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Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Within the body of Transition movement literature, I don’t often see references to the Simple Living or Voluntary Simplicity movement. Perhaps the Voluntary Simplicity movement is less active in the places that Transition founders Rob and Naresh have lived. Perhaps it is because at its origins, Voluntary Simplicity focused more on individual choices and individual changes than on community-centric and societal-transformation ones. I can only speculate.
An agriculture student from a small North Indian village writes home to his sister about the bizarre way of life he encounters during a stay in America. (An updated “Gulliver’s Travels”)
As peak oil moves from the fringes toward the mainstream, the dream of shaping a mass movement around it has caught the imaginations of a growing number of peak oil activists. Is creating a mass movement toward sustainability the best hope we have, or a blind alley that could negate any hope of managing the challenges ahead of us?
We are a lost people. Here in the frantic, waning days of industrial civilization, we have almost completely lost our bearings. We no longer know who we are, what we are, when we are, where we are, or why we are. And as we prepare to embark on a harrowing descent from our civilization’s peak, it would behoove us to find an honest, reality-based frame of reference. So let’s get out our navigation equipment — it’s time we ‘found’ ourselves!
The list of Meatless Monday supporters continues to grow across the globe, and surprisingly to some, many of the latest enthusiasts make their living either cooking meat, such as chef Mario Batali or producing it, like rancher Nicolette Hahn Niman. What makes Meatless Monday so successful is its simple and inclusive message which promotes moderation with the goal of improving public health and the health of the planet.
UNCIVILISATION already seems as if it happened several years ago. Looked at from another angle, it seems as if it happened yesterday. The fallout from the festival has given us a lot to digest. It’s been fascinating and fun digesting most of it, but it does take time.
This is the Doomer’s Curse: to wallow in despair, to sneer at the happiness of others, to revel in schadenfreude and to believe that he has humanity’s best interests at heart. The Doomer honestly thinks that a universal depression (in the emotional sense) would lay the foundation for a better world, but this belief is rooted in his own selfishness, not in a rational socioeconomic analysis.
-Gulf oil spill: A hole in the world
-The Dead Hand of Ronald Reagan Rises in the Gulf
-Here’s another fine mess
-The Journey from Anger to Anguish, responding to eco-cide
-Rio plus 20
Detroit was not an accidental choice for the U.S. Social Forum (USSF). Take a look at the decaying Packard Plant or at boarded-up homes and small businesses, and you’d say this city is dying. Less well known is that it is a city in the midst of a rebirth from the bottom up, and the organizers knew this well when they chose Detroit for the second USSF.
Anna L. Peterson’s “Everyday Ethics and Social Change: The Education of Desire (EE) concedes that is it is our nature to hope, even “when nothing in our world indicates progress is possible” (Pg. 1). She’s not a Pollyanna, noting there are no “valid arguments to justify moral and political hope… This book is about the connection between ‘that which is hoped for’ in our everyday lives and the possibility of [bringing about] this good on a larger and more lasting scale”.
The U.S. political economy is failing across a broad front—environmentally, socially, economically, and politically. Deep, systemic change is needed to transition to a new economy, one where the acknowledged priority is to sustain human and natural communities. Policies are available to effect this transformation and to temper economic growth and consumerism while simultaneously improving social well-being and quality of life, but a new politics involving a coalescing of progressive communities is needed to realize these policies.
In a perfect world, our partners, roommates, children and other assorted members of our lives would say “Oh, I’m so thrilled you are growing a garden/part of a CSA – now I can get rid of the honey-barbecue chips and the fast food, and start really appreciating rutabagas like I’ve always wanted to.”
