Society

Don’t defend the university, transform it!

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The future of the university hangs in the balance and the instinct to defend it against a wholesale attack seems to be an obvious response. But what is it that so many rush to defend? Could it be that rather than seize our placard shields, we should instead rejoice in the downfall of the institution? Or should we perhaps seize this opportunity to search for ways to re-imagine the university and radically transform its inner workings, to look at the actual functioning of the university, to question the kind of subjects it produces and the form of market-led ‘common sense’ that it reproduces?

The turn of the year

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These days feel like a countdown; we are drying herbs for tea and seasonings, pickling vegetables, brewing wine, and checking the miles of hedgerow elderberries inching closer to ripeness. The increasingly rainy weather means time is running out to get peat for fuel from the bog; we have enough, but tractor pull wagons past our front gate laden three metres tall with peat sometimes, the father driving and the rest of the family standing and holding the sides. Even though it is still summer, we all feel the oncoming darkness.

Our fears are unwarranted. America is in fact well-governed.

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America is in better shape than Europe and Japan. We have good demographics, sound fundamentals, relatively easily solved problems, and no powerful enemies. Why the constant sense of crisis? QE2, hyperinflation, climate armageddon, Obama the socialist, AIDS, alar on apples, jihadists, debt, swine flu – a constant drumroll of doom. Answer: elites govern a weak people by exploiting their fears. For example, look at the “government is broke” panic.

The world consequences of U.S. decline

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Today, the view that the United States has declined, has seriously declined, is a banality. Everyone is saying it, except for a few U.S. politicians who fear they will be blamed for the bad news of the decline if they discuss it. The fact is that just about everyone believes today in the reality of the decline.

What is however far less discussed is what have been, what will be the consequences worldwide of this decline. The decline has economic roots of course. But the loss of a quasi-monopoly of geopolitical power, which the United States once exercised, has major political consequences everywhere.

A journey home – Seeking the essence of Transition in England

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This essence was beyond figuring out where our food will come from or how we’ll keep the lights on. I couldn’t put my finger on what that essence was, but I also couldn’t get this feeling out of my mind. It had nothing to do with Britain being the only one “doing Transition” properly, or that this essence didn’t exist anywhere else. I believe that it does. But Britain was my initial experience of Transition, and of course the home of the founders of the movement. I was creating in my mind a myth of Transition. It was a myth to me as I was unsure whether it was true. But I believed that within this myth was the essence of what Transition is.

South Pacific islanders revive sail power with traditional fleet on tour

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“We are a group of Pacific Islanders who have come together from many nations, sailing as one across the Pacific Ocean. We are voyaging to strengthen our ties with the sea, renew our commitment to healthy ecosystems for future generations, and to honour our ancestors who have sailed before us.”

The twilight of meaning

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For those of us who have been thinking and talking about peak oil for more than a few years, one of the most common sources of frustration tends to be the vacant looks generated in so many faces by what are, after all, straightforward and reasonable concepts. Maybe it’s time we talk about the cultural forces that foster, at all levels of American society, the almost trancelike conviction that everything will somehow come out fine.

Peak Moment 199: Peak oil blues – we’re all bozos on this bus

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“My own reaction seemed so crazy to me,” says psychologist Kathy McMahon of her response to Peak Oil. Wondering if she was the only “wacko”, she started the Peak Oil Blues blog to explore her own and readers’ responses. As the “Peak Shrink,” Kathy formulated a delightfully tongue-in-cheek “Panglossian Disorder” — an unrealistic optimism about the future.
(UPDATE – transcript now online)

Hydromimicry: Water as a model for technology and management

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Natural systems, including those that use or are sculpted by water, typically are energy-efficient, produce minimal wastes, and achieve multiple goals simultaneously. As both a tool and creator of nature’s designs, water’s use as a model has applicability to topics as diverse as climate change, energy selection, food production, human health, ecosystem restoration, network design, chemical synthesis, resource management, infrastructure planning, and the fine arts.

Salvaging Health

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Contemporary American culture has a self-defeating fondness for turning every issue into a conflict between absolute opposites denouncing one another in moral terms, and that’s heavily influenced one of the dimensions of everyday life that all of us have to deal with–the question of health care. The current standoff between the medical industry and alternative healing is subject to an unexpected wild card, though, because the two sides differ drastically in their vulnerability to the effects of peak oil.

Nature bats last: Notes on revolution and resistance, revelation and redemption

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My title is ambitious and ambiguous: revolution and resistance (which tend to be associated with left politics), revelation and redemption (typically associated with right-wing religion), all framed by a warning about ecological collapse. My goal is to connect these concepts to support an argument for a radical political theology — let me add to the ambiguity here — that can help us claim our power at the moment when we are more powerless than ever, and identify the sources of hope when there is no hope.