Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Jan Spencer Personally, I would settle for a lot less than paradise. For me, paradigm shift would work, a condition where people simply behave in their own best interests which means living within the boundaries of the natural world and cooperating with each other for the common good. That would look a lot like Kailash Ecovillage.
Humans and human societies are ecologically active and dependent agents and the food-agro-ecosystems need to follow similar principles as other ecosystems in order to be sustainable in the long run.
Hurricanes, tornadoes and other extreme weather do not distinguish between urban and rural boundaries. But when a disaster strikes, there are big differences in how well people are able to respond and recover – and older adults in rural areas are especially vulnerable.
I mean, I’m not sure I had ever encountered anything but effusive praise for the development of writing. Look what it enables us to do! (Exactly, say the extinct—if they could.) Yet the whole time, the dark side of written language was hiding in plain sight. The writing was on the wall.
Far from exonerating my gender for its role in sustaining patriarchy, I insist that men must now take the lead in dismantling it—decisively and without delay. But patriarchy is not the only destructive force we face. Interlocking ideologies—racism, classism, colonialism, transphobia—continue to shape our world, and most people, in some way, still participate in sustaining them. This work demands collective responsibility from people of all gender identities, because these systems harm us all.
We may be very smart creatures, but we are still fundamentally animals in a landscape. If modernism ever de-complexifies, as many think it will, like all civilizations in the past, we would be smart to set in place now the infrastructure, skills and knowledge we’ll need to thrive – together.
Let us call to those better angels of our nature which have expanded democracy and justice over these 249 years, working in the places where we live to organize power and forward the ideas that will make a just and sustainable future. That is the ground for a New American Revolution.
How can the necessary relocalisation of food systems be reconciled with a need for exchange based on mutual aid, complementarity, and reciprocity? Can local biodiversity (and its products) support territorially grounded agricultural economies while also nurturing the emergence of spaces for innovation and cooperation across diverse realities?
In a move that threatens to undermine years of progress toward environmental transparency, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has recently decided to withdraw the much-anticipated Green Claims Directive. This directive, which aimed to hold corporations accountable for misleading sustainability claims, was an essential step toward ensuring that companies align their actions with the urgent need to protect our planet.
Before the Industrial Revolution, people added a temporary layer of textile insulation to either the interior or the exterior of a building, depending on the climate and the season. In cold weather, walls, floors, roofs, windows, doors, and furniture were insulated with drapery and carpetry. In hot weather, windows, doors, facades, roofs, courtyards, and streets were shaded by awnings and toldos.
So, when people ask me for one thing they can do to bring about a more positive future, I suggest they seek out stories of real change that are happening right now. I’m talking about local food projects, renewable energy projects and neighbourhoods coming together to create their own solutions.
As Graeber puts it in his lecture on Care and Freedom, “We need to reimagine production and consumption.” We need to produce ‘Care’ not money, and this is really the central ethos of the Care.Home.Farm project.
