Culture & Behavior

I consume, therefore I am

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Regarding our Fate here in the United States, the writing was on the wall when Americans, actual living & breathing human beings, were labeled and treated as units of consumption. Officially, we are consumers. Apparently, Americans are evaluated solely on whether they are spending enough money. Consuming boosts Gross Domestic Product, and GDP is the only thing that counts. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got the money or not. The virtue of Thrift, of living within your means, got tossed out the window a long, long time ago.

The Long and the Short of It: Existential Comfort in the Age of Hopkins and Greer, Part III

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There is in Greer no sense that we are a singular people standing at a singular moment where history has opened up to provide us with breath-taking possibilities: “Human societies, like fence lizards, are organic systems, and they respond to changes in their environments in much the same way” (85); “history is an ecological phenomenon, governed by the same laws as other processes in nature” (241). Thus we aren’t going to be confronted with a fork in the road, the road less travelled made famous according to the predominant misinterpretation of the Frost poem, with a moment to act or not, as the opening lines of The Handbook suggests.

Independence, interdependence and disability

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I hear all the time the idea that one doesn’t want to be dependent on other people — the idea is expressed in our society by the idea that we should all save a lot of money, invested in the stock market, to make us “independent” if we get old, or less than perfectly able bodied. But of course, the stock market makes us dependent too — dependent on markets and governments and other people to invest where we have. People talk about independence as emerging from their ability to pay people to help meet physical needs if they become old or disabled — imagining that an employer-employee/resident-caregiver relationship is inherently more equitable than a family dependency.

Deep in Ecuador’s rainforest, a plan to forego an oil bonanza

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Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth and is home to remote Indian tribes. It also sits atop a billion barrels of oil. Now, Ecuador and the United Nations are forging an ambitious plan to walk away from drilling in the park in exchange for payments from the international community.

What can communities do?

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Community matters when we are looking for responses to peak oil and climate change because of the power that emerges from working together and creating meaningful change through shared action. In a world where social capital and a sense of connection to community are in decline, it is the taking of practical action that enables us to rediscover meaningfulness and community.

The future is rated “B”

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My voluminous fan mail has made me aware of a curious fact: many of my readers seem persuaded that the future is either Mad Max or Waterworld. As far as they are concerned, there just aren’t any other options. What’s more, some people have even tried to venture a guess as to which of the two it shall be by watching what I do. I live on a boat, and that is apparently an indication that the future must be Waterworld-like. But I have also been seen rattling around town on a rusty old motorcycle, and that is taken as an indication of a more Mad Max-like future.

On survival, survivalists and the New Community Cook-out

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I would like to see EcoReality serve as a pool of knowledge and resources that can out-live a long, slow decline as well as a quick, chaotic one. The former is actually much harder to cope with than the latter! Fear is certainly a bigger enemy than anything tangible that may come down the road.
(Group interview with John Steinman, as well as Rachel Kaplan, Catherine Walker, and Pride Wright of Daily Acts )

Independence: DIY and the differently abled

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Many of us are discovering the joy of being able to make something ourselves, instead of just buying it. We know how a fruit grown from seed in our own yards tastes different than one purchased at a supermarket. We ascribe meaning to a gift beyond its material value and focus on the nature of the exchange itself.

Stories of belonging

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In the industrialised world today, most of us feel overwhelmed by a seemingly endless series of crises. The climate is changing; conflicts rage around the world; the global economy may be on the verge of collapse. On a more personal level, we are experiencing what appears to be an epidemic of psychological disorders. Few of us are completely untouched by the increasing rates of depression and a pervading sense of isolation and low self-esteem.

Rearranging the deck chairs

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Listening to the “news” and reading the usual sources on the internet has become surreal as the summer winds down. The key word lately is infrastructure. The President and the Democrats launched some initiatives that have no chance of being approved by Congress because they have to run for re-election on something, especially with underemployment the highest it’s been since World War II.

Tales from a tail of wooded land (Days 164-165) September 8th -9th

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It would be heartening to think that there could be trust regained in place of the fear, what is it that those who honour ownership above all else fear? And from whence came the sense of alienation from one another, and the sense of entitlement of one above the other?