Happiness
Living Connected to Place and Why It Matters Now
Over time, I’ve come to realize that downturns in my mood are often related to feeling disconnected. Maybe I’ve been working hard and not paying as much attention to my family or not seeing friends. I may be talking with others on Zoom, but it’s not the same felt sense of connection as being together…
Read MoreNurturing A Living Future
In the autumn of 2024 I spent most of a week with a set of remarkable women in Devon, England. Organized by Local Futures leader, Helena Norberg-Hodge (with assistance), our interdisciplinary group spent a day planning and then gave a daylong workshop and evening session to about 100, mostly women, participants. The focus was on…
Read MoreHope is a Muscle: What Keeps Us Going, Year After Year
2025 marks fifty years since Local Futures’ story started high on the Tibetan Plateau, inspired by the traditional culture of Ladakh and what it could teach a globalizing world. Over those fifty years, much has changed in the world – and much for the worse. Cultures, languages, species and ecosystems have been lost. Political moments…
Read MoreEmbracing Sub-Optimal Relationships
By many measures, it would seem that we are not okay, and, more specifically, that the kids are not, in fact, alright.(1) These measures include rates of isolation, loneliness, unhappiness, self-harm, burnout, anxiety, depression, etc. I am not a social scientist, but, as best as I can judge, the findings are well-attested, and they are…
Read MoreThe Caravan of Hope: Uncovering a Localising Japan
To many, Japan is a poster child of globalisation. With its commercial boom and bustling megacities, it’s a vision in neon, characterised by high technology, consumerism, and ruthless capitalist competition. But fissures in the country’s modernising dream run deep: rising poverty, environmental decline, food insecurity, and, infamously, an epidemic of youth suicide and depression that…
Read MoreFrom ‘Progress’ to an Economics of Happiness
If there’s one thing I’d love world leaders to think about in connection with the UN’s International Day of Happiness, it’s that their measure of progress actually goes up with unhappiness and unrest. GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, which is still used as the principal indicator for development and progress, simply measures the exchange of…
Read MoreHumility and the myth of limitlessness
I might be wrong about this, but it seems that over the last couple of years more and more people have been working their way to the conclusion that modern society is fundamentally broken – not just broken in a way that can be fixed with a little tinkering here and there, but somehow broken…
Read MoreArt as Activism: an interview with Brenna Quinlan
Brenna Quinlan’s passions are art, sustainability and education, and she combines these three into what she calls ‘Art as Activism’. Having lived and worked on permaculture sites around the world, her drawings convey the power of permaculture and localization principles, and act as powerful tools for environmental and social justice movements. She created the illustrations…
Read More6 Reasons People of Color Should Grow Their Own Food
In November 2007, my husband and I decided to leave our jobs in biotech, sell our Southern California suburban house, and buy an organic farm. Although we knew what we wanted to do, we had no clue where we would do it. The only thing we knew for certain is that it would have to…
Read MoreWorld Localization Day is back!
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…
Read More