The Economics of Happiness
We regularly release new blog posts by diverse voices from around the world on topics such as climate change, technology, local food, indigenous knowledge, and more. Many of our blogs have been translated into other languages, which you can find on our Translated Resources page.
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I recently visited a spiritual community in Brazil called Source Temple. Drawing primarily on the teachings of Adi Da and A Course in Miracles, it comprises about thirty people from about ten countries, mostly Brazil and South America, ranging in age from 20-something to 60-something. I will neither endorse nor criticize the spiritual teachings and lineage; they serve their purpose to inspire the community and anchor it in non-ordinary thinking, perceiving, and relating. The first thing to make a deep […]
If Bill Gates has his way, the food in our future will little resemble what’s on our plates today. Gates and his agribusiness industry partners are proposing to transform our food and how it is produced. To the techno-food industrialists, hunger and climate change are problems to be solved with data and engineering. The core ingredients of their revolutionary plan: genetic engineering – and patenting – of everything from seeds and food animals, to microbes in the soil, to the […]
A few years ago, when I began questioning what it really takes to write and publish in our digital era, I wondered about electricity’s true costs. I learned that on average, in order to light, heat and cool our homes; to refrigerate and cook food; wash and dry laundry; keep hot water available; send emails, talk on phones, watch tv and videos, write on computers and publish and read posts online, US households use 1,000 kiloWatt hours (kWh) of energy […]
“Regenerative Futures” The phrase had been rolling around my head for a while. I felt that it pretty neatly summed up the direction I wanted to be heading with my work and life. ‘Regenerative’ – I reasoned – is the next stage after sustainability: Degeneration –> Sustainability –> Regeneration And ‘futures’ is, well, the future. Or multiple futures, since there is no predetermined future. I was reading and writing quite a bit about regeneration and so, like a good little […]
June 20th 2021 marks the return of the international WLD campaign, which aims to galvanize the worldwide localization movement into a force for systemic change. This movement is made up of myriad initiatives and groups on every continent working to rebuild community fabric, reduce ecological impact and increase human wellbeing, by bringing the economy back to the local level. Think farmers’ markets, permaculture, community gardens, small-business alliances, micro-grids, alternative education projects, and much more. Over the last few decades, the […]
Peasant movements in Asia marked March 29 as the Day of the Landless. The day pays tribute to the founding of the Asia Peasant Coalition (APC). About 15-million strong, the APC was established in 2003 by more than 20 organizations from 11 countries representing farmers, landless peasants, fishers, agricultural workers, Dalits, indigenous peoples, herders and pastoralists, and rural women and youth. This year, the annual commemoration by peasant groups and advocates took cognizance of the upcoming Food Systems Summit (FSS) […]
“There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.” — Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage The relationship between technology and narrative is long-standing. Indeed, some have argued that it is at the heart of human civilization. It was once fashionable to characterize human beings as tool-using animals (although this turns out not to be the best way of getting at whatever might be distinctly human). It has also been suggested […]
The documentary Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh (John Page, Chris Breemen, Helena Norberg-Hodge & Eric Walton, 1993) provides an excellent introduction to the local, human scale traditions in Ladakh, and how local communities have been affected by the industrialised notion of “progress”. The observation that consumer culture as portrayed in advertisements and Western media appeals primarily to insecure teenagers is apt. I am tempted to qualify the observation from my autistic perspective: consumer culture is designed to target neuronormative teenagers, […]
Corporations are, without a doubt, the number one obstacle to meaningful action on the climate crisis. These almighty actors have spent the past two decades undermining scientific consensus, blocking meaningful legislation and greenwashing their own responsibility. Even the last ditch Paris Agreement, with its lame voluntary commitment to keep the world to a still disastrous 1.5 degrees of warming, has done nothing to stop corporate greed from taking the planet to the brink. Since the signing of the Paris Agreement […]
