Recovering from COVID

By Vicki Robin, Resilience.org

Many may feel this way now as we emerge from Covid and the Trump presidency - still somewhat skittish after 4 years of waking to ever crazier tweets, threats, and lies – yet cautiously hopeful.

Martin Luther King’s vision of an interconnected world is more relevant than ever

By Arthur Romano, Waging Nonviolence

King’s recognition of profound interconnectivity demanded that human security be grounded in the quality of our relationships, the systems we have in place to support people when things get hard, and by creating international frameworks to guarantee equity and human dignity over profit.

The Darkest Hour Is Just Before the Dawn. How to Transform Trumpism After Trump: On Post-Truth, Post-Democracy, and Post-Humanity.

By Otto Scharmer, Medium

Transformation literacy is the capacity of a system to respond to challenges of disruption in ways that move beyond efforts to merely optimize the status quo.

The Rubble of Empire

By Rebecca Gordon, Tom Dispatch

How can you tell when your empire is crumbling? Some signs are actually visible from my own front window here in San Francisco.

Where the story takes us

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

Chapters 1 and 2 of my book tell a story about how our current modern global civilization has got itself into a mess by disregarding some such factors that complicate its tale of endless self-improvement.

Worried about Earth’s future? Well, the outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp

By Corey J.A. Bradshaw, Daniel T. Blumstein, Paul R. Ehrlich, The Conversation

The research published today reviews more than 150 studies to produce a stark summary of the state of the natural world.

Roosevelt’s ‘four freedoms’ weren’t just an American idea

By Miloon Kothari, Open Democracy

January 2021 marks the 80th anniversary of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous State of the Union Address, delivered by the US President in 1941 at a time of deep turmoil and conflict in the world.

Automation and a small farm future

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

One way to address the impasse of the present global political economy may be to embrace the possibility of creating a labour-intensive, semi-autonomous livelihood through farming, homesteading or gardening largely on one’s own account, within a wider society which is collectively oriented to enabling people to live that way.

Science, Belief, and Democracy

By Robert Costanza, Solutions

The United States was founded on ideas that reflected Enlightenment thinking, including the importance of science and the separation of church and state.

The Hardest Work Can Be a Blessing: Grief Work in Transition

By Kaat Vander Straeten, Transition US

There are two stories here, interwoven: the story of a project called “All Things Mortal,” and the story of the dying and funeral of our friend and colleague in Transition. They are two sides of the same coin, like life and death, and joy and grief. Neither one would have happened the way they did if it hadn’t been for Transition.

From Pornography to Agriculture: Challenging Hierarchy

By Robert Jensen, MerionWest

Whatever the future of this broken world, today we can attend to the work of repair and restoration. That does not require hope in what is to come but, rather, a belief in our ability to manage our lives without hierarchy and a faith in each other’s capacity for mutuality.

How capitalism started, and why it still matters

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

In fact, capitalism isn’t particularly about markets or selling things. This needs stressing over and over, because powerful narratives to the contrary repeatedly fool us into supposing otherwise.