Introduction

This site is designed to be a forum for those interested in using the lens of Descent Culture to discuss books and current events. The goal of this site is to incubate our will to act on our ideas.

Our current exploitive and extractive fossil fuel dependent civilization and "growth is inherently good" economic atmosphere is directing us toward resource depletion in a planet that is reaching its environmental limits. We need to start thinking about how to power down our societies in order to create true health and wealth for all people while working to sustain the life support systems on this planet. In a Descent Culture, we are aware of the resource streams that come into our bodies, homes, and cities. We re-train ourselves how to localize and cycle those streams on our own sites or in our communities. We refocus our economies on local energy and local labor that seeks to economically empower the people that work to grow or create the resources we depend on.

Whether we like or not, we will soon be descending from this peak of energy production and consumption because scientific research--an institution dependent on current cheap energy economies--has shown us that the planet we live on has physical limits.

Descent is not bad and growth is not good. Let us reconfigure our values away from the fears and fantasies of the profit driven American Dream. The G8 lifestyle is no longer possible because it has created a world of exploited labor of humans and all other species, depleted and polluted resources, destroyed or fractured ecosystems, and changing climates. Let us take from the earth and from each other in ways that make sense and that will keep our species around for as long as possible.

This site is a place to discuss the systems that currently exist and the work we can do as networks of humans to take care of ourselves and life forms we depend on to co-exist on Earth.