Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Social movements provide a unique mechanism for responding, creating common identity and purpose between strangers and allowing genuine, collective participation in building a better democracy. There is no better antidote to hopelessness than action in community.
Elections are always complicated things, although pundits sometimes try to pretend that they’re not. In this post I run through some different narratives or ‘explanations’ of Trump’s victory that I’ve noticed or heard since Wednesday and pull out a quote or add some commentary.
The key to taking effective action in a Trump world is to avoid perpetuating the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion and disorientation.
The same factors that led to Donald Trump’s election in 2016 are still with us. The French philosopher Bruno Latour made the case that Trump’s perplexing popularity could be traced to his ability to give voice to the anger and fear generated by the effects of Globalism.
“The Democratic Party has a major working-class voter issue. It started a decade ago as a working-class White issue. It’s now gotten even worse and spread across racial lines.”
To give the biosphere, humanity included, the best possible chance of surviving and flourishing through deep time, we must acknowledge limits to growth and re-learn our being in this world through cultural concepts that (re)couple our future to that of all living things.
This day, of Trump’s being elected again, and likely winning Congress too, is a dire dire day for the living planet and for its human denizens. This moment requires us to face reality as never before: and that means us pivoting to adaptation and resilience-building in earnest. Rupert Read explains…
Uncertain times are uniquely suited to an approach I call “multisolving” – acting in service of multiple goals with a single action.
In the day-to-day we can easily forget how entangled we actually are with others and the planet. But we are not separate from each other or the planet. We’re part of one large organism, a complex system with many interconnections and interdependencies.
It is the Day of the Dead. It is the end of yet another season of growth and the beginning of another season of decay. The spiral is turning… It is time to honor our debts to time. Without fear…
When it comes to building community resilience—or building community at all—we have our work cut out for us.
Despite being harvested until December, for many, Halloween will mark the end of pumpkin season with the decorations unceremoniously binned. Studies show that just over half of the pumpkins bought in the UK each year (18,000 tonnes of them) go to waste uneaten.
