Transition Voices on Social Justice – Part Two
But we have to recognise our own part in perpetuating the system. If you don’t care for another human being, what is the point of life?
But we have to recognise our own part in perpetuating the system. If you don’t care for another human being, what is the point of life?
I think what’s fundamental to the Transition approach is that we bring people together to find new solutions to entrenched problems. Essential to that is to have the perspectives of all the people who are affected.
Developed in Australia, a permablitz is an informal gathering in which a group of at least two people come together to: a) create or add to edible gardens, b) share skills related to permaculture and sustainable living, c) build community, and d) have fun!
In the Transition movement, we saw resilience as a way of “bouncing forward”. We wanted to use the anticipation of these shocks to design different and better systems.
People often ask, “So what do Transition Town groups do?” One answer to that question would be, “We take good ideas, bring them home, and make them real.”
In 2010, after the failure of the Copenhagen World Climate Summit, a new idea paved the way: Transition. Ten years later, the movement has also taken root in Luxembourg.
The imagination is radical. It is the only way to get us beyond what is and to get us to what if. It can get us beyond business as usual, beyond what is in front of us.
Wellbeing Farm will explore an array of innovative heritage and leading-edge technologies by which individuals, communities, and the Hudson Valley Bioregion can thrive in decades ahead – designing and realizing pragmatic, environmentally and economically sound tools for peacefully, equitably, and intelligently transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Transition leaders from across the country came together to explore how Transition US could deepen, shift, or adapt our analysis of the crises we face: away from an emphasis on peak oil & resource depletion, and toward a more nuanced understanding of the extractive economy and its connection to both social justice and ecological crises.
This final part of the series presents a vision of new type of university, exemplified in the world-spanning Ecoversities Alliance, and dreamed of in Transition U and Eco Vista U, two prototypes that I am involved in co-creating with students, staff, faculty, and community members in Santa Barbara, California, and in the Transition US movement.
Rob Hopkins is an author and a Co-Founder of Transition Town Totnes and Transition Network. He approaches the question of “What could possibly go right?” with a fascination in the power of imagination for our future.
Rutger Bregman’s new book, ‘Human Kind’, argues that, in essence, “most people, deep down, are decent”, and that the world would be a very different place if we were to recognise that. It may be one of the most important books you will ever read.