What's Next For Earth

Divide and Conquer: not a winning strategy in the long run. The rich and powerful are getting farther and farther out onto branches of a tree that’s losing hold of the ground in the Commons. People and life as a whole are reduced to bits and bytes when resources are hoarded and parsed out by corporate interests, determined by market theories and algorithms.

The beauty of thinking globally and acting locally is that community and responsibility are intertwined. One isn’t divorced from the other. We are connected, in truth, however disconnected we might feel.

To achieve social justice: “…To gain a historical and systemic perspective, it’s helpful to think about wealth inequality in terms of what’s known as the commons—the cultural and natural resources that are accessible to all members of a society, and not privately owned. In most pre-industrial economies, the commons included sources of food as well as natural materials for making tools and building shelters. Everyone who used the commons had a stake in preserving it for the next generation. During and especially after the Middle Ages in Britain and then Europe, common lands were gradually enclosed with fences and claimed as private property by people who were wealthy and powerful enough to be able to defend this appropriation by law and force of arms. During the past century the trend toward privatization has spread to encompass practically the whole world. The result is that people who would otherwise have been able to subsist on common resources now must buy or rent access to basic necessities. Again, the rich get richer, while the poor fall further behind….” Think Resilience, Chap. 18 excerpt