Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
When change unfolds, people want real solutions more than they want to hate. Our work helps people get focused on practical action, brings emotional rewards of connection and common purpose. Transition is an inoculation against human breakdown. It is inoculation against hate.
In America, the spiritual journey starts with an active, conscious, personal rejection of I Consume, Therefore I Am. Life is precious, but new shoes, especially when you’ve already got perfectly adequate footware, are not.
What is the nature of “independence”? We talk about it like it can actually be achieved and that it’s a good thing. What if neither is true?
– a Look at the Example of Detroit
-Lessons From a Low-Impact Week
-Free Geek – Computers for the Community
John and I take a trip out to visit Woody and Zoe at nearby Cuckoo Farm to see their gorgeous straw bale house, which has been plastered to meet health and safety regulations, and which now looks like an ancient thatched cottage. Over cups of tea I hear about anaerobic digesters and how simple a system they are.
We are running out of time. By 2018, converging food, water and energy shortages could magnify the probability of conflict between major powers, civil wars, and cross-border conflicts. After 2020, this could result in political and economic catastrophes that would undermine state control and national infrastructures, potentially leading to social collapse.
The term “loosely connected systems” popped out during a talk with a friend about the Transition Town phenomenon. Curious, I traced the concept back to a paper by Karl E. Weick during the heydey of systems thinking i 1976. It appears to be a perfect organizational architecture for Transition
(excerpts and links)
Tips for personal resilience from conversations I’ve had with indigenous people:
I may have left the impression in Part 3 that because Greer’s narrative is broader than Hopkins’, because it encompasses it, redescribes it, puts it into a wider context, because it doesn’t follow a simple and linear structure or have even a hint of a fairy-tale air about it—that because of all this it is superior or more realistic.
Being mindful of the word-pictures we paint for ourselves is good thinking, no matter where you fall on the Kübler-Ross scale. To tell you why, I will leave the cliff vs. crossroads analogy for now, and turn to something I know a little bit about: martial arts.
Ecocentrism, far from being a side issue, needs to be “the non-negotiable heart” of good human society. It is practical because it prevents us from destroying ourselves, as we are currently doing. It is ethical because it prevents us from destroying everything else at the same time, as we are also currently doing. And it is in a whole different league from discussions about which particular technology we use to run our computers.
Feeling burned out at work? Stressed, tired, crabby, anxious and possibly sick? This time of year, around Labor Day, seems to be a good time to talk about it.
