The Compression Thinking Series
Hear Podcasts; Join in Teleconferences
Compression Thinking seeks what we must do to address all environmental issues, including those that may yet not be identified. Most environmental organizations focus on one or two. But we have to deal with all the issues, and that stretches human capabilities. We have to learn to think differently.
None of us, including Doc Hall, are through this conversion in thinking. Collectively, we have to learn to see outside our old conventions and approach problems differently. Over time Doc, concocted four Guidelines to Compression Thinking that have helped him. Perhaps they will help you.
The Compression Thinking Series is 12 podcasts and 12 follow up teleconferences. Podcasts #2, #4, #5, and #6 address each of the four guidelines of Compression Thinking. Topic #3, “Lawns and Biodiversity,” illustrates how Compression Thinking alters how we see an activity with which most of us are familiar, cutting grass.
Teleconferences:
You are invited to all teleconferences. The Compression Thinking Series will be at 8 pm Eastern on Tuesdays, beginning on February 4, 2020, continuing each Tuesday evening for 11 weeks thereafter. No teleconference will last more than 2 hours, even if discussion is lively.
Can’t make the Compression Series teleconferences, or not all 12 of them? Join the Compression Community. We would like to get to know you personally and set up teleconferences on Compression-related matters of your choice. Or just e-mail Doc: doc@compression.org
All teleconferences are free. But please sign up for Compression Thinking Series teleconferences.
For more information on the Compression Thinking Series, listen to podcasts, or sign up for a teleconference, scroll on down.
Do you have questions or comments? To send your questions and comments about The Compression Thinking Series to Doc Hall, please use the contact form at the bottom of this page.
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Podcast #1. What is Compression Thinking?
“Compression” refers both to the extreme squeeze we are placing on earth and its capacities and to the squeeze we must place on ourselves to strike a new balance with nature. (18-minute podcast)
Follow Up Teleconference: This begins with an exercise coaching you to describe your business without using money. What physical resources does it consume? (If this is confusing, we’ll help you start thinking about it.) Then we ask you to describe the environmental situation where you are and what might be done about it.
- 8 PM Eastern, 2/04/2020
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Click on the podcast image or button above to listen to the podcast.
Image by Marjon Besteman-Horn from Pixabay
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Podcast #2. The Earth is Finite
Seen from space, the earth is finite. Our resources, space, and disposal capacity are limited. But we behave as if consumption could expand forever. Recognizing our limits changes everything. (25 minute podcast)
Follow Up Teleconference: We begin with deeper discussion of an item (you pick one) in the list of environmental threats and why it is existential. We will ask what evidence you see, or not, for decreasing return on energy for the sources of energy supplying our economy? The industrial economy presumes unending expansion. Compression Thinking prepares for what must happen when that is, in general, no longer possible. What evidence do you see of bloat (or waste) in the economy now?
- 8 PM Eastern, 2/11/2020
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Click on the podcast image or button above to listen to the podcast.
Image by Sumitkumar Sahare from Pixabay
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Podcast #3. Lawns and Biodiversity
The waste growing turf is enormous, but we are used to it; don’t see it. Grass is everywhere that we frequent. (24 minute podcast)
Follow Up Teleconference: We open by asking you what you see in a lawn. A cosmetic organic arrangement, or a local ecology? What would a xeriscape lawn (all native plants) look like in your area? If all lawns were xeriscape, what would lawn care become?
- 8 PM Eastern, 2/18/2020
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Click on the podcast image or button above to listen to the podcast.
Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay
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Podcast #4. Symbiotic Thinking
Symbiotic Thinking is Systems Thinking with an added twist. For every decision of consequence, give the effects on nature top priority. Do we see reality, or only iconic representations of it? In how many ways do we deceive ourselves? (22 minute podcast)
Follow Up Teleconference: We open with a question: When in a park, how do you interpret what you see? A synthetic area for recreation, or webs of life? What does “progress” mean to you? Personally? For society? For the nature around you?
- 8 PM Eastern, 2/25/2020
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Click on the podcast image or button above to listen to the podcast.
Image by Nimrod Oren from Pixabay
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Podcast #5. Organize for Learning
To substantially change how we live, we must organize for learning – in a hurry. How do we form groups that can collectively learn what to do and how to do it very quickly? (22 minute podcast)
Follow Up Teleconference: We ask how you actually learn to do differently? Do we learn to do differently first; then figure out the reasons why? Or can we learn why we need to change first; then change our habits of living?
- 8 PM Eastern, 3/03/2020
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Click on the podcast image or button above to listen to the podcast.
Image by Johannes Plenio from Pixabay
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Podcast #6. Quality Over Quantity, Always
By commercial definitions, quality refers to the properties of a product or service. By Compression Thinking, that expands to the quality of all life cycles. That extends beyond a materialist view of the world. (25 minute podcast)
Follow Up Teleconference: We open by asking you what “quality of life” means to you. Then on to a discussion of what quality means if we must dramatically reduce our consumption of energy and raw materials (local circular economies).
- 8 PM Eastern, 3/10/2020
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Click on the podcast image or button above to listen to the podcast.
Image by Konevi from Pixabay
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Podcast #7. Deep Change
The adjective “deep” is popularly used to signify shifting long-held understandings or beliefs, or to complexities that we don’t understand. We refer to deep depression, deep dives, deep religion, deep ecology, and so on. Deep change is not only intellectual, it is emotional. (25 minute podcast)
Follow Up Teleconference: We start by asking everyone if they can identify assumptions they make, or beliefs they may hold, that are so deep that they have been unaware of them. If we are to learn to think very differently, how do we deal with these deep beliefs. Can we really bring ourselves to see ourselves as inseparable from nature?
- 8 PM Eastern, 3/17/2020
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Click on the podcast image or button above to listen to the podcast.
Image by DerWeg from Pixabay
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Podcast #8. Fashionable Waste
The average American has far more clothes and shoes than he/she needs. Why? The waste of being fashionable is enormous, especially if it is commodified — mass produced, mass marketed, or mass propagated. (25 minute podcast)
Follow Up Teleconference: We begin by asking for an estimate of how many items of apparel are in your closet. Then we move to how we might distinguish between things we really need versus things we just want — for convenience or for social distinction.
- 8 PM Eastern, 3/24/2020
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Click on the podcast image or button above to listen to the podcast.
Image by Pexels from Pixabay
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Podcast #9. What Does “Clean” Mean?
A movement called Scientific Cleaning to reduce the water and waste in commercial cleaning has been under way for years. The heart of it is to clean for health before cosmetic appearance. And don’t use or dispose of harmful chemicals to do it. But the notion that we must exterminate every germ and use harsh chemicals to do it still prevails. All this prompts questions: exactly what is “clean” anyway? And why? (26-minute podcast)
Follow Up Teleconference: If an area is sparkling clean, is it healthily clean? Why do we have so many cleaning chemicals? Can we be too clean? (Consider the effects on microbiomes and immune systems.) Why do we clean so much space?
- 8 pm Eastern, 3/31/2020
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Click on the podcast image or button above to listen to the podcast.
Image by Yerson Retamal from Pixabay
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Podcast #10. How Healthy is Health Care?
The technical prowess of U.S. curative care is undisputed — for those that get it. However, the U.S. health care system is bloated; therefore expensive. 60% of adults have a chronic disease; 40% have more than one (CDC). About 25% of American children, ages 2-8, have a chronic health condition. (25 minute podcast)
Follow Up Teleconference: Is the best measure of good health not requiring curative care? Can we define preventive health care? What evidence do you see of “chronic bloat” in the US health care system? What can we do to be “chronically healthy?“
- 8 pm Eastern, 4/7/2020
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Image by Public Domain Images from Pixabay
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Podcast #11. Intractable Transportation
Only 28% of US energy is used by vehicles, but it is hard to reduce. The US Is now in automotive layout. It’s hard to be active in this society without using a vehicle. And the economy — daily living — depends on long-haul movement of materials too. (28 minute podcast)
Follow Up Teleconference: If breaking ourselves of “automobilitis” depends on moving the spots where we would like to go closer together, no quick solution is possible. Even if goaded by extreme urgency, re-locating, downsizing, and re-purposing existing buildings takes time and resources. Can we resolve this problem in just a few years, going through big changes without utter chaos?
- 8 pm Eastern, 4/14/2020
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Image by Greg Reese from Pixabay
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Podcast #12. Deep Changing Our Collective Behavior
Of all the problems cited, and more, our biggest problem is probably our own reluctance to even recognize them, much less deal with them. How do we get past psychic numbness and get on with action to live in a different kind of world? (23 minute podcast)
Follow up Teleconference: What are your ideas for addressing the manifold issues of Compression where you are? What long-term action initiative can you hope to pull off?
- 8 pm Eastern, 4/21/2020
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Image by Gerd Altman from Pixabay
Have Questions for Doc Hall About the Compression Thinking Series of Podcasts and Teleconferences?
Use this form to send a question or comment to Doc Hall about the Compression Thinking Series of Podcasts and Teleconferences. This form is NOT to be used for signing up for Teleconferences. Instead you must choose one or more of the teleconference sign ups options above.
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