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Tag Archives: how to save the world
This Is What Collapse Looks Like
This Is What Collapse Looks Like Every day now, the news is replete with evidence that, everywhere, things are falling apart faster and faster, and nothing of consequence is being, or can be, done about it. Every civilization collapses, but the collapse of our current global industrial civilization is occurring at a breathtaking and accelerating […]
The Thing About AI
The Thing About AI As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with economic, political and ecological collapse, genocides, grotesquely incompetent ‘leaders’, and nuclear brinkmanship, now we also have to worry about AI. To some extent, as Indrajit Samarajiva has repeatedly pointed out, we have had AI around for centuries, in the form of corporations — […]
Not Knowing
Not Knowing The verbs we use to confirm or refute our acceptance of the beliefs and worldviews of those we know, comprise a sort of code, like a hidden handshake, or a shaken fist. We are asked whether we condone or condemn a certain behaviour, but the meaning of condone (other than as a rarely-used synonym of gift) […]
Are We Communitarian By Nature, or Merely Tribal?
Are We Communitarian By Nature, or Merely Tribal? image above from the wild human initiative This month, Aurélien has wandered a bit afield and speculated on the fundamental nature of the human animal. I think most of us can agree that the cult of rugged individualism that has prevailed in the west over the past century, encouraging […]
How Might We Undermine the PMC?
How Might We Undermine the PMC? Fourteen years ago, I wrote a very long article that became the lion’s share of Chapter Two of Keith Farnish’s book Underminers. My article was about the Tools of Disconnection — the cultural mechanisms by which we became disconnected from each other and the more-than-human world, and hence willing and able […]
Happiness is Just Chemistry, and Its Absence
Happiness is Just Chemistry, and Its Absence (like everything on my blog, my graphics are covered by Creative Commons licence) What is it about us that we never seem to be happy, at least for long? What does it even mean to be happy? There have been endless studies suggesting that, a year after winning a major lottery, people […]
Why Unregulated Capitalism Always Leads to Enshittification
Why Unregulated Capitalism Always Leads to Enshittification (right click to open chart in a new tab, or click here, to view full-size; like everything on my blog, my graphics are covered by Creative Commons licence) Lots of ideas work well in theory, but many of them don’t work out so well in practice, especially when the idea becomes […]
Links of the Month: May 2024
Links of the Month: May 2024 Public Service Announcement: If reading my links of the month is unbearably depressing for you, just skip down to the very bottom of this post and at least read Lyz Lenz’s little story on Mothering. Everything else here will probably be the same next month, anyway. cartoon by Michael Leunig No, […]
Our Curious Propensity to Ignore New Evidence
Our Curious Propensity to Ignore New Evidence What is a “belief” anyway, and how does it get “there”? The word belief comes from the old Germanic root that also gives us love and it originally meant something (impersonal) we care about and trust strongly. I would argue that beliefs are unique to the human brain, and that they are the […]
It’s All Chemistry, Isn’t It?
It’s All Chemistry, Isn’t It? This is #29 in a series of month-end reflections on the state of the world, and other things that come to mind, as I walk, hike, and explore in my local community. Chart above is my own invention, having studied the various chemicals that scientists believe are involved in feelings of […]
Childhood: Conditioned to Pretend to Know
Childhood: Conditioned to Pretend to Know New Yorker cartoon by the late Charles Barsotti When I was a young child, I would look at my parents and other adults interacting with each other, with a mixture of bewilderment and amazement. “Surely”, I thought to myself, “they don’t really believe what they’re saying. It must be like […]
A Blameless Explanation of Why Everything is Falling Apart, for Schoolkids
A Blameless Explanation of Why Everything is Falling Apart, for Schoolkids If I were invited to talk to a group of students (of any age) today, to explain why everything seems to be hopeless and falling apart, this is what I think I would tell them. When I was young and idealistic, back in the […]
Acceptance, Forgiveness, Gratitude
Acceptance, Forgiveness, Gratitude Since I’ve come to the (tentative) conclusion that we have no free will (and that in fact there is no ‘self’ to have free will), it’s utterly changed the lens through which I see the world. I now see that our behaviour is completely conditioned by our biology and our culture, given the […]
How De-Dollarization is Likely to Play Out
How De-Dollarization is Likely to Play Out Much has been written in recent years about “De-dollarization” — the shift from the use of the US dollar as the “international reserve currency” in favour of more diverse bi-lateral and multi-lateral currency agreements and transactions. The current system has a long and complicated history, but its most […]
