This is part of an ongoing series highlighting what our members are currently reading (and watching!) in the Post Growth and sustainability realms.

Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom by Bell Hooks

Drawing from decades of life and teaching that centers social justice as it relates to race, class, and gender, bell hooks has compiled a series of thirty two ‘teachings’ she deems relevant for any teacher who sees the classroom as a place where democracy and critical thinking can be cultivated.  But this is not a how-to guide for teachers.  It is a series of accessibly written, deeply personal, and highly relevant reflections and commentaries.  If read with an open and curious mind, these pieces can provoke further reflection and re-engagement with taken-for-granted assumptions and practices.  While the intended audience is clearly teachers, the book holds relevance for anyone interested in critically engaging with truth, knowledge, and power. – Janet Newbury

The High Price of Materialism by the Center for a New American Dream

This 5 minute animated video looks at how the culture of consumerism undermines our wellbeing. It presents problems that emerge from excess materialism and offers ideas for a healthier, fairer and more sustainable way of life.

The clip cites a figure of $150 billion which is spent each year ‘embedding’ consumer messages across a plethora of attention space – TV shows, web sites and public bathrooms. Imagine if a small proportion of that was spent on highlighting the benefits of consuming less, or putting our energy into flourishing the non-material aspects of our lives.

Key messages of this video are that the high price of materialism is not just the consumption of stuff, it results in us organising our very lives around consumption; that materialism shapes values which diminish social and and individual wellbeing; and that focusing on building a life that which expresses intrinsic values can help ‘immunise’ people to the cult of materialism. – Sharon Ede

New Scientist

I’m enjoying reading New Scientist at the moment. This weekly magazine presents the latest science in bite-sized, easy to read pieces.

Whilst it has plenty to offer in the way of astrophysics, I’m always impressed at how often it features science that is directly relevant to those of us interested in post growth issues. In the October 22 2011 issue alone, I learnt about why drug users are more likely to reach for the needle during economic downturns, that there is empirical evidence for a small number of corporations having disproportionate global power, and what it is that we know, and do not know, about climate change. On August 27 2011, I read about empirical evidence linking climate patterns and civil conflict, how racial inequality may be holding back both black scientists and biomedical science in the U.S., and how evolutionary biology links pro-sociality with thriving communities.

A good understanding of multiple scientific disciplines can be an important tool for addressing post growth issues that are sometimes very complex. It also keeps us post growthers on our toes with our own belief systems – for example, despite the common claim that the modern ‘dissolution’ of communities has increased crime rates, a recent article from archaeology science suggested that humanity is far less violent then it used to be.

Magazines like New Scientist can help us better understand why we make the decisions that we do. More importantly, they can provide us with the tools of knowledge that we need to reconfigure the ways in which we live. – Jane Addison

Related posts:

1. What We’re Reading (and Watching!) – November 2011
2. What We’re Reading: June 2011
3. What We’re Reading: July 2011

This is part of an ongoing series highlighting what our members are currently reading in the Post Growth and sustainability realms.

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

A story about a student who reconnects with his dying teacher for one last series of ‘lectures’, Tuesdays with Morrie is a gentle reflection on all that we have within us and all that many of us have sacrificed through the modernisation experience. The wisdom of Morrie (the book’s central character), filtered through the lens of the reflective, young author, Mitch, speaks of the liberation that can stem from revelling in simple pleasures and the joys of the journey. Alluding particularly to the challenges of self-love and emotional connection faced by many men these days, Morrie speaks of not just learning how to give out love but also to learn how to let it come in.

The book also raised for me an important question in our explorations of alternative economic futures: if so much of our current, destructive models is driven from a space of inner-fear, how much more could we come from a space of inner-love if we moved beyond a fear of death?

As I turned the final page of this easy yet insightful read, the words surfaced from one of my own favourite aphorisms on living: “”Dance like nobody’s watching. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Sing like nobody’s listening. Live like it’s heaven on earth”. For in an overly complex world, Tuesdays with Morrie reminds us that we are souls in a physical form; souls understanding that beyond confusing complexity lies profound simplicity. – Donnie Maclurcan

Blossoms of Fire by Maureen Gosling

The first time I watched this was (appropriately) at my mother’s house. The film gives a view into life in the so-called matriarchal society of Juchitan in Oaxaca, Mexico. The people of the film explain their way of seeing the world, and how they live: a society that believes in the unique gifts of each individual, and where the women manage the money. In some ways this is a very traditional ethnographic film, carefully documenting a world view. It is also beautiful and empowering. After watching the film, on a cold March morning with hot chocolate, we were inspired to think about how we could add more color, more festivities, and ‘alternative’ economic arrangements to our own lives. The film could be seen as one vision of living post growth. – Amelia Bryne

The Transition Companion: Making Your Community More Resilient in Uncertain Times by Rob Hopkins

This is the latest from the Transition Network, and it draws on five years experience of developing and running local Transition projects. It was crowd-sourced to draw examples, photos and quotes from around the movement, so it’s full of real-life examples of communities taking action to build resilience in the face of climate change, resource depletion and unstable economics. The limits to growth are taken as given, and Hopkins acknowledges the need for steady state economics. (I even spotted the Post Growth Institute in the footnotes – the first time I’ve seen us referenced in a book, and hopefully not the last!) The Transition Companion is inspiring, positive, and proof that ordinary people can still change the world when they get themselves together. – Jeremy Williams

Related posts:

1. What We’re Reading: June 2011
2. What We’re Reading: July 2011
3. What We’re Reading: September 2011

I was asked weeks ago by some in the Occupy Wall Street movement to make suggestions for how to frame the movement. I have hesitated so far, because I think the movement should be framing itself. It’s a general principle: Unless you frame yourself, others will frame you — the media, your enemies, your competitors, your well-meaning friends. I have so far hesitated to offer suggestions. But the movement appears to maturing and entering a critical time when small framing errors could have large negative consequences. So I thought it might be helpful to accept the invitation and start a discussion of how the movement might think about framing itself.

About framing: It’s normal. Everybody engages in it all the time. Frames are just structures of thought that we use every day. All words in all languages are defined in terms of frame-circuits in the brain. But, ultimately, framing is about ideas, about how we see the world, which determines how we act.

In politics, frames are part of competing moral systems that are used in political discourse and in charting political action. In short, framing is a moral enterprise: it says what the character of a movement is.  All politics is moral. Political figures and movements always make policy recommendations claiming they are the right things to do. No political figure ever says, do what I say because it’s wrong! Or because it doesn’t matter!  Some moral principles or other lie behind every political policy agenda.

Two Moral Framing Systems in Politics

Conservatives have figured out their moral basis and you see it on Wall Street: It includes: The primacy of self-interest. Individual responsibility,  but not social responsibility. Hierarchical authority based on wealth or other forms of power. A moral hierarchy of who is “deserving,” defined by success. And the highest principle is the primacy of this moral system itself, which goes beyond Wall Street and the economy to other arenas: family life, social life, religion, foreign policy, and especially government. Conservative “democracy” is seen as a system of governance and elections that fits this model.

Though OWS concerns go well beyond financial issues,  your target is right:  the application of these principles in Wall Street is central, since that is where the money comes from for elections, for media, and for right-wing policy-making institutions of all sorts on all issues.

The alternative view of democracy is progressive: Democracy starts with citizens caring about one another and acting responsibly on that sense of care, taking responsibility both for oneself and for one’s family, community, country, people in general, and the planet. The role of government is to protect and empower all citizens equally via The Public: public infrastructure, laws and enforcement, health, education, scientific research, protection, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, and on and on. Nobody makes it on their own. If you got wealthy, you depended on The Public, and you have a responsibility to contribute significantly to The Public so that others can benefit in the future. Moreover, the wealthy depend on those who work, and who deserve a fair return for their contribution to our national life. Corporations exist to make life better for most people. Their reason for existing is as public as it is private.

A disproportionate distribution of wealth robs most citizens of access to the resources controlled by the wealthy. Immense wealth is a thief. It takes resources from the rest of the population — the best places to live, the best food, the best educations, the best health facilities, access to the best in nature and culture, the best professionals, and on and on. Resources are limited, and great wealth greatly limits access to resources for most people.

It appears to me that OWS has a progressive moral vision and view of democracy, and that what it is protesting is the disastrous effects that have come from operating with a conservative moral, economic, and political worldview. I see OWS as primarily a moral movement, seeking economic and political changes to carry out that moral movement — whatever those particular changes might be.

A Moral Focus for Occupy Wall Street

I think it is a good thing that the occupation movement is not making specific policy demands. If it did, the movement would become about those demands. If the demands were not met, the movement would be seen as having failed.

It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands. If the moral focus of America changes, new people will be elected and the policies will follow. Without a change of moral focus, the conservative worldview that has brought us to the present disastrous and dangerous moment will continue to prevail.

We Love America. We’re Here to Fix It

I see OWS as a patriotic movement, based on a deep and abiding love of country — a patriotism that it is not just about the self-interests of individuals, but about what the country is and is to be. Do Americans care about other citizens, or mainly just about themselves? That’s what love of America is about. I therefore think it is important to be positive, to be clear about loving America, seeing it in need of fixing, and not just being willing to fix it, but being willing to take to the streets to fix it.  A populist movement starts with the people seeing that they are all in the same boat and being ready to come together to fix the leaks.

Publicize the Public

Tell the truth about The Public, that nobody makes it purely on their own without The Public, that is, without public infrastructure, the justice system, health, education, scientific research, protections of all sorts, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, …  That is a truth to be told day after day. It is an idea that must take hold in public discourse. It must go beyond what I and others have written about it and beyond what Elizabeth Warren has said in her famous video.  The Public is not opposed to The Private. The Public is what makes The Private possible. And it is what makes freedom possible. Wall Street exists only through public support. It has a moral obligation to direct itself to public needs.

All OWS approaches to policy follow from such a moral focus. Here are a handful examples.

Democracy should be about the 99%

Money directs our politics. In a democracy, that must end. We need publicly supported elections, however that is to be arranged.

Strong Wages Make a Strong America

Middle-class wages have not gone up significantly in 30 years, and there is conservative pressure to lower them. But when most people get more money, they spend it and spur the economy, making the economy and the country stronger, as well as making their individual lives better. This truth needs to be central to public economic discourse.

Global Citizenship

America has been a moral beacon to the world. It can function as such only if it sets an example of what a nation should be.

Do we have to spend more on the military that all other nations combined? Do we really need hundreds of military bases abroad?

Nature

We are part of nature. Nature makes us, and all that we love, possible. Yet we are destroying Nature through global warming and other forms of ecological destruction, like fracking and deep-water drilling.

At a global scale, nature is systemic: its effects are neither local nor linear. Global warming is causing the ferocity of the monster storms, tornados, floods, blizzards, heat waves, and fires that have devastated huge areas of our country. The hotter the atmosphere, the more evaporated water and the more energy going into storms, tornados, and blizzards.  Global warming cannot be shown to cause any particular storm, but when a storm system forms, global warming will ramp up the power of the storm and the amount of water it carries.  In winter, evaporated water from the overly heated Pacific will go into the atmosphere, blow northeast over the arctic, and fall as record snows.

We depend on nature – on clean air, water, food, and a livable climate. And we find beauty and grandeur in nature, and a sense of awe that makes life worth living. A love of country requires a love of nature.  And a fair and thriving economy requires the preservation of nature as we have known it.

Summary

OWS is a moral and patriotic movement. It sees Democracy as flowing from citizens caring about one another as well as themselves, and acting with both personal and social responsibility. Democratic governance is about The Public, and the liberty that The Public provides for a thriving Private Sphere. From such a democracy flows fairness, which is incompatible with a hugely disproportionate distribution of wealth. And from the sense of care implicit in such a democracy flows a commitment to the preservation of nature.

From what I have seen of most members of OWS, your individual concerns all flow from one moral focus.

Elections

The Tea Party solidified the power of the conservative worldview via elections. OWS will have no long-term effect unless it too brings its moral focus to the 2012 elections. Insist on supporting candidates that have your overall moral views, no matter what the local issues are.

A Warning

This movement could be destroyed by negativity, by calls for revenge, by chaos, or by having nothing positive to say. Be positive about all things and state the moral basis of all suggestions. Positive and moral in calling for debt relief.  Positive and moral in upholding laws, as they apply to finances. Positive and moral in calling for fairness in acquiring needed revenue. Positive and moral in calling for clean elections. To be effective, your movement must be seen by all of the 99% as positive and moral. To get positive press, you must stress the positive and the moral.

Remember: The Tea Party sees itself as stressing only individual responsibility. The Occupation Movement is stressing both individual and social responsibility.

I believe, and I think you believe, that most Americans care about their fellow citizens as well as themselves. Let’s find out! Shout your moral and patriotic views out loud, regularly. Put them on your signs. Repeat them to the media. Tweet them. And tell everyone you know to do the same.  You have to use your own language with your own framing and you have to repeat it over and over for the ideas to sink in.

Occupy elections: voter registration drives, town hall meetings, talk radio airtime, party organizations, nomination campaigns, election campaigns, and voting booths.

Above all: Frame yourselves before others frame you.

Cross-posted from CommonDreams.org with kind permission

Related posts:

1. Economics of the Story of Stuff
2. Robin Hoodies
3. Million Dollars To A Post Growther

This post is part of an on-going series highlighting what our members are currently reading in the Post Growth and sustainability realms.

The God Species by Mark Lynas

The planet has nine boundaries that should not be crossed, argues Mark Lynas. Some we’re familiar with, like the climate boundary. Others we more or less ignore, such as the nitrogen cycle or ocean acidification. Since humans are in charge of the planet now, it is our God-like responsibility to manage our behaviour to stay within the range of safety. It’s a well researched popularisation of planetary boundaries, although there is much for environmentalists to get upset about along the way. Unfortunately, Lynas is adamant that biological boundaries don’t need to be economic boundaries, and dedicates the final chapter to dismissing the concept of limits to growth. Anyone who’s read anything on post-growth economics will spot the flaws a mile away.  - Jeremy Williams

A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War by Susan Griffin

One of the most beautiful and painful books I have encountered.  It covers so much historical, social, personal, ethical, and geographical ground, it is impossible to summarize.  Griffin does a masterful job of refusing to arbitrarily draw lines around phenomena, choosing instead to highlight the interconnectedness among so many seemingly disparate realities.  The insights in this book are relavent for anyone interested in human change processes – particularly systemic change.  It highlights the complex ways we all uphold the very systems we may oppose, through such ingrained practices as secrecy and denial, among others.  And it pushes through the obvious questions about change in order to bring the reader to some that are more difficult to face. – Janet Newbury

Consulting the Genius of the Place: An Ecological Approach to a New Agriculture by Wes Jackson

The exponential growth of everything – population, energy use, carbon emissions and soil loss – will increasingly challenge our ability to feed ourselves into the future. Jackson presents empirical evidence that our natural systems may be far more efficient at capturing and using water, nutrients and energy than our current agricultural systems. Even if they were not, our agricultural systems have only achieved massive leaps in production due to the unsustainable reliance on fossil fuels, fossil soil carbon and fossil water since the Green Revolution.  Jackson promotes the use of perennial polycultures in agriculture as a way of mimicking the functions of our natural systems. It sometimes appears as if he is promoting an engineering fix to the symptoms of an international growth addiction. Nevertheless, Jackson is well aware of the causes and consequences of ‘exponential everything’ on agriculture, and provides pragmatic suggestions for how we can buy ourselves some time. – Jane Addison

Related posts:

1. What We’re Reading: June 2011
2. What We’re Reading: July 2011
3. What We’re Reading: September 2011

On September 15, 2011, Free Money Day will provide an opportunity for us to re-engage with money, as well as some realistic alternatives to the current dominant economic system.

Perhaps only a generation ago, money was largely understood as the route to freedom, but for me (and it seems for many members of my generation) it feels a lot more like a ball and chain.  In the past 25 years alone, the world has experienced 87 monetary crashes.  While it is important to acknowledge a degree of instability is to be expected within all systems, our current economic system requires more than stability … it requires growth.  This puts us in the difficult position of relying on an unsustainable system for our own sustenance.

Fortunately, alternatives are gaining momentum and – in contrast to the legitimate stress many people experience in relation to money matters – these seem to have the potential to move us in directions of openness, possibility, and real prosperity.

Alternatives are all around us

Ideas about generating complements to existing economic systems have been around since the start of the 20th century; and of course living off the land has been a way of life for most people throughout most of history. But now the globalization of our economic system, coupled with the globalization of communication, has made possible what many see as a worldwide movement in the direction of alternative economies.

‘Economies’ is intentionally pluralized here as few who are part of this movement advocate the development of a singular mega-system; this is a movement of multiplicity.  As in the natural world, decentralized systems and diverse networks are crucial for sustainability.  With diverse, localized, fluid, and creative approaches to prosperity, the likelihood of ‘crashes’ of the scale we are currently experiencing may be significantly reduced – one of the many potential benefits of this kind of major economic transformation.

Perhaps showcasing a few existing initiatives will serve to provide a clearer idea of the alternatives that are being proposed, and – perhaps more importantly – the benefits they can foster. Examples include:

Community Economies

While ‘economies’ are often thought of strictly in terms of financial activity, the Community Economies Collective aims to diversify the notion.  Attending to ‘hidden and alternative’ economic practices such as volunteer work, household labour, food production, and the arts can enrich communities in ways that are sustainable.

Central to this project is the practice of identifying and mobilizing existing community assets in order to strengthen them, rather than focusing economic and development efforts in the area of needs alone.  Whereas capitalist and growth-oriented notions of economic development often strip communities of assets that are not included in their measures, a community economy approach aims to cultivate assets – which exist in all communities – thus contributing to more equitable and sustainable development practices.

Sharing Economies

Instead of all members of a neighbourhood owning their own lawnmower, tools, car, vegetable garden (you get the idea), Janelle Orsi (a sharing lawyer) suggests we could all save money, time, and stress by sharing a lot of these items.  Beyond sharing ‘stuff’, she also advocates sharing jobs, childcare, and rides.  Aside from what it saves us, Orsi – as part of the larger sharing movement – insists doing so can also enrich our lives by building community and facilitating sustainable living.  Her book, ‘The Sharing Solution’, provides recommendations, guidelines, and even templates for agreements and contracts in order to develop sharing arrangements with ease.

Sharing can take place on every level, described as ‘the four degrees of sharing’.  The first degree is something most of us probably do anyway: it is informal sharing like carpooling and having potluck dinners.  It requires cooperation and very little planning.  The second and third degrees gradually increase in both commitment and reliability (including things such as sharing yard space, and community-wide tool-lending libraries), leading to the fourth degree of sharing.  This level of sharing takes place on the level of infrastructure and involves more planning and even restructuring at the community level.  It can include such sharing possibilities as carpool parking lots, city-wide bike-share programs, and community garden plots.

The ultimate outcomes of sharing economies are thriving communities in which the needs of more people are met, with less of a cost to the natural world and less reliance on our current fragile economic system.

Collaborative Consumption

According to Rachel Botsman (co-author of ‘What’s mine is yours: The rise of collaborative consumption’), collaborative consumption is the idea and practice that provides alternatives not only to what we consume, but to how we consume.  It is a movement that aims to connect people in order to reduce the amount of ‘stuff’ we accumulate, and to ensure ‘stuff’ reaches those who could use it – and then pass it on – rather than sitting around unused (thus leveraging under-used items and space).

Collaborative consumption largely involves swapping things without any money changing hands at all, but it can also involve renting.  It is not necessarily about avoiding the money system altogether, but rather about ensuring people can access the things they need or want without having to purchase or own them, which requires a system of mass production.  It can take place on the ground with local clothing swaps, for example, but it also takes place via internet technology.  When people organize, the need for more stuff is drastically reduced as we can each simply know where to go to find someone who doesn’t want (but has) something we want (but don’t have).

Rather than all of us individually punching the clock daily so we can earn money to buy items that have been manufactured to sit in each of our individual homes, collaborative consumptions stretches the lifecycle of products and reduces waste while at the same time reducing the number of hours we need to work and the amount of money we need to earn – giving us more time and energy to do the things that really matter to us.  Collaborative consumption is not about doing without – it is about doing more with what we already have.

JAK Members Bank

This is a member-owned, interest-free banking system based in Skovde, Sweden.  No member can own more than one share, all banking activity takes place outside of the capital market, and loans are financed only by members’ savings.  The result?  A bank that is invulnerable to market turbulence, savings that are not subject to unpredictable interest hikes, and a debt-free economic model.  While this may sound too good to be true, it can perhaps more effectively be argued that our current growth-oriented system is too good to be true.

JAK Members Bank is one example of an institutionalized cooperative approach to economic sustainability.  Others include landshare co-ops, co-operative housing, and consumer cooperatives.  The keys to JAK Members Banking and other institutionalized cooperatives include: democratic non-hierarchical ownership, accessibility, and sustainability.

Free Money Day

This is all really exciting stuff – and real stuff – that’s happening right now!  But how do we get people buzzing about it?  How do we ‘free’ money from the big expectations we have accorded to this construct, and ‘free’ ourselves from its shackles?  How can we remind ourselves that the real value lies in what is exchanged via money (goods, services, time, experiences) – not in the money itself.  With increasing and legitimate overwhelm and despair at the current state of affairs, how do we tap into this energy in order realize there are alternatives?  How do we start the very conversations that get initiatives like these off the ground and into our communities?

Free Money Day has precisely this intention. On September 15th in various locations worldwide, people will be giving out money to strangers – two coins at a time – and asking people to pass one of them on to someone else.  The idea is simple: experience the freedom of letting money go, both literally and figuratively.  The ultimate aim is to inspire the kind of dialogue that leads to the types of exciting economic alternatives highlighted above.  By recognizing the limits of a growth-oriented economy and the possibilities that come with post-growth economies, we can perhaps all become mobilized to connect with existing alternatives, or even instigate some of our own.

To find out more about Free Money Day, please visit www.freemoneyday.org.  You can subscribe to receive updates, read more about the event, find out where there will be one close to you so you can participate, or sign up to host one in your community.

Related posts:

1. Four Degrees of Sharing
2. Occupy Eyewitness – London
3. Sharing is Caring

This post is part of an on-going series highlighting what our members are currently reading in the Post Growth and sustainability realms.

The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life, and Build Community  by Janelle Orsi and Emily Doskow

This is an easy-to-follow guide for easy-to-implement possibilities.  The premise is positive and very simple: Finding ways to incorporate sharing into our lives in informal and formal ways can connect us with others, save us money, and help us live more sustainably.  The authors, who are both attorneys, have written the book as a very clear how-to guide including worksheets, agreements, questionnaires, and other practical tools.  It has dedicated sections on sharing things such as housing, tasks, food, child- and -pet-care, and transportation.  With such concrete recommendations, it is a refreshing read within a school of thought that is often heavily weighted with critique. – Janet Newbury

Anthill by E O Wilson

The great biologist turns his hand to fiction, and it transpires that there’s a growth angle here, albeit a very subtle one. It’s a story about an Alabama childhood, but also a parable about human development versus the natural world, and it contrasts our own species’ infinite growth project with the ebbs and flows that occur in the natural world. With ants (Wilson is an ant expert, and a whole section of the book is gleefully told from the perspective of an anthill), exponential growth is a genetic anomaly that leads to the destruction of the colony. We might want to learn from this, Wilson gently and indirectly hints in his winsome novel.  - Jeremy Williams

The Bridge at the End of the World  by James G. Speth

This is one of the most useful post growth books I’ve read as it paints a particularly clear relationship between the economy and the environment. Written by James G. Speth, an environmental lawyer, Professor at the Vermont Law School, and former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the text compiles evidence, showing how as economic growth continues, the environment suffers. The book’s straightforward graphs showing this relationship – exponential economic growth = exponential environmental destruction and pollution – are perhaps one of its most powerful features. As one reviewer comments, Speth’s book shows that if we “if we do not learn to consume less, we will consume the biosphere itself in our binge.” That is, concern about how human actions are impacting the environment isn’t an idealistic past time, but rather an issue in need of critical attention and significant action – if we want to maintain livable conditions on the planet. – Amelia Bryne

Related posts:

1. What We’re Reading: June 2011
2. What We’re Reading: July 2011
3. What We’re Reading: October 2011

This post is part of an on-going series highlighting what our members are currently reading in the Post Growth and sustainability realms.

Slowcoast.ca is the only blog I follow religiously; I have been doing so for a couple of years now, and it just keeps getting better. Written by another Powell River, Canada local, the flavour and content of the posts always varies. He posts roughly once a week, but less in the busy food producing season it seems.  A consistent thread is the notion of civic responsibility—and it’s interesting to learn how this sense of responsibility manifests in the form of concrete actions and deep philosophical musings for one very engaged citizen. It encourages me to think critically about my own life and to consider new possibilities. — Janet Newbury

 I’ve been getting a lot of value from Shareable.net, a website which offers stories, anecdotes, and lessons about how a sharing culture can contribute to well being. Practical ideas for car, house, and tool-sharing, as well as growing and enjoying food—all of these collaborative approaches to shared living can make life easier and more affordable, while saving time and reducing the demand for resources. Shareable.net shows people how this is happening right now, using practical examples from communities everywhere. — Sharon Ede

Wendell Berry would probably disapprove of the fact that my first contact with him was when a friend whipped out his iPhone to play me a recording of one of his speeches. Berry is chiefly a writer, but his enjoyment of the physicality of the written word leads him to orate, as well as famously continue the practice of writing by hand. His reasons for such “Luddite” behaviour are outlined in his book of essays, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry. Berry grew up in a farming community in the U.S. state of Kentucky, left as an adult, and then returned. Like many people who have grown up “on the land,” Berry has spent a lot of time thinking about the value of place-based community.

The Art of the Commonplace

In The Art of the Commonplace he draws heavily on the local stories of his community to create a narrative that is globally applicable. He crosses constantly between the public and private, secular and sacred, redefining them as he goes.

Berry provides new insights into the intersection of gender and race relations, market economics, community, agriculture, and environment: Why do we celebrate the “liberation” of women from domestic drudgery when their alternative is to join men in a workforce full of bosses? What is desirable about an “equal” marriage of two careerists merely sharing the same bed and consumption pattern—rather than shared and productive work in a home economy? Why don’t we see that our weak and obese bodies and the loss of our agricultural topsoil are linked? What knowledge do we lose when we build roads that seek merely to move individuals from one economic centre to another at the quickest speed, rather than recognising, and responding to, the narratives of the land in which we pass? What is the “progress” we seek, and what do we lose to obtain it?

By weaving together seemingly disparate themes, Berry reminds us that this disparity is a cultural construct—and a relatively new one at that. We treat compartmentalised disorders at our peril, he suggests. To truly “progress” we need to see these disorders as symptoms caused by a culture of extractiveness that affects everything from the way a man and woman relate to our very ability to feed ourselves. — Jane Addison

Related posts:

1. What We’re Reading: June 2011
2. What We’re Reading: September 2011
3. What We’re Reading: October 2011

This post is the first in an on-going series we will be doing at Post Growth highlighting what our members are currently reading in the Post Growth and sustainability realms.

Smart Growth, by Jon Reeds, is a book about urban sprawl, and the future of unsustainable suburbs. Reeds has written a passionate and sometimes angry history of the suburbs, and how low-density, car dependent development became the standard. More importantly, he explores the Smart Growth movement and how it is re-imagining cities for a new century. This book is a must-read for planners, and an interesting introduction to the interplay between land use and growth.

Also check out Fred Pearce’s Peoplequake: the world is undergoing a massive demographic transition, says Pearce, and it begins with a baby boom, moves into a youth bulge, and ends with an aging population. Different countries are at different points, and each has its own challenges. Pearce overplays the population crash a little, but this broad perspective is a great contribution to the debate, and it is likely to provoke population optimists and pessimists equally.

— Jeremy Williams

If you don’t do much else, it’s possible to blow through John D’Agata’s About a Mountain in a weekend. The book, or book-length essay, winds three stories around each other: the story of Las Vegas, maybe the most undeservedly optimistic city in America; the story of Yucca Mountain, the proposed burial ground for American nuclear waste; and the story of a teenager’s suicide leap from a Vegas hotel. Can Yucca keep radioactivity buried for 10,000 years? Probably not—but it seems that we’re going to try anyway. In all of this, and in different ways, the forever-inscrutable notion of suicide reverberates.

— Scott Gast

I first read The Subsistence Perspective, by Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen and Maria Mies, as a university student studying globalization. At the time, I was both excited and disturbed by some of the questions it raises: What do we consider success to be, and why? Why is farming considered “dirty” and “unpleasant” or incompatible with intellectual work? How has society changed in the West since World War II in terms of our relationship to the land? Not for the faint-hearted, its language is sometimes dense with theory—but it is also interspersed with stories and interview excerpts spanning both the Global North and South. This big-ideas book asks its readers to consider core assumptions about the ways we live and what we value.

—Amelia Bryne

Related posts:

1. What We’re Reading: September 2011
2. What We’re Reading: July 2011
3. What We’re Reading: October 2011

In a two short weeks Town Hall Seattle will be hosting Paul Gilding, author of The Great Disruption. Paul will be discussing the now unavoidable consequences of climate change and the challenges humanity will face. But in the face of such great challenges Paul envisions it will bring out the best of us: compassion, innovation, resilience and adaptability.

Paul will be in Seattle giving a talk about his new book and I will be introducing him as the Washington State Chapter Director of CASSE. The event will be at 7:30pm on Friday, May 6th at Town Hall Seattle. I hope you can make it!

Here’s a short description of his work:

“It’s time to stop just worrying about climate change, says Paul Gilding. We need instead to brace for impact because global crisis is no longer avoidable. This Great Disruption started in 2008, with spiking food and oil prices and dramatic ecological changes, such as the melting ice caps. It is not simply about fossil fuels and carbon footprints. We have come to the end of Economic Growth, Version 1.0, a world economy based on consumption and waste, where we lived beyond the means of our planet’s ecosystems and resources.

“The Great Disruption offers a stark and unflinching look at the challenge humanity faces-yet also a deeply optimistic message. The coming decades will see loss, suffering, and conflict as our planetary overdraft is paid; however, they will also bring out the best humanity can offer: compassion, innovation, resilience, and adaptability. Gilding tells us how to fight-and win-what he calls The One Degree War to prevent catastrophic warming of the earth, and how to start today.

“The crisis represents a rare chance to replace our addiction to growth with an ethic of sustainability, and it’s already happening. It’s also an unmatched business opportunity: Old industries will collapse while new companies will literally reshape our economy. In the aftermath of the Great Disruption, we will measure “growth” in a new way. It will mean not quantity of stuff but quality and happiness of life. Yes, there is life after shopping.”

Get your tickets here and check out Paul’s site for more locations on his tour.

Related posts:

1. Book Review: Not For Profit by Martha C. Nussbaum
2. Post Growth Reading List
3. Tim Jackson: Prosperity Without Growth