We tend to think of habitat in regard to flora and fauna. As immoral and ultimately self-destructive as it is to destroy habitat in that sense, there is another sense which is more relevant to us directly:
The original, natural, healthy habitat in which humans best thrive is community. A real community is place-based, with locally-oriented interdependence, sharing of resources, participatory self-management, and stable face-to-face ongoing familiarity. Under conditions of industrial-capitalist hypermodernity real community has withered. The ecovillage movement seeks to revive the concept and create tangible models. Ecovillages give a sense of the direction society must go in if we are to restore healthy human habitat.
A Green Party activist, Steve was an original co-editor of DSA’s “Ecosocialist Review.” He now serves on the Editorial Board of the New Green Horizons webzine.
