Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Kevin R. Nelson Yes, the West has been subjected to extensive critique. But I will show that such critiques rarely reach its core nature and are more often absorbed, neutralized, and ultimately survived by the system itself.
None of us gets to choose the era we live through or to control a whole lot about the world we live in. But we should strive to rise to the challenge of the situation we are confronted with, by doing what we can to make our communities, our country, and our world as livable (and worth living in) as we can.
The link between income inequality and democratic erosion has been well established but little policy action taken to address it. Fortunately. Gary Stevenson has thought a lot about what’s more important than the few winning, and is among those doing something about the gap.
Like Russia’s frontline blood banks, the Venezuelan bond trade signalled that the preceding furore was headed in a specific direction. And in the increasingly chaotic, ill-defined mess of multipolar politics and climate chaos, reliably finding which ‘weak signals’ matter—and which signals are just noise—will be vital for navigating what comes next.
In this week’s Frankly, Nate takes thermodynamics out of the physics classroom, utilizing its principles to explain the invisible forces behind growth, competition, and complexity in our world.
What if, in Algeria, water were no longer seen solely as a scarce resource to exploit or a threat to control, but as an ecological and economic capital to preserve and develop?
Even among those that seem to agree that this growth-addicted system is doomed to fail and collapse, there seems to be quite different perspectives on how fast that will happen. Equally important is of course how deep the collapse will be and what will collapse.
We should admit that widely-mandated climate optimism has been actively harmful to the needful acknowledgement of reality – and to the active collective self-protection that we now desperately need to get serious about making happen.
Mutual Aid 101 taught me that success is not marked by a group’s size, nor its productivity; those are the vestiges of capitalism. It’s about community, collective decision-making, and taking care of each other, no matter how small the circle.
I have seen many people, usually those under the influence of a belief in modern exceptionalism, claim that our ancestors were frightened of this time of darkness, that sacrifices were offered to sky gods so that the sun would rise again after the longest night of the year. To that I say: Nonsense!
Archaeology’s singular contribution to understanding people and their interactions with each other and the natural environment has always been its worldwide documentation of past lifeways over long time spans.
Ah well, the urgency of staving off as best I can the disaster capitalism that Philip Loring mentions keeps me going, even if it feels like a dispiriting and unequal battle sometimes. Cheers!
