Act: Inspiration

Days of Future Past

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When modern people try to gauge whether climate change is real, they run into several problems. We no longer live with a sense of our surroundings as our ancestors did, but spend much of our time in a bubble of regulated temperature and lighting. Even when we allow ourselves to feel the elements, we do so for a narrow sliver of time; until recently most people only lived to forty years or so, and while we have almost doubled that figure lately, our lives still flicker on and off quickly compared to those trees or turtles.

The Dark Mountain Project: In search of a new narrative

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It started with a conversation that became a manifesto that became a book that became a festival that became a movement. Three years on the Dark Mountain Project is still hard to define. It is both a cultural response to a collapsing world, and a network of people who gather to makes sense of that collapse. At its core is a shared recognition that the stories we have inherited are are no longer making sense of our lives, and a new narrative for the times we are living in needs to be forged.

The Fossil Fuel Free Garden

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It’s the first season for our Transition group’s community garden, but already we’ve taken to calling it the Fossil Fuel Free Garden. The tagline is an easy way for us to make the point that not only do we expect our fellow gardeners to stay organic (no chemicals, please) but that we have the additional requirement that no power tools be used at the garden.

Commons: Alternatives to Markets and States

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Capitalism has failed. Leaving the care of society to the market has led to massive inequality, climate chaos and financial crisis. The system is indeed one of zombie economics, the doctrine is dead but the beast still walks amongst us. It reminds me of the cartoons where Bugs Bunny runs over the edge of the cliff but, not noticing that he has done so, continues to march on air until realization strikes and the silly rabbit plummets to the ground.

Why doesn’t more communication translate into greater consensus about the world’s problems?

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On the surface one would think that the revolutionary advances in worldwide communications–made possible first by the telegraph, then by the telephone, the radio, the television and now by the Internet–would lead to a broad consensus on such issues as climate change and resource depletion. Almost everyone now has nearly instant access to the latest scientific information on these issues. Yet, no consensus has emerged, at least not one strong enough to bring about definitive action.

The Apocalypse of the Teacher (The Book of the Great Divide)

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When the teacher arrived, people were already beginning to talk of a Great Divide, a disagreement that would eventually split the city. There were people on both sides who had strong convictions, and some who were uncertain, and as time went on the Great Divide widened. Those who were uncertain felt pressured to choose, and the two sides grew, in number and in unanimity on the surface, though not in depth and commitment. As each side grew larger in number, their ideas became hollower, and as the strength of people’s belief grew it became less clear what they believed in.

Building resilience in a changing climate

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Building resilience means helping society to work more like an ecosystem—and that has major implications for how we use energy. Ecosystems conserve energy by closing nutrient loops: plants capture and chemically store solar energy, which is then circulated as food throughout the food web. Nothing is wasted. We humans—having developed the ability to draw upon ancient, concentrated, cheap, and abundant (though ultimately finite) fossil fuels—have simultaneously adopted the habit of wasting energy on a colossal scale.

An interview with Charles Eisenstein: “Something in your heart knows that this is what life is supposed to be about”

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“I’m not talking about the abolition of money, I’m talking about the transformation of money, so that it takes on the properties of gift. One of those would be that you no longer maintain wealth, status and security by keeping a lot of it, in a gift culture the more you gave the richer you were. The wealthy person was the generous person. Another aspect of it would be to be part of the circle of the gift as in ecology where the waste of any creature is a food for the next.”

From Denmark to Bhutan: the policies of happiness

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Over the last 100 years, living standards in the West have improved enormously, but it appears that people have not become much happier. In 2006, the first ‘Happy Planet Index’ (HPI) measured happiness across 178 countries. The small south Pacific island of Vanuatu was the happiest nation. Germany ranked 81st, Japan 95th and the US 150th.

Various surveys have indicated that while wealthy western nations use up vast quantities of the world’s scarce resources, many of their citizens are not much happier, or are indeed less happy, than those who belong to poorer countries that use far fewer resources.

Is solidarity a thing of the past?

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Humans now labor in narrow occupational niches within our highly complex society in the same way that species occupy ecological niches in nature. This specialization leads to competition within each niche for the limited number of positions available. Consequently, the harder the economic times, the more intense the competition for the reduced number of positions within each niche. This leads to anxiety among those already holding a job since they are often not skilled enough to find work in other niches. The employee often asks himself or herself, “What could I possibly do if I were no longer able to do this kind of work?” Naturally, this concern also creates anxiety among those who are unemployed and seeking jobs within a particular niche.

So, it is no wonder that those in the middle and lower strata of society have a difficult time joining together for common action when they are daily locked in a struggle over keeping or getting jobs in their respective niches.