Living within limits: thoughts for the Lenten Season
It is good to take on some restriction during this Lenten season. It reminds us of all the abundance that we gain from living within ethical limits.
powering down
André Gorz’s Vision for Autonomy and Radical Frugality
Gorz’s reflections on everyday, autonomous ways of meeting our needs encourages us to redefine what it means to live well – which certainly isn’t the abundance erroneously promised by capitalism: what do we want today for happy, collective frugality?
Debunking “development”
It is imperative that a very different conception of development should be adopted as quickly as possible. It is not difficult to imagine a sane, sustainable, just and fulfilling alternative.
Ruminations on losing power and what is appropriate technology
We can’t depend on tech at all if we want to see the future. We depend on this Earth. And no tool is ever going to end that interdependency.
Fossil Fragility
We’re all worshippers of fossil fuels to some degree. It’s not as if all of us willfully have a choice in the matter, but in virtually every product we buy and service we use, somewhere or everywhere along the supply chain there are inputs born of suffering, ecological and human.
‘The Oil Machine’: How environmental grand narratives obstruct ‘real’ change
We need a new, more radical paradigm, which exposes the modern technological lifestyle as an ‘economic suicide cult’.
Against the Economic Grain: Addressing the Social Challenges of Sustainable Livelihoods
Living and working, having lifestyles and livelihoods that are truly regenerative and sustainable look nothing like how most of us currently live and work.
System Change: Through the Perspective of a Bottle of Moisturizer
Perhaps we’ll be forced to return to mud baths and vigorous scratching, but hopefully our innovative minds will keep our skin moist and itch-free.
‘Small is Beautiful – A Study of Economics as if People Mattered’
Some books are so well observed, so prescient, that even their supporters are seemingly overwhelmed by their material implications, and turn away from the truths they annunciate: ‘Small is Beautiful’ is such an example.
Rethinking your energy usage (and some history of Plough Monday)
If it is unusual in the rest of the privileged world to even consider power usage, maybe Vermonters should start training folks in how to live with an increasingly expensive and feeble grid.
The time to de-grow and adapt is now
No search results give any indication that de-growth is not already underway. No evidence anywhere supports the idea that we can do all these things that we haven’t yet done.
Negative Feedback
In all our grand models, we seem to have externalized one of the basic mechanisms of change in the universe — negative feedback.
