Ditching Dualism #9: Reductionism
The thinking is that claiming Life to be “nothing but” matter is not only a staggering simplification, but also reduces the amazingness of life to mere “dead” physics.
Tom Murphy
The Threads That Bind Us
This time of trouble calls for a vibrant forest—a woodland brimming with the stalwart oaks, the slender birches, and the bowing willows. We each offer distinctive gifts and dreams to share in our tenacious striving towards a more resilient tomorrow.
Technology and Wealth: The Straw, the Siphon, and the Sieve
In this week’s Frankly, Nate explores the relationship between technology and wealth when viewed through a global biophysical lens.
Danish image-making of climate change and colonial fantasies of a disappearing Kalaallit Nunaat
When the Trump Administration bid on Greenland, or Kalaallit Nunaat, it continued a long history of imperialism in the Arctic island.
A short history of endurance
The future remains uncertain. The conditions keep shifting. What remains available is the most basic human capacity. Listen. Then place your energy where it returns coherence.
Social Strikes: Confronting ICE and Resisting Authoritarianism
Drawing on historical examples of people power uprisings and on his recent work examining how general strikes and broader “social strikes” are built, in this conversation Brecher reflects on where the U.S. is now, what conditions make such actions possible, and what strategic groundwork is required to turn diffuse outrage into sustained, democratic power.
Celebrating King, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, and the Art of Organizing
Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer were each present at many such critical moments of strategic decision-making, and their stances influenced the outcome of the movement as a whole. As Baker put it, “people have to be made to understand that they cannot look for salvation anywhere but themselves.”
The center cannot hold…
And while the center burns itself to ash, life goes on. Pretty much as it always has. With bad and good, joy and grief, pain and beauty and such wonder. Give attention to that, to the reality of your life, because that’s the best medicine for bewilderment. And it’s also… just life…
A handbook for regenerative design
The Pattern Book for Regenerative Design is written for ‘engineers (and other humans)’ who want to “transform the built environment industry into a force for good.” Despite coming into the “other human” category here, I found its mental models and some of its thinking devices useful.
We are in a crisis – How to build communities that can respond
We have our greatest democratic possibilities in the communities where we live, and this is where we can begin to turn around the trend to concentrated oligarchic power that threatens democracy as a whole. We must build the future in place.
Ditching Dualism #8: Sentience
Authority, for materialist monists, issues from the universe as directly accessed, assuming matter is real (rather than imagined, as in idealism). Materialist monists do not presume that we know better: that the universe is incapable of producing all that we experience based on the constituents and interactions on full display.
We’re racing down the highway to a Mad Max world: But there’s a degrowth way out
We’d reap myriad benefits by deeply cutting resource use while ensuring that collective sufficiency and justice for all become the focus of our world.
