this makes my day
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/12/08/what-do-we-need-state-for-anyway/
I think the orientation he presents here is exactly right: There is no avoiding the collapse of what’s unsustainable (our current society). Sure, mitigation as much as possible and amelioration and palliation and all that stuff, but there will need to be, starting now, the cultivation of post-modern new lifeways. “It is not too early to envision our life after the collapse that is pending.”
Kirk is 85 now and aging, so it’s a rare treat to see him publish something new.
Remember? . . . he’s one of the sane ones . . .
An old cautionary tale has it that there once was a kingdom in which all of the grain crop one exceptional year somehow became poisoned, causing anyone who ate its products to go insane. That posed a terrible dilemma for the queen and her advisors, for the stores of grain from previous years were very modest, not nearly enough to feed the entire population of the land, and there was no way to procure food from without. The kingdom would face either widespread famine and starvation, if the harvest were destroyed, or widespread madness and chaos. After much deliberation, the queen reluctantly decided to have the people go ahead and eat the grain, hoping its effects would be temporary, that at the very least human lives would be preserved. “But,” she added, “we must at the same time keep a few people apart and feed them on an unpoisoned diet of the grain from previous years. That way there will at least be a few among us who will remember that the rest of us are insane.”
It is to those few that this book [Human Scale, 1980, by Kirkpatrick Sale] is dedicated:
Steve Baer
Tom Bender
C. George Benello
Peter Berg
Wendell Berry
Murray Bookchin
Ralph Borsodi
Scott Burns
Ernest Callenbach
Noam Chomsky
Joseph Collins
Richard Cornuelle
Herman E. Daly
Rent Dubos
Edgar Z. Friedenberg
Edward Goldsmith
Paul Goodman
Percival Goodman
Hazel Henderson
Karl Hess
John Holt
Ivan Illich
Judson Jerome
Lee Johnson
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Leopold Kohr
Milton Kotler
Ursula LeGuin
Frances Moore Lappe
Mildred Loomis
Amory Lovins
Jerry Mander
Michael Marien
John McClaughry
Ian McHarg
Margaret Mead
Arthur Morgan
Griscom Morgan
David Morris
Lewis Mumford
Carol Pateman
Fredy Perlman
Theodore Roszak
E. F. Schumacher
Neil Seldman
Paul Shepard
Charlene Spretnak
L. S. Stavrianos
Barry Stein
Bob Swann
Lee Swenson
Gordon Rattray Taylor
Frederick Thayer
William I. Thompson
John Todd
Nancy Todd
Peter van Dresser
