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2584. Why Gardenworld
We are in a mess. We need to be engaged and to do that we need a sense of where we could be heading, which is hard because the major frame that held the world of meaning together has almost disappeared. Since the weakening of Christian perspectives the West has been in a scramble to create a world where the felt purpose of life cohered. The rise of populism - new mass movements - is understandable as a reaction within that loss of meaning, and climate and geopolitical crises can be understood as failures to find that coherence.
The church replaced by neoliberal economics (liberal for money and exploitation for the rest of us) is not a successful shift. The need to find a viable approach to what next for humanity now embroiled in eco- collapse is forcing us all to look for such an approach. Gardenworld is a starting point we can believe in. We got smart coping with climate changes like the little ice age. We grew upright and on two legs in order to outrun the gazelles on the open plain as we were finishing off all the nuts and fruits in the trees and the large slow mammals on the ground. Nature and history should be treated as integrated, inseparable. not separate. We are like all creatures needing to eat, to drink, to breathe, to poop and to reproduce. Death also is part of our shared condition and a major event in our lives creating culture. Thinking about what you really care about and want more of in your life. We got here by coevolving with the planet in a continuous reassessment of priorities, beliefs and appreciations. Thinking that we are a part of nature, not separate and above it, helps us imagine what a better life could be. Gardenworld is the place where nature and humans come together again.1
from Chapter one of Gardenworld Politics.