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Here are our suggestions for recommended readings as preparation for "Seeds for the Future" in 2005. Please feel free to select as many of the readings as you like from each category. We are endeavouring to have copies of all materials at the Gaia Library, in Perth, Western Australia. Some of the books are also available for sale for Australian customers through Earth Voices at (08) 9470 5334. I. Current Conditons and Trends of the Industrial Growth Society Richard Heinberg, The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies, New Society Publishers, 2003. A fascinating and well-researched look at what's in store for the IGS as it runs out of cheap oil in the near future. For an overview by the author, see: http://www.museletter.com/partys-over.html "The Oil Crash & You" The end of the petroleum age as seen in the light of many concurrent developments, each presented with links for further exploration. http://www.oilcrash.com/running.htm "Oil & Security" (from "Hooked" issue of The Ecologist, April 2003): http://www.theecologist.org/archive_article.html?article=391 "The Wages of Denial" (from "Hooked" issue of The Ecologist,April 2003) : http://www.theecologist.org/archive_article.html?article=385 "A Planet Under Stress," the opening chapter of Lester Brown's latest book, Plan B: http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PlanB_ch1_stress.pdf "A History of Our Future," the opening chapter of State of the World 2003, by the Worldwatch Institute; this chapter is excerpted at : http://www.valdosta.edu/~bergstrm/sotw203.html David Ehrenfeld, "The Coming Collapse of the Age of Technology": http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/issue/tik9901/article/990111a.html II. Sustainable Alternatives Alan Weisman, Gaviotas--A Village to Reinvent the World, Chelsea Green. http://www.chelseagreen.comA triumphant ecological and social experiment that succeeded despite inhospitable environmental and political circumstances. An overview appears at http://www.friendsofgaviotas.org/about.htm; The Sarvodaya Movement in Sri Lanka. This Buddhist-inspired village self-help movement, which has influenced Joanna Macy's work, succeeds in applying spiritual values to sustainable community development. See chapters 12 and 13 of World as Lover, World as Self [Note to us: link to be provided] http://www.sarvodaya.org (take a look at their 500-year peace plan: http://sarvodaya.org/PeaceInitiative/SarvodayaPeoplesPeacePlan.htm) BALLE, the U.S.-based Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, puts the teachings of author David Korten (The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism) into practice :http://www.ballenetwork.org/BALLE/ Dan Imhoff, Farming with the Wild: Enhancing Biodiversity on Farms and Ranches, Watershed Media. The beautifully-illustrated stories of people who are demonstrating the possibility of a sustainable future for agriculture and biodiversity. http://www.watershedmedia.org/farming%20with/ Michael Shuman, Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age, Routledge, 2000. An overview is at http://www.greens.org/s-r/22/22-16.html E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, Hartley and Marks, This prophetic classic has shaped the thinking of countless visionaries and is as relevant today as when it was written some 30 years ago. http://www.sfu.ca/cedc/resources/print/books/schumacher.htm III. Explorations of Time David Orr, "Speed." An insightful essay on the natural and social harm caused by time efficiency. http://www.oceanarks.org/annals/articles/speed/ David Orr, "Slow Knowledge," On the consequences of "fast" technology-driven knowledge as compared with the benefits of ecological and cultural "slow" knowledge. [Note to us: link to be added] Jeremy Rifkin, Time Wars: The Primary Conflict in Human History, Henry Holt & Co., 1987, especially chapters 15 and 16. A mind-opening presentation of the political implications of the ways we experience time. Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self, chapters 20, 21, and 22. How the poison fire (nuclear waste) radically alters our relation to time. [note to us: link to be provided] Jay Griffiths, Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time,
Flamingo/HarperCollins, 1999. The political nature of industrial time
is contrasted richly with time as experienced in nature and indigenous
cultures. Jay Griffiths, "No Time Like the Present," (from the "No" issue of The Ecologist, July/August 2003). Tom Griffiths, "Traveling in Deep Time: La longue Duree in Australian History," A fascinating review of scholarly efforts to broaden deepen our understanding of the dream time. http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-June-2000/griffiths4.html IV. Activism. Julia Butterfly Hill, The Legacy of Luna, Harper, San Francisco, 2000. The courageous action over 2 years taken by a young woman aged 23, in defence of a stand of virgin redwoods in the forests of Northern California, protesting the environmental rape by the Maxim Corporation's practices. Inspirational reading. Check out the Circle of Life Foundation at http://www.circleoflifefoundation.org/inspiration/julia/bks_recs/luna/ Starhawk, Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, 2003, contains a number of her best political essays, and new material. Check also Starhawk's "Activism Resources" at http://www.starhawk.org/activism/activism.html including actism resources, notes for trainers and recommended readings Neva Welton and Linda Wolf Global Uprising; Confronting the Tyrannies of the 21st Century. Stories from a new generation of activists Compelling 1st person accounts from activists, on what is at stake and why. Packed with resources and links to activism sources. Available on the net at http://www.globaluprising.net/resources.htm Bill Moyer, with JoAnn McAlister and others Doing Democracy: the MAP Model for Organising Social Movements argues that the ups and downs of the fortunes of a social movement follow a pattern that can be used to plan and carry out more effective social action for the long haul. http://store.globalexchange.org/doing.html Katrina Shields In the Tigers Mouth: An Empowerment Guide for Social Action Millennium Books 1991 Easy practical methods for embarking on social activism, sustaining it and enjoying it. Connects the personal with the political, inner with the outer. http://www.persephone.com.au/author.html Christine Hogan Facilitating Empowerment: A Handbook for Facilitators, Trainers and Individuals. Kogan Page 2000, Details the processes individuals and groups can use to act in a more emplowered way, within a variety of cultural settings. http://styluspub.com/books/book4822.html V. Novels Starhawk, The Fifth Sacred Thing, Bantam, 1993. Featuring corporate control of water and biotechnology on the one hand, and the power of nonviolence in earth-based community on the other, Starhawk's marvelous novel set in the mid-21st century seems more prophetic with each reading. Jean Hegland, Into the Forest, Bantam, 1996. What happens when there's no more electricity from the grid? In this exquisitely convincing story, two teenage sisters survive by returning to indigenous ways. Ursula K. LeGuin, Always Coming Home, Bantam, 1985. A richly-imagined portrayal of a post-industrial culture of the far future, when, except for the poisons it left, industrial culture is lost from memory. Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed, Orion Millennium, 1974. In this favorite novel of Joanna's, the hero, who has conceived a new theory of simultaneous time, is a scientist from an anarchist culture. He travels to a culture which is a logical extension of our own linear notions of time, efficiency, and ownership. Olaf Stapleton, The Star Maker, Dover Publications, 1968. This science fiction classic, written by a scientist in 1937, features galactic journeys to world after world, where the key philosophic and moral issue is whether or not intelligent beings have been able to grasp their interdependence before they die. Please email us <HERE> with any other materials you think are consstent with these themes that we can share with those who enrol for the Course |
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