CommonS Sense Episode 2: Common Sense in Motion
Jul 2, 2025
Max Liberon, interlocutor who defends preserving difference while building coalitions and mutual aid. Astra Taylor, writer and activist exploring how movements reshape public common sense. Stephanie LeMénager, academic who links individualism, interdependence, and climate-driven shifts in everyday assumptions. They discuss coalition models, mutual aid, changing norms around safety, housing, and collective responsibility.
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Individualism Is Losing Its Plausibility
- Individualism is increasingly untenable as a dominant story for how humans live and act.
- Stephanie LeMénager links rising dispossession, neoliberalism, and climate damage to the collapse of the fantasy of autonomous self-possession.
A Homeowner's Wake Up Call From Climate Risk
- Home ownership no longer guarantees safety as climate-driven fires and floods create new everyday realities.
- Stephanie LeMénager recounts buying a house and now preparing go-bags and neighborhood coordination because houses no longer feel secure.
Coalitions Let Difference Stand Together
- Seeking a single dominant common sense erases crucial differences between communities and knowledge systems.
- Max Liberon advocates coalitions and mutual aid as ways to act together while preserving distinct indigenous, settler, and regional perspectives.