The backdrop to Barbara Kingsolver’s brilliant 2012 novel Flight Behaviour was the climate emergency and human disruption of Nature. Her latest book Demon Copperhead, a 21st century Appalachian version of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, looks very different. But both stories are about the countryside and country people. The first involves unintended disruption of life; in the second, disruption is angrily desired.
It is not about wrestling with the controls of economics to force it in the direction of degrowth, but about getting ready for the moment when the coming climacteric does the heavy work of degrowth for us. David Fleming1
I opted out of the big earthquake feed but could not escape its vicarious trauma.
Last month, Mary-Jayne Rust introduced the idea of The Great Turning, the turn towards life-enhancing structures and the world view which sees the web of life as sacred and humans embedded within it. This Digest continues that theme.
The Great Unravelling and The Great Turning
We are living through a period of major upheaval as we face the shadow of industrial growth culture. Old ways of dominating the rest of nature are falling apart. This is a time of great uncertainty, of chaos and suffering. The birth of the new is emerging in glimpses but its shape cannot yet be seen. We are in a liminal space of cultural breakdown and transformation.
We are a diverse community of therapeutic practitioners, thinkers, researchers, artists and others. We believe that attending to the psychology and emotions of the climate and ecological crisis is at the heart of our work.
