New Clear Vision

The Nuclear Age Must Yield to a Time of Love

by Jan Lundberg

Three days before the Fukushima nuclear power explosion, I made this comment on a peace activist’s Facebook page: “I believe a successful, final anti-nuke campaign will only take place in one of two ways: (1) collapse puts the entire infrastructure of industry and consumption out of business, forcing the survivors to minimally babysit the nukes forever, or, there’s an accident or deliberate blast or meltdown that motivates people all over the world to shut down the mechanical beast once and for all.”

I didn’t think it would come so soon. But that has been the pattern for our planet in peril in recent years: acceleration of disasters, climate destabilization, peak oil, strife such as wars and revolutions, extremes of elitist wealth and overwhelming poverty, fresh water depletion — all prelude to complete collapse. However, to use the equivalent of jiu-jitsu or aikido to rapidly channel the onslaught of negative energy toward something positive is our duty and opportunity. (more…)

On the Virtues of Self-Sustaining and Simple Living

by V.I. Postnikov

“Let the beauty we love be what we do.” – Rumi

“The environmental crisis is the crisis of aesthetics.” – James Hillman

“The poet knows of no ‘waste’…. Ecopoetics is the way of thinking economically.” – Hwa Yol Jung

It is the right time for poets and artists to engage in economics. We can’t allow the greedy and self-important “experts” and “economists” to push the world to the brink of catastrophe. A lot has already been written and said about the impending collapse — I won’t repeat it.

The idea is that the systemic collapse could be prevented, or, at least, alleviated, by invoking an inner artist in everyone and directing the artistic creativity to the dismantling of the Mega-Machine. Roughly speaking, in order to survive, we need to decentralize the economy as soon as possible by reducing it to an individual craftsmanship. I understand all the objections and losses involved, even fierce opposition, but the gains are superlative. Ultimately, people will see it as the only strategy, whether pre- or post-collapse.

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In Search of a New Beginning … Before the End

by Randall Amster

Undertaking even a cursory review of the news queue evidences the apocalyptic overtones in our collective midst. In the most recent additions to the canon, 2010 ended with semi-sardonic coverage of the so-called “Snowpocalypse” and its aftermath, and 2011 began with perplexed musings over the “Aflockalypse” in which birds and fish seem to be dying in odd ways due to mystifying causes. Not long before, we had the perceptive invocation of the “Shopocalypse” by Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, and next year’s 2012 allusions promise to spawn a new generation of nomenclatural evolutions.

While we may be tempted to dismiss the suffix “-ocalypse” being deployed much like “-gate” as an all-purpose distortion device, on another level we can also perceive that its very utilization as both a linguistic tool and interpretation of concrete outcomes is telling about the times in which we live. We’re actually in good company on this, at least historically speaking, as the sense of looming apocalypse has been woven into the fabric of Western civilization since its earliest days of recorded reckoning. And there certainly has been no shortage of cataclysmic harbingers in the modern era, from the inception of cinema itself to the invocation of the “mushroom cloud” as part of political theater. This is, in short, our cultural talisman, and its influence upon us is palpable. (more…)

A New Lens and Lexicon for Navigating ‘Climate Collapse’

by Raffi Cavoukian

Are we tweeting while Earth burns? Is climate collapse our new collective Titanic? How do we best describe the survival struggle of seven billion in a way that connects with the public and with decision makers?

The science on global warming is clear and compelling. Earth is in serious climate crisis. That’s why many writers have recently upgraded climate change to climate collapse, climate catastrophe, the long emergency. To convey the climate threat fully, we need a new Story.

In a well known Greek myth, the very rich King Midas, who loves gold above all else, is granted his singular wish that everything he touches turn into gold. The gift becomes a curse when his golden touch kills plants, food and even his daughter, who is turned into a statue. Bereft and repentant, forsaking greed, the king begs for deliverance. His curse is lifted by a wash in the river. All he holds truly precious is restored. (more…)

A Message of Possibility for the New Year, and Beyond

by Jan Lundberg

Please join me in greeting the fall of the U.S. Empire, a healthy way to begin a new year. It is a positive sentiment among some thoughtful Americans. Their ungiddy feeling flows from observation of world developments and the state of the U.S. political system and economy. The timetable is fuzzy, but trends are clear. It’s not pretty, but there is a thin silver lining.

These days are for many of us the winter of our discontent. Weird and dangerous weather on the rise, persistent fossil-fuel dominance, never-ending wars, unraveling of the social fabric, looming shortages of food and water, and lack of money for basic needs aren’t just some unpatriotic ravings of those who want to put America down. Rather, the growing uncertainty of our survival, individually and for our families, has everyone’s skull in a vice tightened by unseen or unknown hands. Those hands are actually of our own making: our dominant culture has been building up to a colossal, spectacular, global failure. (more…)