2592. Summary of Gardenworld Politics
Gardenworld politics is an effort to envision possible futures, getting beyond diagnoses to actual efforts to create some kind of livable, maybe even attractive, world. There is much talk of proposals but few get beyond language that is diagnostic - what's wrong - or filling out proposals that are not implementable and avoid discussing details of implementation.
Most approaches assume growth but the contradiction in logic is obvious: growth requires energy now.
Gardenworld assumes that we are well into a difficult period of serious changes we cannot control such as global heating, and agriculture failure. rising sea temperatures, and that these changes may continue to the end of species time on earth. It is dire.
That is the challenge. Gardenworld anticipates failures of energy and agriculture systems as well as transportation and grid failure.
Gardenworld is a response that says let’s look for a minimalist approach that will save as much as we can of life and livability. There are many proposals for new agriculture, but the proposals make no mention of habitat (the standard logic of most climate thinking is to replace the current energy system with a new one that leaves the rest of society, such as corporations, private property, individual homes and finance systems unchanged). Gardenworld proposes that the most attractive approach is to work gardens and shelter in the same place, combining efforts of food and habitat putting people where the work is to make food and stay out of the rain. It is easy t add an aesthetic dimension to such Gardenworld projects that would enhance participation.
Possibly such localized efforts could be enhanced by an Internet that shares knowledge and manages allocation problems. The danger is that such as platform would be treated as private and a mechanism of extraction from land and people. It might not survive if we cut energy use adequate to the need,
Gardenworld will not be easy but may be the easiest path forward that actually copes. Problems will be obvious. Seed availability. Tools. Seasonal shortfalls. the proliferation of guns, loss of medicines, and governance issues blending effectiveness with full participation. Images from the plague years of the 1480’sshow communities surrounded by death. The future will be horrible and we need to get used To it.
Graeber and Wengrow's amazing book, the Dawn of Everything, suggests that the way forward is much more open to interesting ideas than our linear history has suggested, People like nature and civilization. Let’s align our efforts at coping in the direction of Gardenworld.