Nature
Is a Mass Revolt Against Technocracy Starting to Happen?
Ted Gioia has a popular Substack called “The Honest Broker.” Although, as an author, his books tend to focus on music and popular culture, he writes eloquently about a wide range of topics and offers insightful commentary about the global forced march toward technocratic lifestyle and governance that we’re now immersed in. In one posting,…
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 MoreIf All Life Mattered, What Would Decision-Making Look Like?
In April 2013, the Supreme Court of India delivered a historic judgement recognizing the cultural, religious and spiritual rights of the Dongria Kondh Adivasis, an Indigenous community residing in the Niyamgiri Hills of Odisha state in eastern India. The community fighting against bauxite mining in their sacred landscape had articulated that “our way of life…
Read MoreIt’s Not the End, We Have Several Possible Futures: Interview with indigenous author Ailton Krenak
For decades, scientists have been warning that the world is heading toward catastrophic scenarios due to climate change. But Ailton Krenak refuses to think about an apocalypse. On the contrary, he argues that there are several possible futures — but they will only be achievable when we realize that “being is more important than having.”…
Read MoreCelebrating the Life of Stephan Harding, Gaian Scientist and Friend of Local Futures, 1953-2024
The much-loved and respected Gaian scientist and Head of Holistic Science at Schumacher College, Stephan Harding, passed away on September 2nd at the age of 71. Stephan was a cherished friend and a close collaborator over three decades. I met Stephan when I was teaching at Schumacher College just after it opened in 1990. We…
Read MoreListening to the Forest
To start with a few words about myself, I am a conservationist serving the rainforests of the Western Ghats in India. It has been my lifelong inquiry to look at how a biome can recover from assault – from colonial-neocolonial-capitalistic-civilizational assault. I know, and the biome knows, that it can heal from most travesties and…
Read MoreThe Gospel of Progress
Ever since the archaic divergence of humanity from other hominids, our systems of tools and symbols have developed at an accelerating pace. We depend less and less on the physical capacities of our bodies. We operate more and more in the realm of information: data, words, numbers, and bits. Quite naturally then, we have conceived…
Read MoreThe dirty truth about clean energy
Everyone knows what needs to be done to bring down CO2 levels; pump less of it into the atmosphere. But instead of reducing overall energy consumption, the focus is on increasing ‘green’ energy consumption: electric vehicles, massive electric storage installations, solar ‘farms’ and monster wind turbines. More consumption to cure the cancer of overconsumption. Ah,…
Read MorePandemic Blues
The Covid-19 pandemic, lethal as it is, is instrumental to capital’s assault on the living world. Looming through the terrors unleashed by free-flying strands of DNA are gargantuan infrastructural projects, including medical, green and digital. These are intent on destroying the web of life. Out of this extermination project, will spew more illnesses, disorders, infections,…
Read MoreAttending to the world
“Attention discourse” is my term for the proliferation of articles, essays, books, and op-eds about attention and distraction in the age of digital media. I don’t mean the label pejoratively. I’ve made my own contributions to the genre, in my newsletter and elsewhere, and as recently as May of last year. In fact, I tend…
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