Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Two recent books, Wild Service, a collection of essays edited by Nick Hayes with Jon Moses and Uncommon Ground by Patrick Galbraith, share a common theme: they both seek to address the “disconnectedness” of the mass of the public from nature and the countryside. Yet the two books could hardly be more different.
There are near endless reasons to downsize to elevate our own value for what it means to be human. There are untold benefits to be gained when consumers become citizens. Paradigm shift starts at home and so do the benefits.
Resilience under prolonged crisis is not built through heroic acts or perfect systems. It grows from networks, from biological processes allowed to heal, from appropriate technologies, from communities that remain open rather than retreat inward.
This week’s Frankly inaugurates a new category for videos on The Great Simplification platform, Wide Boundary News, in which Nate invites listeners to view the constant churn of headlines through a wider-boundary lens.
As Hyde shows, gift economies of reciprocity are particularly important to artists and creative communities in their functioning as commons.
In this episode, Nate is joined by Indigenous environmental justice activist and Planetary Guardian, Xiye Bastida, to discuss how her Indigenous heritage and leadership in the youth climate movement have helped guide her to continue her work toward a more ecologically attuned world.
In the context of risk management and in the face of environmental and economic challenges such as climate change, coastal erosion, water insecurity, and the accelerated loss of biodiversity, among others, the concept of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) has emerged.
After nearly two decades deeply engaged in this field, the organizing model developed by the international Transition Towns Movement is still the most holistic, accessible, and effective social technology I’ve found for cultivating more resilient, equitable, sustainable, and regenerative local communities from the bottom up.
In this week’s episode, Nate reflects on his experience with knee surgery and being a “creature in the machine” (the Superorganism).
Systemic risk analysis allows us to fully comprehend the long-tail of all the crises peaking this year. But it also reveals how we can turn these exponential curves around, accelerating just as fast and as far in the opposite direction.
Don’t cower in front of your screen. Get out and join with others in projects to make your town stronger and more socially and environmentally sustainable.
There’s nothing much we can do about this world-as-it-might-be symbolic capacity we have, simultaneously humanity’s blessing or genius and also our curse. Writing, farming and so on were not the cause of our malaise but the result of it.
