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John Fridinger's avatar

P.S...

'Project 2025,' "deliberately"...?? You clearly know what that title represents here in the U.S...

And so something really audacious MUST be in the works, for you to be this vividly confident (as you clearly are) that you can turn 'that' title upside down so as to spill the beans on modern fascism, and then additionally make it represent what a TRUE world class Project 2025 really oughta and MUST be, for the sake of all Life, diverse human community, and the Earth Herself...

THAT is a "Project" this rather old man can step up to and be totally on board with... In any and every way I possibly can...

🙏🌻💕

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Delburn Michael Walter's avatar

Another 'rather old man' in the U.S. agrees with you. I won't sign up until I hear the details, but I suppose that even 'hopium' springs eternal. In the meantime I'll keep reintroducing more native plants to my species-depleted yard.

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Alistair McKee's avatar

Support for P:C 2, which can chair and steer a broad platform based on the right, focused questions before the answers which come out in the well-chaired wash.

Eg Braver Angels workshops in USA just asking of both sides "what would trustworthy elections look like?" These are PROCESS policy goals.

Search TKP 26/50. Here in NZ (believe it or not - we are still disbelieving the enormity of government failure as life on every level has unraled in 2024) it's constitutional and policy mayhem. The next election is twenty26. Our top polecon poster has given a concise preamble to a switch from news curation & comment to the progressive development of a 2050-wise policy concensus in time to win the 2026 NZ Election with a wave of engaged citizenz.

Hint: we focus more on each other's real needs, more proactive mutual aid, more

assuming civic responsibility,

less reactive wailing at the trolling incumbent hucksters and their wonton grab of power & money.

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Tim Coombe's avatar

I attended that evening at the London Business School. Thanks to Sam Baker for organising it! It was interesting to be in a room of current and past alumni (not including myself!) who had studied for MBAs, listening to a discussion about how best to change, transform or replace capitalism.

When the scene is set for the meta-crisis, I think it’s natural to think that there must be a solution waiting out there, and given the scale of the predicament, to go large. It’s tempting to veer towards geo engineering, carbon credits and tech-fixes because we want one answer to fix it all. Maybe a better approach is small and local. Community Energy and local food resilience for example. If the future’s going to be challenging, at least you’ll have some social ‘capital’ to rely on.

The first speaker of the evening layed out the state of play in stark terms, but I think we’re still underestimating the damage we’re doing to the biosphere. Listening to an evolutionary biologist the other day, it seems that the definition of a mass extinction event is the loss of 75% of species. Apart from the asteroid that ended the age of dinosaurs, this usually plays out over a few million years. Our current trajectory may see this happen in a few millennia. It’s hard to understand what this means, or indeed “what should we do?”

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Mike Roberts's avatar

Perhaps the best response is "it depends on what your goal is." I'll bet that the goal of most people is to keep modernity ticking along and hope that can be done without further damaging our biosphere. The trouble is, it can't. It doesn't matter if any action or technology can be scaled quickly, or at all. There is no way to retain modernity and stop damaging the earth.

There might be some modes of living that are close to sustainable but probably not with 8.2 billion people. If we can accept that modernity can't be saved, maybe, just maybe, 8 billion can turn their minds to how to ease the, what will seem like, downward trajectory for all.

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Sophie Krantz's avatar

“I don’t want these things to scale up. I want them to scale out. Where before we had centralised pillars of power, I dream of a world of networks of support. I dream of a web, not a palace, for palaces eventually become tombs.” Powerful.

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Phoebe Barnard's avatar

Agreed, Sophie! I was just coming here, Rachel to tell you that I've added that quote as a kind of strapline to my emails and an inner motto for my work. I've posted something on LinkedIn and Facebook about it being a great example of more feminine (than masculine) metaphorical framing, no matter what kind of person voices it. I am the same. Thanks for voicing this.

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Sophie Krantz's avatar

Love that, Phoebe.

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Richard Bergson's avatar

Your response to your mother’s question was key. Effectively, you were suggesting getting fishing rods not just fish. We desperately need the tools to forge a different path. What we do with them is a process of learning which will involve making mistakes as we learn to use them better.

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Lesley's avatar

Wishing your mother's village good luck with their £7000 eco grant.

and good luck with the new book Rachel!

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bruce meder's avatar

I too get frustrated by the question "what do I do?" Rachel. My response is to pose another question: What do we don't? I wrote about such a question about 18 months ago. https://www.rainbowjuice.org/2023/03/what-shall-we-dont.html

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Tim MacDonald's avatar

“What can we do?”

We can join the conversation about a new kind of financial engineering that is purpose-built for stewardship.

This is fiduciary money negotiating with enterprise directly for equity payback to an actuarial/fiduciary cost of money, plus opportunistic upside (for actuarial compliance as to current income), from enterprise cash flows prioritized by contract for suitability, longevity and fairness.

This innovation in fiduciary finance opens up space for a new conversation at the vanguard of public discourse about who fiduciaries can and should be negotiating with, and what they can and should be negotiating for.

Imagine a consortium of fiduciaries coming together to buy hydrocarbons companies out of public markets ownership and placing them into social stewardship where they can be directed to become and supported in being positive contributors to a new global initiative to rapidly redesign and reconstruct our global energy supply ecosystem to be purpose-rebuilt for energy sufficiency complete with habitat longevity and social equity in a planetary scale in the 21st Century and beyond.

Think Private Equity upgraded from ownership for extraction to stewardship of interaction.

How could that happen?

Let’s talk about it.

That’s what we can do.

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Phoebe Barnard's avatar

As my colleague Dr Chris Tucker said to me at one pivotal moment: "Half the battle is just in getting people talking - and it makes all the difference to the other half."

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John Fridinger's avatar

Clear, direct, out loud as all such should be, and to the point...

This is how everyone for whom all this messaging is not just a play of diversionary words amongst our own selves must now, and now and now and more and more, be speaking, directly and emphatically, both locally and uniquely in all sorts of myriad diverse ways, and also into the faces, board rooms, council chambers and halls of hijacked wealth, power and authority...

As always it seems, thank you Rachel... 🙏

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Darma S's avatar

Can individuals dependent on a paycheck from the system afford to speak up or take action to the point where things become uncomfortable? Modernity seems to have us in a double-bind.

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Aryaykalaki's avatar

It seems that our species has a weakness (at least one). The development of the industrial culture has been and is at the expense of our host, the Earth. All of our conveniences come at great expense, the destruction of the Earth, which is now throwing us off. Those aware of this process are challenged to survive by either now living close to the Earth or learning to do so. I don’t consider myself to be well-read, but I have yet to hear or read about any warnings until recent decades about the above critique. Now living in community where the heat will be bearable, where water is available, where there is arable land to grow food look like key necessities.

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Gunnar Rundgren's avatar

I couldn't agree more. The only question that is worse than "Whay can I do" is "What can the consumer do"....A question I get often, last time just four days ago when presenting our book about "The living". I also liked: "f anybody comes and prescribes a “solution” then I suggest you run in the opposite direction from them. " as well as your take on "scaling up".

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SUE Speaks's avatar

My Substack is all about answering your question. It's called Now What? It's a creative arena for what we-the-people can do, going beyond recycling and not eating meat. We need to think together, where ideas do matter, about a system-change, from self-interest to caring about each other. Not being able to find any scheming going on, in addition to looking for smart people to think with I have $100 offer out for leading me to any person or group already doing that.

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Alan Livshin's avatar

Regenesis Institute for Regenerative Practice offers a program called The Regenerative Practitioner Series that I can not recommend enough, especially after having taken most mainstream sustainability offerings and other so called 'regenerative' courses, Regenesis stands above the rest wth their 40+ years of pioneering work.

https://www.regenerat.es/trp/

Here is their book titled 'Regenerative Development and Design: A Framework for Evolving Sustainability'

https://www.amazon.com/Regenerative-Development-Design-Framework-Sustainability/dp/1118972864

And for a primer you can read their academic journal article of the same name:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321156684_Update_Regenerative_Development_and_Design_2nd_edition

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John Stuckey's avatar

Love this! Always reassuring to find like-minded folks. One suggestion? Find another name for your project, Project 2025 is a draconian document of extreme Right-wing Libertarians, the culmination of over 100 years of steady, patient development described in Nancy MacLean's 'Democracy in Chains,' which is a must-read.

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Lazaros Giannas's avatar

I find the stance to suggest people run in the opposite direction from those who offer solutions quite reactionary, unfortunately. Many people, for all sorts of valid reasons, don’t know what to do about many of the problems they have in their life, either personal or societal. Also, it is not always easy for someone to come up with solutions by themselves, about every single one of those problems. At the same time, many other people, through their work, through their research, do know what needs to be done about those problems. Of course, if the person will do it or not, it depends on the person. But to say not to listen to those offering a solution to many of the problems that one might face is very counterproductive. I only hope that this is not advised out of envy because you don’t have, at least yet, something to offer (which is perfectly fine, of course).

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I Know Nothing's avatar

Nothing to do

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