The title of this essay comes from a heartbreaking three-minute film made by a teenage girl, Liv McNeil. Simply yet precisely crafted, it documents the withering of a teenager’s life in the time of Covid lockdown. The camera lingers over photographs of her having fun with her friends. Then onto her computer screen, her assignments, […]
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Numb
Living in the Gift
Why does the sun shine? A random result of coalescing gases igniting nuclear fusion? Or is it in order to give its light and warmth to Life? Why does the rain fall? Is it the senseless product of blind chemical processes of evaporation and condensation? Or is it to water life? Why do you seek […]
A Shift in Values Everywhere
I’ve been seeing news articles a lot recently about parents being arrested and their children removed from their custody because they let them play unsupervised outdoors. I’m linking to one here. The first thing I felt upon reading it was intense indignation, and alienation from a society in which such a thing is remotely conceivable. […]
Raising My Children in Trust
One of the places I spoke at on my recent trip was Lebensgarten, an ecovillage in Steyersberg, Germany. This is one of the earliest centers of the modern permaculture movement, but what impressed me the most was the children I saw playing, unsupervised, outside. I suppose this shouldn’t be that impressive — after all, in […]
Development in the Ecological Age
Implicit in the developed/developing distinction is the assumption that the course of social and economic evolution exemplified by the developed countries is normal, inevitable and generally desirable. If I am developed and you are developing, that means that your destiny is to be like me. Today, some key flaws in the narrative of development are become obvious.
Pyramid Schemes and the Monetization of Everything
It is time, past time, to adopt a new mythology and a different model of giving and receiving.