Eventually . . . live in bioregions

We live in nation-states. This form of sovereignty is a recent phenomenon. Prior to the rise of modern civilization the natural and basic way for humans to live was in bands, tribes, and villages where the scale was such that no one was a stranger, everyone was known to each other to some extent. State power resulted in expansions, conquests, subordinations, enslavements, and far-flung sovereignties. Within the empires, royal dominions, duchies, etc. ethnic- and culturally-related populaces lived in their mostly locally-based ways but were subject to taxation, conscription, territorial violation, etc. by the overarching powers.

Division of the world into nation-states with internationally recognized borders, citizen identification, and citizen rights dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It has since become the norm. For example, it was the basis for the Zionists saying: “A land without a people for a people without a land.” They didn’t mean that no one lived in Palestine. It was evident that hundreds of thousands of people lived in the area vaguely referred to as “Palestine,” a region of the Ottoman Empire. The people in that area lived in villages and towns. They weren’t citizens of any nation-state. So the slogan should be interpreted as: “A land without a citizenry for a people aspiring to create a nation-state.”

The nation-state system works. But most of the states are so large that they’re antithetical to values that the Greens espouse such as community, responsibility, and a deeper, more participatory form of democracy.

Bioregionalism would restore the human scale. It would foster a sense of place and a renewed relationship to the land. It doesn’t stipulate a type of government or a type of economy. The people of a bioregion would determine matters such as those (not necessarily by deliberations and voting, more likely in an organic kind of way flowing from the cultural experiences of groups-within-territories).

Bioregionalism will come about through the endeavors of a variety of “greening of society” movements motivated by the unsustainability of our current lifeways. It will involve a long-term gradualistic process characterized by the “Five D’s” . . . de-growth, decentralization, diversity, deconcentration of wealth, devolution of power.

Bioregionalism represents a sane synthesis of the archaic and the modern — a chastened perspective regarding “progress” and “development;” a turning away from affluenza; a letting go of cornucopian values; an acceptance of limits; a settling back into place and community.

A cultivation of sustainable and more-satisfying lifeways.