While travelling, I was able to spend some time reading and listening to some really thought provoking books. I am still digesting them, but would like to share these initial ideas.
Breaking Together - a freedom loving response to collapse by Jem Bendell
From Jem’s website https://jembendell.com/2023/04/08/breaking-together-a-freedom-loving-response-to-collapse/:
The collapse of modern societies has already begun. That is the conclusion of two years of research by the interdisciplinary team behind Breaking Together. How did it come to this? Because monetary systems caused us to harm each other and nature to such an extent it broke the foundations of our societies. So what can we do? This book describes people allowing the full pain of our predicament to liberate them into living more courageously and creatively. They demonstrate we can be breaking together, not apart, in this era of collapse. Jem Bendell argues that reclaiming our freedoms is essential to soften the fall and regenerate the natural world. Escaping the efforts of panicking elites, we can advance an ecolibertarian agenda for both politics and practical action in a broken world.
This is one of the most challenging books I have read, and there are parts of it I find really difficult to accept. However, there is a lot of unsettling truth in there, and aligns with much of Naomi Klein’s research and recommendations. I think we need to take this on board, talk about it and work out how we will face the future together.
Doppleganger by Naomi Klein
From her webpage https://naomiklein.org/doppelganger/:
Doppelganger is a guidebook for our unsettling age, inviting all of us to view our reflections in the looking glass. It’s for anyone who has lost hours down an internet rabbit hole, who wonders why our politics has become so fatally warped, and who wants a way out of our collective vertigo and back to fighting for what really matters. Braiding together elements of tragicomic memoir, chilling political reportage, and cobweb-clearing cultural analysis, Naomi Klein dives deep into what she calls the Mirror World—our destabilized present rife with doubles and confusion, where far right movements playact solidarity with the working class, AI-generated content blurs the line between genuine and spurious, New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers further scramble our familiar political allegiances, and so many of us project our own carefully curated digital doubles out into the social media sphere.
This book is really unsettling as I realised how much of our world is being manipulated by the few for their own benefit, leaving the majority of us struggling as to who we should befriend and who we should not. She finishes by suggesting we need to work collectively to create the outcomes we need, staring down the individualistic cries of the powerful elite wanting to control the world.
The Power of Now + A New Earth - create your better life by Eckart Tolle
From GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76334.A_New_Earth:
With his bestselling spiritual guide "The Power of Now," Eckhart Tolle inspired millions of readers to discover the freedom and joy of a life lived in the now. In "A New Earth," Tolle expands on these powerful ideas to show how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness is not only essential to personal happiness, but also the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world. Tolle describes how our attachment to the ego creates the dysfunction that leads to anger, jealousy, and unhappiness, and shows readers how to awaken to a new state of consciousness and follow the path to a truly fulfilling existence. "The Power of Now" was a question-and-answer handbook. "A New Earth" has been written as a traditional narrative, offering anecdotes and philosophies in a way that is accessible to all. Illuminating, enlightening, and uplifting, "A New Earth" is a profoundly spiritual manifesto for a better way of life and for building a better world.
These books are like a salve to modern life, offering gentle accessible approaches for making your life better right now. No need to wait, just implement these approaches… perhaps easier said than done, but a great place to start!