By Martin Shaw, Resilience.org
This condition of wondering is still absolutely intact in us. It is. Amongst the loaded shopping trolleys of Walmart and Tesco, the fluorescent tech hubs, flicker-screens and finger-beckoning apps, it’s still there. This raw, imaginative, holy thing. There’s an audacity to it, but it’s what we’ve always done.
By Laurie Macfarlane, Open Democracy
In the age of the ‘self-made’ millionaire, the lottery of birth is more important than ever. As George Monbiot once said: “If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.”
By Karen O'Brien, Ann El Khoury, Jordan Rosenfeld, Nicole Schafenacker, Resilience.org
Stories play a powerful role in transmitting personal and collective experiences. They allow us to “feel” climate change in ways that can move us emotionally and open our imagination to new possibilities. They raise our awareness not only to what is happening in the world, but to how it may be experienced by others, both now and in the future.
By George Monbiot, Monbiot.com
We should use the new story, and the proposals this narrative vehicle carries, to build mass resistance movements, taking inspiration from – and building on – highly effective mobilisations such as the youth climate strikes. We will draw strength from the movements in other nations, and support them in turn.
By Ivy Brashear, YES! magazine
Stories about Appalachia, who tells them and who gets to claim them, matter a great deal when it comes to understanding the place and people more fully. And that understanding is critical, because without a deeper and more complete understanding of Appalachia, it will be hard for its people to build a brighter future that crosses lines of division and works toward parity between race and class.
By Norton Smith, Resilience.org
The nature of the current crisis demands extreme action, not a watered down politically acceptable compromise. It may seem impossible at present, but as the situation unfolds there will be opportunities to make fundamental changes to how we think, to how we live and govern ourselves.
By Norton Smith, Resilience.org
We live in a culture that is embedded in unquestioned beliefs passing as truth. These beliefs are the source of our current crisis. We attempt to solve the problems of degradation of our environment and climate disruption, but we do not look at these core beliefs.
By Eleanor Finley, ROAR Magazine
Kadalie’s book is one more testament that a collective awakening is taking place to jettison the state and redefine global history from the bottom up. For all this, direct democracy by itself can hardly promise social and ecological restoration. Democracy is not a matter of implementing formulaic procedures and structures; it is a matter of fostering bonds of mutual support and the sharing of communal power.
By Charlotte Du Cann, Paul Kingsnorth, Charlotte Du Cann blog
The minute there’s an orthodoxy of language and an orthodoxy of thought, which we all feel we have to stay within otherwise we’re going to get punished, or cancelled, then that’s the end of expression, that’s the end of any attempt to explore outside the boundaries. It’s what every orthodoxy from fascism to communism to theocracy tries to impose on the people to purify the culture, by forcing out anyone who thinks or speaks incorrectly.
By Paul Chatterton, The Conversation
As I’ve shown in my latest book, creating the car-free city is possible, and urgently necessary, right now. We have all the technical and policy know-how. But we lack a vision of how it could be different, and the recognition that far from a sacrifice, it will bring mainly improvements, rather than constraints, to our lives. Such visions are necessary.
By Heather Alberro, The Conversation
Though a varied and complex story, the widespread separation of humans from nature in Western culture can be traced to a few key historical developments, starting with the rise of Judeo-Christian values 2000 years ago.
By John Michael Greer, Ecosophia
Faith in progress really is the established religion of our time. Most people nowadays believe in the inevitability of progress just as fervently as medieval peasants believed in saints and angels.