Plesion.Co

Soon I hope it to be a declaration. After that, there are big ideas and bigger dreams. For something a bit less abstract, but still an incomplete and quite likely inaccurate work in progress, read on:

The Civic Arts encompass the knowledge and the the craft of living together in civilization; banding together in common cause – and accepting a degree of subjection to the will, best interest and su

pport of the commons – in order to propser beyond what we are capable of on our own. These arts are a living, evolving tradition that we together cultivate (or fail to) through our decisions and actions. Once, civicism was cultivated in an active tradition supported by the lives and homes of people and community. But since the advent of many things – most notably cheap energy, the sprawling of our communities and their anonymization by the automobile and its acceleration and violentization of our public spaces, and the application of Labor theory to education (albeit with good intentions at the time regarding the literacy of the country) – both the formal (schools) and the informal (communities) have ceased teaching these arts, ceased helping multiple generations to understand how we live together and what impacts our actions have on others, and what our responsibilities are to each other and the rest of our environment and world. This makes it easy for us to be, stand, divided – to be manipulated by those few who truly may mean harm at large, either passively through the improper wielding of fear, or actively through the wielding of power. It allows us to unknowingly be held hostage, daily, hourly, to actions which are counter to our own best interest and that of the world at large, around us. Most people are at core good, well intended, want the same straightforward things out of life, have the same basic values. But politics is the front that power wears to distract you. Don’t equate politics with governance, please. Governanace is an act of civic work, to manage in common, according to the best outcomes for the common, supported by and contributed to by the body of that common. Politics is about the compromises needed to come to a course of action amongst differing opinions. And, increasingly – set loose from any sort of Civic Literacy, it is adrift in a stormy sea of our own making. Cheap energy has allowed and urged us to construct a society that is overly complex and reliant on things which are both rapidly decreasing in supply and also wreaking havoc on our entire environment in profound ways. Arguably the pursuance of them is warping us and our entire society. Automobiles have eclipsed the human in all of our pursuits and priorities, and we are all the worse for it. Our communities have been ripped apart and exsanguinated, bleeding out slow deaths over decades and across the countryside. We have been taught to fear each other, and to disengage. We have been pulled from intense civilization and remote wilderness alike – the two cradles of our modern intelligences; social, emotional, philosophical …

We have lost a connection to the things that shaped us at our root, the knowledge that birthed us. And in so doing, we have lost something we can not do without. We have gained much in the interim, things that we would not trade for anything. Things that are already guiding us into the next epoch of human existence, enlightenment and creation. This is just the barest touch of what I to intend explore, journal, understand and apply with my work, practice, and life; Civilization is the only lens that brings it all into focus for me. Civilization is a living tradition that we cultivate, or fail to. It is time for a renewed understanding of how, what, why and more. It it time for a renewal of Civics. An Atlas is, traditionally, a collection of maps and information about what they show. The way a people live amongst and interact with each other is primarily interdependent with their environment, though this is by no means the only factor. Knowledge about that environment and how to live in it are of foundational requirement to all of the rest of civilization. It has been almost exactly 9 years to the day, and a whole lot of life in-between, since I upended my life, quit Journalism as a daily practice (in banging my head against a heartbreaking wall), and took off to gain a deeper understanding of this thing we are doing. I’m ready to start writing about it now.