Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
If today nostalgia and alienation are among the main forces that keep the status quo intact, thus permeating the desolation of our world by the dominant system, then it is the recreation of the civic community and the genuine public that can help the 99% to self-empower themselves and enact crucial changes.
We must accept that some things can only be experienced and accepted. That they cannot be measured in a ‘hard’ way, and that our attempt to do so will kill the very thing we are trying to save.
In the ongoing discourse surrounding environmental justice, the concept of “green colonialism” has emerged as a critical lens to examine the historical and contemporary injustices faced by marginalized communities in the global South, including within the context of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
The way I see it, demanding an explanation that fits in brains not adapted for that purpose is tempting but not justified: again putting humans first. We possess neither the right nor the hardware to know Ultimate Truth. But the allure of that trap is very difficult to resist or escape.
The commons is essentially a parallel economy and social order that quietly affirms that another world is possible. And more: we can build it ourselves, now.
Every so often when reading an obituary of someone, or an awards citation, you realise that you have internalised their work into your thinking without having read it directly. So it was with Donald Shoup, the California transport academic who spent his life working on the problem of urban parking, and who died in February.
This experience of collective construction, centered on energy, has led me to rethink my approach to knowledge and local wisdom, viewing them with greater respect and understanding that they don’t need to make sense to everyone to be valid.
This is an original book only in the sense that it weaves together other people’s ideas and perspectives in novel ways. I believe the result is something new, but more importantly, I think it offers a necessary counter-narrative to the disenchanted materialism that defines modernity.
The pathway that will be followed and the future that will emerge are of course inherently unknowable, being subject to the chaotic dynamics of complex systems. Put another way, for some possible pathways, there be dragons of the type that Sankofa part one described, whilst down other pathways much more hopeful visions beckon.
The question isn’t “is a river alive?” It is why do we not recognize that a river is alive?
It took the Anthropocene to create an aesthetic of the environmental crisis and self-reflection in the cultural canon. And it sparked a long process of going back over famous works that had been taken for granted as artworks devoid of environmental violence.
Across the world, grounded practices of radical democracy and autonomy demonstrate alternative models of politics, economy, and society—rooted in solidarity, reciprocity, and mutual aid among humans and the more-than-human world.
