My Best Stuff

The inimitable Rev. Michael Dowd (bio) recently asked me to distill my list of some 80 “best posts” (on my right sidebar) down to my 10 best, since he and his wife Connie Barlow wanted to record audio versions of some of them to post on their sustainability page, alongside those of other writers about eco-collapse and sustainability such as John Michael Greer, Paul Kingsnorth, Theo Kitchener, Ronald Wright, Richard Heinberg, Joanna Macy and Jim Kunstler, and many other luminaries I greatly admire and have written about on these pages.

I of course agreed to do so. I wanted to focus on the ones that readers suggested they found most useful, educational, inspiring or interesting. About half of these would also be on my ‘favourites’ list because they were fun to write or because researching them taught me a great deal. But ultimately at least half of my ‘favourite’ posts are creative works. They’re the hardest to do, and often the least popular. But I’ve become quite fond of the recurring characters in my short stories, and three of my free-verse works would be at or near the top of my favourite writings.

So I provided Michael with some of both, and I list below, in no particular order, the 30 posts that I think comprise my ‘best’ writing, marked with a †  and/or my personal ‘favourites’ (marked with an *). For non-fiction articles the thesis or subject of each post is shown below the article name.

I hope this list points you to some of my work you might have missed. Comments are closed for older articles to fend off spam, but feel free to comment below or email me.

Ten Things I Wish I’d Learned Earlier (May 2017)†*
The 10 most important things I’ve learned since I started blogging

 A Future Without Us (Nov 2017)†
Life for humans after civilization’s collapse might well be joyous, sustainable and amazingly diverse

 The Mushroom at the End of the World (Jan 2017) (Long) (Book review/summary)†*
How economies really work and how we could prepare for the economy that will emerge after civilization’s collapse 

Complexity and Collapse (updated Jun 2016) (Long) (originally published in SHIFT magazine)†
How complex systems work and how they are leading to the inevitable collapse of our economic, affordable energy and ecological systems

Too Many Rats in the Cage: Civilization Disease (May 2013)†
Civilization has unintentionally made us all ill

Do We Really Want To Know? (Nov 2009)†
Industrial agriculture and other modern industries depend on our human desire not to know the unpleasant details of how the things we want are produced

The Dark and Gathering Sameness of the World (Apr 2006) (Book review/summary)†
The increasing homogeneity of our world threatens our survival and diminishes our lives

The End of Philosophy (May 2005) (Book review/summary)†*
We cannot and shouldn’t want to “save the world” from the rapacity and foolishness of the human species

The Problem With Systems (Jul 2016)†
We can’t “fix” society’s broken systems because they don’t really exist

The Admission of Necessary Ignorance (updated Jun 2016)†
A humbler, more equanimous approach to science and other human endeavours might serve us, and our world, well

 Several Short Sentences About Jellyfish (2014)†*
A research report on the world’s most amazing and enduring creature

The Rogue Animal and Gaia Consciousness (May 2005) (Book review/summary)†
Somehow the human species, attempting to make a better world, created a prosthetic, disconnected one instead

Manifesto (Mar 2010)†
A whimsical rant against our society’s uncritical acceptance of conformity and propaganda

The Value of Conversation (Mar 2010)†*
Skilled, thoughtful discourse is essential to human connection, health and survival

Ten Things to Do When You’re Feeling Hopeless (Sep 2010)†*
Ways of coping in a seemingly ever-worsening world

A Culture of Dependence (Oct 2010)†*
We can’t hope to change a culture whose systems we’re utterly, helplessly dependent on

A Harvest of Myths (Jul 2014)†*
The dubious assumptions on which we base our beliefs, stories and actions (notes from a Dark Mountain conference)

Several Short Sentences About Learning (Apr 2015)†*
How we actually learn and why we often don’t

Cultural Acedia: When We Can No Longer Care (Jul 2018)†
Before every cultural collapse, there is a period of acedia that portends it; we’re now in that period

All There Is, Is This (Apr 2016)*
The essence of radical non-duality and the non-existence of the separate self

On the Shoulders of Giants (Feb 2018) (Short Story)*
A father and daughter banter about the nature of free will

 Conjurer (2009) (Satire in verse)*
A lament on expectations

The Horses’ Bodies (Feb 2014) (Poem)*

Invisible (Nov 2016) (Poem)*

Calling the Cage Freedom (Nov 2017) (Short Story)*

Speaking Grosbeak (Jun 2015) (Short Story)*

Flywheel (Aug 2014) (Short Story)*

A Conversation (Jul 2009) (Short Story)*

Against Hope (Sep 2015) (Video)*
My PechaKucha presentation, a mix of light and dark; embedded at top of this post

Interview with Dean Walker (Jun 2018) (Video)*
Dean asks me about my evolving views on collapse, grief, and non-duality; a light and enjoyable conversation