Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Billy Wimsatt is founder and Executive Director of the Movement Voter Project, an organization that works to strengthen progressive power at all levels of government. He addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”
Only rarely does a book truly change the world. In the nineteenth century, such a book was Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. For the twentieth century, it was The Limits to Growth.
If we are to succeed, it seems we need to first come off our high horse. Now: how do we accomplish this feat of psychological counseling on a grand scale?
One might think that everything that could possibly be written on the subject of power already has been. There are thousands of tomes that discuss subjects related to power in one or another of its many manifestations, and hundreds with the word power in their titles. But no book that I’m aware of has systematically examined the sundry forms of power, and investigated how they are related, how they arose, and what they mean for us today.
Indigenous Knowledges (IK) are embedded in relationships to specific lands, cultures and communities. The misconceptions of IK often represent a static pan-Indigenous framework without acknowledging the interconnected responsibility of place-based knowledge.
The first beekeepers, farmers, ecologists, and scientists were and continue to be Indigenous peoples around the world. And so, again and again, I return to the bees and to my roots, resonating in unison.
How do we change climate together, in ways that makes this Planet liveable for all creatures, in ways that (as Robin Wall Kimmerer puts it) all flourishing can be mutual?
Based on principles and practices of resource use reduction, sharing, conviviality, solidarity, and mutual aid, the Brisbane Tool Library can be considered a small-scale laboratory for a reorientation of society towards degrowth.
I don’t want to prepare for the end of the world. I want to prepare for tomorrow, and I don’t want to do it alone. I want to do it with you, my family, our community and a few more people who know a little bit more than me about how things work. Tomorrow is definitely coming and that is all we really know about it.
Give that phrase free rein and see what it inspires: “A mosaic of local projects animated by a shared idea.” That may be a motto for the kind of healing that earth and society need today. Not a single solution that scales up, but an ecosystem of related solutions, each unique to its place.
When localists born or made embrace or adopt a particular place to live there’s surely no reason for them to base their localism in an inherent lack of openness to people or ideas from elsewhere.
Sustainable Hedonism: A Thriving Life that Does Not Cost the Earth is a call to reflect on our beliefs and actions related to pleasure, joy and ecological sustainability.
