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Some ideas about those uh-oh scenarios
Part 2 of 3: As we become distanced from the basics, thoughts turn to survival.
By Michael Kruse, Times Staff Writer
Published October 1, 2007
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - A bright-eyed, friendly-faced mother of three named Trudi Kubik stood at the microphone in the question-and-answer session after Cameron Sinclair's Architecture for Humanity presentation last month here at the Idea Festival.
"My big idea ..." she said, and then she talked for a while, and then said every American boy and girl basically should learn to be an Eagle Scout, or we're screwed.
Gas prices, credit problems, joblessness, Katrina, global climate change, the Minnesota bridge collapse . . .
"We can see our infrastructure crumbling," she said later. "We're living in such a precarious time.
"It keeps me up at night," she said.
She thinks schools should be teaching things like subsistence living and how to purify water and - yikes - search and rescue missions in the wake of hurricanes and tornados. Kubik's question came on the first morning of the three-day festival, and it fit into a theme that carried throughout: Watch out, people. Something is wrong, and we're headed to a bad, bad place.
So: survival.
It's kind of important, and that's not new. It's why we eat, it's why we have sex, it's even kind of why we get dressed up and go to bars and drink to the point of pickup lines. In any event, it kept coming up here.
You could see it in some uh-oh titles at the Borders book nook set up out in the lobby of the Kentucky International Convention Center:
Laurence Gonzales' Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why.
Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
E.O. Wilson's The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth.
Oh, and Louisville native Hunter Thompson's Hey Rube, a collection of columns he wrote for ESPN.com in the years leading up to his suicide in early 2005.
Wilson, the retired Harvard biologist, and Thompson, the late "gonzo" journalist, probably have next to nothing in common except for, well, this, the topic at hand . . .
"The great challenge of the twenty-first century," Wilson wrote in his latest book, "is to raise people everywhere to a decent standard of living while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible."
"Abandon all hope," Thompson wrote on ESPN.com in November 2000, four-plus years before he shot himself at his home in Woody Creek, Colo.
"Prepare for the Weirdness."
Sinclair, the architect, said at his session that 1-billion people worldwide are living in abject poverty right now, and that 4-billion more are right on the edge. The population is going to keep going up and up, and so is that poverty rate.
"We need," Sinclair said, "a global architecture revolution."
Even at a can-do event like the Idea Festival, at least some of the thought veered toward the things most of us can't do these days, or at least don't.
We don't kill our food. We don't grow our food. We hardly even change our oil or our tire if we get a flat. That's what Jiffy Lube and AAA are for.
Those pictures of people getting plucked off roofs in New Orleans after Katrina?
Those long lines for gas and ice in Miami after Wilma?
Back to Trudi Kubik's question. Her plea: to acknowledge the things we can't do, or the things we've stopped doing, and to recognize the potential implications thereof. Her idea: the anti-FEMA notion of individual sustainability.
It's on you.
This is where Laurence Gonzales comes in, and his 2003 book, Deep Survival.
In the book, and in his talk, he described "mental models," unconscious, ingrained "behavioral scripts" that make us do what we do pretty much without thinking. We drive to work, for example, using a "mental model." It turns almost automatic.
What a mental model says is this: "You already know about this. You can stop paying attention now. You can proceed now."
Sometimes that proves fatal.
It's why accidents happen at or near home more often than not.
Experience isn't always a good thing. Comfort kills too.
This doesn't just apply to the top of an icy, treacherous mountain, either. It also can determine, he said, who gets the raise and who gets fired at work. The people who survive are the people who can adapt, reboot, and bust down those "mental models" - a fancy way to say staying fresh and relevant.
Gonzales told a story about the beginning of his time at a so-called survival school. He was ready to go, impatient to get out into the wilderness, and his survival instructor seemed to him to be "stuck in slow motion." The guy was looking at the flowers and the birds and moving slowly.
It took a while for Gonzales to realize what he was doing.
And it was Lesson No. 1 in survival.
"He was slowing down and paying attention," Gonzales said. "He was deliberately not doing anything. He was allowing himself to have second thoughts."
News researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or (813) 909-4617.
BY MICHAEL KRUSE
Times Staff Writer
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - A bright-eyed, friendly-faced mother of three named Trudi Kubik stood at the microphone in the question-and-answer session after Cameron Sinclair's Architecture for Humanity presentation last month here at the Idea Festival.
"My big idea . . ." she said, and then she talked for a while, and then said every American boy and girl basically should learn to be an Eagle Scout, or we're screwed.
Gas prices, credit problems, joblessness, Katrina, global climate change, the Minnesota bridge collapse . . .
"We can see our infrastructure crumbling," she said later. "We're living in such a precarious time.
"It keeps me up at night," she said.
She thinks schools should be teaching things like subsistence living and how to purify water and - yikes - search and rescue missions in the wake of hurricanes and tornadoes. Kubik's question came on the first morning of the three-day festival, and it fit into a theme that carried throughout: Watch out, people. Something is wrong, and we're headed to a bad, bad place.
So: survival.
It's kind of important, and that's not new. It's why we eat, it's why we have sex, it's even kind of why we get dressed up and go to bars and drink to the point of pickup lines. In any event, it kept coming up here.
You could see it in some uh-oh titles at the Borders book nook set up out in the lobby of the Kentucky International Convention Center:
Laurence Gonzales's Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why.
Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
E.O. Wilson's The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth.
Oh, and Louisville native Hunter Thompson's Hey Rube, a collection of columns he wrote for ESPN.com in the years leading up to his suicide in early 2005.
Wilson, the retired Harvard biologist, and Thompson, the late "gonzo" journalist, probably have next to nothing in common except for, well, this, the topic at hand . . .
"The great challenge of the twenty-first century," Wilson wrote in his latest book, "is to raise people everywhere to a decent standard of living while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible."
"Abandon all hope," Thompson wrote on ESPN.com in November 2000, four-plus years before he shot himself at his home in Woody Creek, Colo.
"Prepare for the Weirdness."
Sinclair, the architect, said at his session that 1-billion people worldwide are living in abject poverty right now, and that 4-billion more are right on the edge. The population is going to keep going up and up, and so is that poverty rate.
"We need," Sinclair said, "a global architecture revolution."
Even at a can-do event like the Idea Festival, at least some of the thought veered toward the things most of us can't do these days, or at least don't.
We don't kill our food. We don't grow our food. We hardly even change our oil or our tire if we get a flat. That's what Jiffy Lube and AAA are for.
Those pictures of people getting plucked off roofs in New Orleans after Katrina?
Those long lines for gas and ice in Miami after Wilma?
Back to Trudi Kubik's question. Her plea: to acknowledge the things we can't do, or the things we've stopped doing, and to recognize the potential implications thereof. Her idea: the anti-FEMA notion of individual sustainability.
It's on you.
This is where Laurence Gonzales comes in, and his 2003 book, Deep Survival.
In the book, and in his talk, he described "mental models," unconscious, ingrained "behavioral scripts" that make us do what we do pretty much without thinking. We drive to work, for example, using a "mental model." It turns almost automatic.
What a mental model says is this: "You already know about this. You can stop paying attention now. You can proceed now."
Sometimes that proves fatal.
It's why accidents happen at or near home more often than not.
Experience isn't always a good thing. Comfort kills too.
This doesn't just apply to the top of an icy, treacherous mountain, either. It also can determine, he said, who gets the raise and who gets fired at work. The people who survive are the people who can adapt, reboot, and bust down those "mental models" - a fancy way to say staying fresh and relevant.
Gonzales told a story about the beginning of his time at a so-called survival school. He was ready to go, impatient to get out into the wilderness, and his survival instructor seemed to him to be "stuck in slow motion." The guy was looking at the flowers and the birds and moving slowly.
It took a while for Gonzales to realize what he was doing.
And it was Lesson No. 1 in survival.
"He was slowing down and paying attention," Gonzales said. "He was deliberately not doing anything. He was allowing himself to have second thoughts."
News researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Michael Kruse can be reached at (813) 909-4617 or mkruse@sptimes.com.
Fast">href="mailto:mkruse@sptimes.com" mce_href="mailto:mkruse@sptimes.com">mkruse@sptimes.com.
Fast Facts:
.3 Part Series
Idea Festival
People got together at the Idea Festival in Louisville, Ky., last month to talk about how we all need to be smarter as we go deeper into the new millennium. Times staff writer Michael Kruse attended and came back with his head full of ideas. Three days' worth.
Sunday: Knowing less and thinking more
Today: Survival
Tuesday: The meaning of life
See the series at life.tampabay.com.
.ON TBE WEB
Want to know more?
ideafestival.com
deepsurvival.com
gonzo.org
cameronsinclair.com
Want to know more?
ideafestival.com
deepsurvival.com
gonzo.org
cameronsinclair.com
[Last modified September 28, 2007, 17:37:33]
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