Localisation Quotes

“It's important to empower localized problem-solving in the way mycelium networks do.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Localisation stands, at best, at the limits of practical possibility, but it has the decisive argument in its favour that there will be no alternative.”
― David Fleming, Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It

“There is a deeper point to be made here, however, having to do with the specificity of everything. One of the great failings of our culture is the nearly universal belief that there can be anything universal. We as a culture take the same approach to living in Phoenix as in Seattle as in Miami, to the detriment of all these landscapes. We turn wild trees to standardized two-by-fours. We turn living fish into fish sticks. But every fish is different from every other fish. Every student is different from every other student. Every place is different from every other place. If we are ever to hope to begin to live sustainably in place (which is the only way to live sustainably), we will have to remember specificity is everything.”
― Derrick Jensen, Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution

“While democracy has advanced, the part we ordinary citizens have played in the making and sustaining of the places and communities we live in has diminished. Never has so much been decided for so many by so few.”
― David Fleming, Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy

“I think capitalism is a good thing. The only problem with capitalism is that it destroys the planet, and that it’s based on growth. I mean apart from those two little details it’s got a lot to be said in its favour.”
― David Fleming, Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy

“The claim that industrial agriculture is the only way of feeding a large population is about as scientific as a belief in Creationism - and far more damaging.”
― David Fleming, Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy

“Unfortunately, the critics of economics have had a tendency to discuss the whole structure as a tissue of misconceptions. It is a critique that fails. The strength of economics is its considerable, if far from complete, understanding of the flows and comparative advantages that underlie trade, jobs, capital and incomes, and the logic of optimising behaviour, all backed by glittering accomplishment in mathematics. That makes it a powerful analytical instrument, so that just a few misconceptions – such as a failure to understand the informal economy or resource depletion – have leverage: like a baby monkey at the controls of a Ferrari, they can turn it into an instrument with extraordinarily destructive potential. If it were a tissue of errors, it would not be dangerous: it is its 90 percent brilliance which makes it so.”
― David Fleming, Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy

“Globalisation and localisation are not antithetical but rather correlated processes: evolution of the concept of territoriality and the risk of levelling and sameness (of values, culture and so forth) make it necessary to reconsider and valorise local belonging and diversity.”
― Giuseppe De Vergottini, Topographical Names and Protection of Linguistic Minorities