Resilience

Chain of arguments for the ecological identity of the international language Esperanto (& its organizations)

This post comes to you from Cultura21

1.

Direct progress with concern to the “interna ideo” (“internal idea”) of Esperanto is the conscious integration of the concept of a “neutral international language” within the framework of the cultures of sustainability & according to the 3 criteria of

  1. Peace,
  2. Human Rights &
  3. Sustainability

2.

The criteria of sustainability (see UN, civil groups – NGOs etc.) are principally constituted & substanciated by  the limitation of the Planet’s material & detoxicating ressources. Hence sustainability means that one

  1. shouldn’t consume more of our geobisofere than can be regenerated &
  2. shouldn’t pollute the geobiosfere more than can be detoxicated by it.

A measure for the degree of consumption-pollution can be the so called“ecological footprint”, i.e. the mathematically kalkulatable excess (quantitative factor).
In addition there is a factor, which relates to the (also to a certain degree measurable) reduction of the biological & cultural diversity on this Planet & its world.
One of the mayor criteria of sustainable evolution is the so called “resilience”, a physical quantity which relates to the elasticity (or buffer capacity) of an autoekopoietic system of the geobiosfere, including the humane social systems. This, so to speak, guarantees the survival of the system. Herto belongs also the principle of prevention.

3.

Besides ecology, economy & the social, also culture is a decisive factor with concern to the ecologically sustainable evolution of the human society.

The culture of sustainability considers culture itself in all its aspects, & thus also communication, as part of a livable present & future. In regard to this transdisciplinarity & transculturality play an important role in the creation of a global  change of mindset, which finally should accomplish both social & ecological justice. This evidently relates to individuals and collectives.

4.

Nowadays all fields of human activity are submitted to examnination concerning their  adequateness in the context of a sustainable operation of our world.Retaxation of values & realignment of theoretical premisses & practical politics belong to the prerequisites of a safe & enjoyable future.  This also applies to the fundamentals of international communication & its acceptable traits & costs (ecological communication).

A nonethnical neutral international language as Esperanto represents the linguistic part of a sustainable culture in international communication.

The international languagein itself is ecologically sustainable with regad to 2 features:

  1. Qualitativly Esperanto minimizes social risks for the fact of  installing“democratic bilinguism”, i.e.  a setup of international communication, in which everybody speaks his own mother  tongue & Esperanto (Esperanto as the 2nd language for all.) Nobody suffers linguistic or communicative disadvantages.
  2. Quantitatively  Esperanto minimizes environmental risks for the fact of “ecological appropriateness”, meaning drastic reduction with concern to the dissipation of resources (consumption of material & energy in translation & interpreter services) & general pollution of the geobiosfere. (Just one figure:  within the EU every fourth official is in one way or another occupied with language & translation problems!)

A more detailed overview of the problem will be given in an article to come: “Esperanto – ecological, ecomical, social & cultural arguments for a neutral international language”.

Wolfgang Guenther (compilation)

* AVE (Asocio de Verduloy Esperantistay – www.verduloj.org)

* NULA HORO (Transnacia Artkoncepto kun Esperanto kile Komuna Lingvo, nula [dot] horo [dot] arto [at] web [dot] de)

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Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)

– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)

– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)

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Steve Waters’ Contingency Plan and the Rubik’s Cube of climate change


Resilience, one of the two plays that form The Contingency Plan by Steve Waters

Given that theatre presents itself as a form that is profoundly engaged in the politics of the present, that we’re a country that produced David Hare, David Edgar, Howard Brenton and Harold Pinter, why has there been so little theatre about the most central political issue of the time?

Last night I was at one of the events put on by the Cultures of Climate Change group at the University of  Cambridge; Time To Act: The Theatre of Climate Change. The blogger/journalist Robert Butler was interviewing playwright Steve Waters about his play The Contingency Plan. The Contingency Plan at The Bush Theatre earlier this year was the first time someone has pulled off a really intelligent piece of theatre about climate change. Even thecritics agreed. Set in the very near future, it involves events – personal and political – leading up at a major storm surge that appears to be about to flood a significant section of the East Anglian coast. (Rob mentioned a great moment at the press night for the play when the Daily Telegraph’s reviewer turned to him at the interval and said, aghast, “Robert, tell me all this isn’t true?” Robert had to break the news to him).

Waters made the point that he was initially taken aback that no one else had written a play that dealt directly and successfully with the subject. He also became very conscious at the time of writing that the British theatre establishment wasn’t really looking a play on the topic.

Partly this is because theatre acknowleges something we all understand. The complex, slowly unfolding narrative of climate change is one that’s incredibly inconvenient for artists. It is not, we tend to assume, particularly dramatic in itself. Robert Butler discussed this in a review ofThe Contingency Plan in Intelligent Life magazine earlier this year:

Climate change is a difficult subject for dramatists. Three years ago Caryl Churchill, a playwright, introduced a talk by two leading environmental scientists by stressing that their work raises an essential dramatic problem: one of distance.To transport science to the stage, a playwright must not only clarify complicated ideas for laypeople, but also evoke the tension of cause and effect. The problem with climate change is that what happens in one place often ends up affecting people in an entirely different place, and at a remote time. The two worlds can seem unrelated. Where’s the catalyst for drama?

As Butler went on to say, Waters succeeds in closing that gap by a having two plays within the single work – and as Peter Gingold of Tippingpoint mentioned on the way out, by being very clever indeed. Having written it though, Waters is also aware that the UK theatre establishment was probably only looking for one play on climate change.

In response to that thought Butler mentioned a discussion he’d heard on Radio 4’s The World Tonight the night before, in which Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate Change at the University of East Anglia, said we have made life difficult for ourselves by the way we’ve approached the issue of climate change:

One of the arguments I make about Copenhagen, says Hulme, is that we’ve stitched together so many concerns – quite serious and real concerns – under one umbrella [namely, the reduction of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere]. It’s a bit like the Rubik’s Cube that came out some years ago. There are so many different combinations that I could never solve it. And this is what we’ve created with Climate Change. A Rubik’s Cube that we can’t solve. Whereas if we begin to tease out the various elements of the problem – the problems of development, the problems of adaptation, the problems of short-lived greenhouse gasses like methane or black soot, separate those out from the problems of long-lived CO2, we could find a much easier set of pathways.

It was a great discussion; Butler did a brilliant job of throwing new thoughts into the ring for Waters to bat back. I’m still trying to work out whether I agree with what Hume says as a political way to approach climate change, but artistically that makes a lot of sense. Even if , hypothetically speaking,  Steve Waters has written THE play about climate change, there is huge scope still to pull the Rubik’s Cube apart to allow us to make profounder sense of climate change.

Thanks to Benjamin Morris and Bradon Smith for the event.

Steve mentioned that the The Contingency Plan will be aired by the BBC on Dec 13 to coincide with COP15. I’ll keep you posted with the details.

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Encouragement of the Arts

I’m wildly excited about two books, one coming out this month the other next year – both are radical insights about what environmental change means for the human relationship to the planet. One is Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto and the other is Timothy Morton’s The Ecological Thought.

What I find so vital in their work is that they are strongly against the misanthropy that seems to underpin much of the dominant narrative around the environmental movement. To my mind, the idea that humans are stupid, indifferent and deliberately destructive is not only an inadequate account of human nature it is heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking because it is debilitating at every level. At a time when we most need compassion and creative thinking the very sentiments that block these – pervasive cynicism and conservatism – are prevalent. (I’ve used too many words beginning with ‘c’ in that sentence, I’ll move onto the letter ‘R’ for a while).

What roots the rigorous accounts given by ecological experts such as Brand and Morton is that people are hugely capable of complex thinking, adaptive living, resilience and resourcefulness. We have created this situation of environmental change so now we must rise to challenge of transforming how we think and behave in response to it. And when I read documents like Peter Head’s Entering an Ecological Age, and see speakers at the RSA like Graciela Chichilnisky, not only do these extraordinary changes feel crucial they appear do-able.

Drawing on Brand, Head and Morton, I have written a short essay for the Copenhagen exhibition RETHINK: Contemporary Art & Climate Change.
Here’s a bit of it:  Art and ideas are not timeless, they are historically specific. The uneasy realisation of our current situation is that we are part of an ecological system that we influence more than we previously thought was possible. We are not outside observers, we are participants; we engage and affect systems whether we intend to or not. … we are the co-creators of our environment. Yet we do not yet fully recognise ourselves as such. This is a revelation awaiting to be fully explored through the arts.

It is the beginning of some work I’m developing for the Arts and Ecology Centre on what the arts may contribute  in moving us towards an ecological age.  Some of the ideas are controversial. And as part of this, writer Josie Appleton has been commissioned to write an essay for this website, as her work sets out to explore fresh thinking about human capability.The Challenge of Climate Change: Towards a New Human Consciousness – is a ‘thought experiment’, as she says in her blog – so comments are welcome.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology