EcoGather

In the Shell of the Old
2025-06-07 15:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Hard-Pressed Community Print Shop, 12 VT Rt. 15, West Danville, Vermont
The systems and institutions of society are not living up to their promises. That might be old news for you. Or it might be a recent revelation. Either way, after noticing the things aren’t as we were lead to believe, it’s worth taking a closer look. Are we dealing with surficial cracks in the paint that could be patched and restored? Or are we seeing the evidence of deep structural flaws? Put differently, do we need to confront the fact that honestly made and long-upheld principles and promises are suddenly being broken? Or is it time to reckon with the fact that those same principles and promises we always dishonestly proffered?
If we accept – or even strongly suspect – that human-made systems aren’t working well and are leading us somewhere we’d rather not go, we might be tempted to pursue significant, large scale, rapid and transformative reform of the system. But after so many decades of clamoring for action on an array of important issues, we also must admit that the massive shifts needed are unlikely, if not impossible, to bring about at the pace of worsening crisis or in the face of regression. This admission is not one of defeat. Rather, it is an invitation to stop trying to change, repair, or redeem “the system”) and, instead, build a new world in the shell of the old.
Taking matters into our own hands involves rebuilding cultures of commoning and cooperation. It also means not waiting for anyone to come save the day. We must take care of each other and get to work. As the old world crumbles and cracks, we can discard the parts that no longer serve us, we can take the pieces that work and start rebuilding the world we want to live in, here and now. This is a task of trusting that other worlds are possible – even if they straddle or hover just beyond the edges of our current imaginative capacity. It is also about committing to doing the work to build with who and what we have immediately around us. And it requires courageously accepting (perhaps even embracing, uncertainty – surrendering to the reality that we cannot know what our new world(s) will be or bring, recognizing that we are in the slipstream, doing the work of generations. It begins when we we show up, whether overwhelmed or undaunted and trust that “[w]e know what we need to do. We need to build the sequel, to draw inspiration which has lain dormant, like the seed beneath the snow.” (David Fleming)

Thrutopia
2025-06-12 17:00 - 18:30
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We can benefit from imagining, ideating, and criticizing utopias and dystopias, but what about right now? Utopias are unachievable and dystopias are undesirable, so what worlds should we inhabit and build, especially now and in the near future? In the pursuit of utopia and in the rejection of dystopia, we encounter Thrutopia.
As philosopher and writer Rupert Read originally envisioned it, “What are desperately needed, but as yet barely exist, are what I term thrutopias. Thrutopias would be about how to get from here to there, where ‘there’ is far far away in time. How to live and love and vision and carve out a future, through pressed times that will endure. The climate crisis is going to be a long emergency, probably lasting hundreds of years. It is useless to fantasise a shining sheer escape from it to utopia. But it’s similarly useless, dangerously defeatist, to wallow around in dystopias. We need ways of seeing, understanding, inhabiting, creating what will be needed for the very long haul. Visioning the politics and ecology of getting through.”
Join us this week as we explore what thrutopia could look like and mean in this stage of modernity and its ongoing collapse.
Thrutopia newsletter
Recommended Resources
Thrutopian Dreams with Manda Scott on Sounds of SAND podcast
THRUTOPIA: Why Neither Dystopias Nor Utopias Are Enough To Get Us Through The Climate Crisis, And How A ‘Thrutopia’ Could Be by Rupert Read
Why building inspiring alternatives is necessary to counter authoritarianism by Barbara Peterson
The Way Out is Through: On Thrutopia with Manda Scott, a conversation by advaya

How to Fall in Love with the Future
2025-06-27 13:00 - 14:30
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In this final EcoGathering, we have partnered with Upstream for a conversation with Rob Hopkins discussing his forthcoming book, How to Fall in Love with the Future. The book comes out June 17th (available in the US on September 16th) and you can order at the link above through Chelsea Green Publishing (use discount code CGP35 for 35% off your purchase). This collaborative EcoGathering serendipitously falls at the end of our cycle on ‘Topias, during which we explored the many ways our stories of the future shape our actions and orientations now. Rob invites us to consider how vividly and sensually imagining the future we want, based on real examples of eutopias strengthens our efforts to bring about the rapid, radical change we need to create vivacious, beautiful communities – and it’s not that hard to build with who and what we have around us. Since this is our final gathering as EcoGather, we will also use Rob’s invitations and tools to dream about what comes next for us as otherWise.
Recommended resources for this gathering:
Upstream Podcast: How to Fall in Love with the Future with Rob Hopkins
