In the last few months, there has emerged a hot new topic on Medium. It is the end of the world as we know it but many top writers take it further with one particularly popular Medium writer branding our times as “The Age of Extinction” signifying that it is not just the ending of powerful civilizations but of life on earth, and he has branded it! Cha-ching!
Maybe true, because, anything is possible. The movie, Don’t Look Up, jumpstarted this trend by taking on the possibility of an asteroid hitting the planet, clearly intended as a metaphor for many other issues that we face today and a reflection on our manner of addressing potentialities. The aforementioned school of Medium writers portrays the collusion of disruptive events as leading to an inevitable outcome of certain doom.
Scientists are trying to understand the potential effect of the land-based ice shelf known as Thwaites Glacier shattering and falling into the ocean which could happen as soon as three years. My local community, situated on a peninsula in Maine is subject to the possibility of sudden and rapidly rising sea levels. Mirroring the media coverage in the movie, Don’t Look Look Up, the Town’s one newspaper gives perpetual center stage to updates about an architectural design of a proposed fifty-million dollar school system, a yet-to-be-voted upon ballot initiative, funded by developer Paul Coulombe and his circle of dark money. The three latest stories about the fifty-million-dollar school project are perpetually glued to the front page. I can only imagine that such coverage is well financed. All totaled there are probably more stories about our water supply and climate change issues but they are not consistently and collectively featured, sometimes they are buried in another story without a mention in the headline.
Imagine an alternate media in which a recent story titled Boothbay Region at forefront of climate crisis headed the list of continually featured centerpiece stories. When the media gives special coverage to a story, covid being another example, it impresses upon the community that it is a significantly important issue. I read the above climate story and hoped the water district has it right in preparing for the worst-case scenario in light of the radical climate changes happening all around us including the Thwaites Glacier. Rates of local sea levels on the coast can be larger than the global average, with the general global message being that sea levels are rising at faster rates than ever before. Each community has to understand its own unique level of threat and protection. That should be Priority #1 for local coastal communities.
Bigelow Labs is a powerful local resource but I am guilty of never attending one of its events. The next is on August 2 and so I registered for it. All of the lectures will soon be available online.
An earlier iceberg named A68a broke off in Antarctica and started drifting into the Weddel Sea in 2017 and has finally dissolved without causing the most feared disaster, but not without an effect on the ecosystem.
In the most recent news, scientists are taken by total surprise to discover previously unknown life forms living in the rivers running beneath the ice shelf which is dropping off into the sea. And, as one surprise layered upon another, as scientists set up their equipment to observe what was taking place below the ice shelf where warm water flows, they discovered a living ecosystem for the first time while simultaneously they were able to observe the effect of the Tongan volcano, which erupted thousands of kilometers away, on the newly discovered life forms.
My favorite philosopher of science, David Bohm, frequently emphasized that science does not deal with absolute truths but with insights. Will the newly discovered lifeforms living in rivers running under icebergs be as paradigm-shattering as the discovery of quanta? We do not know. It frequently happens just at the point when mankind believes to have figured out all of God’s creation, something new emerges transforming previous conceptions.
Now that I am fiscally sponsored, I have to figure out what this new opportunity is all about. There are many unfamiliar pages showing up in my Facebook stream for funding opportunities that resonate with my worldview:
It’s a lot to process and to put the pieces together connectively as a cohesive plan. It’s all new to me so my plan is to submit several applications a week. Are all these pages being generated via the Field or are there other sources? It’s fascinating that organizations that I never knew about before are manifesting all at once in my stream. It feels like a mysterious force is sending messages from organizations tailor-made to my needs, as reinforcing networking. These messages are not identified as coming from The Field, but their emergence serendipitously coincides with becoming fiscally sponsored by The Field.
The Ten Principals of Community-Centric Fundraising not only resonate but in my brief experience of interacting with the organization, they feel practically realized.
Boothbay as a community could work on #3 which is
“3. Nonprofits are generous with and mutually supportive of one another.”
When I was previously fiscally sponsored to start a museum with no experience, I approached local sources and found them completely cold. I appreciate the forthrightness of Patricia Royal, former head of the Boothbay Chamber of Commerce, who, when I approached her about helping to find a board responded with ” Let me get back to you on that! The problem is everyone is competing for boards and funding!” I can’t recall if she said the words that all the non-profit organizations see each other as competition, but that was what was communicated and how my experience with the local non-profit community felt.
And so I will hopefully give the State Ten Year Plan organizers the benefit of the doubt about requiring collaboration between non-profits as a requirement for being accepted into the program, but I also think that the State could play a role in making that happen if it recognizes the existing non collaborating character of the nonprofit community, similar to the way that The Field is playing a guiding role in navigating this new field of opportunity, or so it seems. I happen to have two separate networking projects on my The Field profile, but I would welcome collaborating with other regional organizations. I have just never found those doors open.
In the previous post, I sent a last-minute notice of a video presented hosted by The American Economics Liberty Project concerning the increasing use of nondisclosure agreements in public-private relationships. Nondisclosure agreements were once the province of private enterprise but in public-private relationships, the lines separating each side dissolve as the private sector authors legislation and the public sector adopts private sector practices, the nondisclosure agreement being the latest.
I enjoyed watching this video broadcast that included young and old faces alike. The first speaker was a member of the New York State Legislature and explained why , after winning the Amazon HQ2 contest. New York declined the project. There were many stories told from across the nation about how nondisclosure agreements are being used to keep the public out of the process and delivering nothing in exchange for large subsidies to corporations that don’t need the money and in some cases had no other choice but to locate where the corporate welfare deals were made.
We live in very disruptive times, add public rejection of corporate welfare to the list. We are in radically transforming times of death and rebirth. The past is history. The future is unknown. What we do at this moment makes a difference