. . . a steep winding-down of the size of the industrial economy. It strips away its burdens and complications, nurses the human ecology back to health, builds local competence and discovers a sense of place. . . . This is managed descent. . . . The shock is as gentle and as survivable as foresight can make

Sure, but the way to stop a tipping point is not to freak out about 30% of the Amazon. It’s to devolve power and control to the people who are on the frontlines of that struggle and to return the power to them to self-govern their relationships to land and living systems and to fight back against the desecration of the sacred.

Modern politicians play the role of wheelers and dealers, brokering alliances or negotiating compromises between different constituencies or interest groups. In Nambikwara society this didn’t happen much because there weren’t really many differences in wealth or status. However, chiefs did play an analogous role, brokering between two entirely diff