Culture & Behavior

A lesson in practical magic

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It seems remarkably hard for people nowadays to remember that ours is hardly the first society to find itself teetering on the edge of catastrophic change. In this next installment of The Archdruid Report‘s discussion of the interface between peak oil and magic–that is, the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will–another society in much the same situation provides the stage, and one of the most improbable figures in 19th century history is the main character. His insights have an uncanny relevance to some elements of the crisis of our own time.

Saving Money

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We speak with Charles Eisenstein about his new book Sacred Economics which explains how to save the concept of money from being subject to our outdated understanding of human nature and simplistic mechanistic models of the physical world around us…Can we accept that the failure of money isn’t the end of the world but that it is an opportunity to reorganize?

Occupy Wall Street’s consensus process [VIDEO]

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This mini-doc shows in some detail how the general assembly – the heart of the occupy movement – operates. They make decisions by consensus and anyone can join the assembly. Through this process, the occupy movement models its own radically inclusive political economy and thus demonstrates that it’s more than a protest movement. It’s many things, but what may be overlooked is that it’s a social process through which people can experience being a fully heard citizen, and maybe for the first time. It gives an opening through which people can experience first hand what’s possible when a diverse citizenry works together.

Food & agriculture – October 17

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-How India squared up to Monsanto’s ‘biopiracy’
-Study debunks myths on organic farms
-Planning reforms will threaten Britain’s ability to grow food
-Bitter harvest: migrant workers on UK farms ‘still exploited’
-Trees ‘boost African crop yields and food security’
-A New Approach to Feeding the World

10 ways to support the Occupy movement

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The #OccupyWallStreet movement continues to spread with more than 1,500 sites. More and more people are speaking up for a society that works for the 99 percent, not just the 1 percent.

Here are 10 recommendations from the YES! Magazine staff for ways to build the power and momentum of this movement. Only two of them involve sleeping outside.

The compost candidates

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Something special is happening in France. A nationwide campaign will be launched next week by the Colibris movement for the 2012 Presidential Elections – but without a charismatic leader. The campaign, instead, is for everyone to be a candidate – for a new kind of politics.

In their language and tone-of-voice Les Colibris are like the Transition Movement, but different. They are like Occupy Wall Street but different, too. This is surely healthy. The movement for a global democracy is an ecology, not a single homogeneous movement.

“We know that an election won’t change society” says the Colibris manifesto [colibris is the French for hummingbird]. “For a real transformation, things have to change at the bottom and involve everyone amongst us.”

Making sense of the protests through a post-growth lens

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The world has recently seen protests on Wall Street, rioting in London, and tension in other parts of Europe as it deals with insolvent debtor nations. Mass confusion is in the air.

…Among all the mass confusion, steady-state theory might help us account for not only the the economic problems, but also the ideological divide.

Getting to 350 with a $2 pocket knife

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Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration is a cheap and rapid method of re-vegetating deserts and restoring climate balance to below 350 ppm. Vast areas of cleared agricultural land in arid lands retain an “underground forest” of living stumps and roots. By simply changing agricultural practices, this underground forest can re-sprout, at little cost, very rapidly and with great beneficial impact. In other words, in many instances the costly, time consuming and inefficient methods of raising seedlings, planting them out and protecting them is not even necessary for successful reforestation.

Revisiting population growth: The impact of ecological limits

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Demographers are predicting that world population will climb to 10 billion later this century. But with the planet heating up and growing numbers of people putting increasing pressure on water and food supplies and on life-sustaining ecosystems, will this projected population boom turn into a bust?

Pluto’s Republic

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One of the enduring tropes of Western intellectual culture, dating back to Plato’s time, is the notion that there must be some way to force people to make the right collective decisions whether they want to do so or not. Magic — the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will — is one of many resources that have been applied to this end. The thought of doing this as a way of dealing with our society’s abject failure to respond intelligently to peak oil, though, leads into a thicket of overfamiliar problems.