Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We’re aware that we can’t look to anyone but ourselves to start generating forms of political activity that both overcome the unwelcome return of nationalism, and that genuinely increase the prospects for just, ecologically sound and equitable ways of organising our societies. These will necessarily be aimed at the end of capitalism and the nation-state, and towards democratically organized societies held in common.
How can technology lead to more participation in democratic processes? Who should own and control city data? Can cities embrace a model that socializes data and encourages new forms of cooperativism and democratic innovation?
There is a care economy out there. Many of the most important and fulfilling parts of our lives—such as parenting, neighbourliness and favours—are about care, even if they are not conventionally classed as economic activity. When people are motivated by a need that inspires care, whether unpaid or paid, there can be a richness in the motivation as it is needs-driven and sustaining of both people and society.
Guns, energy, money – each of these factors of power comes to mind in reading the recently released book by John Dower, The Violent American Century: War And Terror Since World War Two. This brief book keeps a tight focus: cataloguing the extent of violence associated with the US role as the world’s dominant superpower.
I’m not looking for Trump’s jawboning to bring back the manufacturing jobs that were lost to outsourcing. I’m not looking for governments to bail us out at all. I’m looking at what we can do for ourselves, working together in values-aligned cooperative groups—the same kind of entities that impressed Margaret Mead so much for their potential to effect world change.
But it is also evident that youth everywhere, forced to deal with a much more insecure and uncertain future, are also more open to creative approaches to change that recognize and seek to address various inequalities and injustices. I find evidence of such creative thinking among my own students, for example, along with a willingness to think beyond the immediate future to the medium term for change. That thinking and willingness gives me hope for the emergence of a Great Transition.
The commons is an emerging paradigm in Europe embracing co-creation, stewardship, and social and ecological sustainability. Commons perspectives could help to reinvigorate Europe with constructive and concrete policy implications on many terrains.
A new world based on community and collaboration is closer than you think. We can steward resources together, in fact, millions of people are doing just that. And not just in the history books. This week, from Kingston, NY, author and activist David Bollier, Co Founder of the Commons Strategy Group, explains what it means to Think Like A Commoner.
In a sharing vision of a local renewable energy system, many households will generate their own renewable energy (as in solar photovoltaic or solar thermal systems on their rooftops), but many more, for whom this is not an option, will share in the ownership and operation of off-site renewable energy generation infrastructure such as wind turbines.
The cooperative movement is in a position to stand in the epicenter of social transformation, by simply doing what it is designed to do —mindfully, and exquisitely well.
The economy of Rojava is geared towards providing for the poorest and those without possessions. Its basic principle is the participation of everyone in production. In the words of a minister of economics: “If a single loaf of bread is manufactured in Rojava, everyone will have contributed to it.”
Critiquing problems is far easier than imagining credible alternative futures. That seems to be the biggest problem in our political culture today: a colossal failure of imagination. I was therefore pleased when a new friend introduced me to the writings of David Fleming, an iconoclastic British thinker about economics, the environment, and culture…
