Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
As global heating accelerates and climate damages mount all around us, and as climate organizations and activists grow desperate about what to do, SAFER provides important new thinking. The challenge, one of the biggest of our times for organizers, theorists and social scientists, is how to bring this idea into our various countries at an organizational level.
In today’s Frankly, Nate imagines that he’s looking back from an unspecified point in the future (even from beyond his lifetime), and ponders the core things he would want during his time on Earth.
In this episode, Nate is joined by John Seed and Skye Cielita Flor to explore the power of rituals and community for processing grief and transforming it into a deeper connection with ourselves, each other, and the natural world.
Personally, I would settle for a lot less than paradise. For me, paradigm shift would work, a condition where people simply behave in their own best interests which means living within the boundaries of the natural world and cooperating with each other for the common good. That would look a lot like Kailash Ecovillage.
Hurricanes, tornadoes and other extreme weather do not distinguish between urban and rural boundaries. But when a disaster strikes, there are big differences in how well people are able to respond and recover – and older adults in rural areas are especially vulnerable.
I mean, I’m not sure I had ever encountered anything but effusive praise for the development of writing. Look what it enables us to do! (Exactly, say the extinct—if they could.) Yet the whole time, the dark side of written language was hiding in plain sight. The writing was on the wall.
Far from exonerating my gender for its role in sustaining patriarchy, I insist that men must now take the lead in dismantling it—decisively and without delay. But patriarchy is not the only destructive force we face. Interlocking ideologies—racism, classism, colonialism, transphobia—continue to shape our world, and most people, in some way, still participate in sustaining them. This work demands collective responsibility from people of all gender identities, because these systems harm us all.
Let us call to those better angels of our nature which have expanded democracy and justice over these 249 years, working in the places where we live to organize power and forward the ideas that will make a just and sustainable future. That is the ground for a New American Revolution.
So, when people ask me for one thing they can do to bring about a more positive future, I suggest they seek out stories of real change that are happening right now. I’m talking about local food projects, renewable energy projects and neighbourhoods coming together to create their own solutions.
Denmark is about to give its citizens ownership rights in their images and voices to protect them from unscrupulous AI-generated deep fakes. I think the ownership of personal information should go a lot further.
If today nostalgia and alienation are among the main forces that keep the status quo intact, thus permeating the desolation of our world by the dominant system, then it is the recreation of the civic community and the genuine public that can help the 99% to self-empower themselves and enact crucial changes.
We must accept that some things can only be experienced and accepted. That they cannot be measured in a ‘hard’ way, and that our attempt to do so will kill the very thing we are trying to save.
