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The man who opened the escape hatch for me and millions of others was Wendell Berry, the farmer prophet of Port Royal, Kentucky. For his life and work, I am immensely grateful. newsletter.petedavis.org/p/on-wendell...

newsletter.petedavis.org

On Wendell Berry

1934-2026

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And you’ll laugh at the most beautiful joke I’ve ever read: O when the world’s at peace and every man is free then will I go down unto my love. O and I may go down several times before that.

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You won’t give up on big dreams, but you will understand that you trade sight for scale: that you lose your bearings when names become numbers, eyes become maps, and friendships become laws. You’ll still care about people around the world, but you’ll learn to love People by first loving a person.

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In the world on the other side of the hatch, you’ll find everything from this world—but you will find it inside out. You’ll still care about what they’re doing in Washington, but you’ll get there by following your neighborhood creek upriver to investigate what they’re dumping in the headwaters.

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Free from screens and narratives that flatten and separate, you can “convocate” with the real neighbors around you—you can weave threads of your callings together into a shared calling, and then participate in the natural drama and joy of living out that vocation together.

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It’s also not true that climbing through the hatch frees us from all that’s false about the world. People are still people, and you are still you. But they’re now people you can work with, at a scale you can work with.

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And in the humiliation of accepting that, you surrender the lie that the old world sold you—that you don’t need one another, that your lives aren’t bound up in each other’s.

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When you climb through the hatch, you finally stop escaping—by sticking around somewhere, you now have the stability to be who you are, with all your grief and shame, quiet hopes and dogged vices.

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Now it’s not exactly right to call this an escape hatch, because when you climb through it, you’re doing the opposite of escaping. The world we are trying to escape is a world designed around escapism—its flashy novelties are here to distract us from feeling our needs and facing our limits.

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The promised land you seek is the land to which you make a promise—to treat it and all that comes with it as the particular, wonderful, concrete things they actually are; to take up your role as a member of it.

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The realm you are escaping is the realm of abstraction—being a unit among units, deploying resources among resources, browsing options among options.

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The escape hatch isn’t anywhere particular—rather, it’s everywhere particular. It appears when you decide to start loving any given particular place, as a particular place.

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Stacy Mitchell @stacyfmitchell.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

There is a hatch through which you can escape all that’s false about this world: all the status games and addictive screens, the news cycles and passing fads, the abstract systems exhausting us with their data on how we are good or bad, up or down, in or out.

newsletter.petedavis.org

On Wendell Berry

1934-2026

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Reposted by Pete Davis

Big thanks to Pete Davis for having me on his new podcast Festival for a fun conversation about how workers, small businesses, and consumers have been in coalition in the past to defeat corporate giants — and how they can be in coalition again.

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Pete Davis @petedavis.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Dolly: “That’s what I want to be when I grow up. I’m gonna be trash!” Philip K. Dick: “The symbols of the divine show up in our world initially at the trash stratum.” Psalm 118: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”

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Pete Davis @petedavis.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

The LOST PROPHETS universe is extending! On Friday, September 11 at 1PM ET, Elias Crim and I are launching The Prophecy Workshop — a weekly online gathering for friends of the show and others who want to explore how we recover a spiritual politics, guided by the wisdom of the elders.

lostprophets.org

The Prophecy Workshop: Launching September 11

An invitation to recover a spiritual politics, guided by the wisdom of the elders.

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Coming next week: The greatest little show in town. Follow along: - Substack: FestivalPod.org - Youtube: @FestivalWithPeteDavis - Spotify:…

Plus, check out FESTIVAL’s trailer, which includes our wonderful theme song—“Last Dance at the Grove” by the great Boston band Noble Dust: youtu.be/Zoc0yke2AZk?...

youtu.be

FESTIVAL Trailer

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Subscribe to FESTIVAL on: Substack: festivalpod.org YouTube: youtube.com/@FestivalWit... Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/033s6jU... Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f...

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Tune in to learn about his push for a new constitutional convention, lessons from his 2016 presidential campaign, and new hope in a Maine court case that could defang Super PACs once and for all.

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Joining us to walk through his past fifteen years of fighting Congressional corruption is cyberlaw folk hero turned campaign finance reform crusader Lawrence Lessig.

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Later in the show, we kick off the series After-Action Report, in which advocates recount recent battles, sharing what went well, what didn’t, and most importantly, what we can learn for future action.

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Tune in to learn about the forgotten history of local businesses and the New Deal, the abandoned power of the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936, and effective methods of changing public narratives around your cause.

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The series kicks off with Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, who has spent three decades championing local community economies and challenging the domination of Walmart and Amazon.

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First, we launch a new recurring segment: The Roots of My Theory of Everything, in which we bring on thinkers and advocates to walk through the origins of how they see the world.

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Pete Davis @petedavis.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

The second episode of FESTIVAL is live, with two-long haul heroes joining us: Stacy Mitchell (@stacyfmitchell.bsky.social), champion of local economies, and Lawrence Lessig (@lessig.bsky.social), cyberlaw folk hero turned campaign finance reform crusader: newsletter.petedavis.org/p/festival-2...

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Reflections on The Odyssey (2026)

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Pete Davis @petedavis.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Reflections on You Can Count on Me (2000)

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Pete Davis @petedavis.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

The latest LOST PROPHETS is live — Part 1 of our two-part series on the great Hannah Arendt, who argued: "We are free to change the world and to start something new in it." www.lostprophets.org/p/23-hannah-...

lostprophets.org

#23. Hannah Arendt, Part 1: Europe

Narrowly surviving the worst of the twentieth century, she nevertheless argued: "We are free to change the world and to start something new in it."

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Pete Davis @petedavis.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

We just published a new Democracy Policy Network policy kit by the great Sam Butler on Group Purchasing — how neighbors and cities can make life more affordable and build community by purchasing together: democracypolicy.network/agenda/open-...

democracypolicy.network

Democracy Policy Network

Together, we can build the foundation for a deeper democracy.

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Pete Davis @petedavis.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

The FDR memorial captures it well — not one large thing to marvel at, but a range of many things, all with a shared vitality flowing forth.

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Pete Davis @petedavis.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Fascism will win if the only fight is creative destruction vs rusted bureaucracy. The third way is participatory democracy—similar grasping toward the Good, Beautiful, and True, but not vicariously through a select few "geniuses"...rather through the the lively mess of our shared co-creation!

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Pete Davis @petedavis.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

If we want people to act like what we are doing over here matters, we have to show ourselves that what we are doing over here matters.

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Pete Davis @petedavis.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Local Halls of Fame, Local Newspapers, Local Archives, Local Historic Markers... they all send a message: What you are doing—right here—matters. It's a countercultural message, because the message the main mediums are sending is: All that matters is what's happening over there.

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For those of us in positions of power or comfort, we should ask ourselves — and teach our children to ask themselves — what injustices today call out to our inner Silas Soule?

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For every awful moment in our history, there were always whistleblowers, moral deviants, conscientious objectors and martyrs like Silas Soule. Those in history have no excuse — and neither do we.

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A few months after testifying against his fellow officers, Soule was shot and killed in what was likely retaliation for his testimony. His murderer was never charged and was eventually buried with honors.

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