What is Down to Earth?

During this time of great upheaval, one of the things we need most is new stories about systems change. The ones in our media environment now tend to skew too far toward the apocalyptic or the techno-optimistic, leaving people feeling hopeless (“There is no point changing because it’s too late anyways”), or powerless (“The scientists and entrepreneurs will fix it”). Both of these lead to a lack of agency.

The stories we tell about the world shape the realm of possibility for the future. For people to take action toward a different world, they need to first feel that there is a compelling vision of the future worth realizing.

To bridge this gap, the team at re•generation decided to launch this Substack newsletter to help all of us find our places in the world of systems change and to bring these often-opaque topics down to earth.

The name Down to Earth also embodies the same principle in a more figurative sense. So much of the conversation about systems change relies on jargon and academic language that make it feel like it’s only relevant to domain experts. Terms like ‘neoliberalism,’ ‘hegemony,’ ‘modernity,’ ‘neocolonialism,’ or ‘extractivism’ are used in so many different ways that they often obscure—rather than clarify—the argument being made. We aim to make all of the work here accessible while not over-simplifying complex and nuanced topics.

We’ll share stories about compelling alternative societies and modes of organization that already exist around the world. We’ll also provide analysis of the past and present that shows our readers that the current systems we live under are not normal, natural, or inevitable. They were made by people and can be remade differently.

As a result, we hope that our newsletter will become an engaged community of people on the journey of envisioning alternative futures for themselves and their communities – and moving towards bringing them to life. If this sounds exciting to you, please join us!