Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Whenever you design and create anything, you deploy one or another conceptual framework. One or another way of framing and making sense of both what you start with, how to go about developing or changing it, where you are heading, and why you are even bothering. No matter if you’re aware of your conceptual framework. It is there.
So you want to escape climate change. That’s a reasonable impulse — climate change rivals nuclear war for the greatest threat to human life in the history of our species’ existence.
Old black-and-white movies set an example for people to follow. In an era when we interact more with screens than with people, and when few people remember how to work together or build a better society, examples are what we need more of.
James Bridle’s New Dark Age is a deeply researched plea for us to move beyond computational thinking. He says learning to code doesn’t help us understand the internet age, any more than learning plumbing skills will give us an understanding of the ways an essential municipal utility is determined by hydrology, infrastructure, and sociopolitical policies.
The research shows that belief in meritocracy, the view that success depends on hard work rather than social structures, strengthens with rising inequality.
In reality, the municipalism of the Fearless Cities means that winning local governments and making them stronger is only part of a broader political strategy based on building power from the bottom up, both within and outside formal institutions.
They launched Every One, Every Day in November 2017, opening two shops (the first of five) on high streets in Barking and Dagenham. The shops don’t sell anything but are places where people meet, discuss ideas and launch projects.
The solutions to this crisis will not be handed down from a mountain top to the grateful hordes: they will rely on us taking power for ourselves. Three decades after Reagan, the nine most laughable words in the English language are: “I’m from the elite and I’m here to help.”
Devon Peña is Professor of American Ethnic Studies and Anthropology at the University of Washington. He is also founder and president of the Acequia Institute an organization devoted to strengthening traditional communal irrigation practices in the San Luis Valley of Colorado.
The Green New Deal is the title of a story that’s yet to be written. It being a work in progress is both blessing and curse.
The growth of polarization makes it possible for haters to come out from the margins, form larger groups and make political trouble. Why is polarization increasing now, with the accompanying growth of fascist groups?
We are old climate veterans who have tried to do our part, in every way we know how, to keep our fossil-fuel addicted civilization from driving off a cliff. Are we tired? Sure. Discouraged? Absolutely. Pissed off? Yep. Sad? Call it broken-hearted. Quitting? Nah.
