Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Once we experience ourselves as inseparable part of the web of life we realize that true well-being for us can only happen in harmony with the whole and all of its parts. When other humans or living beings suffer, we cannot stay untouched. This is what Arne Naess meant when calling for an “ecological self”.
When we temporarily quiet the cognitive activity of the mind to allow these imaginative functions to be activated, it’s easier to recognize the living connections that exist between ourselves and all other forms of life. I call this felt-sense of connection our ‘ecological imagination,’ because it has the capacity to liberate distorted beliefs about our control over nature and our separation from the natural world.
This summer, get outside, roll up your sleeves, and take a stand for public lands. Here are 5 ways to do this. Use them or lose them!
Our core assumptions about what it means to be human, how we relate to the universe and how it relates to us, are well past their pull date; they no longer yield useful insights into the problems that beset us today. It’s because of that failure that the paradigm itself is becoming visible to us at last. We could talk about that paradigm in a great many ways, but I’m going to suggest a deliberately edgy label for it: anthropolatry, the worship of humanity as a god.
Craftivism was coined in 2003 by Betsy Greer. I always say Craftivism is like punk music. Under that punk umbrella label you’ve got the Talking Heads, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and the Clash, and they all sound completely different but they’re all under that banner. So you could say Craftivism is anything that links craft with activism.
Amid a natural gas boom, could U.S. activists ever dream of a national ban on fracking? If it seems impossible, they should look to the south for inspiration. On March 29, the small Central American nation of El Salvador passed a total ban on metal mining.
People soon realized it was not enough to just say no. They needed to offer a better alternative and say yes to something. So the Germans demanded what has since become known as energy democracy: the right to make your own energy.
Walking advocates once focused primarily on physical health —spurred by mounting evidence that physical activity is key to preventing disease—but now are stepping up to promote social, economic and community health. Their ultimate goal is to transform towns and neighborhoods across America into better places for everyone to live.
The Ecosystem Restoration Camps allow us act together and let us learn to respect, collaborate and co-create the world we want. We need to work on this and we also need to play and to practice perhaps more than work on it … so that we can experiment and find the answers to many perplexing problems.
The We Are Still In coalition is a loose voluntary group of city mayors, state governors, CEOs, investors and university principals who have signed a pledge, on behalf of their communities and organisations, and an open letter to the UN, stating that they are still committed to the Paris Agreement.
The cooperative movement is in a position to stand in the epicenter of social transformation, by simply doing what it is designed to do —mindfully, and exquisitely well.
Calling themselves Sunrise Movement, this group — founded by a core team of eight organizers, most under the age of 30 — plan to recruit and train a nonviolent volunteer army, hundreds strong, that will shake up the 2018 midterm elections and make 2020 the first presidential election about climate change.
