Natalie Audelo

I don’t have any answers because I don’t think there are any. But I’m fond of Margaret Wheatley’s framing of creating “islands of sanity,” which a kind reader reminded me of in the lovely comments of my last post. These islands are crucially not places of retreat, but rather of contribution — hyperlocal, small in scale, yet deeply meaningful. To... See more

If it’s not abundantly obvious by now, what I find so thought-provoking and why I think it’s so important to keep talking about this, is the reality that so many (read: almost all of us) cannot, don’t want, don’t even know how to imagine alternate ways of living.

"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."

What’s clarifying is that I do believe every person is important. That means working on a human scale matters. Things don’t feel small and petty if you really believe every life is precious and fully linked to all life on Earth. I may not be religious, but I hold community as sacred all the same.

But the real root of the problem is something much deeper than cost-cutting exercises, maximizing shareholder value, and a general loss of craft and bold originality. Somewhere along the way, we lost respect for each other. We’ve broken our social contract, forgotten our manners, ignored the golden rule. The producers have lost respect for the... See more

Chomsky and Robinson also acknowledge that other great powers acted in much the same way that the United States has, and these states also invented elaborate moral justifications—the “white man’s burden,” la mission civilisatrice, the need to protect socialism—to whitewash their atrocious conduct. Given that this behavior preceded the emergence of... See more

As the world grows increasingly fractured, taking the time to engage with strangers has become even more important. The artist and graphic journalist Wendy MacNaughton has created a simple but powerful way for people to connect in an isolated world.

In this audio essay, she shares how she brings people together by having them draw each other in... See more