Missing Words
How can we discuss and respond to our culture’s biggest challenges if we don’t even have the words to describe them?
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My Ishmael
We’re awkwardly caught between being too intelligent to work as well as turtles and mushrooms, but not intelligent enough to be like angels or gods. The flaw, then, is intelligence, which gives us enough power to screw up the world. It’s a special curse. Yet, we need not invoke interstellar travel to find people who have lived sustainably and without difficulty.
Towards Individual Wisdom and Restraint
How do we slow down and reject the “hustle culture” that prioritizes gains in efficiency, wealth and consumption over all else? How do we maximize the positive impacts and minimize the negative effects we have on the environment around us? What should we do today to plant the seeds of a future we’d like to see, or would like generations beyond us to see?
Depolarisation and adaptation create serious change together
Adaptation is a chance to gather almost everybody around the table. The hard facts can be laid out on that table for all to see and, around it, the possibility of a future can be negotiated. Please let’s invite everybody who is operating in good faith to sit at it.
Living through the second Gilded Age
For some time we Americans have been living through the country’s second Gilded Age, one that will not likely end the way the first one did.
An Important New Book on the Praxis of Social Ecology
A new book offers offers a welcome, up-to-date examination of social ecology as a living tradition.
Death as a Nothing-Burger
Fear of death pervades our culture: many among us cringe at its mention, and indeed structure whole lives around elaborate stories of denial: we can’t really ever be dead, surely!
Human Nature Odyssey: Episode 14. The King Is Dead, Now What? The 250-Year Struggle for Democracy (Part 3)
Several decades after the Cold War, Russia and the U.S. found themselves on eerily parallel oligarchic paths. In this episode, we trace how the world drifted from dreams of liberation to authoritarian control—and how a new generation began planting the seeds of liberty and equality once again.
After deadly flash floods, a Texas town takes halting, painful steps toward recovery
By Wednesday, almost two weeks after the July 4 floods that devastated the Central Texas region that hugs the Guadalupe River, the rain had finally subsided long enough for rescue and recovery work to resume in earnest.
Leave the Light On: Thinking Down the Road
We need social resilience, and what greater builder of social resilience can there be than communities coming together to work for a future that gives priority to real people and places and to a life-sustaining planet.
Let’s (Not) Choose Sides and Fight
In this article, I’ll make a case for the increasing likelihood of conflict, internationally as well as domestically within the US, and then consider some novel ideas about conflict. As we’ll see, either taking sides in an approaching battle, or refusing to do so, comes with a cost.
Joanna Macy: a personal tribute from Rupert Read
An unparalleled eco-philosopher, Buddhist scholar, systems theorist, and activist, Joanna dedicated her life to illuminating the interconnectedness of all life and empowering individuals and groups to confront the ecological and social crises of our time with courage and compassion.
