Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
My approach, as always, is to try and understand the way past societies prospered despite being comprised of flawed humans—people with all the same shortcomings we have today. When we do that, one thing we quickly realize is that the Traditional Development approach – the way we built cities for thousands of years prior to the past century– was a good party, while our modern approach, what we call the Suburban Experiment, is a really bad party.
Within the context of capitalism, collective joy through dancing and other forms of expression is already subversive. Back in 1905, the German sociologist Max Weber warned of an “unprecedented inner loneliness of the single individual” that accompanied the “spirit” of modern capitalism. In a capitalist society founded on competition, privatisation and small family units, collective joy—as opposed to individual happiness—signals both personal resilience and political rebellion. The very act of relishing in a shared connection is a triumph in a society that seeks to divide us.
The Minga, or as I like to call it, Ancestral Placemaking, has been in practice in the Andean highlands of Ecuador, Peru, Colombia and Bolivia for hundreds of years. It is a voluntary, collaborative effort in which townspeople of all ages and genders contribute with their work, their motivation, their knowledge or their wit to finish a project of collective interest.
A hot shower, even where there is no electricity: low-income families in Argentina build their own solar water heaters using recycled materials. A non-profit organization hosts the workshops, gathers helpers and shows participants how to utilize renewable energy.
Imagine a city block full of apartment buildings; if everyone living there retreats into their own little units, rarely speaking to one another, there’s no community identity, no shared sense of obligation and purpose. This isn’t just a mental exercise — one survey found that the less neighbors socialize with each other, the less politically engaged they tend to be.
“I don’t want to act based on fear, but I see how fragile the institutions are around us. Things could suddenly change. I listen behind the headlines to the trends in the news, the signs of our societal decomposition. There are many ways we should prepare for the transition, and connecting with neighbors and local people is key.”
Guns, energy, money – each of these factors of power comes to mind in reading the recently released book by John Dower, The Violent American Century: War And Terror Since World War Two. This brief book keeps a tight focus: cataloguing the extent of violence associated with the US role as the world’s dominant superpower.
My aim in this post is to use Frase’s book as a cue to discuss some issues of interest to me, rather than reviewing or précising it as such – but I’d certainly recommend taking a look at it. Like many left-futurologists, Frase in my opinion gets a little too excited about the prospect of an automated and jobless future but at least the insights he generates from these new-old chestnuts are subtler than most.
Just a few years ago, sheep wool was considered little more than trash in France. Today, initiatives are springing up all over the country to re-valorize this renewable resource. “More and more people question waste, long transport routes, manufacturing practices, the way we use natural resources,” says Marie-Thérèse Chaupin, founder of an association called Atelier Laines d’Europe, which represents about 250 activists from the industry. “There is a movement to encourage local development,” Marie-Thérèse adds.
I’m not looking for Trump’s jawboning to bring back the manufacturing jobs that were lost to outsourcing. I’m not looking for governments to bail us out at all. I’m looking at what we can do for ourselves, working together in values-aligned cooperative groups—the same kind of entities that impressed Margaret Mead so much for their potential to effect world change.
Leftists are told that we have to be realistic, and I agree. But how realistic is it to expect solutions to human injustices and ecological crises to emerge from the systems that have created the problems? If you want to be realistic, get radical.
The Bayou Bridge pipeline will be the last leg of the Dakota Access, carrying oil fracked in North Dakota to Louisiana. The final stretch of the project, if built, will span 162.5 miles from Lake Charles to St. James, cutting through the Atchafalaya Basin, a national heritage area and the country’s largest wetland.
