Who is flemming funch

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. Tammie: "Have you always been an "idealist and incurable optimist," and what experiences in your life have most helped to shape your positive attitude? Flemming: Actually, I've gone through a number of transformative experiences along the way. As a young kid, I was very shy and withdrawn, but was very imaginative and was writing science fiction stories and thinking about how the world might work.

Then when education started teaching me to not going around imagining silly stuff, I became a shy and serious teenager. Certainly, nothing like an optimist. Rather, somebody who didn't believe in anything, and who didn't have any hope that he might leave much of an impression of the world. I started waking up around the age of 18 or so. I started pursuing personal growth and studying metaphysics.

I had several mystical experiences that pretty much changed me overnight. Like, I had the sudden realization that it was much less painful to face my fears, rather than hide from them. After that, I started to methodically pursue subjects I otherwise was afraid of, like public speaking, acting and other people-related activities.

And I found that my calling very much was in dealing with people, rather than in hiding from them. I can't quite pinpoint when my pervasive positive attitude appeared. There's the intellectual realization along the way that things simply work better that way, but that doesn't quite explain it.

Tammie: You've been asked to describe the New Civilization Foundation many times before, but would you briefly describe it again and also, what needs of your own led to it's creation? Flemming: The New Civilization Network and the New Civilization Foundation, for me personally, grew out of my realization that I needed to expand my activities to work with groups. At the time, I was successful as a counselor, getting great results working with individuals on their personal growth issues, and having written up my techniques in a couple of books.

It seemed like the next challenge would be to facilitate growth and transformation for groups and for society at large.

In the early 80s, I embraced the vision that it was possible to do something to make a whole planet work better, and that it has something to do with including all that is needed to make a world work: education, energy, food production, economy, social interaction, etc.

It was in the back of my mind for years that I wanted to do something with that. The New Civilization Network is essentially a space for this kind of activity. It is a very open, very tolerant place, open to anybody who is working on anything constructive that might be part of the puzzle. It is particularly open to alternative, locally empowering, innovative, collaborative, holistic kinds of pursuits.

Tammie: You describe personal change as a journey of discovery, can you tell us a little about your own unique journey? Flemming: As I mentioned above, my own life has changed quite dramatically along the way. An assortment of spiritual awakenings along the way have turned me quite upside down. From being a completely intellectual and materialistic person, I became somebody who orients myself mostly by what I feel and what I perceive that goes beyond the physical.

From being an arrogant status-seeking know-it-all, I became much more humble, much more appreciative of the vast mysteries of the universe that I don't have much of a clue about. I began to become conformable with moving through a mysterious universe into an uncertain future.

I also started doing it with greater confidence, though, and greater conviction that it all is going to work out very well. Tammie: Do you believe that pain can be a teacher and if so, what are some of the lessons your own pain has taught you? Flemming: I often try to pretend that I'm motivated only by positive stuff and nice possibilities.

However, I must admit that it is more often the unpleasant and painful experiences I learn the most from, and it is often painful necessities that drive me to change and act. I have learned to appreciate that more. I've learned that pain, uncomfortableness and fear often hide the biggest gifts. I mean, if there's some area of life you're avoiding, there's something new to learn right there. Tammie: You've maintained that each of us are creators of our world. Would you elaborate on that?

Flemming: You're in the center of your own life. Your actions shape what is going on around you. The way you experience things shapes the picture you have the world and how you respond to it. Many well-meaning people will be very interested when a friend or family member starts to learn something new. There are surely activities that might be worth watching even when done by beginners.

Most are not. Some people Malcolm Gladwell say that you need to practice something for 10, hours to master it. That number is completely arbitrary and probably unfounded, but it gives the idea. That's something like 40 hours per week for 5 years.

And doing that mindlessly, repeating the same actions over and over, surely wouldn't do it either. Many people think they're not gifted or not able to learn, because they tried something a couple of times and they didn't succeed. You know, they tried making a drawing and it wasn't good. They obviously have no clue what it would take to succeed. Probably to a certain degree it is the fault of a general anti-mastery atmosphere. Or, we could say, a need for instant gratification. We celebrate people who've mastered fantastic skills, but we usually render the required work completely invisible, leaving the illusion that the mastery somehow was easy or didn't take much time.

Some people show up for the audition in American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance after having practiced for hours per day for years, and they do great. The show makes it look like they do what they do in a few days. Obviously the illusion fools enough people that some people will show up to the same auditions never having practiced anything, thinking they have a chance, and the only chance they get is to look like complete idiots in front of millions of people.

So, if you should be an expert by now, you should obviously have started years ago and have worked on it every day. It takes a lot of practice. And not just repetition of stuff one is trying to do, or that one is repeating in the wrong way.

It takes attentive exploration of all aspects of what one is trying to learn. Getting to understand deeply why one has difficulty with some particular part, and how one can overcome it. And then moving on to some other part. Most people who're really passionate about something, or who are trying to master something, will have a great need to talk about it or think about it. And, there again, unless they're surrounded by people who're passionate about the same thing or learning the same thing, they'll probably find that others have a very limited patience for this.

We're used to the TV format. Sure, we'd like to see your audition, and a couple of snapshots of you practicing, and a few soundbites of you talking about your challenges, and then we'd like to see your performance, preferably flawless. But that's of course not really what has been going on. Again, they'd have been working on it for years, every day.

I'm writing in a blog here. Blogs could be a format for talking about what one really is working on, and others might be interested if they're on the same path. But not if they aren't. If you have a somewhat general blog, like this one, and you suddenly get passionate about something specific, and you start writing about that all the time, you would probably lose most of the audience. For example, I was really into aquaponics a couple of years ago.

That meant that I spent hours every day doing research, trying to solve problems, or constructing things in the garage or in my greenhouse. I have written about that in other places. I could very well have written several posts here every day, but I didn't, because it would be much too much for most people.

Right now I'm passionate about dance, and I could write about that every day. I don't, or I only do it in my private notes.

If you don't already have it, it would be a good idea to seek out a forum where your passion and your learning actually is welcome, also at great length. That's maybe really obvious to some who already have it, but not to others who didn't know where to look. You'd want to communicate with people who're on a similar level of involvement with the subject, or who would like to be.

People immediately around you are not likely to follow you, so you might have to go out of the way to find the others. And if what you're into is something really specialized, it is quite possible that you won't find anybody else in the world who's deeply into that.

Don't let that stop you. Later on, when you've succeeded, everybody will show up to congratulate you, including those who didn't really have the patience for you working so much on it, or who even tried to talk you out of it. Friday, September 26, At some point, a few years ago, I became good at saying wise stuff very concisely.

It was sort of accidental. The challenge I set myself was to say more things that were quotable. It is a Toastmasters principle that one ought to always have some material ready, in case somebody unexpectedly asks you to get up and speak to a crowd. Some stories, some jokes, some unusual facts, some quotes. One could simply collect some of those when one runs into them, put them on a list, and glance at them once in a while so that one is likely to remember them.

And I thought -- quotes -- I can't remember anything I've said that was quotable. Once in a while other people would quote me on something I had written years ago, and I usually was impressed.

But I couldn't myself think of anything. So I decided to write it down when I said something that would make a good quote. Incidentally, Twitter or Facebook are ideal for brief statements.

On Twitter you simply can't write more than characters, so if one has any hope of writing something memorable and meaningful, it would have to be within that limit. I was quickly surprised to find that it was quite easy for me to say something quotable. I had just meant to try to catch it when I said something clever, but by doing that, I started mainly writing things that were clever and quotable.

That maybe shouldn't be surprising, one typically gets what one puts one's attention on. Anyway, the result became that I more or less copied everything I said on Twitter or Facebook to my quote list right away. So, now, several years later there are hundreds and hundreds of entries on it. It is worth noting that even though my initial motivation was somewhat vain and self-serving, to collect clever things I've said in order to sound smart and quotable later, it was something else I managed to tap into.

See, I can't really come up with something clever on command. If I try to deliberately construct a wise and profound statement, I generally can't. I'd sweat over it and just come up with something mediocre and unoriginal. Because it is not really about constructing something clever at all.

It is more about discovering something. The way it works for me is that I'm busy with something else and suddenly, bing, an insight pops into my head, fully formed. That has certainly happened for a long time.

What was new now was that words came along with it. I could just write those words down, a sentence or two, and post them on Twitter or whatever. And I would probably pop right back to what I was doing before, having just spent a minute or so noting down or posting that thought. The cool thing is that most of those little packets of wisdom could be unpacked to something much larger if necessary.

If somebody has a question about it, I'd have a lot to say about it, and I'd have examples, etc. Or any of them could be a whole discussion, or a lecture, or a book, if necessary, and if I had time to write it. Or they could just stay brief. What is very useful about the brief form is that it is enough to remind me of exactly what it is about. So, even years later, I could still unpack it into a speech or an explanation. There'd be nothing to forget, because the initial quote says it all, even if it maybe isn't clear to most other people.

And it almost always has a built-in integrity and coherence. Nobody ever catches me in having gotten it wrong. I don't particularly mean that to brag. I'm after all only partially responsible. Those thoughts pop into my head from I don't know where.

I didn't try to construct them, they don't represent something I painstakingly have figured out. I can explain them after the fact, though. The downside of saying many little things like that is that I might not get around to the bigger and longer and more detailed explanations and articles. And even though I myself was quite happy with my mini version, and a bunch of people clicked Like on it, I'm quite aware that probably most people didn't quite get what I meant.

They might have entirely misunderstood it, or have at least filled a few of their own fixed ideas into it. The advantage of longer form writing, like blog posts, is that the subject matter can be unfolded and illustrated in a variety of different ways, and it is more likely that the reader gets it and that it becomes real and useful to them.

So, I will give myself the challenge of also collecting longer treatments of simple ideas I care about. An evolving path. I've spent the last couple of months doing quite different things from what I normally have. I've been outside, digging in the garden, tinkering, using power tools.

And I've been studying a bunch of new things I knew nothing about. Aquaponics, fish, plants, plumping, permaculture, forest gardens, and many sub-subjects of each. Now, this is really quite uncharacteristic. I've never been interested in any of those things before. But maybe it is not so uncharacteristic of me to dive deeply into a new subject. And, looking a couple of posts back, Accomplishments and Aims , I notice that this is actually exactly what I said I would do.

What is new is that I might be writing more about it. Doing more physical things, building stuff, watching nature, surprise, that actually leads to lots of deep things to talk about. But I'll also just talk about those practical things, without any need for them to be deep. Resilient, local, distributed, empowering action has always been part of the subtext here. And there's lots of practical stuff it might be a good idea to start paying attention to.

Tuesday, January 24, Intellectual Property. There's no such thing. Certainly it isn't something you can steal. Quite the contrary, it is a license to steal. Specifically, it is a legal construct that gives an exclusive license to one party to stop all other parties from using certain words or certain pictures or certain designs or certain patterns of arranging things, simply because they were the first to claim that they invented those words or pictures, and that they own them.

And the purported owner can then extort money from all the other people, or simply stop them from doing anything that looks like what they did. It is a tired, tired old discussion, but intellectual property is not property. It is not in any way the same as when you own a physical object of some kind, and somebody can steal it. It is not even remotely that way, and you should be insulted if anybody suggests it. If you have a car, and somebody steals that car, by removing it from you and taking it into their possession, then obviously you don't have your car any longer, a car that took quite some resources to acquire, and which took raw materials to build.

As opposed to that, with our modern technologies, ideas, words and pictures are extremely easily copied, for almost no cost, while leaving the original completely intact. Your car is still there, even if somebody took a picture of it, just like your website is still there, even though somebody saved a copy of it. Your car is also still there, even if somebody went to the trouble of building a copy of it. Copying is not stealing. Not even close. If you claim so, you're running some kind of scam.

The scam of Intellectual Property is quite similar to how you meet a con artist on the street. They seem friendly and they might ask you for a favor or invite you to play a little game. And before you know it, you owe them dollars, and it isn't quite clear how it happened.

There's a lot of apparently friendly Intellectual Property around. If you turn on the radio, there are dozens of channels playing music non-stop. They actually broadcast songs over all civilized areas, from high powered emitters. Apparently free for anybody to pick up, as long as they have the receiver, which is cheap and ubiquitous. Nowhere are you presented with any contract that says that you'll be punished for saving any of this music, or sharing it with a friend.

Turn on your TV and it is the same thing. Dozens of channels broadcasting high quality content to you non-stop, for free.

The same people broadcast much of this content for free on the Internet. But if you ever get the idea that you can save some of it for replaying to yourself and your friends, you're suddenly a criminal, because you didn't then drive to a store to buy a CD or a DVD with the music or film you wanted to keep. Intellectual property is like those apples one always hears about at Halloween, where some wacko embedded razorblades in them.

They looked like a nice and friendly gift, but if you go off and actually try to eat them, you get hurt. Or it is like a crack dealer distributing free samples. Seems like a nice and friendly thing to do, but it is a gift you'll pay for later. There are a lot of bogus cover stories you'll be presented with. It is to support the starving artists and musicians.

They need to be paid for their hard work. It is just that those people are rarely the actual people you're being asked to pay. Sony is not an artist. Neither is Warner Brothers. They are businesses trying to make a profit. If you look into the accounting that applies to the majority of artists or authors that have record deals or publishing contracts, you'll find that the vast majority of them make nothing whatsoever, or they even have to pay out of their own pocket to be published.

The people who make money are the very few really big names. The Madonnas and Brad Pitts. But much more so the media companies. The rest have been scammed as much as you have. If you think it is a problem now, it can get much, much worse. Think about patents on DNA. Think about copyrights on 3D wireframe models. Think about big companies using courts to stop people from growing certain things in their gardens and from creating certain objects in their garages. In addition to stopping us from using certain words and certain melodies and certain images and likenesses.

What could be a glorious future of local production and distributed creativity could instead turn into a nightmare dystopia where a few multi-national megacorps have the government backed power to turn off the things you create, or use, or grow, because they "own" them. Or have you pay them handsomely for the right to create.

One possible avenue, to avoid this, is to stay far away from anything that looks like Intellectual Property, to refuse to use it, to block it, ban it. A new Internet2, free from copyrights and patents and any other kind of IP looks like a better and better idea. No, I don't mean a pirate network for sharing their stuff. I mean a network where intellectual property is banned. We just won't play their game at all.

Software has been created for the purpose of identifying "owned" materials, like music or film. Imagine using it in reverse in a new Internet. Not by its owners, not by anybody. It simply won't go anywhere. Nobody wants it. In other words: If you have intellectual property, please keep it to yourself! Which is what should have happened in the first place.

We call your bluff. If you made it and you think it is yours alone, fine, keep it. But don't let us catch you handing it out as a free sample to anybody that you could hope to later entrap.

If you really think it is YOUR photo, keep it to yourself in a shoebox or on your computer. Don't post it to thousands of people on the Internet, and then later claim that they stole it from you.

They didn't. You gave it to them. So, don't, if you don't want to. Hefty fines would be in order for anybody trying to distribute their own intellectual property in any way. Some number of dollars for each person you knowingly have distributed it to for free would be quite reasonable, if you then later make demands of money for the very same thing. So, I'm suggesting reversing the game. Blow the cover off the game when you see it.

Don't allow this kind of thing on your networks. It's a crime. I'm well aware that there are very large and rich corporations that have made themselves the cultural gate keepers who somehow seem to own most of all music and film, and a lot of the words, despite them not having created any of it.

And others corporations who seem to own any thinkable way of manufacturing most of the things we need. And, yes, I know that they somehow have bribed the governments of most countries to do their bidding, and their plan of turning their scheme into international law is well advanced.

And they have plenty of ways of expanding their scam. Just like they can patent the vegetables in your garden and the cells in your body, they can of course also think up ways of making it seem like the music you create yourself and the videos you record violate their copyrights. They could very well have the power to position a copyright-refusing Internet2 as a haven for pirates. But if, instead of buying into their game, feeling guilty when they entrap us into pirating their stuff, you recognize it for what it is, it will be a lot harder for them.

If you create spaces where their stuff isn't allowed, it will slow them down. If you call them on it, fewer people will be fooled. There's still a chance that this civilization-killing scheme can be stopped and reversed.

Support people who create. Writers, musicians, photographers, artists, makers. Support their creativity. Help them make a living from it. Oppose corporations and their lawyers and politicians who make a system out of owning and stopping creativity and communication, profiting unscrupulously from the creative work of others. Create loads and loads of new stuff. In new ways, in new media. Make it altogether impractical for them to keep up.

Expand the commons faster than they can privatize it. Use and support stuff that is free. Pay for and reward added value, route around ownership.

Monday, January 2, It can be stimulating and rewarding to once in a while take stock of what one has accomplished and what one aims at doing next. The new year is traditionally a good time for doing that. And, I'm in part inspired by such a post from Vanessa Miemis.

To illustrate one good reason for writing it down, when I at first think about what I might have accomplished in , I draw a blank. Didn't really do much, and hadn't really planned anything either.

But when one looks a bit closer, there's of course more there Not that I was particularly hopeless, but there was a certain cynicism that had crept in. A "been there, done that, it didn't work" kind of attitude, hovering behind my habitual optimism. Now, suddenly, there are lots of reasons to be hopeful. The right people are starting to connect in the right ways. Ideas gain traction that previously didn't. Conflicts that previously existed, no longer have much power. On the world scene, the centralized control system is crumbling fast.

We have a unique opportunity to put something better in place. For the first time since the s do I feel really energized and hopeful about this being the time when it is possible. In I found my philosophical voice in a new way. That was actually a life hack.

I'm a member of a local Toastmasters club where people practice public speaking. It is a good piece of advice for a public speaker to collect material that will be ready for use whenever one is called upon to say something.

Stories, jokes, quotes, that kind of thing. So, I made a document for recording good material when I ran into it. I made one of the categories My Own Quotes, i. Surprisingly, it turned out that I suddenly started saying more things that were quotable, on Twitter, on Facebook, etc. Which in turn, ironically, means I have little use for my list, as it is more fun to make up something new.

I've met a lot of people. Specifically, I now feel part of a global network of the "right" kind of people, which is really a mix of different kinds of people, but one that fits.

And it is not one thing. Rather, I notice overlapping groups coming together, sort of under the surface, without formal leaders. Things are more likely to happen in hidden Facebook groups or private hangouts. Not that there's anything secret going on, but it seems more productive with self-selecting groups that invite new members personally, rather than very visible public groups and causes that people go and join for abstract reasons.

The Next Edge is one name for a loose group that is quite happening. In October I was in New York for a week. All of it very inspiring. Meeting a bunch of kindred souls I otherwise knew only online. And the Occupy movement added a very tangible and present focus, an incarnation of much that we're talking about, and a surprising inspiration that sends things in a new direction.

It was enlightening to see how a small group of people sleeping under tarps in Zuccotti park could hold the world's attention. Very inspiring to experience the consensus process in a General Assembly. In I began to see Dialogue happening online. I have previously attempted that, and failed , so it is new. I decided to move forward with some of what I consider my own online projects, stuff I haven't gotten around to for years, despite not really having time.

Ironically, since I'm busy being a paid programmer for other people's projects, I am now experimenting with outsourcing some of my own programming projects to others. It is still unclear whether it will bear fruit, but it is nevertheless satisfying to see activity. I started adjusting my work environment more to my liking. I'm now working on a standup desk most of the time, which I think is more healthy. Most important will probably be a long-awaited re-launch of newciv. But I'd also like to make my personal web presence more coherent, as it is spread over a number of sites now, hard to follow in one place.

I also hope to launch one or two useful tools on the web that might gain some traction. I'm right now really excited about taking up aquaponics. I'm right now learning what I need to know, but I plan on getting that all going this year. In a greenhouse, I'm thinking. I'm not otherwise somebody you're likely to find outside with his hands in the dirt, so this will require some learning.

What motivates me is in part that it involves technology, besides it being completely organic and producing no waste. We already have chickens, we have a large backyard with fruit trees, and a well on the property, so we have good potential for being able to be quite self-sufficient. I'm a software guy and haven't traditionally been somebody you'd find in the garage with power tools.

But I'd like in various ways to be more of a maker and tinkerer. In part for the fun, in part for the self-sufficiency aspects, in part because I think the economy is going in that kind of direction. So, if I don't run out of money from buying aquaponics equipment, I'm thinking maybe 3D printing, maybe some kind of solar panel setup.

We can't use the standard government sponsored approach to that, as we only rent this house. Oh, and I need webcams, so I can monitor my aquaponics setup, etc.

I have almost no network here locally of the kind that is in sync with what I'm into online. That is rather odd, if I compare with how it was for us in California.

I hope to remedy that this year. That might be local groups that are into permaculture, local economies, the local fablab, co-ops, dialogue, etc. My current choice for exercise and socializing and being more in my body is dance.