The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming novel EcoGuerrillas. Like agriculture, every aspect of our material culture is subsidized by fossil fuels. The idea of “energy slaves” allows us to conceptualize the degree to which we are dependent on cheap and abundant fuel to produce things and use appliances. In 1940, R. Buckminster Fuller … More Basic Stances – Materials
The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming novel EcoGuerrillas. Industrial agriculture is the antithesis of the three tenets laid out by the institute: it concentrates all resources for human benefit alone, purposefully ignores the lessons of natural systems mortgaging future stability for gains today, and it is incredibly complicated. Agriculture puts one species in … More Basic Stances — Industrial Agriculture
The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming novel EcoGuerrillas. Energy The solution is easy to articulate but nearly impossible to implement: stop using fossil fuels immediately. We realize that this sounds alarmist, but we see no other single action that could have as broad an impact as the complete cessation of the use of … More Basic Stances — Energy: Electricity
The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming novel EcoGuerrillas. Humans are a product of the interplay of their genetic propensities and surroundings. Before the neolithic revolution, 10,000 years ago, when humans first started settling down to an agricultural way of life, they were hunter-gatherers, moving throughout a region in search of seasonally available … More Basic Stances — Infrastructure
The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming novel EcoGuerrillas. Education Throughout human history, educational systems have been a reflection of their age. In feudal times, education was the purview of the wealthy and religious ascetics. With the invention of the printing press (first in China and then Europe), knowledge became more widespread as the … More Basic Stances — Social Organization: Education and Population (Part 4)
Holly Dressel is one of our regular contributors. She is a well-known author, filmmaker, speaker, and researcher (see more on the about us page). The book reviewed, The Mudgirls Manifesto ($29.99), is available for preorder from New Society Publishers. The Mudgirls Collective can be found at their website, https://mudgirls.wordpress.com/. If you can get up to … More The Mudgirls Manifesto — Book Review from Contributor Holly Dressel
The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming novel EcoGuerrillas. It’s the ‸Stupid Economy, Stupid The economy can be looked at through a variety of lenses, but one of the most basic divides it into three sectors. The primary sector has to do with resource extraction. Everything from logging, mining, and drilling to farming and … More Basic Stances — Social Organization: Economy and Finance (Part 3)
The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming novel EcoGuerrillas. We must get away from the two most insidious beliefs of modern governance—hierarchy and survival of the fittest—and instead we should champion their opposites—heterarchy and cooperative symbiosis. Our current society is explicitly ordered in hierarchical systems: local, state, and federal governments, for example, or … More Basic Stances — Social Organization: Heterarchy and Survival of the Fittest (Part 2)
The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming novel EcoGuerrillas. Our society uses a variety of systems to organize itself. Cities, neighborhoods, counties, and towns order us in physical space. Representatives in the local, regional, and national government make decisions and the rules by which we live. Our work is organized into industries: extraction, production, … More Basic Stances — Social Organization (Part 1)
We pride ourselves on the ingenuity of our society and believe we will be able to think our way out of any problems. James Scott calls this blind faith in technology “high modernism,” described as: a strong, one might even say muscle-bound, version of the self-confidence about scientific and technological progress, the expansion of production, … More Basic Stances — High Modernism