What We Need is Some Culture: Part 3
Here I will be laying out what I consider to be the core elements and principle guidelines for civic/popular programs for democratic praxis. First, some definitions.
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What We Need is Some Culture: Part 2
In Part I, last week, I made the case for the over-riding importance for a major shift in the strategic focus for all democratic change movements, and especially for co-operative/solidarity economics. Here in Part II I sketch out how I think we can begin moving decisively toward community and regional networks with a cultural/structural strategy.
The Case for the Power of Culture
Let’s begin by stopping our addiction to thinking in big structural terms. There is value in the scaling-up structural visions and strategies for growing our movements for co-operative/solidarity economics [2] and deep social change. However, structural strategies by themselves are like a one-armed swimmer moving upstream into a heady current.
What is the Commons Transition?
The world – and chiefly among it, first world countries – seems to me, to be moving away from a purely industrial model, aimed mainly at production, to a new type of society whose contours and goals have yet to be clearly defined.”
Radical Ecological Democracy: Some More Reflections from the South on Degrowth
There is no doubt that as a species we have to downsize if we are to respect the limits; not only for ourselves but —just as importantly— for the millions of other species that co-inhabit the earth with us. It is timely, therefore, to talk of degrowth in the context of humanity as a whole, and most certainly in the context of the Global North which is overconsuming and overdumping.
Carbon Markets at the End of 2016 – What can We Expect in the Future?
I attended the UN Climate Summit (COP22) in Marrakech last November…As someone studying the ethical issues surrounding carbon trading schemes, it was particularly noticeable that ‘ethics’ of any description are simply not on the agenda of these talks.
Positive Thinking in a Dark Age
I recall a Buddhist parable involving a stick that appears from a distance to be a snake, causing fear to rise in the perceiver. As the perception shifts upon closer examination, the fear subsides and the relieved hiker continues down the path. Understanding and awareness have a lot to do with how we feel and how we act. As hosts to the dominant cultural mindset (our collective understanding of who we are in the universe), our minds play a critical part in both perpetuating our dominant way of life and also in shifting away from it.
All Money Should be Used for Public Good
We have empirical evidence that extreme options never win in this procedure. They always lose.
Growthism: Part 2
One of the notable features of Growthism is the way it takes growth to be entirely normal and, at the same time, understands it as the very recent triumph of humanity over the awful conditions it faced for the first two hundred thousand years of its existence as a species.
A Voice from the Field: Margaret Nakiguli’s Story
My name is Nakiguli Margaret, and my story is now filled with hope.
Cities in Transition
CommonsPolis— a civil society initiative to create dialogue between progressive municipalist movements and city governments, and European citizens — held an encounter described as “a common space for exchange; cities in transition and citizen struggles” in Paris on November 24, 2016…
In Conversation: Our Economy After Fossil Fuels
As our energy sources change, our economy will likely evolve and adapt—perhaps in surprising ways.