Naomi Klein writes in today’s Guardian that “hope alone won’t save the world. It’s time to hope less, and demand more”.
I’m not sure. I find Klein’s piece enervating. Will demanding things from mainstream politicians like Obama be more productive than waiting hopefully for them to save us? I don’t think so.
My mood is lightened by John Michael Greer. He suggests that the time may be ripe to change the question. “Oversimplifying reality into two rigid categories is probably the most pervasive source of failed thinking in the modern world”, he writes. “Rather than limit ourselves to a choice between two unpromising alternatives – “capitalism” and “socialism” – why not look at different frameworks, such as distributism.
Distributism. Right. Having paused to find out what distributism is, or was I return to find Greer writing about another novelty: the Druid notion of ternary thinking. “The basic practice is that when you encounter any classification of the world into two and only two sides (we call this a binary), think of a third option that isn’t simply a compromise between them. With practice you get very good at noticing the blind spots that make binary thinking seem to make sense. Yes, you can then go on to look for a fourth, fifth, etc.!”
So I need to practice ternary thinking. Well, it’s market day here in Ganges so my first practice session will be to ponder, as I transit between the cheese stall and the bread stall, how much our market is embryonic of a “distributist” economy – and what might be added to make it more so.
My first stop in looking for ideas will be Velowala. One of my all-time favourite websites, I now realize that Velowala is an amazing source of ideas for budding distributist entrepreneurs:
