Monthly Archives: November 2015

These are epic times – perhaps the most epic of all human times, since the first cultivations of those large-seeded grasses – and still, that germ of all settled cultures remains – the foundation of modernity is agriculture and central … Continue reading →

Even so, with regards to raising our glasses to the ordinary, we should resist becoming too passionately ordinary.  We should also try not to make an evil of what threatens our ordinariness. After all, though my ordinariness is my humanity … Continue reading →

I am responsible for my actions, my work and the thoughts I contribute to the common pot.  My thesis has been that whatever and whoever is in power over my culture and on whatever scale, the culture remains just what … Continue reading →

Ivan Illich sought to discover how some tools could assist convivial societies and how some created social division.  He could see that social behaviour in Nineteen Seventy indicated that despite a dependency on finite supplies, most people lived as though … Continue reading →

Here is Ivan Illich on the “benefits” of the average American’s car in 1973: The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. … Continue reading →

OK put up or shut up you say?  Although the thesis of this book is that cultures are what we do – one by one – and that cultural change comes – also one by one – by the powers … Continue reading →

I must speak for myself.  How else can I speak?  I have mentioned obstacles to appropriate behaviour – now to what may encourage appropriate behaviour.  These are things I’d ask of others: institutions, NGOs and government departments, in reply to … Continue reading →