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Caroline Levine argues that humanists, for too long, have thrown their lot in with indeterminacy and the disruption of systems. We have been anti-instrumentality for too long, and she suggests a set of forms for building infrastructures/spaces that enable thriving: routines (perhaps best understood as habits?), pathways (ways to move people and things), enclosures (abodes). She offers a number of examples of how these forms can be combined in various ways, and she also argues for the importance of "hinges."

A hinge can be temporal, as in a turning point. One example of how this concept is useful - organizing people can be especially effective when they are at a turning point in their lives or in their thinking. But a hinge can also be a linkage between two networks, and it was this concept I found most interesting as I think about federation:

"What does this mean in practice? It means neither valorizing the small, local action over the massive revolutionary subject, or vice versa, but rather paying attention to the linkages between groups. It means focusing on the form of the hinge. Po­liti­cal theorists have long argued that social movements are most successful at recruiting new members when they tap into existing networks: families, workplaces, friendships, neighborhoods, unions, churches, schools, and colleges. A person might bring her new neighbor to a meeting, for example, and that neighbor will ­ tell her cousin about it, who in turn gets so excited about the experience that she invites her ­ w hole youth group. As the social movement grows, its events and organ­izations create a vibrant new network of their own, which carries a sense of purpose and belonging that can make it attractive to new members." (135)

"hinged organ­izations can succeed, even if they are ideologically composite or even incoherent, because ­ of their massive size. ­ There is no need for purity or consistency. In fact, precisely the reverse may be true: movements grow large and power­ful in part by linking groups with views that do not necessarily align perfectly." (139)

Yunkaporta offers Indigenous modes of thought and storytelling as a method, but he's clear that “‘ancient wisdom’ is not your one-stop-shop for salvation through regenerative design.” (24)

But he offers "right story" as a method, a way of offering a complex, multi-dimensional set of stories that ground technologies and cultural practices in relationality and responsibility toward one another, nonhumans, and land:

“Right story is not about objective truth but the metaphors and relations and narratives of interconnected communities living in complex contexts of knowledge and economy, aligned with the patterns of land and creation. right story never comes from individuals, but from groups living in right relation with each other and with the land. wrong story wrong way - this means unilateral or unbalanced ritual, word and thought.” (21)

"Right story" is a lot of things, but the idea I found most useful was Yunkaporta's argument that any technology must be accompanied by a psycho-social technology, a set of ideas and practices that ensure that this entire technological ecology will not do harm:

“You need to leave the ore in the ground until you have strong enough story to regulate its use in the world.” (192)