Linda Cockburn
The Quiet Revolution. A Masterplan for a Flourishing World. This has been the work of years. Working through the threads of what we do wrong looking for points of departure from it. Solutions that don't just create the next wave of problems and require short-term thinking. But instead assume we want to save not just ourselves but every generation to come. The answers are all indigenous, but need to be made 'new' in a way we will embrace, and live off the back of the current world we've created, but grow it into something that doesn't just make the planet flourish, but us all.
Often books talk about all the things that are wrong for 75% of the book, it's hard not to, but we all know it, we don't need our noses ground into that shit-pile. We want answers, not just the vague, we need ingenious solutions, or look, here's another piece of tech that will ensure we don't need to change, we can keep leveraging more out of the diminishing world.
I've read a lot of books full of graphs and statistics, science is awesome, and we need to rely on it more than ever, but people are increasingly unswayed by facts. Facts which are now on the chopping block, constantly contested and disputed. Change is not going to come from piling more facts on. We've become fact-resistant. So how do we change? We're going to change not because the situation demands it, but because we want to. Our human foibles are on display. So what life would we choose over this one? The dominant paradigm can only be changed by a stronger one. What is stronger than the religion of easy and endless novelty and consumption?
We want our lives to mean something, not just be caught up in the cogs of an economic system. We're bowed down in debt that can never be repaid, personal or environmental, if we continue as we are. We're tired of being busy, and made ashamed if we complain of it. We set everyone free of debt. From personal to global debt. We wipe the Monopoly board clean. Put it away and pull out a different one, one based on Reciprocity. Not just to each other, but to the planet.
Reciprocity is the method by which we arrived in the Anthropocene with so many resources. All the generations that came before us lived by it. They gave back as much as they took. It's the law of the universe. If you take more than you give, eventually there's nothing left.
And changing how we live, how we view the world and each other could be the greatest gift we have to give. We'd regain not just a stable planet, but meaning. We'd become heroes.
The Quiet Revolution is how we might do that. What it might look like, who we might yet become.
The future is the most exciting place we've never been.
Often books talk about all the things that are wrong for 75% of the book, it's hard not to, but we all know it, we don't need our noses ground into that shit-pile. We want answers, not just the vague, we need ingenious solutions, or look, here's another piece of tech that will ensure we don't need to change, we can keep leveraging more out of the diminishing world.
I've read a lot of books full of graphs and statistics, science is awesome, and we need to rely on it more than ever, but people are increasingly unswayed by facts. Facts which are now on the chopping block, constantly contested and disputed. Change is not going to come from piling more facts on. We've become fact-resistant. So how do we change? We're going to change not because the situation demands it, but because we want to. Our human foibles are on display. So what life would we choose over this one? The dominant paradigm can only be changed by a stronger one. What is stronger than the religion of easy and endless novelty and consumption?
We want our lives to mean something, not just be caught up in the cogs of an economic system. We're bowed down in debt that can never be repaid, personal or environmental, if we continue as we are. We're tired of being busy, and made ashamed if we complain of it. We set everyone free of debt. From personal to global debt. We wipe the Monopoly board clean. Put it away and pull out a different one, one based on Reciprocity. Not just to each other, but to the planet.
Reciprocity is the method by which we arrived in the Anthropocene with so many resources. All the generations that came before us lived by it. They gave back as much as they took. It's the law of the universe. If you take more than you give, eventually there's nothing left.
And changing how we live, how we view the world and each other could be the greatest gift we have to give. We'd regain not just a stable planet, but meaning. We'd become heroes.
The Quiet Revolution is how we might do that. What it might look like, who we might yet become.
The future is the most exciting place we've never been.
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