Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Put bluntly: yes, Britain is mired in a democratic crisis. But it is one that is older, wider and deeper than this week’s debacle over Brexit and parliamentary sovereignty, and it features across our everyday lives.
Just as the Dutch stood up and ultimately created some of the most cycling friendly streets on the planet, so too can New Yorkers, Londoners and others around the world. The people are asking, now it’s up to our representatives to answer the call.
So despite the good intentions, now is not the time to be defending Britain’s broken democracy. Instead, we should be demanding a democratic revolution.
Food security, traditional agriculture, and local self-reliance are key to regenerative societies of the future, say water protectors taking the movement’s lessons forward.
President Trump’s announcement that he thinks the U.S. should consider buying Greenland was widely ridiculed. But what he is proposing has a long pedigree in American history. And, he is tapping into very deep yearning in the American psyche.
In general, the power of the elite cannot be confronted by timidly asking or jumping to compromises. It can only be confronted by hampering the source of their power in the first place: the ability to make a profit.
There is a very powerful reason we are currently unable to move toward a simpler and sustainable society: the costs of securing access to land for housing often mean only the relatively affluent can afford such “green lifestyles”.
In response to this problem, we offer some ideas to show how public land could be used for sustainable forms of community-led development.
Take this leap. You are not alone. We are all in this together. Garnish support from and hold space for others. Let’s process, dream, and grow together. We need you now. There is no more time to waste.
The stakes of course are very, very high, here, because the climate crisis and the broader ecological emergency of which it is only the most urgent part puts the whole of what we know as civilisation at risk. By ‘this civilisation’ I mean the hegemonic civilisation of globalised industrial growth capitalism— sometimes called ‘Empire’—which today governs the vast majority of human life on Earth.
There are many signs that in our use of electronic technology we’ve reached the point of damage in the physical realm. I contend that we are reaching that point in the intellectual realm, too – when to know something means to be able to type, click, skim, and forget.
Democratic socialism is, I think, at least potentially compatible with, and perhaps even capable of drawing strength from, the small towns and churches of U.S. society.
We don’t view mindfulness as a panacea that will cure the world’s ills. But socially-engaged mindfulness and mindful social action can contribute to addressing our individual and collective challenges.
