Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Now, the ILR invites anyone to traverse The Line (accessible by Google Maps) by foot (or boat, bicycle or other human-powered method) and document the landscape. The documentation—called “linear research”—is collected in the Atlas of Remoteness, an ongoing research project that is archived on the Atlas of Remoteness website and in books that explore The Line globally.
In this episode, Nate is joined by social neuroscientist Taylor Guthrie to delve into the neuroscience of identity, exploring how the brain constructs a sense of self and the implications for our modern societal challenges.
In an era when climate breakdown demands radical alternatives to endless growth, we might find unexpected wisdom in a largely forgotten experiment from the periphery of Europe’s recent past. For over four decades (1945-1991), Yugoslavia pioneered a unique form of economic democracy that shifted power from political elites to working people – anticipating many principles that today’s degrowth and post-growth movements advocate.
Pull Einstein out of his artificial context and plop him (with colleagues, sure) into a wild place and you’ll quickly find out who the real geniuses are. Humans are certainly capable of such genius survival, but only if loaded with the appropriate cultural software—as vanishingly few are today. Not genius.
In this conversation, Nate is joined by Stephen Jenkinson, a cultural activist and author on the topic of grief, loss, and dying, to discuss his extensive work on grief literacy and the shortcomings of the dominant cultural attitudes towards death.
Guerra has done a great job of describing the recipe for overbuilding. But the recipe for converting an overbuilt network into a safe, sustainable transportation system is still being worked out in countries and cities around the world.
In this week’s Frankly, Nate reflects on a moment of unexpected insight during a morning bike ride, which catalyzed a larger meditation on the modern human predicament.
Yet if the value of the commons remains always partly mysterious to systems which can only deal with the legible, so too does their capacity for endurance and the strength which they give to those who live and work with them, and the process of enclosure is never quite as total as its promoters would like us to believe.
How can we discuss and respond to our culture’s biggest challenges if we don’t even have the words to describe them?
We’re awkwardly caught between being too intelligent to work as well as turtles and mushrooms, but not intelligent enough to be like angels or gods. The flaw, then, is intelligence, which gives us enough power to screw up the world. It’s a special curse. Yet, we need not invoke interstellar travel to find people who have lived sustainably and without difficulty.
How do we slow down and reject the “hustle culture” that prioritizes gains in efficiency, wealth and consumption over all else? How do we maximize the positive impacts and minimize the negative effects we have on the environment around us? What should we do today to plant the seeds of a future we’d like to see, or would like generations beyond us to see?
Adaptation is a chance to gather almost everybody around the table. The hard facts can be laid out on that table for all to see and, around it, the possibility of a future can be negotiated. Please let’s invite everybody who is operating in good faith to sit at it.
