Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
When I step from the timeless present to time again, the horror would overwhelm me, but for the utopian light, the other side of darkness. Utopia is not fanciful. Our lives are that. It is imaginative and true. Utopia is possible. It is our weakness which makes it apparently impossible.
XR has tried to put itself ‘beyond politics’, steering clear of parliamentary machinations, in a bid to broaden its appeal and express the urgency and scale of the crisis to as many people as possible. But with the most important election of a generation looming in the UK, is it now time for XR to use its reach to grapple directly with the workings of this country?
Put another way, those who made their money peddling fossil fuels—the executives and shareholders holding funds—owe something to those who got hurt. It’s not, in the bigger picture, all that different from the demand for reparations by African American descendants of slaves—claims that in recent months more than a few institutions have begun to pay, among a growing number of faith denominations, universities and politicians, including presidential candidates, have begun to publicly endorse.
Education over the last two centuries has had the unprecedented and noble goal of reaching everyone, of every race, gender, and economic class. That’s a good thing and shouldn’t be lost; but we have to ask ourselves: Is the universal public . . . experience . . . we foist on our children actually education, and is it any good?
We have only one rational choice: to choose to survive.
This demands all necessary actions – although they spell the end of existing systems of energy, food, water, money, defence, transport and politics – and their replacement with new ones, universally dedicated to a viable, just and sustainable human and planetary future.
The Arts, Culture and Commoning working group is interested in using commons-based approaches “to transform the landscape of arts and culture toward equity, abundance, and interdependence as part of a social movement engaged in and in conversation with this urgent moment. Cooperation, collaboration, mutuality, and co-creation bring us together.”
With the longstanding liberal-conservative status quo now crumbling, the new right has not only taken up this call, it is putting it into practice. This construction of “another world” — an intolerant, anti-democratic, unsustainable world — can be stopped before it is too late. But it requires that the best of us regain the conviction that Yeats described — not just to counter the new right, but to save the planet from ruin.
During those nine months we changed our name from ‘Tooting Baby Bank’ to Little Village. This was a very important change. It underlined the fact that as well as redistibuting pre-loved kit to families in need, we also had some serious intentions to build community.
To put it another way, if you’d prefer to avoid harsh dystopias of involuntary rural simplicity in the future of the Pol Pot variety, then there’s a good case for working up some gentle utopias of voluntary rural simplicity right now, and trying to implement them.
A fundamental questioning of the whole ‘development’ idea as such is uncomfortable and inconvenient. Yet, especially in light of the fact that the finiteness of our planet becomes more and more difficult to overlook, it is time to not only look for, but to practice alternatives to development.
Natural systems are most resilient when they showcase a lot of diversity — something our economic monocultures ignore.
A wild forest can absorb many surprises from fires to insects, for example, because its diverse ecosystem ensures robustness over centuries and allows for collapse and renewal.
This Is Not A Drill has been written to clarify, inform, inspire and equip the people who are undecided yet interested in moving deeper into the climate action zeitgeist XR has ingeniously catalysed.
