Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Every act of care, every restored relationship, and every small step toward shared responsibility contributes to the future that is already taking shape. This is work we can keep doing, steadily and together.
The frustration is reaching critical mass, and it will drive change. The question is what type, and direction, of change?
Working at smaller scales means that the benefits of additional crop rotations, processing mills and artisan-micro-maker labs could be spread throughout the country, bringing greater resilience and livelihoods to rural areas. Energy demands would be lower and distributed as processing would be localised and require limited transport.
The book invites us to imagine ways we can strengthen all our community partnerships and offers skills to create a new world through the art of Radical Listening.
Common sense is contested terrain.
Community-scale and bioregional-scale responses to the Great Unraveling invite personal action and lead both to convivial social arrangements and to the discovery of ways to live more in cooperation with, less in domination of, the web of life.
It is our task, now, to bring our economic system into alignment with the regenerative process. When we do, like turning a canoe downstream after a long struggle against the current, our journey will be lightened, our destination assured.
If the theory of the biotic pump is correct—and the forests play an essential role in the water cycle—this gives urgent importance to saving our old growth forests and restoring those which have been demolished or degraded.
As I stood there with Van Zile and looked at the land, I did not hear the sound of a big truck rumbling nearby or a tree falling. I took a big breath, because sometimes we win. Remember that the dams are gone. Remember that.
You might think, as I did, that that emergence is coming out of something and leaving difficulty behind, but I discovered, as I wrote this piece, it is in fact about becoming a different kind of creature for a world turned upside down. The Labyrinth is a training ground for a re-entry.
In today’s episode, Nate sits down with Dutch historian and author Rutger Bregman to discuss the concept of moral ambition, which he defines as the desire to be one of the best, measured by different standards of success: not by big payouts or fancy honorifics, but by the ability to tackle the world’s biggest problems.
One could say that ‘bioregioning’ is our species long-term evolutionary survival pattern and hence a return to it may well be the most promising pathway our species can take through the tumultuous if not catastrophic decades ahead.
