Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I have no comprehensive proposal for how we can get to “fewer and less,” nor does anyone else. The scale and scope of the challenge is unprecedented, and beyond the reach of conventional policy proposals. But we can enhance our chances of success by cultivating restless and relentless minds.
Understanding the alley’s past reveals it for what it is today: a hidden resource for making our cities stronger and more prosperous.
Today, Native nations are creating vibrant children’s programs, using the most up-to-date and culturally appropriate means to keep their youngsters involved in tradition and community—while still ensuring their safety in these dangerous pandemic times.
The Americans failed at ‘nation-building’ because they spent all the money on the military. The British delusions of being an independent ‘global’ power have been shown up for what they are. And the people who pay the price for this are the Afghanis, still living in one of the poorest states in the world.
It is rare to find a street in America that does not seem to be almost wholly oriented around the movement of cars from one point to another. The street understood as part of the public realm seems to be forever lost, a thing of the past.
Unless the elites of the world transform their understanding of security, things are going to look good for extreme movements in the 2030s and beyond, whether they stem from perverse religious identities, ethnicities, nationalisms or political ideologies.
Psychologist Jamil Zaki has described ‘distant socialising’ as something most of us might wish for in current conditions: to be connected despite physical distance. He points to the confusion created by the go-to label of social distancing, which implies a loss of companionship and connection.
The Biden administration is about to require COVID-19 vaccinations for all U.S. visitors. The plan is likely to become unworkable in very short order. It is an attempt to get around a now very clear fact about widespread international travel: That travel has become a threat to all humankind.
As modern society faces climate change and the sixth extinction, these oldest stories of place and survivance are evolving. And they are also remaining the same, allowing us to see the past and imagine alternate futures as we move with the Earth around the sun.
The great challenge is not to deny this fear, but to take responsibility and overcome it, avoiding paralysis and nihilistic or cynical attitudes. In other words, converting fear into preventive and effective action, into awareness of all species.
Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. Rushkoff’s work explores how different technological environments change our relationship to narrative, money, power, and one another. He addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”
The point is: the prophet’s vision is a harder sell than the glitzy wizardly version of the future. Thus, we need more attempts to imagine that world.
