The politics of progress; cleantech, the economy, antiwar
Because with the continued hollowing out of the nation state, resilient communities will -
Shield us from increasingly frequent shocks and breakdowns of an out of control global system.
Protect us from predatory and parasitical non-state actors — from globe spanning banks/corporations to local/transnational militias/gangs.
Provide us with a path that will allow us to thrive — economically, [...]
Sharif Abdullah of the Commonway Institute in Portland, Oregon offers a tele-seminar titled, “Catalyzing Our Relational World: Building the Lifeboat.” The five-session seminar will be held Tuesday evenings beginning January 27, and will preview the contents of his forthcoming book, Catalyzing Our Relational World. Topics include:
The Default Option: We Don’t Make it.
The Big Three: Food, [...]
(AFP photo: Members of the Lords Resistance Army, accused of hacking 45 civilians to death in Uganda on Friday.)
DJ Mitchell posts about power and why atrocities occur by those wanting it or trying to hold on to it.
The killers call their causes by different names: religious purity, ethnic pride, security, or freedom. But behind [...]
(Eschlabach photo.)
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.” –Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).
Of the fallacies of modern [...]
Some years ago I visited two villages near Gampaha, Sri Lanka. Both were small and poor. Both were inhabited by members of Rodhi caste, the Sinhalese version of untouchables. But there, all similarity ended. In the first, families of five and six lived in palm-leaf huts just large enough for them all to lie down [...]
