Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Tom Murphy I’m more concerned with the course and speed of the Titanic (or why there even is a Titanic) than with the proper arrangement of deck chairs. As in Ishmael Chapter 12, my chief aim is not fairness and equity within the prison, but in dismantling the prison altogether—arguing that we oughtn’t be on the Titanic in the first place.
Being alive to the real world around us, seeing the love and the connection and the magic, is all we need in life, it is all we want. It is the meaning of life.
At the heart of everything this is what a strong social movement needs: people coming together to form meaningful and lasting friendships with a shared passion for system change and a willingness to push for that change.
Heroism and hope in these times are only possible against a backdrop of total relinquishment to the possibility that we won’t be able to control our own fate. But on a deeper level, this will be the way for us to reconnect with our origins, to become one again with the natural world.
The main lesson is that debt cancellation is a crucial component of a global energy transition, and substantial reconstruction funds must also accompany it. What would be the overarching rationale for the cancellation? To ensure that low-income countries constitute a strong and economically successful defense against climate change.
The recent Climate Change Committee report on the UK government’s lack of preparedness for climate breakdown reveals negligence at a historic scale.
So, yes, we need to condemn globalization loud and clear. And we need a cohesive strategy that moves us sensibly and sanely in the opposite direction.
If you close your eyes, you can feel the energy of land and creek, rocks and bluffs, grasses and red cedar trees, blue sky and snow, all of it together.
Let’s keep pushing businesses to behave better and to innovate in ways that are genuinely beneficial for us and the environment, and let’s celebrate them when they do. But we should not expect – and we certainly should not depend on – commercial salvation.
In many ways, then, the real challenge in times of ecological collapse, the rise of authoritarian governments, capitalist crisis, and war-mongering militarization is to truly understand these systems, their evolving nature in relation to contemporary societies, their potential interface with modern institutions of governance, and how to strengthen overall governance for the purposes of justice and sustainability.
Ishmael asks Alan to define culture, working out in steps that culture is the accumulated knowledge that defines a people, passed down to—and refined/amended by—future generations. This transmission goes beyond mere information, encompassing “beliefs, assumptions, theories, customs, legends, songs, stories, dances, jokes, superstitions, prejudices, tastes, attitudes.”
Liberate water, liberate the land, liberate the mind — this is the triple revolution awaiting Algeria.
