![]() When I post the results of original research or surveys, my hit rates jump significantly. These are, alas, hard to do well. I’m a ‘thinker’ not a ‘linker’, though I have enormous admiration for those like Mark Woods , Caterina and Natasha who read immense volumes of news and commentary, report only the best and most important in their blogs, and say just the right amount to provide the context needed to allow each reader to determine whether or not to read the entire article in question. Reading a dozen such blogs per day almost eliminates, for me, the need to read newspapers. If my goal was strictly popularity of my blog, I’d write about business, the nuances of blogging, and informative and educational articles on politics and economics (they receive an average of 10 comments per post). I’d write less poetry, fewer short stories and memoirs, less on society and culture (my posts on depression , procrastination , regret and compromise ), and fewer persuasive articles and essays on politics and philosophy. Here’s what I’m thinking of writing about over the next couple of weeks. Dear patient reader, I would welcome your guidance, preferences, and additional ideas (but please e-mail me rather than commenting, to avoid biasing others’ responses).
|
Navigation
Collapsniks
Albert Bates (US)
Andrew Nikiforuk (CA)
Brutus (US)
Carolyn Baker (US)*
Catherine Ingram (US)
Chris Hedges (US)
Dahr Jamail (US)
Dean Spillane-Walker (US)*
Derrick Jensen (US)
Dougald & Paul (IE/SE)*
Gail Tverberg (US)
Guy McPherson (US)
Honest Sorcerer
Janaia & Robin (US)*
Jem Bendell (UK)
Mari Werner
Michael Dowd (US)*
Nate Hagens (US)
Paul Heft (US)*
Post Carbon Inst. (US)
Resilience (US)
Richard Heinberg (US)
Robert Jensen (US)
Roy Scranton (US)
Sam Mitchell (US)
Tim Watkins (UK)
Umair Haque (UK)
William Rees (CA)
XrayMike (AU)
Radical Non-Duality
Essential Reading
Archive by Category
My Bio, Contact Info, Signature Posts
About the Author (2023)
My Circles
E-mail me
--- My Best 200 Posts, 2003-22 by category, from newest to oldest ---
Collapse Watch:
Hope — On the Balance of Probabilities
The Caste War for the Dregs
Recuperation, Accommodation, Resilience
How Do We Teach the Critical Skills
Collapse Not Apocalypse
Effective Activism
'Making Sense of the World' Reading List
Notes From the Rising Dark
What is Exponential Decay
Collapse: Slowly Then Suddenly
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Making Sense of Who We Are
What Would Net-Zero Emissions Look Like?
Post Collapse with Michael Dowd (video)
Why Economic Collapse Will Precede Climate Collapse
Being Adaptable: A Reminder List
A Culture of Fear
What Will It Take?
A Future Without Us
Dean Walker Interview (video)
The Mushroom at the End of the World
What Would It Take To Live Sustainably?
The New Political Map (Poster)
Beyond Belief
Complexity and Collapse
Requiem for a Species
Civilization Disease
What a Desolated Earth Looks Like
If We Had a Better Story...
Giving Up on Environmentalism
The Hard Part is Finding People Who Care
Going Vegan
The Dark & Gathering Sameness of the World
The End of Philosophy
A Short History of Progress
The Boiling Frog
Our Culture / Ourselves:
A CoVid-19 Recap
What It Means to be Human
A Culture Built on Wrong Models
Understanding Conservatives
Our Unique Capacity for Hatred
Not Meant to Govern Each Other
The Humanist Trap
Credulous
Amazing What People Get Used To
My Reluctant Misanthropy
The Dawn of Everything
Species Shame
Why Misinformation Doesn't Work
The Lab-Leak Hypothesis
The Right to Die
CoVid-19: Go for Zero
Pollard's Laws
On Caste
The Process of Self-Organization
The Tragic Spread of Misinformation
A Better Way to Work
The Needs of the Moment
Ask Yourself This
What to Believe Now?
Rogue Primate
Conversation & Silence
The Language of Our Eyes
True Story
May I Ask a Question?
Cultural Acedia: When We Can No Longer Care
Useless Advice
Several Short Sentences About Learning
Why I Don't Want to Hear Your Story
A Harvest of Myths
The Qualities of a Great Story
The Trouble With Stories
A Model of Identity & Community
Not Ready to Do What's Needed
A Culture of Dependence
So What's Next
Ten Things to Do When You're Feeling Hopeless
No Use to the World Broken
Living in Another World
Does Language Restrict What We Can Think?
The Value of Conversation Manifesto Nobody Knows Anything
If I Only Had 37 Days
The Only Life We Know
A Long Way Down
No Noble Savages
Figments of Reality
Too Far Ahead
Learning From Nature
The Rogue Animal
How the World Really Works:
Making Sense of Scents
An Age of Wonder
The Truth About Ukraine
Navigating Complexity
The Supply Chain Problem
The Promise of Dialogue
Too Dumb to Take Care of Ourselves
Extinction Capitalism
Homeless
Republicans Slide Into Fascism
All the Things I Was Wrong About
Several Short Sentences About Sharks
How Change Happens
What's the Best Possible Outcome?
The Perpetual Growth Machine
We Make Zero
How Long We've Been Around (graphic)
If You Wanted to Sabotage the Elections
Collective Intelligence & Complexity
Ten Things I Wish I'd Learned Earlier
The Problem With Systems
Against Hope (Video)
The Admission of Necessary Ignorance
Several Short Sentences About Jellyfish
Loren Eiseley, in Verse
A Synopsis of 'Finding the Sweet Spot'
Learning from Indigenous Cultures
The Gift Economy
The Job of the Media
The Wal-Mart Dilemma
The Illusion of the Separate Self, and Free Will:
No Free Will, No Freedom
The Other Side of 'No Me'
This Body Takes Me For a Walk
The Only One Who Really Knew Me
No Free Will — Fightin' Words
The Paradox of the Self
A Radical Non-Duality FAQ
What We Think We Know
Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark
Healing From Ourselves
The Entanglement Hypothesis
Nothing Needs to Happen
Nothing to Say About This
What I Wanted to Believe
A Continuous Reassemblage of Meaning
No Choice But to Misbehave
What's Apparently Happening
A Different Kind of Animal
Happy Now?
This Creature
Did Early Humans Have Selves?
Nothing On Offer Here
Even Simpler and More Hopeless Than That
Glimpses
How Our Bodies Sense the World
Fragments
What Happens in Vagus
We Have No Choice
Never Comfortable in the Skin of Self
Letting Go of the Story of Me
All There Is, Is This
A Theory of No Mind
Creative Works:
Mindful Wanderings (Reflections) (Archive)
A Prayer to No One
Frogs' Hollow (Short Story)
We Do What We Do (Poem)
Negative Assertions (Poem)
Reminder (Short Story)
A Canadian Sorry (Satire)
Under No Illusions (Short Story)
The Ever-Stranger (Poem)
The Fortune Teller (Short Story)
Non-Duality Dude (Play)
Your Self: An Owner's Manual (Satire)
All the Things I Thought I Knew (Short Story)
On the Shoulders of Giants (Short Story)
Improv (Poem)
Calling the Cage Freedom (Short Story)
Rune (Poem)
Only This (Poem)
The Other Extinction (Short Story)
Invisible (Poem)
Disruption (Short Story)
A Thought-Less Experiment (Poem)
Speaking Grosbeak (Short Story)
The Only Way There (Short Story)
The Wild Man (Short Story)
Flywheel (Short Story)
The Opposite of Presence (Satire)
How to Make Love Last (Poem)
The Horses' Bodies (Poem)
Enough (Lament)
Distracted (Short Story)
Worse, Still (Poem)
Conjurer (Satire)
A Conversation (Short Story)
Farewell to Albion (Poem)
My Other Sites
Any and all of them look interesting. I’ve put you on my regular read list!
Dave… About Bush’s dream I suspect Hobbes was right. Without government our lives would be’Nasty, mean, swinish, brutish, and short. Still, I’d like to hear what you say.Incidentally, if well done longer is better than shorter.Art Jacobson
If you ever do go mono-topical, maybe its a bid for readership, but y’know, it wouldn’t be for my readership — give me a live human being who breathes, thinks, ponders and dreams over any self-aggrandized narrowcast pundit any day!
Yes, I think if you hired a manager to come in and “maximize” this blog’s popularity potential, sort of the way Clear Channel’s got the radio biz down, you’d end up cutting a lot of what makes “How to Save the World” memorable and unique. I’ve been impressed by the way you alternate between topics with mass appeal and more difficult ones which require a deeper level of readerly engagement. Yesterday’s “Closure”, for example. Maybe it didn’t get so many comments, comparatively speaking. But it’s not a post that necessarily lends itself to off-the-cuff replies, either.A number of my fave bloggers do write brief posts that are also substantial, while others require a larger canvas. Dickinson vs. Whitman, Tolstoy vs. Issa, expansiveness vs. compression…both can be done well, or not so well.
Mark, Art, Gary, Adrian:Wow. I’ve gotta stop and ask questions like this more often. In these brief comments you’ve taught me more about my readership than all the stats and bloglinks since I started blogging. I’m delighted that my schizophrenic subjects and eclectic interests don’t cause you any cognitive dissonance, and that the fact even my categories are kind of uncategorizable doesn’t turn you off. Gentlemen, I’m very grateful and humble for your comments and hope that I can live up to them. -/- Dave
Dave,I’ve had a similar discovery about my blog. I almost feel guilty when I post about something ‘off-topic’. But my posts that get the most comments are those ‘off-topic’ posts. So now I feel much better about posting on whatever I want. I figure that people can just use the category filter to ignore whatever they want.
Dave, I would like to hear your thoughs on #13, when to use which media for communication. I am interested in communities of learning/innovation and believe that we will use weblogs, WebCrossing, and Groove. Your thoughs will be much appreciated.
Marc: Been out of town blogging from hotel rooms, and this item requires some serious research time. I will get around to it eventually, and appreciate your comment.