Building Community

That Which May Be Gained: A Return to Scale, Community, and Morality

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Bound by the tangled cord of its own sins, Industrial Civilization sits immobilized — with the gun of reality pressed to its temple. Monumental changes are imminent – probably (hopefully) a swirling mix of both bad and good. In order to maintain our present sanity and maximize chances for the best possible futures, we need to both envision and embody the positive change we wish to see in the coming post-carbon era. As such, I suggest this: a return to life at a proper ‘human’ scale, the reclamation of functional human communities, and the widespread internalization and application of a true morality.

For You Were Strangers in the Land of Egypt: Preparing for a Century of Displacement

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Passover is a holiday deeply concerned with inclusion – at one point during each seder night, we open our doors and leave them open wide, and call out “let all who are hungry come and eat.” One year, teaching Hebrew School to 10 year olds, I asked them what would happen if they called out and a stranger came in and sat down. My students, largely from affluent and middle families in a leafy suburb where most strangers are likely to be much like them, were to a one deeply uncomfortable with the notion. They expressed fear at the thought of the stranger coming to their table, even surrounded by family members.

Hidden History of Cooperation in America

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Fewer and fewer people are happily employed, according to Derek Bok, former President of Harvard, in his latest book. The only thing Americans hate more than working is commuting, but when he considers how we can get happier, he suggests doing less of neither. Being an unhappy worker seems to be a normal, natural condition, but is it? Our hidden history of working together says it is not.

Unschooling & Unworking: Confessions of a stay-at-home family (Part 4)

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Revelations means to reveal, and apocalypse means to uncover. I recently put together a collection of folktales, subtitled, “Paradise Apocalypse,” meaning “Paradise Uncovered,” because I believe we have the power to remember the garden that grows beneath our feet.

(The) Something is Rank

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In the resource depletion soup, one ingredient looms large – social equity. Equality is a function of population, social status aspirations and resources. With a small population, everyone can have reasonable equality. With unlimited resources, the same (although the amplitude generated by law of large numbers will exert outsized social pull from the top). But with large populations AND limits to resources, equity can only be reasonably attained if the activities that generate rank are not resource intensive.

Peak Moment 169: The Sacred Demise of Industrial Civilization (transcript added)

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As a historian, Carolyn Baker has a keen eye for current events that are indicators of the collapse we’re seeing all around us. But she’s also a psychologist concerned about how we personally navigate the turbulence and find meaning within it. The author of Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse, she describes the old story that isn’t working anymore (humans are separate from nature), and the new story we must live by for real sustainability.

“A Nighttime Letter to the Grandchildren”

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My dear ones, your generation will face a series of environmental challenges that will dwarf anything any previous generation has confronted. I’m hoping to add some insights of my own based on things I learned as a policymaker in the 1950s and ’60s, when I observed and participated in some monumental achievements and profound misjudgments. As a freshman congressman in 1955, I regrettably voted with my unanimous colleagues for the Interstate Highway Program. All of us acted on the shortsighted assumption that cheap oil was super-abundant and would always be available.

A Perspective on Ag 2.0 Silicon Valley

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I attended the Agriculture 2.0 Silicon Valley conference co-hosted by New Seed Advisors, U.S. Venture Partners and Spin Farming…The agenda was much larger and diverse than in New York, and given the level of interest I expect more events are being planned. The following are some notes and thoughts that reflect the highlights of the day for me.

The collapse of journalism / The journalism of collapse

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The first step in crafting a new narrative for journalists is to reject technological fundamentalism and deal with a harsh reality: In the future we will have to make due with far less energy, which means less high-technology and a need for more creative ways of coping. Journalists have to tell stories about what that kind of creativity looks like. They have to reject the gee-whizzery of much of the contemporary science and technology reporting and emphasize the activities of those with a deeper ecological worldview.