Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The fatalist-gloomy-future narrative around climate change hasn’t been compelling to mobilise enough individuals and communities for change. In response, new organisations are emerging with positive narratives and more complex strategies to tackle ‘the problem’ of our generation.
By now you have probably read about the so-called “tech backlash.” Facebook and other social media have undermined what’s left of the illusion of democracy, while smartphones damage young brains and erode the nature of discourse in the family. Meanwhile computers and other gadgets have diminished our attention spans along with our ever-failing connection to reality. The … Read more
Tinkering with improvements to our current ways of life is futile. We must each of us change how we live, or else be changed forever by our own effects.
I don’t think I’m being too Spenglerian to express the fear that in present troubled times, when the modernist state-industry-warfare nexus is manifestly unraveling, something similar could easily take hold again and do the same. And that, I submit, is a thoughtstarter, not a thoughtstopper.
The Netherlands has a worldwide reputation as a bicycle-loving country – but bikes account for only a small proportion of kilometers travelled.
The fact that climate change is mostly caused by the rich and yet the poorest, who have done least to cause it and have the least resources to respond, will be hit most seriously by the damaging impacts – is uncomfortable. But it is important.
As much pride and empowerment as there is in community ownership of food-producing gardens and financial services such as credit unions to support local businesses, research shows those sorts of grassroots efforts cannot close the ever-growing wealth gap that has been historically and systematically created along racial lines.
We will not solve climate change and other pressing global threats until we admit, and learn from, the repeated failures of past proclamations and promises.
In 2010, Detroit launched a 24-month visioning process intended to engage a high percentage of Detroit’s 700,000 residents in the crafting of a 50-year framework for Detroit’s future. Instead of focusing on bad things to be removed, this process focused on building on Detroit’s many assets.
We may think like the wild, or we may think like the tamed. We humans, products, beneficiaries, and dependents of the web of life from which we were spun, can continue our collective course on this tangential path from the natural processes, limits, and communities of this planet.
I don’t think there is a duty to vote, and I wouldn’t support compulsory voting, even if that was a political possibility in this country. I do think voting is responsibility though.
The increasing connectedness of the global economic system has long been touted as the path to greater prosperity and peaceful relations among nations and their peoples. There’s just one hitch: Complex systems have more points of failure and also hidden risks that only surface when something goes wrong.
