Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
As a gardener, Winter Solstice holds much more meaning for me than the conventional new year marker of January 1. Even here in Southern California’s year-round growing season, we observe the slowing of plant growth into semi-dormancy as the Solstice approaches. We witness the acceleration into new growth once the Solstice is past. Animals know it too — my chickens are resuming laying. The Winter Solstice is the crossover point, the planet’s annual marker of change.
Asking an economist to evaluate the work of Nicole Foss is a bit like asking a Baptist Minister to evaluate the work of a secular, agnostic theologian or philosopher of religion, for we are dealing with two competing belief systems and Foss (along with Richard Heinberg, John Michael Greer, Juliet Schor, Wendell Berry, and to some extent Bill McKibben, along with countless others) is, among other things, challenging the economists unquestioned belief in a very specific view of the world, as well as numerous elements of faith.
[Foss is speaking in Madison and Milwaukee this coming week.]
John Michael Greer takes on economics, a subject in desperate need of his characteristic, level-headed analysis. The usual growth oriented fantastical notions that have plagued the subject over the last half century were in particular need of such cool headed dispatching.
In this third and final article in this series, we will discuss seven new ways of living which we can adopt as economic growth fails. They are not revolutionary (revolutions never achieve their utopian visions because of something called “human nature”). Rather, they may allow us to “muddle through” the best we can right now with what we already know how to do. We will do these things because they will work — and we certainly need to stop doing things that don’t work, and find new ways that will work.
Those who love Wendell Berry, from homesteaders and Greenhorns (that’s new farmers to you and me) to community gardeners, find inspiration in the plainspoken moral indignation of this latter-day Jeffersonian who won’t be budged from his conviction that the real America is farms and rural towns, not big cities and suburbs.
Our expectations tend to be outsized with respect to the physical limitations at hand. We quickly dash up against ideological articles of faith, so that many are unable to acknowledge that there is an energy/resource problem at all. The Spock in me wants to raise an eyebrow and say “fascinating.” The human in me is distressed by the implications to our collective rationality. The adult in me wants less whining, fewer temper tantrums, realistic expectations, a willingness to sacrifice where needed, the maturity to talk of the possibility of collapse and the need to step off the growth train, and adoption of a selfless attitude that we owe future generations a livable world where we can live rich and fulfilling lives with another click of the ratchet. Otherwise we deserve a spanking—sorry—attitude adjustment. And nature is happy to oblige.
A great many of those who insist that we can afford to ignore the head-on collision between industrial civilization and the limits of a finite planet justify that claim by talking about hope. As millions of people turn their eyes heavenward, waiting for the end of the Mayan calendar or some other prophesied event to bail humanity out from the consequences of three centuries of our own mistakes, it’s arguably time to ask whether everything that gets labeled “hope” deserves the name.
We cannot “set things right” in the sense of restoring things to the way they once were, but we must begin now to adapt to the new realities if we are to reduce suffering and continue an advanced culture. Today’s article, “Out With the Old”, discusses ending seven unsustainable practices.
The story of the Empress Galla Placidia deals with such things as system dynamics, the fall of empires, resource depletion, controlling complex systems and, yes, also a little about Christmas.
Her story seems like the plot of an adventure movie. She started as a princess, then she was prisoner of the Goths, then she became their Queen, then she was again their prisoner.
In the 5th century, when she came to power, the Roman Empire had been running out of reactants. It had been growing on the profits made from military campaigns but, at some point around the 2nd century, it had reached its limits. With no more easy conquests in sight, the Empire had to live on its own resources and it never really learned how to do that.
During the 5th century, what an emperor (or empress) could have done was to give to the events just a little push in the right direction. Don’t fight the change, ease it. It is the way of pushing the levers in the right direction. Could Placidia have done just that? Incredibly, perhaps she did.
“Compassion is our new currency,” was the message scrawled on a pizza-box lid at Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan — held by a pensive-looking young man in Jeremy Ayers’s great photo portrait. But what can you buy with compassion?
Quite a lot, it turns out, including a global movement, and even pizza, which can arrive at that movement’s campground as a gift of solidarity.
Here’s the bitter truth. I’m my family’s biggest pain in the ass every Christmas. Most radical homemakers probably are….We’re sick of the consumerism, we’re sick of feeling sick after all the crappy food, we’re sick of being pushed around with our kids in an endless stream of command visits and activities, we’re sick of the over-stimulation wrought by endless, ecologically rapacious, quickly-broken toys.
Some of you are aware that I have been working on a cooperative board game called Collapse! designed to help people learn and practice grassroots community-building and preparing locally for the various crises that may precede civilization’s collapse. I’ve finally got a first outline draft of the game, and decided to share it with the world before I go any further. Here are the rules and some images of the game equipment that I have developed thus far, along with a list of what I still have to do to complete the game’s development.
