Library

Short answer: nothing. There’s a quiet lie that does more damage than the loud ones because it doesn’t shout. It just sits down next to you at the end of a long day and says: everyone else has this figured out. What’s wrong with you? I saw it on display the other day in our…

Finding Flow in turbulent times Jan 20, 2017 The world’s a mess. Democracy is in peril. The ice caps are melting. And the inmates have taken over the asylum. Suddenly, more and more people are waking up to alarm bells and wondering what can I do; how can I help? But that’s not an easy…

The Show up or Shut up Manifesto Aug 22, 2024 It’s hard not to be cynical these days. The world is unraveling in front of our eyes yet the vast majority of folks carry on as usual. We face a rise of authoritarian populism (aka fascism), a return to diplomacy by brute force (complete with…

On cutting free what was never yours to carry I had a sort of waking dream today. It was a most amazing experience. I had been reading the news and, as is pretty common these days, felt a panic attack coming on. I used a technique I’ve learned to focus on the physical sensations in the…

I have made it my personal mission to launch a Fleet of 100 Lifeboats in response to the multiple global crises we now face. Recently, a friend asked where this idea came from. As I was talking through a possible response with one of my collaborators, we realized it’s a challenging story to tell because it involves…

From the edge of 2017 Rarely has a year been as hated as 2016. The poor thing; so unfairly accused. After all, all 2016 did was provide 365 days. It was up to us to fill them. Each day, we had a choice: to be resolved, to live our convictions or to let it slide.…

Daily Reflection 2025-05-21 I want to coin a new term: larva brain. We talk about our reptile brains; this is like that but different. The larva brain is a sort of layer over top of the organic brain. These larva are parasitic, feeding off the electricity of a brain that’s freaking out. It’s the larva…

Daily Reflections 2025-05-19 It’s a rainy morning. We had a gorgeous day yesterday and I spent most of it in the garden preparing beds for planting so I’m a bit stiff and sore this morning, but in a good way. And I have a few thought rattling around. I read a great piece by Jennifer…

On barbs, bravery and belonging My dad turned 93 last week. He’s been sober for about sixty of those years, with a gap in the middle that started about the time I came along. The drinking hadn’t always been a problem. It came on in his thirties, the way these things sometimes do. Pressures started…

A story about trusting the counsel of rocks and other things older and wiser than you. Some evenings, the world feels too loud for language. Emails multiply like rats, the news mutates into performance art, and even well-meaning people suddenly require more emotional bandwidth than the average small-town power grid can provide. On those nights,…

Every action you take has an energy signature. Some actions have a “buy now, pay later” quality; they leave you with an energy debt. They short-change what is necessary now and postpone it until later. Not only do they leave you with an energy debt, there is always, as it were, an interest charge. Taking…

Because patience isn’t passive Sometimes Monday afternoon feels like it should be Friday night. Thursday at least. Everything is over-scheduled. The calendar looks like a game of Tetris played by an anxious god: ferry runs, presentations, meetings, and the occasional spiritual ambush disguised as a “networking dinner.” You think the bottleneck is out there —…

Learning to see what’s already moving Some days it feels like I’m standing in a blizzard of good intentions. Emails, grant proposals, meeting notes, invitations — all swirling so thick I can’t tell what’s moving and what’s stuck. The world turns white, and it’s hard to tell up from down; forward from backward. I had…

May 14, 2025 We’re all in this together. I am perpetually surprised at how hard it is to convey a simple idea to people who can only think in complicated ways. The idea at the core of the Lifeboat Academy is just such an idea. We think of it as the farmastery experience. Once you…

What if the problem isn't ownership — but disconnection? Ben Kadel examines what happens when stewardship structures ask people to give long-term care to land and community without allowing that care to return as security, continuity, or future capacity. Drawing on the logic of healthy land-based cultures — where stewardship and livelihood were inseparable —…

The pan-dimensional Möbius process As the reality of the polycrisis is dawning on more and more people, we keep hearing the same questions: What can I do? Where do I start? How can I get ready for something when I don’t even know what’s gonna happen? Next week, we’ll be hosting our next DIY Lifeboat…

Our current problems run deep. Our leaders, institutions, and basic assumptions about how the world is supposed to work are all failing us. The problem is so huge that our brains can’t grok what’s going on. The complexity. The scale. And the constant noise! Who can make sense of it all? So, let’s talk in…

Daily Reflections 2025-07-02 Jul 02, 2025 The other day, I told a friend that I’m no good at money. She’s concerned that this represents a self-limiting belief about money that’s holding me back. It bugged me for a few days until I finally realized that she heard that as some sort of self-confession, but I…

Jan 7, 2021 I had an interesting day today. Didn’t we all? Mine had a slight twist in it, though. My morning started out with an amazing conversation about death and life and collapse and, really, what’s it all about Alfie. Lately, I’ve been hosting online “navigation sessions” based on the sociocracy 3.0 model. We do…

Listening for the tuning fork note Dec 03, 2025 Roland’s Facebook memory from 11 years ago popped up this morning:“Just back from Pender in what may have been a life-altering experience.” Boy, howdy, was it — and is it. It got me thinking about intuition. We got Zelda, our dog, because of intuition. I was…

Hint: It’s not me. Oct 31, 2018 The thing that makes me the angriest about our most recent slide towards fascism is that even when I know what’s happening, I still question my sanity from time to time. I suspect I’m not the only one. Most of us are unprepared for this. We have been…

Oct 13, 2018 There is a classic Buddhist story about a farmer and a horse. The moral of the story: you never know whether something is a blessing or a curse. With time and perspective, curses look like blessings and blessings look like curses. Most people, myself included, have direct personal experience with the concept. We’ve…

When we quiet all the chatter Dec 02, 2025 Some lessons don’t arrive as wisdom.They arrive as exhaustion. I’ve been witnessing this one for years — this repeating pattern every time we try to build a coherent “system.” Just when you think you’ve got it almost worked out, life comes along and flicks it off…

Learning to stand together Jan 27, 2026 Part 1 TL;DR Part 1 focused on a simple, direct question: What helps ordinary people stay grounded, capable, and connected when the ground beneath us starts to slip? I propose that our overwhelm in this moment of geopolitical history isn’t because of what’s happening out there so much as trying to…

Disillusionment is a threshold Jan 20, 2026 When the ground starts to slip Something old is ending. Not suddenly.Not cleanly.And not in a way that makes for a satisfying headline. It’s ending the way things usually do in real life: slowly, unevenly, with long stretches of denial punctuated by moments where the floor gives just…

A Soft Apocalypse Survival Tool Nov 19, 2025 Some conversations start as small talk and end up accidentally telling the truth. This one began with me teasing Aiden about his strange workplace. We were just hanging out after we’d worked on a few “business items” together. When I looked around, I could see he lived…

Business as Usual and the Antidote Jul 14, 2025 I’m often surprised at how hard people make things for themselves. For example, we treat sociocracy as some complicated, arcane rule-based system when it’s actually amazingly simple. Sociocracy basically says “do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.” Simple. To do that, we lean…

The Wisdom of Agoraphobia Nov 25, 2024 A few years back, as we were “coming out” of Covid and everyone was rushing to get things “back to normal” I started to develop an odd form of agoraphobia. There were some events or meetings that I just couldn’t bring myself to attend, even though I’d been…

Are you willing to give up privilege for connection? Sep 17, 2024 No one wants what I’m selling, which I completely understand. What people want is a delicious tasting candy that is guaranteed to help you lose 35 pounds in three weeks without diet or exercise or your money back — get your free bottle…

Everything you need to know about global politics you learned in elementary school Nov 12, 2024 A lot of people are scratching their heads about what the hell just happened. Talking heads are acting like the descent into authoritarianism is mysterious and unfathomable. “How could it happen here?!?” It’s actually not that hard to understand…

Reciprocity has become one of the most fraught words at the Farmastery. Everyone nods along, but underneath the agreement is a collective flinch — because most of us still reach for a ledger when someone hands us a shovel. But what if the forest's accounting is older and wiser than ours?

The economy doesn't malfunction — it performs exactly as designed. A small number of people sit on the resources everyone else needs, and in exchange for not letting us starve, they extract our labour. Colonial capitalism is feudalism in a three-piece suit. But something else is taking root in the cracks.

I am the closest thing to a prophet you’re going to get and believe me no one here is excited by the prospects. I know what you’re thinking. Matted hair. Crazy eyes. Looks more like a bum than a sage. Liable to go into a rant at the slightest provocation. And yes, at the moment,…

This is a call to action. We live in turbulent times and they are likely to get even bumpier. The combined pressures of climate chaos, social breakdown, and a post-peak-energy future mean there will be no “going back.” Science is telling us that we need to mobilize like we’ve never mobilized before and yet our…

I’m seeing a lot of bruised and battered, dazed and confused folk wandering around out there, so I’m hoping this might provide a bit of relief for some of you. If my circle of friends or my own personal experience is any indication, a lot of us are starting to question our mental health lately.…

It’s not accidental that our mid-winter celebrations are marked by three related holidays — Solstice, Christmas, and New Years. They symbolically represent the arc of a near-death experience. Imagine our ancestors migrating north from our native African home where mid-winter and mid-summer have little impact on the cycles of life. Suddenly those first explorers to…