By Brian Kaller, Restoring Mayberry
Doomer porn has limited appeal and shelf life; you can only get so miserable before there’s nowhere to go and no point. One of the most appealing subsets of speculative fiction, then, is what we might call the “good old future,” where our descendants have come through a crisis and created a better world that looks a lot like the past.
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
My aim in this post is to use Frase’s book as a cue to discuss some issues of interest to me, rather than reviewing or précising it as such – but I’d certainly recommend taking a look at it. Like many left-futurologists, Frase in my opinion gets a little too excited about the prospect of an automated and jobless future but at least the insights he generates from these new-old chestnuts are subtler than most.
By John Michael Greer, Dark Mountain Project
One of the oddest features of contemporary industrial society, it seems to me, is the profound ambivalence it displays toward the future. It’s hard to think of any society in human history that has made so much noise about the future, or used images and ideas of the future so relentlessly as rhetorical ammunition in its political and cultural controversies.
By Paul D. Raskin, The Great Transition
Whither Earthland? The only certainty about the future is surprise, the one constant change.
By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report
Most people in today’s industrial society believe, or think they believe, in progress: they believe, that is, that human history has a built-in bias that infallibly moves it from worse things to better things over time.
By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report
Our narrator spends his last few hours in the Lakeland Republic, finds an answer to a question that has been bothering him, and boards the train back to Pittsburgh and the unknowns that wait there...
By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report
At a final meeting between our narrator and Isaiah Meeker, President of the Lakeland Republic, certain unstated agendas are revealed and the future of one of the post-US North American republics takes an unexpected turn...
By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report
In his last full day in the Lakeland Republic, our narrator pays a visit to industrial magnate Janice Mikkelson and gets a different perspective on the Republic and the lessons of its history...
By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report
Our narrator has dinner with Melanie Berger, tells her about his change of mind, and has to confront the hard choices ahead of him.
By Erik Assadourian, Worldwatch Institute
What might education look like in 2040 if it were to be truly Earth-centric?