Well I see that it has been just over five months since I last posted on here. Not that I haven't been doing stuff since February - my March blog post on Green-History sometimes-the-present-takes-priority gives some of the reasons for the silence. In addition a fair amount of reading, including Goldsmith's "The Way" and Jeremy Lent's "The Patterning Instinct" - both of which I will right short reviews/reactions/commentaries on on here dreckly - and also a constant stream of stimulating ideas from other sources, plus some personal action and involvement in other public actions.

But I'm back here so I'll start with a short roundup of the five months. 

As a nerdy addendum to the previous post it reminded me of a thing when I worked as an engineer in the fringes of media and communication.

There was something called the Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) model that was a conceptual tool to describe how a communication system or network could be seen as a hierarchy of seven specific layers which received messages and passed them up and down the chain to the adjacent layers.

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING - say it again...

So a recurring question came up again yesterday as a result of a brief summary of the piece here on thoughts on strategy that I posted as a reply on an XR Message Board. Ben replied: 

Roger, I think your general point about not needing centralised strategy is interesting and food for though. Not sure I agree, but it's interesting to think about - no one has all the answers for this. But regarding the point that "any consideration of what the mainstream media may say or show for example is entirely irrelevant", how do you respond to the criticism that how we come across in the media will be crucial for whether people as yet not part of the movement will come towards us or go away from us, and thus crucial for the possibility of success?

I have never yet found a satisfactory answer to this although it is a position I have long held, probably dating from various more or less successful attempts to get my message through the MSM as an election candidate or spokesperson for some action group or other.

Some thoughts about strategy in the context of an ecologically benign organisation, prompted by looking at the attempts of a group in XR to produce and update a strategy document.

A strategy, in the sense of a document that is produced by one sub-group within an organisation to guide the direction and actions of the whole organisation over a period of time, is usually the a product of an organisation which has a centralised command and control structure. A hierarchical organisation in which the central node (the 'top' of a hierarchy) sets a direction and constraints on the actions of its component parts.

This is not how organisms in nature, in an eco-system, in Gaia, work.