Accidental Gods

What does our post-carbon, post urban, post-industrial future look like and how do we get there in ways that allow the current and future generations of life on this planet to flourish? More at https://accidentalgods.life

Show Notes

Chris Smaje is a social scientist by training and a small-scale farmer by occupation. For the past 19 years, he has co-worked a small farm in Somerset, in southwest England.  Previously, he was a university-based social scientist, working in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surry and the Dept of Anthropology at Goldsmith's College. HIs focus was aspects of social policy, social identities and the environment. Since switching focus to the practice and politics of agro-ecology, he's written for various publications, such as The Land, Dark Mountain and Permaculture Magazine, as well as academic journals such as Agroecology and Sustainable Food systems. He blogs at Small Farm Futures and has previously been a director of the Ecological Land Co-op. 

His latest book, A Small Farm Future, forms the basis of this conversation - in it, he lays out Ten Crises of our times, which, put together, create the Wicked Problem of this moment in history. From there, the remaining three parts of the book explore the ways in which rural localism can offer a way for humanity to see itself through the numerous crises we currently face both in the richer and poorer countries.

In the podcast, we take the book as our starting point (really, you should read it) and look less at the why, of rural localism and more at the ways it might happen and how it might work.   We delve into the ways humanity has organised in the past (with deep passing references to Graeber and Wengrow's brilliant book, The Dawn of Everything') and how we might self-organise in the future.  We look at the future of energy, at our conceptions of prosperity, the ways small farms can feed the world - and the absolute insanity of the 'precision fermentation' model of feeding eight billion people while enabling them to flourish free of corporate capture. 


Chris's blog https://smallfarmfuture.org.uk/
Chris's book https://uk.bookshop.org/books/a-small-farm-future-making-the-case-for-a-society-built-around-local-economies-self-provisioning-agricultural-diversity-and-a/9781603589024
Chris's response to Monbiot's Regenesis https://smallfarmfuture.org.uk/?p=1978
Article on The Land updating the book https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/commons-and-households-small-farm-future
Chris on Twitter https://twitter.com/csmaje
Graeber and Wengrow - The Dawn of Everything https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-dawn-of-everything-a-new-history-of-humanity/9780141991061
Simon Michaux https://www.simonmichaux.com/
Rebecca Solnit - A Paradise Built in Hell http://www.rebeccasolnit.net/book/a-paradise-built-in-hell/
What your food Qte https://uk.bookshop.org/books/what-your-food-ate-how-to-heal-our-land-and-reclaim-our-health/9781324004530
The Agricultural Dilemma https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-agricultural-dilemma-how-not-to-feed-the-world/9781032260457

What is Accidental Gods ?

Another World is still Possible. The old system was never fit for purpose and now it has gone- and it's never coming back.

We have the power of gods to destroy our home. But we also have the chance to become something we cannot yet imagine,
and by doing so, lay the foundations for a future we would be proud to leave to the generations yet unborn.

What happens if we commit to a world based on generative values: compassion, courage, integrity?

What happens if we let go of the race for meaningless money and commit instead to the things that matter: clean air, clean water, clean soil - and clean, clear, courageous connections between all parts of ourselves (so we have to do the inner work of healing individually and collectively), between ourselves and each other (so we have to do the outer work of relearning how to build generative communities) and between ourselves and the Web of Life (so we have to reclaim our birthright as conscious nodes in the web of life)?

We can do this - and every week on Accidental Gods we speak with the people who are living this world into being. We have all the answers, we just (so far) lack the visions and collective will to weave them into a future that works. We can make this happen. We will. Join us.

Accidental Gods is a podcast and membership program devoted to exploring the ways we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations yet to come.

If we're going to emerge into a just, equitable - and above all regenerative - future, we need to get to know the people who are already living, working, thinking and believing at the leading edge of inter-becoming transformation.
Accidental Gods exists to bring these voices to the world so that we can work together to lay the foundations of a world we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us.
We have the choice now - we can choose to transform…or we can face the chaos of a failing system.
Our Choice. Our Chance. Our Future.

Find the membership and the podcast pages here: https://accidentalgods.life
Find Manda's Thrutopian novel, Any Human Power here: https://mandascott.co.uk
Find Manda on BlueSky @mandascott.bsky.social
On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandascottauthor/
On FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/MandaScottAuthor