A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity
A Simpler Way is a documentary about simple living, permaculture, and local economy as a response to global crises.
Society
Review: After Progress, Twilight’s Last Gleaming, and The Fires of Shalsha
Three more offerings from the incessantly fertile mind of John Michael Greer.
A Good Life is the Business of us All
Digital culture is changing society: the way we relate to each other, how power flows, decisions are made, and politics is done, shaping environmental stresses.
Small Town Resilience
Rural communities, with their face-to-face interactions, have provided the template for human existence for the past thousands of years.
Counterintuitive: (Some) volatility is good for you, stability not so much
A certain amount of volatility is good for humans and the systems they build. Attempts to stifle the natural and healthy volatility of a system can lead to greater and even catastrophic volatility in the end.
Why Walkability Matters
Walking helps to cultivate community. Driving is an isolated mode of travel: it separates us physically from those around us, be they drivers, walkers, or bikers.
The Wild Edge Of Sorrow: A Book Review By Carolyn Baker
Why should we consent to an apprenticeship with sorrow and read this instruction manual for doing so? From my perspective, the answer is quite simple: Unacknowledged and unexpressed grief is the most oppressive and agonizing burden that humans are carrying at this moment in history.
How Placemaking with “Bottle Bricks” Changes Lives
This is the story of how a simple idea forever changed my life, as well as the lives of many others.
Resilience Roundup – Aug 21
A global oil glut has tanked prices and cut profits—so why won’t Shell give up on the north? | E.P.A. Announces New Rules to Cut Methane Emissions | The Thin Green Line Is Stopping Coal and Oil in Their Tracks | Study: China May Have Overestimated Carbon Emissions | Global stocks in ‘panic mode’ as Chinese factory slump drags on markets…
The Last Refuge of the Incompetent
The science fiction author Isaac Asimov used to say that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Stairway to Heaven
Technocornucopians see the world of the future as a great 3D printer with an unlimited supply reservoir.
Progress in an Uncertain World
Strong Towns vision is heavy on experimentation and small-scale risk-taking (with potentially great rewards). It is heavy on civic engagement and grassroots action. And it is notably light on technocratic policy interventions: to the extent we talk about policy, it’s often about what policy makers should NOT do, not what they should.
