Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In the West, we would do well to consider places like Brazil in developing a strategy to start down the path to ending homelessness here and we would do well to consider the power of the 8 to 11 million unhoused people who know what they need and are finally beginning to organize for their future.
Each step in human evolution has brought inventions that threaten to weaken our innate abilities.
Our investigation of the disastrous society-wide collapses of four premodern polities, China’s Ming Dynasty, the South Asian Mughal Empire, the High Roman Empire, and Renaissance Venice led to the discovery of an unexpected historical pattern.
In a farmhouse attic turned podcast studio in Corvallis, Oregon, I joined Crazy Town podcast hosts Jason Bradford, Rob Dietz, and Asher Miller to discuss whether it’s possible to escape our modern civilization and its various components (industrialism, imperialism, capitalism) or whether we’re completely trapped.
This week, Nate is joined by Daniel Christian Wahl, a leader and activist in regenerative living, for an exploration into what our lifestyles and communities could look like if we aligned human systems—like agriculture, economy, and community planning—with the natural ecosystems of a specific bioregion to create more sustainable and harmonious ways of living.
It was the cows themselves who had impressed on me so deeply this alignment with rhythms borne not of the mind but some deeper undercurrent, a trust that the quietness brings all into its own order.
How the Rojavan democracy was made to happen should be of deep interest to everyone seeking a democracy built and nurtured from the bottom up.
But the question remains, will New Yorkers invest that activist energy into cultivating sustainable ways to do more with less, while more equitably redistributing the shrinking pie, or simply force the redirection of goods from other parts of the world that have less power or force of will?
Faced with the towering set of concerns raised in this series, and the glaring unsustainability of modernity—which is not only familiar and comfortable, but seemingly essential for modern survival—it is natural that a top-of-mind question for many is: What Can I Do?
Social engineering is when a small group of people advance their own interests by using widespread, “industrial scale” messaging that goes out to large numbers of people, with the purpose to influence and shape their thinking, beliefs, values and decision making.
The question is to what extent has pedagogical practice perpetuated and endorsed a culture of heedless exploitation to the detriment of all else, with the justification of it being for the common good of humanity.
Designing for Health helps us track health and unhealth in the different levels of any system (our community, organisation, society, family…). It helps us creating relationships, communities and societies where all beings can thrive.
