Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
When people lose wisdom, the easiest way out appears to them to find an enemy, Our new enemies seem to be the scientists. We haven’t seen yet climatologists being lynched by angry mobs, as it happened to Hypatia long ago – but we seem to be getting close to something like that.
There are now tens of thousands of so-called Millennials who—for likely the first time ever—are having the life-changing experience of standing up and demanding change, of marching in the streets, of getting beat on and pepper-sprayed by the police, of getting misportrayed and vilified by the media,… and of coming back and keeping at it, and seeing their actions pay off.
And there are maybe millions of Millennials who are not on the streets but are watching on TV people just like them having these experiences — and don’t doubt for a second that they’re being affected too .
#Occupy is proving to be their first big political roar. Watch out.
Something special is happening in France. A nationwide campaign will be launched next week by the Colibris movement for the 2012 Presidential Elections – but without a charismatic leader. The campaign, instead, is for everyone to be a candidate – for a new kind of politics.
In their language and tone-of-voice Les Colibris are like the Transition Movement, but different. They are like Occupy Wall Street but different, too. This is surely healthy. The movement for a global democracy is an ecology, not a single homogeneous movement.
“We know that an election won’t change society” says the Colibris manifesto [colibris is the French for hummingbird]. “For a real transformation, things have to change at the bottom and involve everyone amongst us.”
I’m setting off today, catching an early train. I’m leaving Bristol Temple Meads, London Liverpool Steet, Macynlleth. I’m leaving Darsham by the marshes of my own home territory, crossing the city, negotiating bridges, underground tunnels, standing on a platform with schoolchildren, city commuters and old ladies going to the sea for a holiday. I’m on my way to visit the social reporters who live in different corners of the country, to meet the people I’m working with to create this new Transition communications hub. To find out how the places we live in influence our everyday lives and our initiatives, and how we all connect on a national scale.
One of the enduring tropes of Western intellectual culture, dating back to Plato’s time, is the notion that there must be some way to force people to make the right collective decisions whether they want to do so or not. Magic — the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will — is one of many resources that have been applied to this end. The thought of doing this as a way of dealing with our society’s abject failure to respond intelligently to peak oil, though, leads into a thicket of overfamiliar problems.
I believe the key to resilience in the coming decades will be our ability, in the moment, to imagine ways around the crises we cannot prevent, predict or plan for.
I must own up to something at the start of this: I have a bias. I have an agenda. I am not impartial. I see things through a complicated lens of culture, class, and gender. I am a mature male of African, Native American and European heritage, a son of the Americas. I decided at an early age that all of that, despite what was happening in the outside world, would be at peace with me.
[The author is a writer, educator, activist, poet – and a Transition trainer.]
Backyard gardeners and urban homesteaders are coming together to share excess produce in increasingly popular local meet-ups known as crop swaps, where neighbors exchange, say, beets and greens for apples and squash…..While the actual cash-free transactions can take place in mere minutes, in some cases, people linger long after the produce exchanges have taken place to visit with new friends, hang out with old pals, and pick up some pointers on cooking the goodies they scored, explained Carole Bennett-Simmons of Transition Berkeley, which runs two crop swaps in the Northern California town.
– Meet 4 Middle-Class Americans Who’ve Been Politicized by #OccupyWallStree
– Chris Hedges: “Ketchup” describes Occupy experience and group process
– Training video for running an Occupy General Assembly
… all crashes are relative. My acquaintances back in the USA tell me that they struggle every day in this economy of high unemployment and fuel prices; I believe them, but I also mention that our unemployment is much higher, and we pay the litre-and-euro equivalent of $8.00 a gallon. Today’s Irish, meanwhile, remain wealthy compared to the Irish of 20 years ago, who might, in turn, have been in the wealthiest half of the world. Yet people lived hearty lives in all these times and places, even when most of them had less money than the underclass of the modern West. Americans’ suffering comes not just from a lack of money, but from a lack of training.
Some say that the best way to learn is to teach. In my second year as a college environmental educator, I have learned much more about my subject matter—namely the increasingly tenuous ability of nature to meet the needs of seven billion human consumers. But I have also come to learn the barriers to understanding and acting upon the signs of planetary peril, including climate change, peaking oil production, water depletion and toxics in our food.
EB contributor Piyush reports on a Tar Sands rally and Occupy events in Washington DC. He concludes: “I encourage all at post-carbon, energy bulletin to go to their nearest occupation when possible and participate in spreading awareness and contributing in whatever way they can.”
