Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The biggest problem in many communities—especially low-income ones— is caused by perception more than reality…Yet even in the most economically and socially challenged communities, there are a lot of good things going on—examples of the commons such as shared dreams, community assets and ways that people come together. These are the building blocks to make things better.
It was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, and the sound of pounding drums mingled with subway steel rattling underground, sending a hot pulse through the high-arched edifice of a humble house of worship in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. As Nina Simone sang in her blue soliloquy to the slain civil rights leader, “The king of love is dead.” But here, in St. Jacobi Lutheran Church, one could feel King’s heart beat on.
We are published today! 10,000 copies of our first Spring issue are now being distributed throughout the UK. Do check out your local hub and spread the word. It might just be the best £1 you’ve spent in a long while. If you or your intiative are not near a distributor, you can check out our on-line version…
Crossroads is an exciting and surprisingly uplifting new documentary about the role of ideology in finding solutions to the urgent global crises humankind faces in the 21st century. In bringing an evolutionary perspective to these urgent economic and ecological crises, the film offers a uniquely optimistic view of political and social change.
By now we are all extremely familiar with the litany of challenges we face as a global species, the threats of scarcity which pit state against state and community against community, problems manmade and visible in nature: growing population, increasing urbanization, deforestation, damaged watersheds, overconsumption of resources, energy shortages, waste, pollution….All of us could easily add to this list. We know there will be no easy fixes, no panaceas, but nevertheless as we try to set priorities and search for the most promising ways to approach these problems, many of us find ourselves looking to different cultures and to earlier eras for inspiration. In this regard, the Edo period of Japan has a lot to teach us.
For every person who thinks that you can ‘placemake’ unilaterally by dropping in cool amenities, there is another who believes that Placemaking is as much about the discussion that participants have with each other as it is about whether a space contains public art or picnic tables when all is said and done. The physical attributes of the space in question are important, but they are the means, not the end. If you’re not building social capital in the community where you’re working, you’re not Placemaking; you’re just reorganizing the furniture.
Once money becomes primary value rather than a marker of value, it’s almost automatic that money will further dissociate our values and alter our perceptions. We don’t see the hungry person, we see the poor person—and the response is very different.
The return to an older American concept of government as the guarantor of the national commons, the theme of last week’s post here on The Archdruid Report, is to my mind one of the crucial steps that might just succeed in making a viable future for the post-imperial United States. A viable future, mind you, does not mean one in which any signficant number of Americans retain any significant fraction of the material abundance we currently get from the “wealth pump” of our global empire. The delusion that we can still live like citizens of an imperial power when the empire has gone away will be enormously popular, not least among those who currently insist they want nothing to do with the imperial system that guarantees their prosperity, but it’s still a delusion.
At the heart of the climate crisis is a profound clash of worldviews. People live in different ideological camps — beholden to their own beliefs, values, judgements, and ideas about the relationship between humans and the natural environment. The failure of climate activists to engage the broad public effectively is largely attributable to this great blind spot in climate communications by remaining ignorant of the central struggle to define reality in our moral terms.
•Passive House: A Building Revolution – trailer •How retrofitting a California suburb for walkability is spurring economic development •A Century from Now Concrete Will be Nothing But Rubble •Tiny Houses with Kids
Climate change, to me, is the over arching context of everything we deal with on the planet at this moment in time, and henceforth for the rest of our lives, our children’s lives and on into the future. It’s now become the 800 pound gorilla in the room, whether our politicians are able to act on it or not. Eventually they will, at different levels, and they already are at some levels, but as Thomas Friedman, who writes for the New York Times, says “Nature bats last”.
What makes someone come alive is a gift that they do not possess. This gift should be shared with as few constraints as possible.
