Movement – April 4
– Kellogg’s six-hour day
– Why are there no young people in the room?
– Political strategy, macro and micro
– First Transition Town in Pennsylviania
Society
Say it loud: I’m childfree and I’m proud
Here’s the dirty little secret that we’re never supposed to say in mixed company: There are a lot of perks to childfree living, not to mention a lot of green good that comes from bringing fewer beings onto a polluted and crowded planet. [Also, Stephanie Mills video on her decision to remain childless]
Courtship, Cooperation & Negotiation: What Darwin Got Wrong about Human Emotions
Many social critics in the Peak Oil community are fond of saying “Men do what they do driven by the desire to please women.” But what if that notion is just plain wrong? Is there power in the narrative that redirects our energies away from helpful pursuits believing that such strivings are “against the laws of nature?”
The collapse of journalism / The journalism of collapse
The first step in crafting a new narrative for journalists is to reject technological fundamentalism and deal with a harsh reality: In the future we will have to make due with far less energy, which means less high-technology and a need for more creative ways of coping. Journalists have to tell stories about what that kind of creativity looks like. They have to reject the gee-whizzery of much of the contemporary science and technology reporting and emphasize the activities of those with a deeper ecological worldview.
Transition Handbook outline
An outline with notes for The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins, the foundational text of the Transition Movement.
Fear and loathing in Ohio
The passage of health care reform legislation in the House of Representatives last weekend was met with such a crescendo of hyperbole and vitriol on both sides of the political aisle that even William Shatner thought, "Jeez, tone down the theatrics.” … If Koch and others are feeding fear to protect the profits of health insurers, just imagine the kind of fomenting we’ll see when the stakes are even higher—when the energy and climate crises come front and center in the national debate.
The Activist – Spiritual Divide
Can we bridge the divide between the activist and the interior / personal side of ourselves? I think we’ll need to if we’re to deal with the intense challenges we now face. The intense challenges are the steps in the transition to a low-carbon future, steps we must collectively take, willingly or no. The problem isn’t a lack of technology so much as a lack of evolutionary preparedness in us. Integrating the activist and the interior / personal side of ourselves is a challenge we’ve scarcely considered. We’re going to.
Taking Back Our Words
Recently, I received a message from a group called Trees Have Rights Too. They want to create a Meme, a replicating cultural entity, from the word “ecocide”…
Towards Local Democracy
It’s been more than a year since we’ve started our initiative in Sopot, Poland. It has the same aim as the Transition initiatives, however we have decided to focus on local democracy first. Democracy helps to eliminate the struggles of political parties and it weakens vested interests. What we have also quickly realized is that even if you come up with a great plan for improving public transport or installing a biogas digester in your city, there’s this little, tiny issue: how can you make it all happen? Where will the money come from? Who will give all permits and change the city plans?
The failure of republics
There were elections in Brittany yesterday. The result was, let’s say, interesting for us, but that would be hard to understand for people not familiar with the French voting system and with the arcana of Breton politics. To make a long story short we ended up a left wing opposition to the left wing president of the regional council. This local oddity is not, however, the main lesson of yesterday’s vote. The very low turnout is, and this tells a lot about the way our political system does and will react to the ongoing energy descent.
Ecosystem Modeling
An ecosystem is no more nor less than the sum of individual responses of diverse cooperating or competing organisms to stimuli from events in their environment. Diversity is a sign that there is a high number of stimuli and that the system has become dynamic in response. A great many small parts, making separate and nimble adjustments, solve problems better than a few large parts responding ponderously.
The Survival Mindset
But lately I’ve been asking myself a different question. What are the best mental patterns of thinking for surviving tough times? There are a variety of ways to look at this issue, and one is looking at who survives when bad things happen in the wilderness, or in dangerous recreational pursuits and why. I’ve taken some of the ideas outlined by Gonzales and added some of my own here.
