Our friend Rajani Kanth, a strong critic of eurocentrism, has published a call for a new kind of education and schooling, which we are republishing here: The Campus of the Living Arts: A concept for our times By Professor Rajani Kanth , Harvard University A General Call for Participation February , 2015 Please read the… Continue reading
Date archives "February 2015"
Emergent versus imposed design
By Vera Bradova. Original post here. We make the path by walking. – Spanish proverb Some decades back, the communist planners in a central European town built several of their cheap high-rise apartment warrens. As usual, the landscaping was slow in coming. The grounds between the buildings grew muddy, people complained. Someone threw grass seed… Continue reading
The Seven Translations of “Think Like a Commoner”
It’s been a year since the publication of Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons. I’m pleased to report that not only have domestic US sales gone well, but there will be seven foreign translations by the end of 2015. There is already a French translation, La Renaissance des… Continue reading
Share the World’s Resources, a conversation with Rajesh Makwana
Reposted from our Commons Transition website, here’s an interview with Rajesh Makwana, executive director of Share The World’s Resources, (or STWR). STWR is a London-based civil society organisation campaigning for a fairer sharing of wealth, power and resources within and between nations. The interview is part of a series on Commoners in Transition. Can you define Commons… Continue reading
Documentary: 22 days to make history in Greece
“Dragasakis’s (vice-president of the Syriza government) at the end of his speech in the parliament, explicitly referred to new bottom-up, Commons-based productive models as a model for the future development of Greece and Southern Europe” “Greece, the end of austerity“, is an independent documentary on the electoral campaign of Syriza in Greece, by Theopi Skarlatos… Continue reading
Schumacher College Course – Towards a Commons-Based Political Economy: Rethinking State, Market and Civil Society
Course dates: Monday, 20 April, 2015 to Friday, 24 April, 2015 – https://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/courses/short-courses/towards-a-commons-based-political-economy Michel Bauwens, John Restakis and Kevin Flanagan The history of political and economic organization within capitalism has been the recurring fight over the balance of power between the state and the market, which has ended in a radical subordination of the state… Continue reading
As Night Closes In
By John Michael Greer. Original post here. I was saddened to learn a few days ago, via a phone call from a fellow author, that William R. Catton Jr. died early last month, just short of his 89th birthday. Some of my readers will have no idea who he was; others may dimly recall that… Continue reading
Fureai Kippu social credit for Elderly Care
Oxfam’s latest bombshell on how unequally the world’s wealth is shared
Twitter feeds and newspaper headlines were again dominated this morning by new statistics on growing wealth inequality, as released by Oxfam ahead of this week’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. It is now customary for Oxfam to publish new research on how severe the gap between the 1% and the 99% is growing,… Continue reading
Introducing the logic of a transition towards the commons
This is a recorded conversation about our new e-book on the Commons Transition, posted at commonstransition.org . The interview program is by Mass Mosaic and the interviewers say it shows “how the FLOK Project (Free/Libre Open Knowledge) in Ecuador began a shift towards embracing “good living” through a commons. The policy that results has far… Continue reading
The Lost Right of Gleaning
Amazingly, it is sometimes a criminal act to retrieve food that has been thrown away. Often it is simply seen as culturally inappropriate or embarrassing. But when an estimated $165 billion worth of food gets thrown away in the U.S. every year, surely it’s time to change our attitudes about food waste. That was the… Continue reading
How the UK government attempts to derail the community energy revolution
First, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) changed the rules under which energy co-operatives could be established. As a result of the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act passed into law last year, the model that has proved so successful in Germany has been deemed ineligible here. The FCA has been rejecting attempts to establish new… Continue reading
Deeyah Khan: Solidarity doesn’t cost anything
Born in Norway to immigrant parents from Afghanistan and Pakistan, director and producer Deeyah Khan won an Emmy and the Peabody award for her documentary “Banaz: A Love Story” on the horror of honour killings within immigrant communities in Europe. Working at the intersection of art and activism, the multidisciplinary artist has also created… Continue reading
The youth factor in Greece and in Syriza’s victory
Excerpted from Paul Mason: “The youth are usurped when oligarchy, corruption and elite politics stifle meritocracy. The sudden emergence of small centrist parties led by charismatic young professionals in Greece is testimony that this generation has had enough. But by the time they got their act together, Tsipras was already there. From outside, Greece looks… Continue reading
Merging 3D Printing and the Circular Economy
Plan C in Belgium is launching a design challenge to further explore how 3D printing overlaps with circular economy. A first response from Eric Hunting: “I think the three biggest challenges at the moment for getting additive production to conform to the precepts of a circular economy are the nature of the materials, the economy… Continue reading
Heeding Christ’s teaching to share in the 21st century
To address the epochal challenges of the twenty-first century, we will have to heed Christ’s simple message like never before—and finally share the world’s wealth and resources more equitably among us all. In Christianity, the need to share is central to the teachings of Jesus and a major theme throughout the New Testament. According to… Continue reading