The consumer paradigm has succeeded as well as it has because it offered us all the potential to live like kings with everything we want and a life free of want and fear from starvation and hard work as well as reliance on other people. We pay for services rendered Read more…
“If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve the people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only ONE thing: you can better yourself” Leo Tolstoy. I Read more…
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come…” Victor Hugo We have just come through the Christmas Holiday, where in countries where Christianity is a primary religion, we at least, for one day a year espouse, “peace on Earth and good will to all people.” We have Read more…
I have spoken of the desperate need to rethink and change our global economic systems (see previous post The world Economy – are we really doing better? Measurement is everything!). Bhutan has metrics in place since 1998 to measure Gross National Happiness (GNH) using over 9 major metrics instead of Read more…
If we see everybody as ‘same to me’ or ‘other than me’ we find that this creates either compassion or fear respectively. What separates communities that work and have resilience is that they bond together for the benefit of the whole. Community expert Mark Nepo uses the analogy of Aspen Read more…
I previously outlined how different types of business paradigms are setting out to change how we do business (See (previous post Businesses making a difference). Much of this post is from my Sustainable Living Text but I will introduce it here in this blog. Since business is so much a Read more…
Human power comes from every human being on the planet. The reason that the ultra elite-hierarchy or Cabal have such power is that we collectively give them our power. We can happily exist without this super hierarchy – we don’t need them. They make us believe that we do, but Read more…
We are at a crucial juncture in human existence. Besides the need to grow spiritually (and for those that haven’t read my earlier posts on this, I emphasize that this does not automatically include religion, which itself is a control system) we need to regain control of our own society. Read more…
The last five posts were a story of how we globally came to be bamboozled by American Hyper-Consumerism. The problem is not so much consumerism as the economic drive that forced a tragic and mindless lifestyle onto people with the hollow promise of a wonderful life but gave instead loss Read more…
In my Sustainable Living (SL) Text, I overview a few locations where the people are living in a new way of cooperative and localized living. It is really about rebuilding community, and that’s what ‘Intentional Communities’ are all about – living with cooperative intention instead of just living with people Read more…
Whenever I talk about the farming system, many people disempower themselves with disclaimers like “I can’t afford healthy food” or “It’s hard to find healthy food.” Talk about an external Locus of Control (see prior post – How people think about the future 1). This seems true of most situations, Read more…
Before I get back to sustainable food systems, a post on how we enclosed water. It’s not as though it falls from the sky. (I think I hear lots of groans 😊.) Looking at the Earth from space we see a shining blue planet with vast ice fields and major Read more…
Over the years, during lectures and many talks I have given, one question that always comes up is could we actually make the transition to sustainability or is it just a pipe-dream. Obviously the question usually comes from people who think a sustainable future is some half-life of a harsh Read more…
In the developed countries, when you have enough monetary wealth to live comfortably, being in the rut is not such an imposition. It might still have problems, but you can afford to suffer through them – or as often happens, you can afford prescription or even non-prescription medications to blunt Read more…
I was clearing out boxes of books I had brought back home from my academic office after I retired and came across ‘The Mis-measure of Man’ by Stephen Jay Gould. In this book Gould lays out the rationale and justification for how scientists used ‘good’ science to ‘prove’ that intellect Read more…
“Change never comes from the powerful and proud [the hierarchy] – they have too much to lose and too little to gain. Change always comes from the common and humble – we have little to lose and much to gain. John Ikerd” If we are to transform the way we live, Read more…
What makes the Leaver worldview unique is that it is completely community oriented. Our current westernized culture thrives on competition, individualism, and reliance on authority to solve problems. I need to be careful here – I am NOT condoning some Ayn Rand way of looking at the world, that is Read more…
Our culture has all these people throughout history whom we revere for their creativity and inventiveness. The names Gutenberg, Tesla, Edison, Carver, and Bell, are but a few who made great technological changes for society. While today we might use names like Zuckerberg or Musk to show how creativity is Read more…
Many years ago, I attended a weekly, evening, continuing education course about Creative Writing. The instructor as you might guess focused on creativity and its expression. During one class discussion we had to think of a subject on which to write about things to do at a Caribbean resort. There Read more…
Jared Diamond writes in his book The World until Yesterday about how indigenous peoples lived for most of human existence in tribal societies. He doesn’t paint a utopia, yet explains why the tribal system worked overall. Relatively recently in human history we moved from hunter-gatherer tribal systems into farming communities Read more…
It is estimated that 90% of people intensely dislike the working week, which is a product of efficiency for the industrial revolution and machine system of living. So, 10% of people have a living that is ideal for them. They could work 15 hours a day and still love what Read more…
If we are to move towards a sustainable world, we most certainly will have to find ways to live more harmoniously with each other. We will not have to become saints to live together, but we will have to find respect for all our differences, and compassion will have to Read more…
Business, just like money, is a tool that can be helpful or otherwise. The reason it holds so much power over us is because it gives us luxuries and comforts that most of us find desirable. The level to which these desires have become addictive, however, is a product of Read more…
I have just returned from Ouray, Colorado, as spectacular a mountain setting as can be found in many places around the world. The men of European descent who first came here in the late 1800s didn’t come to appreciate the mountains. To them the mountains were just a resource to Read more…
I’m busy ice-climbing this week enjoying the beauty of the mountains of Colorado! More regular posts once I get back from playing. I live comfortably in a house much to big for my needs, although it is one of the more modest ones in my neighborhood subject to Home Owners Read more…
At this point I may have some divergence from many of my colleagues on what constitutes education for a sustainable world. We train teachers to set up specific curricula with specific goals and objectives – lesson plans. While I don’t disagree with this, I did it myself for many years, Read more…
Is there a model system we can explore that can show us how a Steady State System works successfully over long periods of time? Yes, and it is called the Natural world. The currency of this system is energy and it can show us a lot about how economies ought Read more…
“Remember, everything is right until it’s wrong. You’ll know when it’s wrong” Ernest Hemingway. In the film ‘The Matrix’ The hero Neo takes the red pill and awakens from his illusion of the consumer lifestyle to find himself in a dystopian ruined world run by artificial intelligence. He is the Read more…
I have briefly stated it in previous posts, and I have a whole chapter in my SL text about Happiness. In economic posts I mention that what we really value and want is not what we measure. In a class I had a colleague snigger when I told the class Read more…
As I have been trying to emphasize, healthy food makes healthy humans. Michael Pollan says that when you walk into a modern store, you should avoid the center isles that carry all the processed and dangerous crap (I use that C-word purposefully) and head to the fringes of the store Read more…