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Futuring: uncertainties
Core question: What are the (environmental) critical uncertainties in the American South-West?
Technique used to probe the question: CLA
Heat
| Current | Alt | |
|---|---|---|
| Litany | Impact, duration & intensity of heat-waves | Seeking shade & shadows; Daily & yearly rhythms attuned to desert cycles (Saguaro time) |
| Causes | Climate change; Lifestyle & cities not adapted to desert conditions | Shade-based architecture and transport; Situated learning; Government is the medium; Monastic entities for rethinking time |
| Worldviews | Man has dominion over Earth; Right to property and prosperity | Long, durational desert abiding (qualitative time); Redesign of the body attuned to the event (alignment, emergence) |
| Myths | Phoenix; Prometheus; Wild West, Desert is a void (purity of wilderness); Noble Savage | Desert Attunement; American Gods; Evolutionary architecture; Long temporality of nothingness followed by abrupt change, return to nothingness |
Water
| Current | Alt | |
|---|---|---|
| Litany | Distribution, pricing and quality of water | Governance and sharing of a variable water supply as a commons |
| Causes | Weak public infrastructure and political inaction; growing population; economic valuation; water rights and food sovereignty | Variable abundance & commons management (stewarding, minding); Feasts & festivals (train social commitment) |
| Worldviews | Individual self-reliance and DIY; libertarian ethos, free market | Sociality of a coven/dionisian feast; Social responsibility, commitment and obligation; A spirit/transformational field |
| Myths | Easy Rider, Godless (Guns & God); sufficiency and hubris | Carnivàle, Dionisian world (time marked by feasts & silences; blooming, flowing, absorption, ecstasy |
Tech industry
| Current | Alt | |
|---|---|---|
| Litany | Impact of the tech industry | Impact of Antennae-centric tech industry; Smart-grid & solar; Ambient & responsive; Rise of new attunement instruments |
| Causes | Economic incentives; Risk tolerance; Job creation; “Innovation Valley of the Sun” | Collective incentives; Government supports trans-species chanelling, Tech-supported complementary currencies; ecological resource management; Non-representational media and occult/alchemical technologies |
| Worldviews | Faith in technological progress; American pragmatism; Distrust of educated elites; Protestant work ethic; Importance of tangible, visible and measurable contribution to society; Immortality | Serial monotasking (commitment to the act); Bringing together heterogeneous systems where medium is the catalyst (biomimicry); Attunement to differentials |
| Myths | (Cowboy) Missionaries, John Ford films, Pioneers, Atomism of the isolated subject; Idleness is the devil's playground; Existential quests and transcendence in the desert | City & the city, The Laundry Files, The New Renaissance, dissolving, trance, enthusiasm |
Saguaro Times
Headlines from Saguaro Times, the daily newspaper in a future/parallel Phoenix
Commons news
- Government is (still) the medium
- New century calendar updates approved
- Water tokens fluctuating
- Wiccan Goddess elected to government in a landslide victory
- The governor reveals the new monument “to honor our heroes, the brave homeless”
- Salt River Shade Route: new public transit “Covered protection everywhere you want to be”
- Polls suggest that engineering majors at all time low, while ficto-criticism, coven studies and environmental theory at all time high
- Shade traversal association conscripts snowbirds for summer cycles
Daily attunement
- Heat attunement classes by Cowboy Missionaries at the Desert Monastery
- Saguaro monks lead attunement festival preparation
- The water levels have spoken!
- Desert attunement center reopens after possession season
- Death pilgrims return
Our living environment
- New season shadow patterns emerge
- Sounds of meteors this spring
- Architectural structures form ecomimetic shade routes
- Sprouts cracked Phoenix-Tucson highway creating a new venue the Desert Fest
- Landscaping co-ops beautify the buffer zone
- How to feed your bats?
- Seven Arm Jack still standing after floods
- Drought cycles lengthening
Time Out in Phoenix
- Where to see, what to do during this summer migration (with cooking tips)
- Festival of Shades at the Occult Shade monastery featuring Ethereal Dead
- Pokemon Go - Capture that Heat!
- The sweet smell of success: Mesquite
- Maple syrup - lemon preserve exchange ~ Again!
- 3rd International Conference on Shade Studies to be held in Phoenix
- Local native community hosts 12th Annual low-tech cooling festival
Tech Review
- Tech boom or antenna bubble?
- Antennae repairs not included in dust tax rewrite
- Nomad tech on smart grids
- Seasonal drift stresses old infrastructure
True Crime
- Tree-cycle clocks vandalised by property fundamentalists
- Gun-range courtyard dispute ongoing
- Power execs sentenced to 10 years shade growth
- Shadow-world expedition washed away by flash-floods (Expect hermeneuts and invite time intensification; Open your courtyards at siesta time)
Saguaro humor
- In shade we trust!
- I throw up my arms in despair
- These arms are (not) made for hugging
- IRS = Internal Review of Shades
- Shade grown coffee (and children) are rich, full and robust
- Calling all late bloomers (you're right on time!)
maja