Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I regret the lazy oversimplifications of our time. As our world becomes ever fuller withaccessible information, ever more porous, ever more pressing with demands for our attention, so our subtler semiotic capacities appear to stall before the task. Our attempts at interpretation and meaning-making are overwhelmed: more information means less meaning.
A professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and a former political adviser, Nichols argues that the country has shifted from a healthy skepticism of accepted knowledge to a proud, self-satisfied ignorance and active hostility to the very idea of expertise. Across American society, intellectual authority is resented, resisted and disregarded, with every opinion ostensibly holding equal weight.
We are living in a world where holistic, systemic crises threaten the future of humanity. And yet, there has been an historic pattern of fragmentation in the physical and social sciences needed to tackle them. I have taken on the life mission to guide the evolution of cultural sciences so that they become fully integrated with the dynamics 0f our changing Earth.
The lack of internet access is especially problematic because it is a key driver of inequality, which is a principal threat to not just democracy, but all human rights; hence, the barriers listed above only serve to exacerbate inequality. As the authors of a paper that examined sustainability and participation in the digital commons (Franquesa & Navarro, 2017) emphasized: “it is well established that there is an access gap between citizens who can afford a digital device and an internet connection and those who cannot.
With 16,000 vacant properties in Baltimore—a number some say is severely undercounted and may be closer to the 23,000 that the U.S. Census estimates—there’s plenty of blight to fix. Adding community land trusts into the mix of solutions to throw at the problem seems likely—if not this budget, then next.
President Trump recently tried to eliminate the National Education Association and National Endowment for the Humanities. This proposal is another step in the already long process of marginalizing the humanities in society. According to Martha Nussbaum, an American philosopher, the effects of the devaluation of and growing disinterest in the humanities could jeopardise democracy itself.
History, as we all know, may not repeat itself, but it surely rhymes. So, the theme of a civil war and of a return of Fascism is much discussed in the US nowadays. What kind of rhymes with past events can we perceive? On this point, I can propose to re-examine how Fascism took over in Italy, in the early 1920s, and in particular how it was related to energy supply factors.
The author David Wallace-Wells is correct when he writes, “No plausible program of emissions reductions alone can prevent climate disaster.” However, that doesn’t mean that nothing can be done to save our species – and the planet – from approaching cataclysm. In fact, if humanity was to awaken to our current plight and work together, we could transform the Earth in a positive direction that would allow us to thrive here for the long term.
Often the most important things are invisible — we simply don’t have eyes to see. Feel the wind on your cheek and something undetectable to the human eye has been perceived. But what of the cultural patterns that have been invisible to us? How can we learn to see them?
In our cities and towns, there isn’t a more democratic space than our streets and sidewalks. Buildings are exclusive—homes are private, offices are secure, you have to pay to get into the gym or eat at a restaurant. Yet, streets are inclusive, collectively ours, and the very essence of public space, shared by all citizens.
But first let me venture a working definition of the creed for anyone who’s lived thus far in blessed innocence of it: ecomodernism typically combines overenthusiasm for a handful of technologies as putative solutions to contemporary problems (typically nuclear power and GM crops), underenthusiasm for any social orders other than capitalist modernity, a fetishisation of both humanity and nature as surpassing splendours each in their separate spheres, questionable evidence-selection to support the preceding points, and high disdain for those who take a different view.
The PA is a 110-acre homestead run by Ethan and Sarah Hughes, who have two young daughters. Their reliance on fossil fuels is limited to trains for long-distance trips, municipal water, and a telephone landline. They purchase bike parts, bulk grains, and tin roofing, as needed—but that’s about it. No electricity, no gas, no cars, no planes.
