Chris Smaje

In truth, I’m not massively optimistic that the new dark age will turn out too well for many people, but I think once one has appraised the reality of the surrounding darkness it’s always worth looking for the light as best one can and seeking least worst responses to our predicaments. Whether we find it or not is another matter.

We don’t have simple answers where we can just say, right, ‘That’s what we need to do’. So we need to do things locally, individually, in community from the grassroots.

Presently, the major currents of thinking on both the mainstream political left and right seem fatefully enraptured with the centralized politics of the nation-state, believing that if the correct government is in place it will deliver what the people really want. If people were to stop thinking that, we may be at the start of a politics equal to present times.

But while we’re all yelling at each other about how our favoured politics are the best, the more important political story might lie with constituents, including the urban poor, who are quietly innovating their own welfare, perhaps by leaving town.

What matters above all is that people get occupancy rights that give them the long-term residential security to address their livelihood needs, and it’s entirely possible that these will sometimes be obtained in urban or suburban situations.

And so now I’m home again, back to the farm, back to the book publication, back to a million things to do, back to trying to grow some produce and grow some politics that’s not far-left or far-right but equal to the present moment by dispensing with those figments of modernism and doing my bit to articulate more vital political traditions like Romanticism and distributism.