Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
So…what path to take? The old familiar mainstream, the marginal, or the radically new? Hell, I’m opting for all of the above. I think we need to revitalise the best of the old traditions of right and left, while bringing in the contributions of more marginal political positions from the past – and articulating them all afresh in the completely novel historical circumstances we face.
Life actively contributed to the creation and maintenance of conditions on Earth that are favourable for higher organisms. In the words of Janine Benyus, the founder of the Biomimcry Institute: “Life creates conditions conducive to life.” Over the course of the last forty years James Lovelock’s hypothesis has matured into a new field of scientific investigation that is referred to as Gaia theory or Earth Systems Science.
In short, the biggest inhibitor to effective action in the face of the current convergence of crises is a fundamental lack of collective intelligence on the part of the human species as a whole.
So the sense of worthlessness, and the fear of worthlessness, of pointlessness, of meaninglessness, tends to drive a lot of our efforts. But if we remove that fear, That’s my ‘if’ question: if we manage to remove that fear, of pointlessness, worthlessness, and meaninglessness, what would be possible for us to do?
All I’ll need of my current wage will be a tithe. We’ll keep the tithe and refuse the rest. We’ll keep just a living, breathing Earth and refuse the strata of those many millions of sequestered and fossilised years. “Keep the tithe and refuse the rest!” could prove a populist slogan, or the refrain to a popular song.
Every city has its graveyard of nonprofits, cooperatives, social clubs, and community centers. Without a strategic vision, local projects cannot possibly amount to a systemic alternative to capitalism.
Around 11,000 years ago, as the last ice age ended, our ancestors – in no fewer than 5 locations around the world – took advantage of the new conditions and tried an agricultural way of life. Fast forward through two momentous phase shifts in human history (agricultural and industrial revolutions), and here we are: approaching 8 billion, seeking freedom, experiences, and material wealth all derived from physical surplus.
Climate twitter – the most fun twitter – has recently been reigniting the debate between human extinction and mere civilizational collapse, between doom and gloom, despair and (kind of) hope.
Seven months after Juan and Jonathan Leija were forced to evacuate their flooded homes during Hurricane Harvey, the cousins face challenges that go beyond just recovering their lives. Building back isn’t easy for anybody, but the Leijas are doing it as looming policy decisions threaten to uproot them again.
I was intrigued as to what impact living in a state of ‘Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder’ might have on the human imagination, on its ability to flourish, and to imagine the future in positive ways. Are we all, to one degree or another, living in a state of ‘Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder’?
With IMBY we wanted to answer the question of how, starting from design and production methods, we could build a house that could foster social integration and civic engagement in a sustainable model. And this can only be done by empowering the people.
We briefly mentioned the problem of hierarchy as the shared root of many systems of oppression in our first column two weeks ago. In this article, we want to expand on the meaning of hierarchy—a system of obedience and command backed by the threat of force—and ground it in history.
