Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
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.
Changing how we live and transforming our societies can feel impossible, but that shouldn’t be surprising when the ethical beliefs that shape us are so rarely subject to scrutiny or discussion. What if we build a social movement that pulls growing numbers of people out of those habits of passivity and helps us cultivate our moral agency?
The way we do business and the way we live our lives is ingrained in a growth at all costs mindset. But that “cost” is the very systems that keep us alive. Finance can follow this new path. We believe it must.
Everywhere, it’s necessary to pay attention, to get to know the neighborhood and its denizens, the non-human citizens whose families probably have been living there longer than you maybe have been alive. To learn the lay of the land—literally.
Pretty much the last nail in the coffin for the idea that there’s going to be a smooth transition out of fossil fuels and into renewables that can rescue the existing high-energy global economy in anything like its present form comes courtesy of Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and his 2024 book More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy.
Chickens are smart, emotional animals. They can decimate local insect populations, but they are resilient and courageous. They deserve our respect.
Today, Nate is joined by neuroscientist and best-selling author, Maren Urner, to discuss the critical role of journalism in democracy, the importance of rebuilding trust in media, and how neuroscience can inform our understanding of media consumption.
