An economy beyond jobs: the new normal
With more people losing full-time jobs, can’t the unemployed just create their own dream careers as wired freelancers?
Building Community
Citywatch: A tale of two levels of government: today’s debt crunches test tomorrow’s city limits
One way to make out a slim ray of hope from today’s global financial crisis is to look from the vantage point of 2008, and &– forgive me for going so far back into the mists of time –1973.
Radical homemakers vs. the hurricane
It was busy in town Friday and Saturday. Stores and restaurants were filled with New Yorkers and Long Islanders seeking refuge from hurricane Irene, slated to pummel downstate on Sunday…We assumed we were over-prepared. We weren’t.
Visualizing a plenitude economy
This beautifully drawn 5-minute video provides a vision of what a post-consumer society could look like, with people working fewer hours and pursuing re-skilling, homesteading, and small-scale enterprises that can help reduce the overall size and impact of the consumer economy.
From crushing distance to opening space – a meditation on speed and local consciousness
We do not really cease being drivers when we step from our vehicles. Like television, automobile travel strengthens some of the more pernicious habits of the egoic mind. Bottom line: motor travel is addictive, and the effects of the addiction are likely to persist even if we can no longer afford to drive.
Sustaining our better angels
We have within us, the very innate altruistic qualities needed to work our way back to that simpler, communally-focused way of life– the 75% reduction that Dr. Rees said was possible–that will bring us back to our senses. It is happening already.
Locally. Methodically. Little by little. Step-by-step.
Coming round the dark mountain part 2: the shaman and the village
If Transition is the village, Dark Mountain is the shaman.
Culture and behavior: The human nature of unsustainability
Humans may pride themselves as being the best evidence for intelligent life on Earth, but an alien observer would record that the (un)sustainability conundrum has the global community floundering in a swamp of cognitive dissonance and collective denial…
Coming round the Dark Mountain Part 1: Uncivilisation
“We’re writers with dirt under our fingernails” states the manifesto, and what strikes you is that the new narrative is not some urban dystopia, a tale told by cynical city novelists, it’s directly rooted in the materials of nature. It shares a lineage with English visionaries, dissenters and poets, and yet feels new and modern, planetary, something we are all inventing together.
The economy: Possible scenarios for the future 3
In Sacred Economy, Charles Eisenstein poses the seemingly outrageous idea that money should be sacred. In this he means that a good bit of the mess we’re currently in is because we have lost this sense of the sacred and the special – the connected and interdependent nature of transactions between people.
Danger ahead: prioritising risk avoidance in political and economic decision-making
Now that the financial and political components of the present system have discredited themselves, a fluid situation exists that might allow more viable options to emerge. Local green initiatives, in particular the Transition Towns movement, are gaining in strength and number(s), but do they have the potential to develop the capacity needed at a national level to transform societies’ energy and transport infrastructures?
Joel Salatin: How to prepare for a future increasingly defined by localized food & energy
Joel Salatin, proprietor of Polyface Farms and highly-visible champion of sustainable farming, thinks modern humans have become so far removed from a natural connection to the food they eat, that we no longer have a true understanding of what “normal” food is. In this interview, Chris and Joel explore what constitutes truly sustainable agriculture and the reasons why our current system has departed so far from it, as well as practical steps individuals can take to increase their own personal resiliency around the food they eat (in short: “find your kitchen”, source your food locally, and grow some yourself).
