Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The main lesson is that debt cancellation is a crucial component of a global energy transition, and substantial reconstruction funds must also accompany it. What would be the overarching rationale for the cancellation? To ensure that low-income countries constitute a strong and economically successful defense against climate change.
Modernity’s inevitable failure need not be humanity’s ultimate failure. Modernity never could have worked in the long term, and represents only a small sliver of human existence.
Only by belonging to the world and living in the hands of the gods did we get to be humans.
The recent Climate Change Committee report on the UK government’s lack of preparedness for climate breakdown reveals negligence at a historic scale.
Our political discourse is actually far narrower than our total public discourse which makes addressing big problems such as climate change very difficult.
So, yes, we need to condemn globalization loud and clear. And we need a cohesive strategy that moves us sensibly and sanely in the opposite direction.
Asked if he could fathom trading modern life for a pre-agricultural lifestyle, Alan admits that he cannot. Meanwhile, Leavers exposed to modernity have consistently tried to return to their Leaver lifestyles—often rendered impossible by the destructive acts of Takers.
If you close your eyes, you can feel the energy of land and creek, rocks and bluffs, grasses and red cedar trees, blue sky and snow, all of it together.
Let’s keep pushing businesses to behave better and to innovate in ways that are genuinely beneficial for us and the environment, and let’s celebrate them when they do. But we should not expect – and we certainly should not depend on – commercial salvation.
In many ways, then, the real challenge in times of ecological collapse, the rise of authoritarian governments, capitalist crisis, and war-mongering militarization is to truly understand these systems, their evolving nature in relation to contemporary societies, their potential interface with modern institutions of governance, and how to strengthen overall governance for the purposes of justice and sustainability.
Ishmael asks Alan to define culture, working out in steps that culture is the accumulated knowledge that defines a people, passed down to—and refined/amended by—future generations. This transmission goes beyond mere information, encompassing “beliefs, assumptions, theories, customs, legends, songs, stories, dances, jokes, superstitions, prejudices, tastes, attitudes.”
Liberate water, liberate the land, liberate the mind — this is the triple revolution awaiting Algeria.
