What I'm thinking about, and planning on writing (and podcasting) about soon:
Joyless Responsibility: I've
written recently about the importance of each of us accepting personal
responsibility for our actions, for our inactions, and for knowing
their consequences. It is natural to accept responsibility, because in
nature it is almost always joyful. It entails raising offspring,
together, as community, and looking out for each other. It entails
taking only what we need and knowing that by living simply we are
preserving and sustaining a rich diversity of life that reciprocates
our taking responsibility, and provides for us, so that our lives can
continue to be joyful, astonishing, easy. But sometimes we have to take
responsibility that is joyless, a burden, a thankless chore. For a few
weeks each year when the fledglings are young, the adult birds in our
yard look disheveled, exhausted. They know, I suppose, that it will
pass, so they labour on, but they look tragic, unnatural. For many
humans, too, responsibility is thrust on us unasked, even unfairly, and
in our modern fractured nuclear society it is rarely shared. How do we
cope when this happens to us? And what is our responsibility before
that time, when we know billions of others are living lives of endless,
lonely, joyless responsibility?
Need Less:
The essence of radical simplicity, of the gift/generosity economy, of
natural community, and of natural entrepreneurship, I think, is needing
less. Needing less makes us, as individuals, members of enterprises,
communities and societies, more self-sufficient, and more resilient,
and allows us to give more with the 'excess' time, energy and money
that we have by virtue of needing less. Meanwhile, the industrial
economy is utterly dependent on consumers needing (or thinking they
need) more and more. Without ever-increasing need there can be no
growth, and without continuous growth, the industrial economy
collapses. By contrast, the natural economy is sustainable indefinitely
requiring only generosity, resilience and innovation.
Vignettes: Coming up soon, vignette #5.
Blog-Hosted Conversations:
Delayed a couple of weeks due to technical problems with Skype and with
Pamela, the software I was using to record the conversations. So
starting next week, this blog will feature
30-minute conversations, initially on the subject of "What is your
model of a better way to live, and what capacities do we need to
develop or re-learn to live that way?"
Open Thread Question:
What's your single favourite work of art, and why? |
3:07:11 PM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
