By John Thackara, Doors of Perception
The way ahead will be based on a combination of knowledge obtained remotely, using modern tools and devices, and ways of knowing that are local, experienced directly, contextual, and embodied. When we connect with living systems emotionally, and not just rationally, and focus on the informal, the local and the conversational – things will really begin to change.
By Brian Kaller, Restoring Mayberry
When I talk to my elderly neighbours, or read interviews with people from earlier eras, one of the things that most comes through about their childhoods, and seems dramatically different than the way children are raised today, is how far and freely they roamed. Unlike most modern children, they did not spend most of their time indoors watching television or playing video games, or following one adult-led activity after another.
By Kate Duva, Transition Network
Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA), a nonprofit, multi-issue, grassroots organization has earned international acclaim for giving parents leadership roles in schools since 1995. Their Parent Mentors start out assisting in the classroom, and go on to design full-service community schools, offering adult education, childcare, and afterschool classes, reviving a simple principle that we too often forget: schools belong to families.
By Jody Tishmack, Anima/Soul
I think the reason people are unwilling to change their lifestyle to counter climate change is because of an inability to recognize our dependence on the culture we’ve created. Like an anteater that evolved a specialized nose making them totally dependent on eating ants (thus as the ants go so goes the anteater), humans have become adept at using and depending on fossil fuels and technology.
By Elizabeth West, Common Dreams
We can’t prevent the suffering and dying of wild life, and the Earth herself, when confronted by the unleashed forces of fire and water, but we can include them in our assessment of the cost. We might even grieve for them. Their losses are indeed ours, and if we do not see them or their importance to our lives, if we continue to either ignore and/or dominate all other life on this planet, it won’t be long till we join them.
By Walter Lewis, Feeding Body and Soul
In prison was not where I was expecting to spend any time during my travels around small scale farmers and growers! That’s exactly where I did spend a quite unforgettable day, though, specifically at HMP Rye Hill.
By Leslie Davenport, Open Democracy
When we temporarily quiet the cognitive activity of the mind to allow these imaginative functions to be activated, it’s easier to recognize the living connections that exist between ourselves and all other forms of life. I call this felt-sense of connection our ‘ecological imagination,’ because it has the capacity to liberate distorted beliefs about our control over nature and our separation from the natural world.
By Paul Mobbs, Free Range Activisim Website
The issue is not only to allow people to remove fossil fuels from camp cooking. The idea is that cooking on a small stick fire requires a far closer relationship to the land – and thus can be transformational for people's lifestyle generally. Their emphasis on the self-build/DIY element of the stick-fire grate is part of that greater aim, allowing people to "gain the confidence to 'make' rather than 'buy' the things you need".
By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog
A common experience when seeing something like the dawn chorus, something beautiful, powerful, something that resonates back with human experience for tens of thousands of years, is a feeling of awe.
By Clifford Dean Scholz, Green Hand Initiative
Likewise, it looks to me like Standing Rock has devolved into an attempt on the part of big business to exterminate a particular kind of consciousness, demoralize it, demonstrate its weakness, and win recruits to a less feeling way of existing in the service of these business entities and the governmental agencies they have co-opted.
By Charles Eisenstein, Charles Eisenstein blog
I feel quite sure that whatever the scientific explanation for the die-off of the horseshoe crabs and eels, the real reason is the senseless killing Stella described.
By Alastair McIntosh, Dark Mountain Project
When we were young growing up on the island, the old folks used say that on a moonless night, they’d move from house to house by just the light of a glowing peat taken from the fire.