Monthly Archives: January 2023

Walking in the Dark

This post is about the most recent of the 2-3 hour ‘contemplative wanderings’ that I do near the end of each month. In the early hours of evening, at this time of year this far north, it’s already been dark … Continue reading

Posted in Creative Works, Month-End Reflections | 5 Comments

Hope, on the Balance of Probabilities

my now-slightly-outdated map of worldviews about collapse; right-click and open in a new tab to see it full-sized It’s interesting to listen to social philosopher Daniel Schmachtenberger try to reconcile his assessment of the state of the world with his … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 6 Comments

Making Sense of Scents

fragrance wheel from drom, from ‘top notes’ (citrus) around to ‘bass notes’ (musk), one of many different attempts to taxonomize the scents used in perfumery When I was young, my emotions and my sense of place and time were quite … Continue reading

Posted in How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 2 Comments

Every Picture Tells a Story

image from Mozilla Foundation’s promotion for their VPN product; the image is not on their site, and only appears on the start tab when upgrading your Firefox version This morning when I updated to the latest version of Firefox, a … Continue reading

Posted in Our Culture / Ourselves | 1 Comment

Links of the Month: January 2023

from Michael Leunig, of course The recent end-of-year messages from most of my favourite writers have been pretty glum — the situation, they say, is hopeless, and inevitably going to get much worse (and without the “before it gets better” … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 4 Comments

Coping With Collapse: Updated Poster

2023 update to this 2019 poster; right click and open in a separate tab to view or print full-size Dire warnings about imminent or ongoing economic or ecological collapse always used to be followed by obligatory “It might not be … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 2 Comments

No Free Will, No Freedom

Ah, here we go again, down the “free will” rabbit hole. photo by Pavel Danilyuk, for Pexels, CC0 In a recent post, Caitlin Johnstone got to the heart of why we continue to tolerate the massive dysfunction, corruption and inequality … Continue reading

Posted in How the World Really Works, Illusion of the Separate Self and Free Will, Our Culture / Ourselves | 12 Comments

CoVid-19: Are You Feeling Lucky?

I’m still tracking the data on the pandemic. My message hasn’t changed. I’ll try to keep this short, since it’s mostly preaching to the choir. The data in the charts below are based on excess deaths data, provided by health … Continue reading

Posted in How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 10 Comments

You Have My Divided Attention

image from piqsels, CC0 Since I first wrote about Paying Attention to What We Pay Attention To, eighteen months ago, there has been a lot of, well, attention in the media about the business and importance of paying attention. As I’m … Continue reading

Posted in Illusion of the Separate Self and Free Will, Our Culture / Ourselves | 3 Comments

The Things That We Call Love

I‘ve been using the chart above for many years, and it’s evolved somewhat, but what it’s basically saying is: Everything we call love is a conditioned chemical response to sensory stimuli. Nature, in order to propagate the species effectively, hooks … Continue reading

Posted in How the World Really Works, Illusion of the Separate Self and Free Will, Our Culture / Ourselves | 1 Comment