The essence of our worldview and our project

Who do I consider to be “us” in this context?

. Simplicity Institute
. Fifth Estate
. Extinction Rebellion
. the localization, transition, bioregionalism, and ecovillage movements

The essential ideas are:

The current state of human society is unsustainable and unjust; it’s stressful on people and the planet.

Humans (as per the genus ‘homo’) lived in a certain original, natural, basic way for all of our species history (millions of years) until relatively recently. After the Neolithic Revolution ten thousand years ago a process was set in motion. One inflection point in that process was the emergence of a whole new way of life characterized by statism, urbanism, and developmentalism about five thousand years ago. The latter permeated human societies worldwide only about four hundred years ago when a second inflection point (trend toward globalization and industrialism) accelerated the problematic civilizational trajectories — such that we’ve now arrived at a state of insane hypertrophy in regard to population, production, consumption, pollution, depletion, congestion . . . etc.

And an egregious state of inequality.

The essential “project” . . . the only ultimate solution . . . the most vital social change work:
. we need to effectuate a radical change of direction
. gradualistic but deeply transformational social and cultural change
. toward living more lightly, more simply, more locally
. on a pathway “back” toward village life