This is a brief rundown of some recent doomsaying: although we might predict that the visionaries would suggest that the game is up, we’re also seeing this from portions of the mainstream.  This runs counter to the common wisdom that predicts economic boom in the hopes that such predictions will morph into self-fulfilling prophesies, and should be an indication that we’ve entered a new era in economic thought.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

To celebrate the revolutionary spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I’ve decided to look at a newer volume; Chris Harman’s A People’s History of the World.  This newer book takes off from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which indeed covered the particular impacts of people’s movements (including the one participated in by King) throughout American history.  A People’s History of the World, unfortunately, has to cover far too much ground far too quickly, and so Harman puts out a series of historical explanations which follow his script too closely, and thus misses a lot of the content of people’s history.

A People’s History of the World is nevertheless a fun read which ought to stoke some anti-capitalist fires in the hearts of readers, even if it doesn’t do so thoroughly.  My review will conclude by discussing the import, to activists, of the issues Harman brings up.

The various outrages over the “bailout” typically imagine it as a species of robbery — but what needs to be seen here is that the “bailout” is an attempt to “reconstitute capitalism” given the threat to it (see the Economist editorial “Capitalism at bay“) which was prompted by the deflation of the credit bubble and the current economic crisis.  If we look at the “bailout” with a sober, steady focus upon its meaning in political economy, we see it, and the capitalism it is reconstituting, for what it really is: a system of domination, where an investor class gets “bailed out” whereas the rest of us are viewed as being lucky to find work and are supposed to be placated through “jobs programs.”

(Crossposted at Big Orange)

This is a pictorial diary in French Intensive/ Biodynamic gardening, as regards the methods I use when working at the Pomona College Natural Farm.  The methods described here are a sort of “working intuition” that I use to pursue my own self-sufficiency amidst general economic dislocation.  The label “French Intensive/ Biodynamic gardening” describes a gardening strategy to coax maximum yield out of minimum space.  This was something I “learned by heart” when I was an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Cruz; I will just discuss the usual list of things to do here.

(now crossposted at Big Orange)

This diary will suggest a sort of “Earthly dream” in light of the inspiration felt by millions to pursue the “American dream” of the age of nationalism.  I want to proceed from an assessment of where we are now, to a short discussion of how we fit into the systems of which we are a part, to a look at how our hopes and dreams may be transformed into a future of ecological dislocation and crisis.

(crossposted on Big Orange)

This is, in short, a book review of Sing C. Chew’s new book Ecological Futures: what history can teach us.  Chew is important because he wants to incorporate ecological data into historical discussions of the rise and fall of civilizations; his most recent book attempts to use this “ecologized” version of history to make a solid (if somewhat scary) prediction about the future of the human race.  Chew doesn’t mean to scare us, however; what’s scary are the implications of his naturalistic point of view when it comes around to analyze the disastrous course our civilization has taken in its relations to the natural world.

I will end with a short set of prognostications of my own, related to reflections in the book review.

SING C. CHEW is Associate Professor of Sociology at Humboldt State University and editor of the Humboldt Journal of Social Relations.

(crossposted at Big Orange)