Listening to Plants, Whales, and Elephants
By Erik Assadourian, Gaianism
The only way an ecocentric (or any) belief system spreads is from person to person, as all missionaries have understood from the days that Buddha’s disciples walked from India to China or sailed to Sri Lanka or Japan.
Waves, Waterfalls and Our Eventual Return to Gaia
By Erik Assadourian, Gaianism
Knowing that our lives are brief—and worse—not knowing where the end of the waterfall is (is it a short drop or a long one?) means it is up to us to live every moment of our lives well. Not “live it up” but live meaningfully, purposefully, and conscious that life could end at any moment.
Why Are We So Anxious?
By Erik Assadourian, Gaianism
Being present in the now, connecting with nature, knowing you’re doing all you can to heal Gaia and prepare yourself and your community for the transition that is coming, and avoiding the bits of modernity that foment anxiety: all of that will help reorient you, dulling the anxiety and helplessness you feel, strengthening your sense of self and purpose and hopefully helping you to stay committed to using your life energy to heal the planet that you are part of and utterly depend on.
Listening for Greensong
By Erik Assadourian, Resilience.org
All around us is Greensong—the sounds, vibrations, smells, and tastes of a living planet. Can you sense it? Are you listening? What does it tell you?
‘Til Sustainability Do You Part: Arranging a Marriage Between Degrowth and the Circular Economy
By Erik Assadourian, John Mulrow, Resilience.org
But advocates of the circular economy rarely grapple with a central truth: the circular economy depends on a significant and sustained period of economic degrowth. Instead they tend to focus on innovations that deliver efficiencies and unlock new economic opportunities.
Primitive Skills, Primeval Connections
By Erik Assadourian, Future Perfect
Learning primitive skills offers an opportunity for people to reconnect to the environment and to gain a deeper understanding of sustainable living. The U.S.-based MAPS Meet provides a forum to learn these skills.
Having your Bit of Cake and Eating it Too?
By Erik Assadourian, Worldwatch Institute
Downsizing, the film by Alexander Payne, which follows Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) as he decides to shrink himself to 5 inches tall and moves to the downsized colony of Leisureland, had great promise as a conversation starter about sustainability, and in some ways it succeeded, but in many ways it reinforced the same myths society regularly perpetuates.
Why we must talk about population
By Erik Assadourian, Resilience
Focusing on some of the tactics of stabilizing population growth without offering an understanding of the urgency of the crisis we face undermines overall population efforts.