It can be as simple as neighbours gathering for singing and games, rather than being on their own watching telly. Grassroots Planning: This action is also ecolibertarian, as it involves local solutions and community independence over global influences. A freedom-loving response to collapse arises from recognising that it is not innate human badness that caused the destruction, but the manipulations and appropriations of economic and political systems.

Again, each of these actions can be seen as embodying ecolibertarian principles, though how they represent them can vary depending on context and implementation. Nearly 160 years ago William Stanley Jevons explained that efficiencies likely increase demand for resources, not reduce them. Published by Good Works, an imprint of The Schumacher Institute, the paperback and epub will be available in June 2023. At this juncture, with the need for solutions / preparation paramount, we need to make sure that we don’t miss talent and good ideas by ignoring marginalised voices.Krishnamurti is often quoted as saying that “it is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

Second, when we recognise that trajectory, it’s possible for our previous preoccupations to break down, so we get to choose to live more consciously and creatively. Fifty years after the publication of EF Schumacher’s ecological masterpiece, Small is Beautiful, I am honoured that my book is being published by Good Works (named after another of his books), which is an imprint of the Schumacher Institute. Capitalists aren’t challenged by wokeness, and have incorporated it into their advertising – but I think wokeness is something that has been absorbed into the culture and into people irreversibly, especially young people, in ways that have moved us forward, and made a move to the commons more likely (we all have to work together in communities to make it happen, after all – all of us). No doubt some will argue with his assessment of the severity of some problems, or argue that we have time or the capacity to turn some of these things around.Perhaps a collapse of our modern day society will be a good thing as it presents us with a real opportunity to develop a fairer , freer society in which we take back our inalienable rights and power. The list I was providing from ‘Breaking Together’ that detailed pathways to attaining critical wisdom didn’t include a fifth point as such. There so often is much to be found and learned when we expand into interrelated networks of existing knowledge: a plurality of framings to the problem and available responses. He asked about fatalism and agency, practical and political action, and what eco-libertarianism involves.

This might mean taking an online course, reading books on cognitive sciences, or engaging in debates. Speaking about the ecological wisdom of her Native American culture, Lyla June told me that “we weren’t just born this cool.

The result is Breaking Together, a powerful statement of where we are at and where our world is going. However, this raises perhaps the biggest question of all: How do we dismantle these power structures and encourage a shift towards more cooperative, equitable relationships?

Queer black feminists (particularly) have been talking about civilisational collapse due to biosphere destruction, climate change and an expansionist money system? And it teaches us it is hard to explain precisely why because collapse is always the result of multiple interacting factors. This book is part of a healing movement that extends beyond what we normally think of as ecological. They are unscientific because they ignore how complex human societies existed for tens of thousands of years without destroying their environments.Encouraging ‘Being the Change’: Individuals can embody the change they wish to see, thus liberating people from oppressive modern systems. That’s not because that would make it more like my own voice (easy, tiger), but because I don’t like coders tricking people into thinking they are interacting with anything other than a computer programme. My view is that such ideas are propagated by tech companies to distract from their own responsibilities for the code they release into the world. This event was partly set up as the launch of Jem’s new book, Breaking Together: you can see my blog review of it here.