We are already into the second half of 2010! Happy 4th of July to American readers! This is a quick link summary of what we have been up to in the first half of 2010 and where we will be going in the second half of 2010. (These are also posted on the blog marilyn.integralcity.com .)

•  We are happy to announce new research and new podcasts that have been posted to the website (see items 1 and 2).
• Also below are some of the events and places where we will be contributing until the end of 2010 and into 2011.
• As usual we look forward to seeing you as we seek to catalyze evolutionary intelligences in the Human Hive

Today’s Integral City Sparkie for the City Mind/Heart:

In the history of the city, human systems have too rarely asked, what ought to be the conscious intention of citizens (or even what is the conscious duty of citizens)?

 Hamilton, M., 2008, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, p.179

1. New Research on City Values and Integral Vital Signs Monitor – check it out at http://www.integralcity.com/discovery-zone/research.html
2. New Podcasts – Preface and 12 Chapters of Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive – download mp3’s http://integralcity.com/Podcasts/podcasts.html
3. Integral Theory Conference: Enacting an Integral Future – JF Kennedy University, Pleasant Hill, California http://www.integraltheoryconference.org/default.html
   1. July 29, 2010 830am – 12pm Guest of Bert Parlee on Sexual Boundaries in the Integral Community: A Process Workshop
   2. July 29, 2010 1245-415 Generational Cycles, Saecula & Cities: What do Integral Boomers Gen X,Y, Z Need to Let Go Of & Create Anew? Presenter with Cherie Beck
   3. July 30, 2010 200 – 300pm Meshworking Integral Intelligences for Resilient Environments: Enabling Order and Creativity in the Human Hive.  Presenter
   4. July 30, 2010 – 330 pm Panel Moderator: Spiral Dynamics in Academia: The Transdisciplinary Dance of Dissonance
   5. July 31, 2010 1230 – 1:45pm Ginger Group Collaborative, ACE-Its
   6. July 31, 2010 200 – 300pm Panel Member: Women’s Panel: Creating a Full-Spectrum Ecology for Women’s Development
4. Next Step Integral Conference: Integral Education and Integral Ecology – Presenter, 12 Intelligences of the Human Hive http://i-edu.org/
5. The Map, The Mesh and The Human Hive – Telecourse, September 2010 – forward inquiries to map@integralcity.com
6. Royal Roads University, September 13, 2010 – April, 2011 Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Community Development Grad Certificate – Designer, Co-Developer and Faculty for Residency and Distance Learning Courses. http://www.royalroads.ca/program/graduate-certificate-sustainable-community-development
7. Renaissance2,  Designing a Resilient Civilization Oct. 21-23, Conscious Evolution 24-25 2010. http://www.renaissance2.eu/events/event-detail.php?id=498975449
8. What if we aren’t planning to survive?  Asks Alberta Association of Canadian Institute of Planners at their annual conference, Lake Louise AB, October 17-19, 2010. Join us.  http://www.aacip.com/public/conferences.html
9. Business Innovation for Sustainable Growth. Globe Forum Dublin in November 17-18, 2010. Keynote Speaker on Integral City Innovation, Evolution & Resilience http://www.globeforum.com/
10. Globe Forum, Jury of the Globe Sustainable City awards (in Stockholm in May, 2011). http://www.globeaward.org/

…meshful summer blessings … and see you soon.

 Marilyn

We have not met but I feel like I know you through your writings.  Integral Cities is a important book.  I first came to know about your work through Will Varey who spoke of meshworking and linked us to “The Art and Science of Meshworking” http://www.creativityatwork.com/Newsletters/07/March07-meshwork.html.  I was stunned and delighted to see the roots of this idea. For more than 50 years, when I first came to know how young children best learn, I have been practicing meshworking.  From classroom teaching I founded the Learning Exchange in KC, Mo.  Here I brought CEO’s, teachers, artists, scientists, kids, teachers (inner city and suburban), parents, professors from different universities together to design and put into schools programs that were missing from the curriculum.  Programs were designed from the bottom up … through playing with ideas, iterating possibilities, and mostly coming to know each other as co-designers of big ideas.  Then in 1981, I co-founded MG Taylor Corporation with my husband, Matt. Our focus became helping corporations and enterprises solve complex problems.  Against all odds we insisted on bringing all what we called “Value Web” members together – 40 to 100 people from executive to mailroom, from customers, board members, and suppliers together to forge new solutions.  Participants loved finding each other, being able to see how diversity of thought worked for them, not against them.   Now Tomorrow Makers is my focus.  Through it all, the future by design, not default has been the motto.  

 I always knew we were doing more than building networks but the word meshworking was not in our vocabulary.  It is a profound concept.  

Anyway, I could go on and on and I am sure we could have meaningful exchanges.  But I thought it would be fun to share with you a photo based on your paragraph:

“The brain builds itself by laying down large synaptic highways, which become the scaffold of communication corridors from which secondary and tertiary corridors emerge, until a vast “hairnet of axons” covers the brain. Once this hairnet is in place then we have a brain that is able to self-organize an infinite number of connections, thoughts, ideas, innovations and learnings while at the same time behave and direct behavior in dependable, learned ways.” 

We were working with a very exciting group, Circle of Blue, to create the next phase of their organizational and business model. Their assignment: 

This is a modeling exercise.  You have a box of resources.  Use them to create a multi-dimensional model that reveals the workings of the entire ecosystem and Meshworking capacities of COB.  In particular, pay attention to the idea that your work is helping the entire planet escape to a higher order.  What is the attractor that draws you – and thus the world – forward into this new order?

Anyway, there were many, many good playful ideas that spilled forth but I thought you might be particularly interested in this photo of “a hairnet of axons” 

My cohort and son Todd,  are also writing a chapter for a book on Evolutionary Leadership and our subject is Wayfinding.  

Our chapter is very much in draft form but here is our reference to meshworking: 

Wayfinders inherently know that all aspects of a social system must work together and come to know each other’s contributions through engagement, finding ways that very different fields of knowledge or expertise fit together.  They don’t exert themselves breaking down the stove pipe mentality, but rather help people reach through and across these boundaries.  They assist in finding the cross linkages and intersections. They create strange, yet vital connections and synergies between networks, willing to hold the creative tension of different vantage points together until these partners find common metaphors and create a language that makes their connection relevant.  Wayfinders dance with the flow of possibility.  They train their senses on seeing what others fail to see and on weaving these differences into the fabric of scenarios in the making.  

Marilyn Hamilton, in her book Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, describes how the brain develops:

“The brain builds itself by laying down large synaptic highways, which become the scaffold of communication corridors from which secondary and tertiary corridors emerge, until a vast “hairnet of axons” covers the brain. Once this hairnet is in place then we have a brain that is able to self-organize an infinite number of connections, thoughts, ideas, innovations and learnings while at the same time behave and direct behavior in dependable, learned ways.” 

We think this is a wonderful and accurate description for how Wayfinders work. As one paradigm falls and another one emerges, tremendous transformational events and processes occur.  These changes are nonlinear, and cannot be “controlled” by nation states or institutional powers.  Rather they are a “hairnet of axons” growing throughout the global brain, taking root in the most unusual places, building and connecting entire ecosystems. Wayfinders are meshworkers, wiring and perturbing the global brain, hoping to reveal the shortest routes to a surprising, resilient new world.  As the meshwork grows stronger, more and more people recognize ways forward –  they begin to see Magellan’s ship.  As the new paradigm matures, extraordinary ideas become ordinary transactions.

My apologies for a long, wandering email. I have been meaning to write you for some time, but when I saw the photo, I knew it was time.  

 My best,

 Gail

Tomorrow Makers, inc.

gail@tomorrowmakers.org

Bringing There to Here

visit us on the web @

http://www.tomorrowmakers.org

follow us on Twittter @

http://www.twitter.com/tomorrowmakers

This study contributed Knowledge and Development Exchange (KDE) for a Welcoming and Inclusive Communities and Work Places project, named “Food for Thought” located in Abbotsford BC. 

The objectives of this study were:

1. Values mapping to identify the location of differences: cultural sources of misunderstandings, conflicts and differing expectations. This contributed directly to effective decision making in the “Food for Thought” Demonstration Project (DP). 
2. Mapping values of newcomers and immigrants to Abbotsford, identifying postal code locations, languages (and thereby culture and ethnic backgrounds) and age (with a special focus on youth), to help locate the geographic clustering or distribution of newcomers and immigrants.  This revealed the interconnections and disconnections of people.
3. Creating a framework for a capacity and asset map of Abbotsford that embraces Place Caring and Place Making capacities.
4. Developing a framework for a vital signs of wellbeing monitor for Abbotsford based on the values and asset maps, which can contribute to the strategic planning process of the City, the Fraser Health Authority, the School District, UFV, Civil Society and private firms.

Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from a random population sample of 479 residents including youth, and residents whose first language was Punjabi, Korean and Mandarin. Analysis showed that Abbotsford adults prefer collective-based values of family, order and caring; while youth and Punjabi and Korean language groups have stronger individual-based values, particularly related to personal expression. Overall the data showed that Abbotsford was experiencing a deficit of values related to results, planning and strategy. Most respondents from all the data samples agreed that what was not working well in Abbotsford related to unhealthy personal expression, showing up as drugs, gangs and violence.

Recommendations proposed that :

1. Abbotsford grow its capacities for success, results and planning at all ages. The Chamber of Commerce is a key stakeholder in enabling this to happen.
2. The agriculture sector promote the whole trajectory of jobs from the farm gate to the food plate to young people in an annual agriculture career fair.
3. Policy makers across the city incorporate  the results of this research into values-based strategies in their programs and services.
4. Key city stakeholders collaborate to activate the prototype of the Integral Vital Signs Monitor (IVSM) to track effective changes to Abbotsford’s wellbeing. 
5. Key city stakeholders collaborate to create a Community of Practice to administer the Integral Vital Signs Monitor (IVSM) and meshwork community organizations so that their services are aligned.
6. Other recommendations included: approaching Abbotsford wellbeing with a whole systems, all quadrant, all levels, cross cultural, all faiths meshwork.

 Details of the research on the Integral City Meshworks Inc. website www.integralcity.com and Food for Thought website www.hungryforfutures.ca . Presentations of key Research Findings to interested parties can be scheduled with charter partner Integral City Meshworks Inc. at kde@integralcity.com .

The faint signals of re-imagining the city, in the next decade, arise from those who recognize it as the most complex human system ever created – and one that deserves to be respected and honoured for the living system it is. The city is a social holon, like a human hive, where each person experiences life through individual exteriors like body, brain and behaviours and collective exteriors like systems, structures and infrastructures. In addition, and more importantly for the next decade, the city resonates with the individual interiors of intention, inspiration and imagination and the collective interiors of values, visions and cultural vitality.

Read the rest of this Blog at http://kedgeforward.com/2010/05/17/ktls-emerging-cityscapes-volume-4-number-3/

Thanks Frank Spencer for the invitation to contribute to Emerging Cityscapes.

The Brazilian city Curitiba awarded the Globe Sustainable City Award 2010

STOCKHOLM, April 7, 2010 − The Brazilian city Curitiba wins the Globe Sustainable City Award 2010. The city of Curitiba is awarded for excellent sustainable urban development. The Globe Award statuette will be presented to representatives from the City of Curitiba on April 29^th at a gala dinner at the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, Sweden.

The Globe Sustainable City Award is now presented for the second year. The aim of the City Award is to underline cities and municipalities, which excel in sustainable urban development, and to set a positive example for others. The general mission of the Globe Sustainability Awards is to highlight and acknowledge particular cases and initiatives within the sustainability area.

The competition was hard and the runners-up were sustainable cities like Malmoe in Sweden, Murcia in Spain, Songpa in South Korea, Stargard Szczecinski in Poland (the winner of the Globe Award Polish Edition 2009) and Sydney in Australia. Curtiba’s holistic approach to sustainable urban development impressed the jury and the city was unanimously selected as a winner.

The jury’s motivation: “The City of Curitiba shows maturity in their understanding of sustainable city development – both regarding policy and implementation. The holistic approach is well framed and managed in order to create a strong and healthy community, integrating the environmental dimension with other dimensions like intellectual, cultural, economic and social.”

The jury group for the Sustainable City Award is chaired by Jan Sturesson, World Economic Forum, in the global agenda council “future of Government”, Partner PricewaterhouseCoopers and Global Leader of Government and Public Service in Sweden.

The winning city will be awarded at a prestigious gala dinner at the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, Sweden on April 29, held in connection to the Globe Forum sustainability conference on April 28-29^th in Stockholm. The Globe Sustainabilty Awards have been given out since 2007 in four cathegories: Sustainable research, innovation, reporting and cities. For more information about the other Globe Award winners see www.globeaward.org.

For more information please contact:  

Lars-Olle Larsson, Chairman of the Globe Award jury, Partner PricewaterhouseCoopers Sweden Mobile: +46-709 29 39 83, e-mail: lars-olle.larsson@se.pwc.com

Martina Nee, Manager Globe Award, Globe Forum, Stockholm, Sweden

Mobile: +46-733 17 53 55, e-mail: martina.nee@globeforum.com

Carin Balfe Arbman. Press Contact Globe Forum, Stockholm, Sweden
Mobile: +46-706 33 35 08, e-mail carin.balfe.arbman@globeforum.com

About the winner:

Curitiba, Brazil – Municipal Master Plan indicates reorganization of the urban territory, considering drainage basins as basic planning units, institutional strengthening, seeking the development of transversality in planning and environmental management processes as well as changes in production and consumption standards, reducing costs and waste. www.curitiba.br

The Jury:
The jury for the Globe Sustainable City Award consists of highly experienced and internationally recognized experts. The overall chairman of all four jury groups is Lars-Olle Larsson, Partner PricewaterhouseCoopers Sweden.

Jan Sturesson – World Economic Forum in the global agenda council “future of Government”, Partner in PwC and Global Leader of Government and Public Service, Sweden

Lawrence Bloom – Deputy Chairman of Noble Cities Plc., Former Chair and Current Member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Urban Management, Chairman of the UN Environmental Programme, Green Economy Initiative, sector on Green Cities, Buildings and Transport. and the UK Chair of the Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organisation

Marilyn Hamilton – PhD, CGA is the founder of Integral City Meshworks Inc. and TDG Global Learning Connections, Canada

C. S. Kiang – professor, Chairman of Peking University Environment Fund, China

Carlos Arruda – PhD, Chairman of the Unicon, Director of the International Relations and coordinator of the Innovation Central Fundação Dom Cabral (FDC), Brazil

Globe Award was founded in 2007 in Sweden by the international business network and marketplace Globe Forum. Globe Award 2010 is acknowledging prominent researchers, innovators, cities and companies – from all parts of the world – within four categories Sustainability Research Award, Sustainability Innovation Award, Sustainable City Award and the Sustainability Reporting Award; www.globeaward.org, www.globeforum.com

Leading Sustainability Awards The world’s best sustainable cities in the running for Globe Sustainable City Award 2010 STOCKHOLM, March 23, 2010 − Six cities extensively working in the sustainability area have been nominated for the Globe Sustainable City Award 2010. The City Award − one of four categories of the Globe Award − is given to municipalities all over the world which successfully contribute to increasing knowledge on sustainability.

One winner will be receiving the prestigious award on the 29th of April, at the gala dinner at the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, Sweden. Globe Award is presented for the fourth consecutive time. The aim is to discover and encourage researchers, innovators, cities and companies which distinguish in sustainable development. Globe Award’s mission is to highlight and acknowledge particular cases and initiatives within sustainability area.

The jury consists of highly experienced and internationally recognized experts. Chairman of the jury group for the Sustainable City Award is Jan Sturesson, Partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers and Global Leader of Government and Public Service in Sweden. “The selection process of most sustainable city has for the jury been a fantastic moment with unexpected good and professional applications from cities all around the globe. Sustainable development 2.0 with a fresh, innovative and holistic approach is definitely here to stay for the benefits of future citizens!” – says Jan Sturesson.

 The jury has evaluated the cities looking at a holistic perspective on sustainable development. Different kinds of resources and capitals have been taken into account, such as: • Environmental Capital – Natural Resources Preservation • Social Capital – Well being and Social Relations • Human and Intellectual Capital – Innovation and Social Intelligence • Technical and Infrastructure Capital – Transportation and ICT • Culture and Leisure Capital – Experience • Political Capital – Confidence and Public Trust • Financial Capital – Assets and Financial Management

The nominated cities are: • Curitiba, Brazil • Malmö, Sweden • Murcia, Spain • Songpa, South Korea • Stargard Szczecinski, Poland (the winner of Globe Award polish edition 2009) • Sydney, Australia The winner will be announced on the 7th of April.

For more information please contact: Lars-Olle Larsson, Chairman of the Globe Award jury, Partner PricewaterhouseCoopers Sweden. Mobile: +46-709 29 39 83, e-mail: lars-olle.larsson@se.pwc.com Martina Nee, Manager Globe Award, Globe Forum, Stockholm, Sweden Mobile: +46-733 17 53 55, e-mail: martina.nee@globeforum.com

More information about the nominees for the Globe Sustainable City Award:

• Curitiba, Brazil – Municipal Master Plan indicates reorganization of the urban territory, considering drainage basins as basic planning units, Institutional strengthening, seeking the development of transversality in planning and environmental management processes as well as changes in production and consumption standards, reducing costs and waste;

• Malmö, Sweden – the city built its reputation around a heavy industrial core with large-scale manufacturing facilities in its Western Harbour (WH) which has become an urbanised district focused on energy and environment, mixed-use urban planning and architectural diversification integrated within the larger city centre;

• Murcia, Spain – the comprehensive plan; Sustainable Strategy, started with the introduction of sustainability criteria in the new urban developments, such as the demand of solar thermal facilities in the new homes for hot sanitary water demand and the demand of cycling line in the urban developments. Sustainable Strategy includes many distinguishing initiatives, such as Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan and other urban projects to improve the level of sustainability in many areas in the city;

• Songpa, South Korea – Song Pa presents an eco-friendly urban development project for the new millennium to execute a green and sustainable city construction. Waterway Songpa aims to restore the natural environment in the city that has been damaged due to accelerated development; it is a solution for ecological restoration, promotion of diverse life forms, and adaptation to climate changes;

• Stargard Szczecinski, Poland – the comprehensive project of revitalizing the former airfield area, shows the significance of sustainable approach to municipal projects, strategic planning, devising long term investment plans. Currently the airfield revitalization project is the object of study visits, which is the reason for pride among all involved;

• Sydney, Australia – the initiative Sustainable Sydney 2030 looks holistically at the city – its environment, economic, social and cultural life, its physical form and its future needs. The Sustainable Sydney 2030 Vision is for a Green, Global, and Connected City.

The Jury: Jan Sturesson – Partner in PwC and Global Leader of Government and Public Service, Sweden Lawrence Bloom – Deputy Chairman of Noble Cities Plc. Chairs the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Urban Management and the UN Environmental Programme Green Economy Initiative sector on Green Cities, Buildings and Transport, UK Marilyn Hamilton – PhD, CGA is the founder of Integral City Meshworks Inc. and TDG Global Learning Connections, Canada C. S. Kiang – professor, Chairman of Peking University Environment Fund, China Carlos Arruda – PhD, Chairman of the Unicon, Director of the International Relations and coordinator of the Innovation Central Fundação Dom Cabral (FDC), Brazil

Globe Award was founded in 2007 in Sweden by the international business network and marketplace Globe Forum. Globe Award 2010 is acknowledging prominent researchers, innovators, cities and companies – from all parts of the world – within four categories Sustainability Research Award, Sustainability Innovation Award, Sustainable City Award and the Sustainability Reporting Award; www.globeaward.org, www.globeforum.com

The presence of 2600 athletes from around the world, was in many ways indistinguishable from the presence of all the nations of the world who are the citizens and the fabric of our country. But emerging from this external mosaic of multi-culturalism was an internal trans-ethnic cultural sense of our self as a world of nations in our one nation.

The sense of one-ness came not from melding our differences into some homogenous blend but of boasting about our hybrid roots and welcoming the world not as strangers but as relations. The featuring and honouring of our First Nations was symbolic of recalibrating the oldest cultures with the most recent ones.

Canada all of a sudden finds the dream it has had of the north, to be one that reflects the whole world because it emerges from the energy and cultures of the whole world. The pride looks on the outside like patriotism — and in many ways it is — but it is a patriotism that comes from opening with delight and surprise to accepting who we have become. It is as if our nation has claimed a sense of purpose in serving the world by recognizing how much we are capable of. If we choose to struggle together, honour each other, compete with respect, learn from each other and embrace differences that make a difference, we believe we can create a new dream. But this is not just a new dream of the north, this is the new dream of the world.

========

Dateline Jan. 26, 2010 Hazels says:

The EthicMark Award I founded is going viral!  Spellcasters, our multimedia EthicMark® video debuted on truthout.org this weekend, exposing the unethical practice of NEUROMARKETING.  Join us in taking the pledge to refrain from using neuromarketing and to use only ethical marketing tools to reach your audience.  We can connect you to the World Business Academy, or you can sign the petition at www.worldbusiness.org.

With permission from Terry Patten terry@integralheart.com , January 22, 2010 the following is a re-blog.

 Yesterday’s political news couldn’t have been more important. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a dramatic departure from established law, struck down regulations limiting corporate spending on political advertising, including much of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act.

This ruling is of enormous significance to Integralists and Evolutionaries, because it is about a meta-systemic realignment of the very political mechanisms through which citizens’ choices can shape public decisions.

An Integral Analysis of Money Politics & Media

Americans live in a virtual sea of advertising and public relations messages that are structured (scientifically reverse-engineered, in fact) to influence us outside our conscious awareness. Subliminally, these communications have enormous influence over our buying decisions, attitudes, and votes, even though we think we’re aware of them and are disregarding their influence. This applies equally to commercial and political messages. They influence people up and down the evolutionary scale, but are particularly compelling at earlier levels of development. And ads cost money.

Through the interconnections between media saturation (we live in a virtual, mediated world most of our waking hours) and scientific advertising and PR, along with political donations, lobbying, and spin, guided by political polling, Nielsen ratings, and market research, the ultimate power in the United states tends to be an intertwined meta-marketplace. Some players are certainly more skillful than others, but what dominates is market dynamics. The marketplace for the attention of consumers, voters and contributors merges with the marketplace for goods and services and the marketplaces for money, power, and political influence.

An Integral Analysis — Beyond Paranoia to Sobriety

This fused meta-marketplace operates to facilitate marketplace success and economic expansion. Let’s not fall into left-wing-style condemnation of greedy malicious corporate villainy—many corporate leaders are quite enlightened. And let’s not overgeneralize. We’re talking about powerful tendencies rather than absolute correspondences. But the incentives of the system still operate in a way that’s opaque to non-economic values. Our financial economy tends to be a “machine of more.” We now manufacture not only goods and services, but also the demand for them. Consumers can be readily influenced to buy products and services they don’t want or need.

Voters can be influenced too, even to misplaced loyalties and hatred even of those who most closely represent their interests. Because of the effectiveness of media manipulation, the popular will can, to a significant degree, be bought and sold. People try to reason for themselves; we are not blind automatons. But the power of well-funded advertising and PR efforts (even when they are dishonest and destructive) is now much stronger & more insidious than is generally understood. It determines the results of most elections. We shrug it off and minimize it at our peril.

We’re all party to a pattern bigger than any player. As I wrote in 2004 in The Terrible Truth and the Wonderful Secret: Answering the Call of Our Evolutionary Emergency:

“…the all-consuming marketplace tends to function as a positive feedback loop fueling uncontrolled consumption and economic expansion. Companies must maximize profits to succeed. Successful companies must advertise, whetting consumer appetites in order to increase sales and profits. To succeed, television, radio, online and other media, advertising, and public relations must compete for our attention. In the process programming must become ever more hypnotic, compelling, addictive, and persuasive. Media-saturated citizens will believe they are making free choices, even when their consumption and voting choices are being programmed subconsciously….Profitable companies, their executives, and well-to-do investors all understand the wisdom of contributing money to parties and candidates who are sympathetic to their interests. Politicians must raise money if they want to get elected, re-elected, and wield influence. It seems as though no one has any real choice in these matters; everyone is simply fulfilling the inherited obligations of his or her role.”

Many Integral Evolutionaries have been working to bring more intelligence to public affairs through cultural education and persuasion. But yesterday’s ruling tilts the game board in a way that further exaggerates the influence of money politics and corporate special interests, even further stacking the deck against principled political activism.

Without demonizing corporations, we can see that in aggregate they exercise their political influence on behalf of their economic advantages and interests, which are often (although not always) different from the best interests of the country as a whole, and too often unprincipled. It’s not the job or the nature of corporations to lead us to an optimal political future. But yesterday’s ruling hands them outsized political power.

Even with the surge of citizen involvement he catalyzed in 2008, it is doubtful that Barack Obama could have been elected president under the campaign finance rules handed down yesterday.

It was a sweeping ruling, going far beyond the case at hand (and even the plaintiffs’ arguments) to strike down campaign finance restrictions that have been in effect since 1909. In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, “The Court operates with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel when it strikes down one of Congress’ most significant efforts to regulate the role that corporations and unions play in electoral politics. It compounds the offense by implicitly striking down a great many state laws as well.” (Speaking of judicial activism!)

Stevens began his dissent with a chilling one-line summary: “The Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation.” And President Obama summed it up pretty well: “With its ruling yesterday, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics.” A New York Times editorial said it “strikes at the heart of democracy.” Florida Representative Alan Grayson probably said it most dramatically: “The Supreme Court in essence has ruled that corporations can buy elections.”

Don’t forget, this comes at a moment when huge transitions in the newspaper industry are also threatening the financial underpinnings of the serious journalism that is vital to an informed electorate.

Like most other Integralists, I admire President Obama tremendously. Even so, I’ve been unenthusiastic about the compromised process that has produced most major legislation this year, especially the health care reform bills (which reform only certain aspects of a dysfunctional disease-care system, deferring more fundamental reform into the future). I mobilized to elect him, but it’s been hard for me to get excited about his recent agenda. So, like many others, I’ve become less outwardly engaged in politics. But yesterday’s news calls all passivity into question.

An Evolutionary Civic Duty

The issue raised by this ruling is unambiguous, fundamental, and impossible to overlook. It compromises the ability of our society to make important choices intelligently. Democratic rule has serious problems, but the problems of a corporate plutocracy are of a whole different—and frightening—order. 

This is a blow to what’s left of our system’s very ability to correct course and purify itself of corruption. 

May this ruling prove to be the “swing to excess” that produces a backlash. May it mobilize a broad coalition of patriotic citizens who can’t bear to see American government being effectively for sale via a marketplace controlled by moneyed special interests.

This may be a meta-systemic issue that large numbers of people can understand. If so, it may harness people’s widespread anger over our broken system and motivate a movement more righteous and benign than that of the recent tea-parties.

Conscious, responsible citizens will need to respond forcefully and effectively to this disturbing development. That includes President Obama, the fragmented and disappointing Democratic Party, you, and me.

http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/Honeybees+modern+canaries+coal+mines/2453882/story.html