Hi Inna:

Ecopragmatism, an interesting new concept. But in those parts of Europe that have been settled and farmed for 3,000 years, ecopragmatism is an ancient concept. Most of Europe has been altered by human hands, but so gradually and environmentally sensitive that a man-made but ecologically sound environment emerged as a result.

The carefully cultured landscapes of Bavaria, where I grew up, are a healthy mix of farmland and forest. Building activity is limited to strictly defined settlement areas, so that there are large tracts of unsettled farmland and forest between villages and towns. No houses scattered all over the landscape, no urban sprawl. This makes not only for a picturesque but environmentally sound landscape. Organic and eco-farming is encouraged and subsidized by the state. Also, agritourism is a source of income for eco farmers. It keeps their small ecologically run farms profitable.

Arminius,

you might enjoy Stewart Brand's latest book, "Whole Earth Discipline:  an Ecopragmatist Manifesto"

(the footnotes to that book are available online and the afterword, where he changes some of his ideas, are also online...)

Here's Him doing a related talk

Thanks, Inna. I haven't read anything by Stewart Brand for a long time. I was attracted to his ideas when he was editor of the Whole Earth Catalog series and contributor to Co-Evolution Quarterly. That was decades ago. He has become older and wiser since, as we all should.

An Agape tale worth mentioning might be the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt.

Ingolstadt is situated 35 km from where my wife and I grew up. It is a small industrial city on the Danube, its major industry is the Audi plant. When those devastating floods happened on the Danube in early June, I looked up some u-tube postings about the flooding in Ingolstadt. I then went on to watch the monthly podcast by their mayor. What he said astonished and delighted me.

He said that UNICEF just named Ingolstadt the most child-friendly city in the world. The reason for this is that Ingolstadt has the most playground areas and subsidized high quality daycare spaces per child in the world. There is subsidized quality daycare for all children over three in existence, and the city now has a five year plan to establish the same for children zero to three. But that's not all.

The city financed the building of an elementary public school in Africa, equipped the school and pays the salaries of the teachers. "If we want to improve the world, we have to start with the children of the world," said the mayor, "and the developed world has to help improve the lot of the children in the underdeveloped world."

Some of the funds for all this came from the city of Ingolstadt, but a substantial part came from private and corporate donations. Audi, of course, is the biggest corporate donour. I can't imagine a better way for an automobile manufacturer to advertise itself.

Another growing tale of agape, that has been burgeoning, developing...

the emerging global brain

(will this be Pan's 'ultimately connected one?')

Francis Heylighen's home page (chock-full of deep musings...)

(for further musings, one might check out Howard Bloom's book 'the Global Brain')

The emerging global brain: a fascinating concept!

The internet, as an extension of the human brain, already has a major impact on the evolution of our brain, and on the evolution of our individual as well as our collective consciousness.

Hi Inna:

I just scanned Francis Heylighen's home page. Very interesting!

"Heylighen", by the way, is Old High German for "Holy One".

Another Holy Francis, eh?

As an aside: I wonder why Holland ranks 4th on the "Happiness Scale" while neighbouring Germany, with a similar language and culture, ranks 30th? The top three are Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Denmark, too, is a northern neighbour of Germany, but ranks much higher than Germany on the Happiness Scale.

Maybe those German perfectionists are perfect achievers in everything but their own happiness, eh?

Reminds me of the story of Labyrinth City by Michael Ende. Labyrinth City was an unhappy city, destined to be so. The citizens of Labyrinth City were desperately unhappy, and desperately wanted to escape from their city and be happy, but the city was goverend by a paradox: one had to be happy to escape its confines.

The citizens of Labyrinth City, can, of course, always get out over the top. They can abandon their either/or thinking and embrace both extremes. They can escape their doomed city by being happily unhappy, or unhappily happy.

today is the WWW's 25th birthday.  Holeeey!

and that is another tale of agape methinks

the World Wide Web, which is what you are using to log on to WC, could have been made so that all of us would have to pay royalties to its creators...it wasn't...now, that's selfless...

Heinleinian heroes & effective agape

Elon Musk

(elon musk recently opened up all the patents for his Tesla car...)

The Gates

and, of course, Edward Snowden