{"id":3512799,"date":"2025-05-14T11:15:30","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T11:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3512799"},"modified":"2025-05-14T11:15:30","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T11:15:30","slug":"finding-lights-in-a-dark-age-or-writing-%e1%bc%80%cf%80%ce%bf%ce%ba%ce%ac%ce%bb%cf%85%cf%88%ce%b9%cf%82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2025-05-14\/finding-lights-in-a-dark-age-or-writing-%e1%bc%80%cf%80%ce%bf%ce%ba%ce%ac%ce%bb%cf%85%cf%88%ce%b9%cf%82\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Lights in a Dark Age \u2013 or, writing \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03ba\u03ac\u03bb\u03c5\u03c8\u03b9\u03c2"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve all but finished my new book,\u00a0Finding Lights in a Dark Age: Sharing Land, Work and Craft<\/em>, which will be out in the autumn. A few words here about its context, and some other bits and bobs of news.<\/p>\n

I got quite a lot of input from readers of this blog about suggested content as I was preparing to write the book. Thank you \u2013 it was much appreciated. Some people were interested in more of the staple fare of this blog: agrarianism, climate change, energy futures, politics and suchlike from a quasi-academic perspective. Others pushed me to explore distributism, Catholic Social Teaching and matters of faith and spirituality in more depth. Some suggested a global overview of small-scale farming and societies oriented toward renewable local livelihoods. Yet others were interested in the story of my own little smallholding. And some advocated for a turn to fiction, with a future-focused novel about how local societies might fare in the context of climate change.<\/p>\n

Obviously, I couldn\u2019t encompass all those things within the pages of one relatively short book. There was a need to narrow it down. So what I did was \u2026 no, actually the book\u00a0does\u00a0<\/em>encompass elements of all those things within its pages. It\u2019s been quite a journey writing it over the last few months. Perhaps the book runs the risk of breadth over depth, or too many different approaches jumbled together. But on the whole I\u2019m happy with it, and I hope others will find it interesting.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll write a little more on this site about the book\u2019s themes and content in due course. For now, I\u2019ll just make a few remarks about the overarching context. The first being that I just can\u2019t take seriously any more the idea that the existing global political economy is going to survive for long in anything like its present form \u2013 high-energy, statist, welfare capitalist, consumerist etc. That\u2019s quite a dark idea, because there\u2019s no way its dissolution can occur without a lot of suffering and conflict. Yet one of the features of past dark ages is that they weren\u2019t so dark for everyone, especially for many ordinary people. So the challenge is to seek what light is to be found in the present impending dark age, and try to help manifest it.<\/p>\n

We have numerous ways of ducking that challenge. Perhaps they can be broadly divided into (1) the belief that technological innovation will rescue the status quo, (2) the belief that some favoured brand of politics \u2013 socialist, liberal, conservative, green, whatever \u2013 will rescue it, or (3) a more generic belief that the resilience of the human spirit will prevail. While there\u2019s a lot to be said for technological development, good politics and the resilience of the human spirit, nevertheless it seems clear to me that none of these are going to rescue the status quo.<\/p>\n

Writers are particularly prone to falling into these erroneous beliefs. I think this is partly because we\u2019re under a lot of pressure to tell a version of the modern Promethean hero narrative, which I discuss a little in the book. It\u2019s also partly because this is a deeply satisfying and seductive mythic structure that, like a moth to a flame, is really hard for writers to avoid. Broadly, the way it goes is \u2018there\u2019s all sorts of trouble and conflict in the world that confuses us, but nevertheless I\u2019m optimistic things will turn out well because of this MacGuffin that appears toward the end of my book (technology, politics, human positivity etc.)<\/p>\n

Probably some readers will think that I succumb to this same myth in\u00a0Finding Lights\u2026<\/em>\u00a0All I can say is that I did my best to avoid it, while also trying to avoid an impotent hopelessness. I\u2019m grateful to my publisher for giving me the space to do that.<\/p>\n

As I see it, writers generally need to try to write apocalypse more thoughtfully. I used the Greek lettering for apocalypse, \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03ba\u03ac\u03bb\u03c5\u03c8\u03b9\u03c2, in my title not (just) to be pretentious, but with a view to casting a different light on it from its usual connotations. It\u2019s hardly original to observe that, in the Greek, apocalypse means a revelation or uncovering. Yet we routinely talk nowadays about the need to avoid apocalypse, to maintain the status quo, to solve our problems. I\u2019d suggest instead we need to embrace what apocalypse is revealing to us, while for sure trying to mitigate the miseries it inevitably entails.<\/p>\n

The apocalypse we\u2019re entering, however disastrous, is a revelation or uncovering of what we\u2019ve been getting wrong, and we need to look unflinchingly at that if we\u2019re to avoid worse disaster. What we\u2019ve been getting wrong is not fundamentally things like the carbon we\u2019re putting into the atmosphere, the fossil fuels we\u2019re burning, the meat we\u2019re eating, the excess water we\u2019re using, or the endless habitats and wild species we\u2019ve been obliterating. These are more symptom than cause. What we\u2019ve been getting wrong is culture. What we\u2019ve been getting wrong is our spiritual orientation to place and to meta-place. I explore this a little in my new book, but it needs a lot more exposition.<\/p>\n

Exposition is only a small part of what\u2019s required, though. I think writers, lawyers, analysts, policymakers and other wordsmiths need to dial down our inflated sense of our ability to understand, model and solve.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0recent post<\/a>, I wrote \u201cso much of our public narrative about the future is in the hands of academics, journalists and politicos \u2013 basically wordsmiths, aka symbolic capitalists or the professional managerial class, who like to write and model on paper or on the computer\u201d. John Thackara\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in response \u201cSo help me understand: why write another book which will be read by \u2013 well, that same group?\u201d<\/p>\n

Fair question! I hope John will forgive me for only belatedly attempting to answer it here. The first thing to say is I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything wrong with writing, with being a wordsmith, as such. Nor can people in the professional-managerial class help being in it. And there are a lot of them \u2013 expanding its numbers and diminishing the numbers of those creating local material livelihoods has been one of modernism\u2019s major projects.<\/p>\n

The problem arises when we delude ourselves into thinking that we PMC wordsmiths can offer actual solutions via our words on the page, through language tricks, through our MacGuffins, our \u2018game-changing new technologies\u2019 and our \u2018but I\u2019m optimistics\u2019. Fundamentally, I don\u2019t think we should be in the business of trying to \u2018solve\u2019 problems \u2013 rather, that\u2019s part of the problem itself, and proffering prose solutions typically involves a refusal of the revelation that\u2019s available to us. The best a writer can do, if they feel called to write, is to use words to draw attention to things that command responses beyond words, models or \u2018solutions\u2019. I don\u2019t think you can ever fully succeed at that as a writer, but maybe there are degrees, and it can be worth trying to fail as well as possible.<\/p>\n

That, at any rate, is one way in which I would like to frame\u00a0Finding Lights in a Dark Age.<\/em>\u00a0We need to find ways to inhabit place and meta-place differently to the present, ways that are equal to the challenges of our times and what they\u2019re revealing to us.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Anyway, talking of words, I have been and will be spilling quite a few more of them in various podcasts and other presentations \u2013 see the list below, and also the\u00a0Events<\/a>\u00a0page on this website. I have to confess something of a contradiction here, not so much in respect of my previous point about the limitations of words as in the fact that usually I don\u2019t greatly enjoy public speaking. Something along the lines of \u201cI\u2019ve already expressed this better in my book than I can think of to say right now off the top of my head \u2013 go and read the book!\u201d<\/p>\n

However, I guess speaking with people is the beginning of something less abstracted \u2013 an invitation into encounter and specific place or context. So I will try to do this as well as I can in forthcoming events.<\/p>\n

And so, regarding events, I spoke recently with my friends Ashley and Jason on the Doomer Optimism podcast about\u00a0N.S. Lyons<\/a>, who I wrote about recently\u00a0here<\/a>. Lyons also did an interview at Unherd\u00a0here<\/a>. I have some agreement with him on a few points, but mostly I find his positions antithetical to the world we somehow need to bring about.<\/p>\n

I also spoke recently at a We Feed the UK\u00a0event<\/a>\u00a0in Bristol, alongside\u00a0Helen Keys<\/a>\u00a0who\u2019s involved in helping to revitalize the linen industry in Northern Ireland. I\u2019d recommend\u00a0We Feed the UK<\/a>\u00a0for the stories they\u2019re trying to weave about place, food and fibre. I gave another talk to the Planetary Limits Academic Network \u2013 an interesting group and discussion.<\/p>\n

Looking forward, I\u2019ll be speaking at the Glastonbury Festival on 27 June and again on 29 June. I fear I may have left it a bit late in life for my first Glastonbury Festival, but I\u2019m hoping to enjoy myself there. The last chapter of my book involves a fictional future walk ending near Glastonbury. It\u2019s too good an opportunity to miss to walk there next month. Life imitating words. I\u2019ll report back here on any strange and wonderful events I encounter along the way.<\/p>\n

The programme at Glastonbury looks quite interesting, with talks from people like\u00a0Adam Greenfield<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Caroline Lucas<\/a>, discussed recently here. Maybe I\u2019ll bring my guitar as well, in case Neil Young fails to show.<\/p>\n

Then I\u2019ll be speaking at the Green Gathering in Chepstow\/Cas-gwent on 3 August. I\u2019ve got various podcasts in the offing too. I\u2019ll share information about those as and when.<\/p>\n

But right now, I\u2019m going to get outside and try to pick up some sorely neglected threads in this little smallholding that I call home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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