembly line that inspired the industrial age school design, with the aim of producing a unform, standardized product as efficiently as possible.  Though the need to encourage thoughtful, knowledgeable, compassionate global citizens in the twenty-first century differs profoundly from the need to train factory workers in the nineteenth century, the industrial age school continues to expand, largely unaffected by the realities within which children are growing up in the present day.

As Buckminster Fuller pointed out, a living system continually recreates itself.  But how this occurs in social systems such as globl institutions depends on both our individual and collective level of awareness. For example, each individual school, is both a whole unto itself and a part, a place for "presencing" of the larger educational system.  So, too, is each individual member of the school: teachers, administrators, students, and parents.  In particular, adults carry the memory, expectations, and emotions of their own experience as schoolchildren.  The same holds true in businesses: the organization's members become vehicles for presencing the prevailing systems of management because those systems are most familiar.

As long as our thinking is governed by habit-- notably by industrial, "machine age" concepts such as control, predictability, standardization and "faster is better"-- we will continue to re-create institutions as they have been, despite their disharmony with the larger world, and the need of all living systems to evolve."

"The King is Dead; Long Live the King"

Wikipedia informs me that this cry -- a traditional proclamation upon the death of a king-- comes from the law of le mort saisit le vif : the transfer of sovereignty occurs instantaneously upon the moment of death of the previous monarch.  Thus a particular king may die, but the country is never without a king. 

The death of Zaadz has crept up on me-- what, it's almost the 15th, already?  This is the last day of this form, this name?

We are an optimistic crew here, so eager to reassure each other of rebirth, to skip over to the constructive side of things.

But I wanted to linger here a moment, not to dwell on the past, but to let the death sink in... It's not really a rebirth until you've felt through the death, right? 

Stillness, stillness.  A heartline goes flat.

And we are still here, holding space, into the void.

Love.

I was standing on the lashed-together ladder up to my loft bed, reaching to tug at a blanket to carry with me to the couch. 

I felt the ladder legs skid, then give out.  The falling was slow, and I had a long time to think on the way to the floor.

My first thought was, Oh shit! I'm stupid.  Then something else I don't remember.  I was shocked how far into the fall it took me to even think maybe I should move somehow or alter my position, maybe do something to protect my head.

But by that point the ladder and I were already down for the count.  I was-- am-- totally fine, no injuries, but adrenaline-stunned.  I held stock still for a second.  No sudden moves.  Memory zoomed me back to my first conscious instant on the ground the time I was hit by a car, when I had to wait in shock to see if I could still breathe.  And I had an image of my grandmother who is about to go into the hospital for surgery.  Is this feeling the quality of helplessness experienced by elderly people who fall?  I hadn't even felt my body do anything instinctive, reactive, on the way down.

Rationally, my brain informed me that I was okay, all clear, I could get up.  But instead I crawled off the ladder, tossed the blanket (still somehow in my hand) into a bundle on the floor, and curled up on top of it.  Giving in to being a body, letting its reactions play out.  Sobbing without tears, whimpering.  Slightly shaking.  Breathing.   Animals twitch and shiver after trauma, to let out their shock.  It's natural.  We forget.

And of course, I was brought back to all the other times sickness and injury and shock have showed me that I am really a body, in the end and that a Self is an illusion of arrogance.  Surrender, surrender.  You are the body.  You are those waves of pain and intensity, of roaring inarticulate emotion and aching muscle.

I am I am I am.

How about something a bit lighter today?

My second cousin Shana had a baby around Dec 11-ish.  That was right before finals and holiday trips, so I didn't send out a gift until mid-January. 

Rather than send a "Congrats on the baby!" card, I decided to send a belated birthday card, made out to my new niece herself.

Today I received a reply in the mail:

Thanks so much for the cool toy from Vietnam.  Pretty soon I will know how to grab onto it-- but for now I'm enjoying the bright colors I see when I look at it.  Don't worry about missing my birthday-- I'll take gifts anytime!  I hear you might come visit? Will you mind if I spit up on you? It's a reflex so I'm just warning you!

Love,
Adelaide

How fantastic?  I'm tempted to take up a correspondence "to Adelaide" as a regular thing. 

...

Actually, how about a two-for-one deal?  I also recently gave a souvenier from Mexico to an 8-year old girl who takes Spanish lessons from my mother.  I got a reply from her, too-- but not ghost-written.  It reads:

Thank you very much for the sombrero for Pig.  He is wearing it right now! Pig has always wanted to learn the Mexican Hat Dance-- and now's his Mexican Hat Chance! I love the decorations on it and so does Pig.  He didn't get anything else for Christmas, you know! --Julia

[Of course, it's even better when you see the meandering hand-writing and size-changing letters.]

[aka how else could I ever look Al Gore in the face?]

So I'm geekily psyched about taking Water Law this semester.  I keep reading these articles that say "Water will be in the twenty-first century what oil was in the twentieth century."

Water privatization, droughts, fresh water shortages... How could I really go out and live and be lawyerly in California without knowing about something that's such a fundamental Big Deal to western states-- and lots of developing countries too? (I worry, e.g.: are NGOs et al. adequately taking climate change into account when recommending that farmers concentrate on certain crops? Say, cash crops over something more hardy and sustainable, over anything diverse?)

I cracked open the first chapter of the text a couple days ago, and I'm so glad to be getting a better understanding of the system. Yeah, lots of the stats about increasing use and future needs are scary, but it feels great to be learning information (and soon, legal tools) to be able to do something useful someday.

So, some stuff from my reading:

Three important facts about western water use & the related economy:

1) "Irrigation uses the overwhelming share of water consumed in every western state."

2) Surprisingly, the author contends "continued rapid population growth in the West, will not, in theory, overstrain the region's water supply." That is, despite the West's urbanization, water use by municipal areas and industries are insignificant compared to well, see 1.

"[I]n California and elsewhere, a relatively modest reduction in agricultural use-- on the order of 10 or 12 percent-- could free up enough water, in theory, to permit decades of population growth."

3) "[M]ost agricultural water grows low-value crops."

And what's the answer to that problem? How about, "Alex, what is vegetarianism?"

"In California... nearly 1 million acres of irrigated pasture requires about 4.2 million acre-feet of water per year-- as much as an urban population of 23 million. Pasture, though it is the single largest water user in California, is an extremely low-value crop, with a gross value of just $93 Million (1986) in a $480 Billion state economy. (Pasture's total economic value is several times greater if one calculates secondary benefits, but a much smaller amount of water used on high-value crops or in an urban setting would produce equal secondary benefits.)"

And the next largest water consumers in California? Alfalfa, cotton, and irrigated rice.

These top four water consumers accounted for nearly half of all agricultural water use in California. "By contrast, the value of California's grape crop- $1.5billion-- was almost equal to that of ALL the crops just mentioned, but the grape acreage used just 1.6 million acre-feet of water, about one-ninth as much."

MORE WINE, LESS CATTLE? Sounds like a motto to me.

(Oh and it's not just wine. Think of all the other yummy crops from Cali: avocados, strawberries, oranges, asparagus, almonds, walnuts... all are Higher-value but use less water than pasture/alfalfa/cotton/rice.)

...

I usually feel Gaia is not the place to post cynical web comics, but I couldn't resist this one. I mean, sometimes I feel like lonely, angsty fish in a barrel myself ;)


[On a brighter topic, my grandmother's valve replacement surgery went fine & she's expected to make a full recovery]

This made me hilariously happy.  And, of course, reminded me of Farland's pictures of dogs bounding through snow ;)