This is the solution

Our current social realities are not just anti-ecological and anti-social . . . they’re insane. Erich Fromm had an intimation of this back in 1955 when he wrote the book, The Sane Society.

After millennia of growth, expansion, development, and “progress” (and especially during the four hundred years since the industrial revolution) all has become hypertrophied. In other words, the scale of our nation-states, our governments, our institutions, and our technologies is so beyond human-scale, so beyond our ability to cope with, manage, democratize (or love) that it’s driving people to a state of alienation and distraction. Silicon Valley says it’s “disruptive” . . . as if that’s some kind of positive attribute. It’s not. It’s disorienting. It’s stressful for people and stressful for the planet.

The solution is a transformation of society toward the ultimate direction of bioregionalism.

https://www.meetup.com/toward-fostering-bioregionalism/

We’ve come so far from basic, natural, grounded lifeways that this transformation is sure to take many generations, during which we’ll be trying to navigate our way through what James Howard Kunstler calls The Long Emergency. Generations of recalibration, relocalization, downscaling, devolution . . . and, hopefully, the beginnings of regeneration.

We’ve come so far from basic, natural, grounded lifeways that bioregionalism is a distant goal. It’s not immediately “on the table” as a social change aspiration. We don’t see people marching in the streets carrying banners: “Bioregionalism Now!” It’s not explicated in any political programs (not even that of the Green Party). It’s so alternative to our current lifeways that it’s even hard for modern people to conceive of it.

But it is the ultimate solution. Some of us need to start talking about it now . . . considering the objective, imagining the alternative, thinking about the process of getting “from here to there.”

There’s been a small movement for bioregionalism for a while (since the 1970s). It will need to grow if humanity hopes to survive the crucible of the looming ecological and social crises. The idea of our Meetup is to study about it, think about it, talk about it, and figure out some ways we might be able to contribute to the movement.

We’ll be meeting for our second gathering this Sunday. We’re just starting to read our first book. Join us!

https://www.meetup.com/toward-fostering-bioregionalism/events/280734354