Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Although creating an alternative culture requires effort, some effort is also put in maintaining the dominant culture. So the question is where to put the effort.
Our very nature is far more caring, loving, and empathic than we have been educated to believe. While being empathic may have initially extended primarily to our family and tribe, our ability to empathize has continued to expand to include the whole of humanity, other species and life as a whole.
Maybe the most important “technology” for helping us think, then, is friendship. Thinking alongside people whom we disagree with and yet still care about trains our feelings and dispositions.
Leggett’s insider observations vindicate the conclusion that humankind finds itself in the midst of an unprecedented civilisational ‘phase-shift’, in which we are witnessing the slow (and sometimes not so slow) implosion of the old industrial paradigm.
Let’s be honest, making choices to live a more ethical or sustainable life take effort. It would be easier to just go with the flow.
Collecting first into bands, then villages, then cities, then states, now humans form a single, giant creature – the superorganism – which is literally devouring the planet to keep itself growing. I
People in Puerto Rico have endured the devastation left behind by Hurricane Maria since the storm hit 8 months ago, with many still struggling to get clean water and medical care. Now there’s evidence that the death toll from Maria and its aftermath has been far worse than previously thought
I’d like to raise a standard in this post for two doctrines that I think speak to our troubled times. The doctrines I have in mind are civic republicanism (that’s the Florence part of my title) and agrarian populism (the Texas part). Let me explain…
It’s time to accept that we are not going to dislodge the entrenched interests holding back effective action on looming climate chaos by any means tried so far. Believing that 97% of credible scientists is consensus enough is 103% short for effective response.
Extreme inequality of wealth, income, and opportunity is warping everything we care about. It takes away the sense that we’re all in the same boat. It screws up communities.
In common with other critical social movements, the community gardens presented their demands under the umbrella of the right to the city, understood not as a legal claim, but as citizens’ right to intervene in the city, to build it and transform it.
I would like to see less images specifically about the traditional view of nature. For years, for decades, for centuries, many of the spaces of nature just have not been accessible — or have been only accessible to a limited few, mostly elites, mostly white people. So to use imagery that doesn’t invite all of us to participate is a mistake.
