Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
While this new rural economy is coming to life, its success is uncertain. It will likely be an uneven, difficult, and slow transition if there’s a transition at all. It will take people of uncommon vision, commitment and patience to make it happen.
People are at last beginning to pay attention to localism. The idea behind the term is old—ancient even—but it appears to be “having a moment,” so to speak, in this fractured and divisive era.
A murdered ranch employee. A vanished suspect. A stolen rodeo horse. A black helicopter. Angry environmentalists. Menacing oil-and-gas developers. A Sasquatch hunter gone astray. A mysterious billionaire. A missing can opener…
As one of the co-founders and now Executive Director of the non-profit division of Cooperation Jackson, Kali Akuno is working to transform the city into ‘a beacon of radical politics’.
Maybe there’s seemed to be a disconnect between the message we’ve been bringing – that this society is knowingly causing the harshest catastrophe in history – and the actions we’ve been taking? Maybe if the wider public see that hundreds feel the need to go to jail over this, they might start to seriously ask why? With these stakes, it’s worth a shot.
By now you have probably read about the so-called “tech backlash.” Facebook and other social media have undermined what’s left of the illusion of democracy, while smartphones damage young brains and erode the nature of discourse in the family. Meanwhile computers and other gadgets have diminished our attention spans along with our ever-failing connection to reality. The … Read more
I don’t think I’m being too Spenglerian to express the fear that in present troubled times, when the modernist state-industry-warfare nexus is manifestly unraveling, something similar could easily take hold again and do the same. And that, I submit, is a thoughtstarter, not a thoughtstopper.
As much pride and empowerment as there is in community ownership of food-producing gardens and financial services such as credit unions to support local businesses, research shows those sorts of grassroots efforts cannot close the ever-growing wealth gap that has been historically and systematically created along racial lines.
I don’t think there is a duty to vote, and I wouldn’t support compulsory voting, even if that was a political possibility in this country. I do think voting is responsibility though.
What made Europeans so successful in the task of conquering the world? My interpretation is that it was the result of periodic “Seneca Collapses” of the European population which made it possible to accumulate resources that would then be available to propel the European expansion. It is an effect that may be called the”Seneca Rebound” that makes growth faster after a collapse.
The crisis in democracy is much discussed these days, but almost entirely in political terms that ignore its deeper causes.
On the 157th anniversary of the Great Beaufort Skedaddle, it’s worth remembering that sometimes doubling down on one’s way of life brings about catastrophe from which there is no recovery.
