Society featured

How catalytic events change the course of history: From the 9/11 attacks to the coronavirus pandemic

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If you are a chemist, you know very well how catalysts can work small miracles: you had been trying for some time to have a reaction occur, without success, then you add a little pinch of something and – suddenly – things go “bang.” In no time, the reaction is complete. Of course, as a chemist you know that catalysts don’t really work miracles: all they can do is to accelerate reaction that would occur anyway.

Breaking the Brady Vase: Coronavirus and America’s Fault Lines (Episode 28 of Crazy Town)

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Besides lessons in ethics (and in Asher’s case, lessons in the English language), the Brady Bunch offers up a metaphor about the fault lines in American politics — fault lines that include the undermining of government, extreme individualism, race and class divides, and capitalist and corporate excesses.

Building Resilience in the Days of the Coronavirus: Lessons from the Great Depression

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An overview of the narratives of these resilient women reveals a pattern of resourcefulness, persistence in the face of setbacks, courage to take a stand, and through all the challenges, pride in family and community. All of them continued to be active in community life, and all of them were proud of what their children had accomplished when the walls of segregation came tumbling down.

Reflections on Lockdown in the Countryside: Life Goes on Almost as Normal, but my View of Home has Changed

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With everything and everyone locked down, my comparisons between somewhere like Lincolnshire and somewhere bigger and brighter – like London – have reverted back to zero; right now, we’re all on a level-playing field, and Lincolnshire, quite frankly, is coming up trumps.

Poked by a Porcupine: the Politics of Contraction (Episode 27 of Crazy Town)

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In this episode Asher, Rob, and Jason wonder if individualism (not to mention all those other “-isms”… capitalism, socialism, communism) is simply the product of a relatively short period of expansionism, and what of our values must be kept or discarded as we enter a new era of contraction and bureaucratic breakdown.

False Solutions to Climate Change: Real Solutions

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This has been a long tour through the Wonderland of fake solutions to climate change, ideas designed to splash a coat of green paint on Business As Usual so that certain private interests can keep getting richer…and so the rest of us need not be bothered with changing our habits or lifestyle. This won’t do.

Collaborative Feminist Degrowth: Pandemic as an Opening for a Care-Full Radical Transformation

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Change needs to be systemic to match the scale of the emergency and the inequalities uncovered and reproduced by the pandemic. This crisis can and should be used as a collective learning point for a transformation towards an alternative feminist degrowth future.

Planet of the Humans: Reviewing the Film and its Reviews

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Not unlike Einstein’s summons, Planet of the Humans is at least spot on about the need to turn away from our technocentric story and all its delusions that have claimed to give us full control. Then, and only then, will any light shine like the dawn.

Descansos

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According to Cantadora and Wise Woman, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Descansos are symbols that mark a death: as an example, a cross by the wayside with the name of the person who died spelled out in nails. Can we create Descansos for our dying civilization? For die it must if we are to live. Let these words be my Descansos offered in gratitude to She Who Loves Us All.