Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In order to challenge existing systems or imagine a degrowth world, our solutions cannot be generated from within. We need a different, external perspective. Perhaps this is how Ubuntu and Indigenous peoples like the Achuar can help.
Given the ubiquitous nature of this animistic intuition among the diverse indigenous peoples of this planet – given its commonality among so many exceedingly diverse and divergent cultures – it would seem that this is our birthright as humans.
Animism, the enactment and culture of interspecies reciprocity, cannot teach us how to better manage “natural objects”, but shows how to sustain a cosmos giving life to all its members. This will require us to rethink traditional sustainable practices.
As I have learned about the social life of trees and the intimate bonds that indigenous peoples have with various lifeforms and rivers — as I pore through recent ecophilosophy that explains aliveness to the western mind — I’ve concluded: We really ought to be talking more about animism and commoning.
