A highly imaginative and relatable guide for anyone who needs the reassurance that suicide is never worth it.
Are you inclined to escape the crumminess of everyday life into fantasy worlds? Are you smart and imaginative in a way that isn't really suited to your surroundings? Are you definitely misunderstood, likely angry, and almost certainly depressed? Set Sytes, hailing from the UK, would prefer you stay alive and sort things out rather than the alternative, thanks. He figures there are better opportunities for you out there and lays it all out in a way that's compelling, funny, sharp, and useful. This zine turned book (please don't call it a self-help guide, asks the author) is ultimately about how to be a person in the world. It can be done non-miserably, we promise.
A highly imaginative and relatable guide for anyone who needs the reassurance that suicide is never worth it.
Are you inclined to escape the crumminess of everyday life into fantasy worlds? Are you smart and imaginative in a way that isn't really suited to your surroundings? Are you definitely misunderstood, likely angry, and almost certainly depressed? Set Sytes, hailing from the UK, would prefer you stay alive and sort things out rather than the alternative, thanks. He figures there are better opportunities for you out there and lays it all out in a way that's compelling, funny, sharp, and useful. This zine turned book (please don't call it a self-help guide, asks the author) is ultimately about how to be a person in the world. It can be done non-miserably, we promise.
How Not To Kill Yourself: A Survival Guide for Imaginative Pessimists
Narrated by Tim Bruce
Marina Alekseevna RevelevaUnabridged — 2 hours, 41 minutes
How Not To Kill Yourself: A Survival Guide for Imaginative Pessimists
Narrated by Tim Bruce
Marina Alekseevna RevelevaUnabridged — 2 hours, 41 minutes
Overview
A highly imaginative and relatable guide for anyone who needs the reassurance that suicide is never worth it.
Are you inclined to escape the crumminess of everyday life into fantasy worlds? Are you smart and imaginative in a way that isn't really suited to your surroundings? Are you definitely misunderstood, likely angry, and almost certainly depressed? Set Sytes, hailing from the UK, would prefer you stay alive and sort things out rather than the alternative, thanks. He figures there are better opportunities for you out there and lays it all out in a way that's compelling, funny, sharp, and useful. This zine turned book (please don't call it a self-help guide, asks the author) is ultimately about how to be a person in the world. It can be done non-miserably, we promise.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169781946 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 07/17/2018 |
| Series: | The Good Life |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
Environmental Disputes
Community Involvement in Conflict Resolution
By James E. Crowfoot, Julia M. Wondolleck
ISLAND PRESS
Copyright © 1990 James E. Crowfoot and Julia M. WondolleckAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59726-888-2
CHAPTER 1
Citizen Organizations and Environmental Conflict
James E. Crowfoot and Julia M. Wondolleck
Using the natural environment and protecting it directly involves many societal groups. These groups are sometimes composed of concerned citizens, sometimes of government officials or industry representatives. Conflicts between the groups over the use of the environment and natural resources are now common occurrences and are growing in number and importance as the human population grows, technology changes, and as pressures to use the environment increase (Gladwin 1979). These conflicts are intensified as humans become more aware of the need to achieve changes to ensure protection of the environment for future generations.
Since the early 1970s, new approaches to managing environmental conflicts, particularly environmental negotiation and mediation, increasingly have been employed to help resolve some of these disputes. These processes are new to citizen groups, and are very different from the established strategies and tools with which most environmental and citizen organizations are comfortable. The techniques include collaboration among contending interest groups instead of adversarial relationships; they involve consensus decision-making rather than judgments by authorities. Consequently, dispute resolution processes require new, different skills and perspectives on the part of citizens.
Often the mediation and negotiation has been promoted by government, business, or interests sympathetic to government or business. This support by traditional adversaries can further heighten the suspicions of citizen organizations that these strategies and tools will help other interest groups more than they will help them. Historically, citizen organizations involved with government or business groups have seen their interests co-opted through familiar techniques: appeals to common values, requests that citizens put their trust in government or in business, and participation processes in which citizen interests have been overwhelmed by the expertise of other interest groups. This history contributes to citizen organizations' skepticism toward environmental dispute resolution processes.
Carpenter and Kennedy, two pioneers in these new approaches, have observed that "public disputes are commonly fought by people who are unfamiliar with negotiation and are compelled to negotiate" (1988, 225). Furthermore, "negotiation of public disputes is carried on with few accepted guidelines and without established traditions" (242). Therefore, citizen organizations, as one of the major parties in these disputes, need information about environmental negotiations and mediation. They need to understand the structure and dynamics of these processes, how they might most effectively be involved in a dispute settlement process, and when participation may not be in their best interests.
This book describes some of the experiences of citizen groups that have participated in environmental dispute settlement processes. Our purpose is to begin responding to the concerns and questions of citizen organizations about the advantages and disadvantages of these new means of settling environmental and natural resource disputes and how they might use these processes to advance their interests. While this approach to environmental decision-making is still young and much remains to be learned about both its positive and negative impacts, these early experiences can provide useful insights to other citizens contemplating involvement in dispute resolution processes.
Chapter 1 is divided into two sections. The first section describes the defining characteristics of environmental and citizen organizations. It then identifies the key challenges to these groups that arise from new processes of dispute settlement. This section includes questions citizen organizations must answer in deciding whether or not to become involved in a dispute settlement process.
The second section provides information on the sources of environmental conflict. While the evidence of environmental conflict is quite clear, the interpretations of both specific individuals and groups concerning the extent of this conflict and what should be done about it are often very different. This section draws upon research on environmental values to illustrate the differing values and views that give rise to specific environmental disputes. It then provides a framework of three distinct perspectives that capture the different understandings of environmental conflict and what should be done about it.
Citizen Organizations and the Challenges of Environmental Dispute Settlement
Conflict is an integral element of the change processes that are the lifeblood of citizen organizations. These groups are not strangers to either internal or external conflict. They frequently find themselves adversaries of other organizations advocating different decisions and competing for some of the same resources.
The Nature of Environmental Citizen Organizations
Citizen organizations—those focused on the environment and natural resources— organize when people become dissatisfied with the decisions and values of government, business, and other interest groups. These citizen organizations want something different from what these other powerful societal actors may want. To achieve their goals, citizen organizations face three major tasks. They must: (1) determine what they want; (2) obtain resources and create influence to achieve their goals; and (3) act to influence the decisions and actions of other organizations.
Each of these tasks is a major challenge. Each presents a conflict for the organization, and that organization must have the ability to settle the resulting disputes.
To determine what they want requires choices about a group's objectives. Members inevitably bring different preferences and priorities into an organization, and the resulting discussions and decisions involve conflict. The individual citizen organization cannot be all things to all people; to be effective, it must limit what it seeks to do.
Citizen organizations cannot be maintained without resources. They often must acquire these resources in competition with other associations that need the same contributions, members, media attention, volunteered time, and leadership skills. Sometimes acquiring these resources involves conflict. When the group converts these resources to effective influence, structures are created and leaders are selected—which also at times involves conflict. Again, the organization must possess the ability to settle these disputes sufficiently so that it can function.
The final activity in the citizen organization's triad of major tasks is influencing the decisions and behavior of other organizations that have the ability to meet citizens' needs. To exercise influence requires a coherent plan (usually referred to as a "strategy") and specific actions (usually referred to as "tactics") for carrying out the strategy. Employing these tactics in hopes of influencing others requires decisions, discipline, evaluation, and adaptability; conflict is a partner to such activity. Furthermore, the actions of citizen groups in exercising influence encourage similar actions by competing organizations, leading to interorganizational conflict. It is this conflict that is the chief focus of our environmental dispute settlement analysis.
Citizen organizations are most often the least powerful party among the multiple parties seeking to influence a specific environmental policy or management decision. These organizations function with fewer dollars and staff resources than do other interest groups. They rely on volunteer contributions, rights accorded by laws and regulations, public sympathy, and the traditions of a pluralistic and democratic political culture. They do not have the specialized resources of government and business, nor do they command the same access and influence with the media, legislators, and other constituents that generally support established institutions, leaders, and policies.
Citizen organizations are effective and survive by engaging in conflict to gain the attention, resources, and influence they need to meet their goals. They acquire these critical resources by distinguishing themselves from other groups. As they do so, they are dependent on the differences in values and attitudes found in society among citizens and leaders. These different values and attitudes will be discussed later in this chapter.
The Challenges of Environmental Dispute Settlement Processes
Citizen and environmental organizations face difficult choices in deciding whether or not to participate in environmental dispute settlement processes and how to proceed if they decide to do so. Environmental and citizen activists are often more familiar with adversarial strategies of change in which pressure, coercion, and unilateral decisions are key features than they are with dispute settlement efforts. In fact, as Carpenter and Kennedy note, "It is the nature of public disputes that some of the participants have never before been involved in formal negotiation, and some are unlikely to be negotiators again after the principal issue is settled" (1988, 233). These differences in experience and skills can be threatening because they carry the risk that important environmental goals will be ignored and citizens' needs will not be met. Also, these new approaches can be seen as lowering the visibility of citizen organizations and reducing their ability to attract the resources that are critical to their survival and effectiveness. Carpenter and Kennedy have observed, "Citizen groups contending with powerful government agencies or large corporations often must take the hardest possible line—total victory—to keep the support of their members and maintain their momentum" (1988, 2). Strategies stressing collaborative problem-solving, negotiation, and consensus decision-making confront many citizen organizations with unfamiliar options and requirements for information and skills they may not possess.
Douglas Amy, who since the 1970s has studied environmental negotiation and mediation from the perspective of environmental organizations, offers this advice:
... This process should be approached carefully and skeptically. Environmental mediation should not be accepted at face value and should not be entered into quickly. Potential participants must be careful to see through the myths of mediation—the illusion that it is a simple and easy process, that all participants around the table are equal, that the process is inherently fair, that compromise is always reasonable, and so on.... Given the many pitfalls of this process and the absence of significant procedural safeguards, only the intelligence and vigilance of the participants can insure that it is a mutually beneficial process. (1987, 197—98)
To exercise this intelligence and vigilance requires that citizen organizations pay careful attention to their key tasks and to other critical choices confronting them. One set of choices focuses outside the organization and concerns the strategy to be used by it in seeking to influence different societal decisions and plans. A second set of decisions focuses internally on how to develop and use social change tools or tactics in relation to factors like the organization's leadership, structure, member commitment, and communication processes and, additionally, to its values and goals. Both sets of choices, while having a specific focus, must nonetheless take into consideration the total circumstances of the organization.
Making such strategy choices requires that attention be paid to alternative actions that could also be pursued to achieve the changes desired by the citizen group. Gail Bingham, an experienced mediator and evaluator of environmental mediation, makes this comment about the choice among alternative strategies:
Although voluntary, environmental dispute resolution processes are often characterized as alternative to litigation—with the presumption that litigation is bad—they are better viewed as additional tools that might or might not be more effective or more efficient in particular circumstances. Litigation and other traditional decision-making processes remain important options. (1986)
These judgments of whether or not to be involved in environmental negotiation and mediation require relating these tools and their proposed use to the organization's basic understanding of conflict and how change occurs. Also, attention must be given to identifying alternative strategies for a specific situation in light of the other parties involved and the organization's objectives and resources. Perhaps litigation or direct action would be more effective in a given situation.
Judgments concerning whether or not to participate in environmental dispute settlement processes cannot be made without attention to the other parties that need to be involved in ending the dispute. Are all the other important parties willing to be involved? Will they be seriously committed to the negotiation process and willing and able to bargain in good faith? In some instances, there are other groups with which the organization would have to be in coalition for the negotiation to occur. Sometimes, this coalition-building is workable and can save the organization's resources, while other times it is not possible without sacrificing core objectives.
Turning to internal and more tactical considerations brings another set of concerns and issues into the determination of whether or not to be involved in environmental negotiation, and if this decision is yes, how to be involved. These considerations are important, because, as Gerald Cormick, an experienced environmental mediator, has observed:
This is a hard, tough process, full of pitfalls and dangers. It takes work, organizations, clear thinking and stamina. Groups that don't have a clear idea of the process, of what they want and how much they can actually get, are in for a disappointment. Those that are together and know how to stay that way have the best chance to succeed. (1977, 10)
To become involved and to be effective in environmental negotiation and mediation require that an organization's leadership and membership understand these processes, support their use, and are skilled or willing to become skilled in using these tools. Members' time and energy and organizational communication processes must be such that they can regularly receive information on the negotiations from their representatives and provide them with reactions and directions as to what the organization will and will not accept.
The organization's immediate objectives in the environmental conflict at issue must allow for some give and take and compromise. Sometimes, objectives are based on principle and are not negotiable. If the issues potentially to be negotiated are not of high importance to the organization, then involvement might be a highly questionable use of the group's resources and could be ineffective because of insufficient commitment by leaders and members.
The organization's resources and power must be examined in relation to a possible environmental negotiation. Does it have the power to make an impact and do other parties perceive this power? Is the organization willing to use its power on these issues and in this negotiation? Is there adequate time, money, and information to become involved? Is the organization willing to use these resources in this forum as opposed to applying them to other potential issues and/or strategies for bringing about change to meet stated objectives?
Environmental and citizen organizations must constantly build their membership base, increase the level of donations and other support, and develop their leadership. How will involvement in environmental negotiation and/or mediation affect these vital needs? Sometimes, the answer to this question is that these needs will be negatively affected when examined from the perspective of other issues that the organization could be pursuing. In those instances, different strategies should be adopted.
Citizen organizations either implicitly or explicitly select a strategy as they undertake actions in pursuit of their goals. This choice of strategy requires that assumptions be made about how environmental conflict might be used to bring about change. It is essential that an organization understand different perspectives on environmental conflict and change and adopt the one that best reflects its values and goals. To make sound judgments on whether or not to be involved in environmental negotiation and mediation requires relating these tools and their proposed use to the organization's basic understanding of conflict and how change occurs, and to its goals.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Environmental Disputes by James E. Crowfoot, Julia M. Wondolleck. Copyright © 1990 James E. Crowfoot and Julia M. Wondolleck. Excerpted by permission of ISLAND PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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