Since April 1 in some parts of the world is a traditional day for playing tricks and elaborate jokes (mostly on one’s friends), I found myself musing about the world I would like to see and had some fun taking about five minutes to jot down the following list (without rethinking it and in no particular order, except for the final line) in about five minutes.
Maybe it’s a poem, or a manifesto, or climate fiction.
Feel free to scramble these up and make your own – ha ha!
Everyone owns their dwelling, no more renting
No military, no armed police, no prisons
No flying
Reparations: global, indigenous, communities of color…
Citizenship for all
Green New Deal work – retrofitting buildings, public transportation, housing upgrades, dismantling pipelines
Physical activity, including breathing
Public banks, no stock market, no finance sector, FORGIVE ALL DEBT
Public transportation, biking, walking
Local, healthy food – with permaculture, no chemical pesticides or fertilizer, less meat, less fish, more vegetables
Free health care
Clean water
No insurance companies
No money in elections, no money in the mass media
Free education
No long-range shipping
Mental and spiritual health care, yoga, meditation
No limits on imagination, creativity, or sweetness
No space industry (as in flying to Mars)
Commons, share economy, reskilling, degrowth, buen vivir, intersectional ecosocialism [Google it], ecovillaging, Transition Initiatives [consult Pluriverse for others]
Arts, creative work, conviviality, play
A fair, ambitious and binding global climate treaty
Guaranteed basic income
Everyone who now rents is given their dwelling for free
Everyone who has no place to live, gets one they design
All with less work hours, less economic growth, less resource extraction, and more enjoyment
Also cats, hugs, sunshine, fresh air, and laughter
Cosmic Bio of John Foran
By day I teach sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Most of the time, I live the life of a scholar-activist in the global climate justice movement, the center of the struggle for achieving social justice and radical social change in the 21st century. One manifestation of this locally is the Eco Vista dreamworld at www.ecovistacommunity.com
I believe that just as spirituality remains a wasted gesture unless put into some kind of practice outside of oneself in the world, I also feel that far too much activism falls short of its potential for liberation because groups and individuals fail to acknowledge and work on the inner transition and nurturing of relationships that the best spiritual practices enable in us.
I am an unabashed eclecticist when it comes to both spirituality and activism, and I believe that we are called at this time to be applying our imagination, our deepest being, our most creative and unbounded imagination to the task at hand, which is nothing short of a complete transformation of the way we live.
You can see some of my work along these lines at www.resilience.org. I participate as much as I can as an active member both at home and beyond with Transition US, Democratic Socialists of America, System Change Not Climate Change, 350.org, the Green Party of California, Extinction Rebellion, and Symbiosis Revolution, among others.
Please contact me at jforan5@gmail.com to start the conversation!
Teaser photo credit: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
