Autumn in Vermont
Vermont is proof that humans can localize food, as well as most of our other basic needs, and still live very well.
Society
The road ahead
If you believe, like I do, that capitalism as a system is harmful, that food and agriculture should be commons and that humanity should leave more space to other species while at the same time be a responsible keystone species, then the short and medium term actions and political demands should contribute to the reality you desire.
The First Casualty of Politics is Complexity
The State Lands Commissioner race here in Washington State, USA, is in full swing and I find myself contemplating complexity, in particularly that of the natural world.
The Superorganism and the Self
In today’s Frankly, Nate navigates the delicate balance between systems thinking and the profound emotional weight of the realities we face.
Why FEMA’s disaster relief gets political − especially when hurricane season and election season collide
Rumors and lies about government responses to natural disasters are not new. Politics, misinformation and blame-shifting have long surrounded government response efforts.
Archiving Ancestral Knowledge to Co-Create New Economic Paradigms
Reclaming archiving is not just about organizing the past but unlocking potential for new knowledge and endless possibilities beyond colonial modalities of control.
Telling another story
The Enlightenment, modernity, technology, fossil fuels and capitalism were mutually reinforcing and permeated daily practices, which in turn galvanized the system; earlier greed was bad, then it became ok and then good and now, finally, it is an essential virtue. This insight has implications for how we instill change.
Fiddling while the world teeters on the brink
In my 2012 essay in The Futurist, I concluded that we might no longer be able to get out of the mess we were creating for ourselves, but we could get through it. There was still plenty to dream of, and to strive for. Today, hope remains, unreasonable, hanging by a thread.
The Homegrown National Park
What if we could bring the natural world to our own yards? What if we could connect our yards in such a way that we create a kind of continuation of our national parks, where nature is restored and we can be right in the middle of it all?
The ways out
The ways out are small and silent and obscure. And they do not come with publishing contracts… The ways out are doing the work and being an embodied life. The ways out do not need leaders or mass action or public law. They do not require expert opinion or explication. The ways out are just that… out. No more of this…
Life Expectations
A while back, I came across a fascinating paper from 2007 by Gurven and Kaplan on longevity among hunter-gatherers that helped me understand aspects of what life was (and is) like outside of modernity. My interest is both a matter of pure curiosity, and to gain perspective on how desperate life feels—or doesn’t—to members of pre-agricultural (ecological) cultures.
Helene: the haves and have-nots
Resilience is not measured by wealth and access to power alone. It is often, perhaps even more so, calculated by the culture, strength, and community of a people.
