"All these protests held industry—not consumers—responsible for the proliferation of disposable items that depleted natural resources and created a solid waste crisis.
I really enjoy people who take many aspects into consideration, and actually know very few who are in one of the first two states. Most of the people I know are engaged both personally and politically and as activists.
Something that brought people together in my neck of the woods was the desire for proportional representation. It was wonderful watching people from the NDP (centre left, steadily drifting towards the centre) and the Green Party becoming friends as they promoted pro rep together.
There is so much complexity in the world these days that we need respectful communication and collaboration more than ever.
You're living in Canada, right? Here in the USA "the corporate state" has such a stranglehold on politics that I (and many millions of us here) doubt that we can create meaningful social / political change through voting or participating in party politics. If we want real change -- transformational change -- we (millions of us) are doubting we can achieve this through government policies. This is why we (as it seems to me!) need to re-imagine what politics *is* and how to go about it. I envy those who can honestly, and in an informed way, believe they can achieve truly democratic governance through government. My faith in that ended years ago.
Our governments are very much corporate captured here too, although I get that the two party system in the USA is even worse.
Yes. I'm Canadian and live in Canada. I'd love to know your ideas about how to change things.
I've been paying attention to what the rest of the world is doing, and there are some pretty amazing things going on. I don't know how much longer our western governments can orchestrate coups as other countries organize and support each other.
We need to break through the spin and non-stop propaganda from all sides, and make big changes, and I'm always trying to figure out how we do that.
The only strategy I can think of is to make local communities, down to the immediate local space of the village and neighborhood, much more relevant in the practice of politics, and to do so in such a way which generally looks beyond (outside of) even municipal and county government. The reason is, that municipal and county governments tend to repeat and echo and mirror the very same ethos as the central state governments, which is a corporate capitalist ethos (and culture). We the people need to begin to directly look after one another, and ecosystems, without fruitlessly struggling to get governments to 'change their spots' (morph into butterflies).
We have to somehow begin to really matter in relation to our immediate neighbors (and bioregional neighbors), in ways which intertwine human needs with the needs of the biotic communities we're embedded within. This means making interspecies and intergenerational mutuality and care imaginable, but also making it practical, practicable, actually happening in the granular immediacy of our local places. Otherwise, we're just all caught up in the machinery of the Megamachine. (See part one of a series on that topic here: https://theraven.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-megamachine )
I can't imagine any meaningful social and political transformation occurring which doesn't have a complex form of neighborhood regeneration at its core. We need regenerative neighborhood practices which not only regenerate soil, land, atmosphere, water... but human relationships and connectivity (belonging) within neighborhoods. It's pitiful and pathetic, the degree to which most of us living in modern cities don't even know the names of our neighbors, much less their stories. This is a very new and unusual condition, actually -- at least in terms of the geographical extent of this phenomenon. It even happens in rural areas now, not just in towns and cities.
The result of this not knowing and being involved with our neighbors is that we're uprooted, disconnected from the places in which we dwell -- which become abstractions rather than actual, living places of community.
Rarely, in discussions of 'regeneration' in eco-cultural contexts is regeneration woven into a whole from the parts which have to do with water, soil, trees, plants, animals ....(biodiversity), ... and its parts which are social in the sense of immediate local community belonging and caring for one another. Perhaps we're just too busy? Surely, it's often much more difficult to "make ends meet", but also we tend to be over-burdened by oversized and underutilized houses, multiple expensive cars, the expectation to have expensive faraway vacations in exotic faraway places, and so on. So we neglect our local communities, for we have no time for such irrelevancies.
Changing any of this means weaving in new stories, new imaginative possibilities. It's essentially an art form, which artists ought to take up! Are there live theatres in our towns? Let's bring this story to them there! Let's write about it and set these pamphlets into the hands of our neighbors, or leave them in the crooks of trees on the street, or nail (tape) them to the doors of the local bank or grocery store. Somehow, the small acts need to become large again, the little flower in the crack in the sidewalks sown. We need to be able to say "small is beautiful" and be received with bright, knowing eyes and smiles.
This makes me think both of the region I live in (very community oriented) and the novel I wrote a number of years ago set in a similar kind of place.
I think providing for a lot of the needs that go ignored by our predatory system -- respect, authentic sense of belonging, care -- in other words, living the world we want to create, is a promising route to the future.
I'm feeling the call to write about what I call "community-oriented permaculture," which extends permaculture ethics and principles from the family homestead into the community at the neighborhood scale. It's a rather large writing project. But it's not just permaculture, it's also other things like bioregionalism, all woven into one thing.
It was the act of imagining community-oriented permaculture which really deeply informed my ideas about the importance of neighborhoods in towns, cities, suburbs. If I tell my story of this (I tried to bring it into this world where I live, but it went nowhere), I'll also be revealing just why it is I think neighborhoods matter much more than most of us moderns imagine they do. And why imagination itself matters so much!
I really enjoy people who take many aspects into consideration, and actually know very few who are in one of the first two states. Most of the people I know are engaged both personally and politically and as activists.
Something that brought people together in my neck of the woods was the desire for proportional representation. It was wonderful watching people from the NDP (centre left, steadily drifting towards the centre) and the Green Party becoming friends as they promoted pro rep together.
There is so much complexity in the world these days that we need respectful communication and collaboration more than ever.
Diana -
You're living in Canada, right? Here in the USA "the corporate state" has such a stranglehold on politics that I (and many millions of us here) doubt that we can create meaningful social / political change through voting or participating in party politics. If we want real change -- transformational change -- we (millions of us) are doubting we can achieve this through government policies. This is why we (as it seems to me!) need to re-imagine what politics *is* and how to go about it. I envy those who can honestly, and in an informed way, believe they can achieve truly democratic governance through government. My faith in that ended years ago.
Our governments are very much corporate captured here too, although I get that the two party system in the USA is even worse.
Yes. I'm Canadian and live in Canada. I'd love to know your ideas about how to change things.
I've been paying attention to what the rest of the world is doing, and there are some pretty amazing things going on. I don't know how much longer our western governments can orchestrate coups as other countries organize and support each other.
We need to break through the spin and non-stop propaganda from all sides, and make big changes, and I'm always trying to figure out how we do that.
Diana -
The only strategy I can think of is to make local communities, down to the immediate local space of the village and neighborhood, much more relevant in the practice of politics, and to do so in such a way which generally looks beyond (outside of) even municipal and county government. The reason is, that municipal and county governments tend to repeat and echo and mirror the very same ethos as the central state governments, which is a corporate capitalist ethos (and culture). We the people need to begin to directly look after one another, and ecosystems, without fruitlessly struggling to get governments to 'change their spots' (morph into butterflies).
We have to somehow begin to really matter in relation to our immediate neighbors (and bioregional neighbors), in ways which intertwine human needs with the needs of the biotic communities we're embedded within. This means making interspecies and intergenerational mutuality and care imaginable, but also making it practical, practicable, actually happening in the granular immediacy of our local places. Otherwise, we're just all caught up in the machinery of the Megamachine. (See part one of a series on that topic here: https://theraven.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-megamachine )
I can't imagine any meaningful social and political transformation occurring which doesn't have a complex form of neighborhood regeneration at its core. We need regenerative neighborhood practices which not only regenerate soil, land, atmosphere, water... but human relationships and connectivity (belonging) within neighborhoods. It's pitiful and pathetic, the degree to which most of us living in modern cities don't even know the names of our neighbors, much less their stories. This is a very new and unusual condition, actually -- at least in terms of the geographical extent of this phenomenon. It even happens in rural areas now, not just in towns and cities.
The result of this not knowing and being involved with our neighbors is that we're uprooted, disconnected from the places in which we dwell -- which become abstractions rather than actual, living places of community.
Rarely, in discussions of 'regeneration' in eco-cultural contexts is regeneration woven into a whole from the parts which have to do with water, soil, trees, plants, animals ....(biodiversity), ... and its parts which are social in the sense of immediate local community belonging and caring for one another. Perhaps we're just too busy? Surely, it's often much more difficult to "make ends meet", but also we tend to be over-burdened by oversized and underutilized houses, multiple expensive cars, the expectation to have expensive faraway vacations in exotic faraway places, and so on. So we neglect our local communities, for we have no time for such irrelevancies.
Changing any of this means weaving in new stories, new imaginative possibilities. It's essentially an art form, which artists ought to take up! Are there live theatres in our towns? Let's bring this story to them there! Let's write about it and set these pamphlets into the hands of our neighbors, or leave them in the crooks of trees on the street, or nail (tape) them to the doors of the local bank or grocery store. Somehow, the small acts need to become large again, the little flower in the crack in the sidewalks sown. We need to be able to say "small is beautiful" and be received with bright, knowing eyes and smiles.
Diana,
May I have your permission to post our conversation here as an article at Deep Transformation Network (DTN)?
Hi James,
This makes me think both of the region I live in (very community oriented) and the novel I wrote a number of years ago set in a similar kind of place.
I think providing for a lot of the needs that go ignored by our predatory system -- respect, authentic sense of belonging, care -- in other words, living the world we want to create, is a promising route to the future.
Ah! I want to read your novel! What is the title?
Certainly, James.
I'm not sure when I'll post it.
I'm feeling the call to write about what I call "community-oriented permaculture," which extends permaculture ethics and principles from the family homestead into the community at the neighborhood scale. It's a rather large writing project. But it's not just permaculture, it's also other things like bioregionalism, all woven into one thing.
It was the act of imagining community-oriented permaculture which really deeply informed my ideas about the importance of neighborhoods in towns, cities, suburbs. If I tell my story of this (I tried to bring it into this world where I live, but it went nowhere), I'll also be revealing just why it is I think neighborhoods matter much more than most of us moderns imagine they do. And why imagination itself matters so much!
Looks like I’m a Westie . Nicely written James and to the point !