Society

Mudville – Tin Village at the Sunrise Festival

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Sometimes you have to go off-line, off-grid, out of your comfort zones, to get a sense of what is possible. I know now when push comes to shove people can work together in hard conditions and flourish. And when they do something beautiful can happen that you would not expect if you judged everything from the way things appear, from the outside. The people who will make the future work are not the people you think: the control people, the shiny people, the spiritual people. They are the activist people, smart, funny, edgy, generous, friendly, warrior-hearted. The people who are not afraid of the mud. Who are not afraid of the earth or each other, and who can still make a fire, come what may.

Sustainable healthcare

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Sustainable healthcare is achievable now, at (relatively) little cost and with existing knowledge. It is being demonstrated all over the world currently and has been demonstrated historically. Is it easy? No, it is challenging, but why would that be a reason not to do it? What we have is unsustainable, and more importantly, does not generate health.

Postcard from Transition Ibiza and Can Masdeu, Barcelona

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Last summer I was inspired by the film ‘Paths Through Utopias’ – documenting a road trip around Europe visiting communities who are already living post-Transition futures, to varying degrees – to make my own journey to see some real-life examples of the world we’re trying to create. Having spent the last decade or so with pictures in my head of how I’d like the world to be, and trying to work towards building a new world in the shell of the old with very few tangible reference points, I needed real life visions, sustenance and some confirmation I was on the right path. I was also about to initiate Transition Dartmouth Park and felt like I needed some inspiration.

The Degeneration of Politics

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One of the richest ironies of the crisis of contemporary America is the number of problems it currently faces that are the direct result of much-ballyhooed reforms. As the United States trudges wearily through yet another vacuous presidential election in which substantive issues are the last thing either candidate wants to talk about, it may be worth talking about one of the major examples of that wry reality. Brandishing an old straw hat with a red-white-and-blue Truman in ’48 hatband, the Archdruid explains.

Mother Earth News’ 2012 Homesteaders of The Year

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Have you ever crashed a realtor’s open house — not because you were a buyer, but just so you could see what the owners have done with the house? That’s kind of how we feel when we read about the three Mother Earth News 2012 Homesteaders of The Year. We want to stop by each of these homes, just so we can learn everything about what they’re doing!

 

Energy ethics for survival of people in nature

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Cultural values are group norms or rules for behavior that make a culture work. Ethical values are our cultural DNA. But our values can change in response to the conditions of the economy and environment. Our current value system is no longer working—money, science, laws, mores, politics, religion, and culture are becoming less meaningful to many…The survival of the whole system is at stake, and ethics will begin to shift as old ways of doing and being endanger humanity…

Retrofitting the suburbs for the energy descent future

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Sometimes well-meaning ‘green’ people like to imagine that the eco-cities of the future are going to look either like some techno-utopia – like the Jetson’s, perhaps, except environmentally friendly – or some agrarian village, where everyone is living in cob houses that they built themselves. The fact is, however, that over the next few critical decades, most people are going to find themselves in an urban environment that already exists – suburbia.

Dog days

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There is an elegiac beauty in loss (or what we imagine is loss), to coming home, to realising your limits, to deepening your experience, to loving the neighbourhood, the people in the room, a humble dish of new potatoes, the small strip of seashore I go to each day, where once I could roam the world like Alexander. In fact when you look back and see the track you have made, the dance you have made with your fellows, that’s when you understand everything, the beauty of it all – even the hard times. We’re trying as a people to get back on track against all odds.

The end of the European dream

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The European debt crisis is making the front page, again. Moody has changed the outlook of Germany to negative and Spain is forced to borrow at more and more unsustainable rates. The fate of the Euro is more and more uncertain and while it is not certain, it is quite possible that Greece, and perhaps other Mediterranean countries, will abandon it at some point of the future. This, of course, would trigger a trust crisis which would in turn further damage the position of a currency which has no need for that.

The Blueprint: Averting Global Collapse (free ebook download for 7/26 only)

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We are faced with an impending calamity that threatens to bankrupt the planetary ecosystem and with it much of the manmade world. Rirdan submits a plan that truly goes the distance: a highly detailed, planetary-wide blueprint that lays out a new course for our technological and industrial engines. It calls for sweeping adjustments in the way every person thinks and lives.

The hardest battle

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Comparing the world to a prison or a hospital in which we are all inmates or patients is hardly original. Patrick McGoohan did the former, and TS Eliot did the latter. They are clever, moving allegories, but not terribly useful. The mysterious enemy of The Prisoner turns out to be his own ego. But our modern global imprisonment is subtler: It is our culture that has imprisoned us, a culture evolved in the belief that this is what’s best for the survival and continued expansion of the species.