Monthly Archives: May 2024

A Dragon, Several Stories High

This is #30 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. a children’s book about the dangers of ignoring a problem … Continue reading

Posted in Creative Works, Illusion of the Separate Self and Free Will, Month-End Reflections | 3 Comments

Come See How We Live Here

NYC-Dublin portal; photo by Brendan McDermid/Reuters via CBC OK, so this is another of Dave’s wild and crazy ideas. This one is especially annoying because I have neither the expertise/resources to bring it to fruition, nor the social skills to … Continue reading

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

What Just Apparently Happened

The ‘model of reality’ referred to in this article is shown in blue on the diagram above. So ‘I’ apparently ‘wake up’. A conditioned series of biological responses increases the blood flow to certain parts of this body and brain, … Continue reading

Posted in How the World Really Works, Illusion of the Separate Self and Free Will, Our Culture / Ourselves | 4 Comments

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 … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works | 7 Comments

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 … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 8 Comments

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 … Continue reading

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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 … Continue reading

Posted in How the World Really Works | 6 Comments

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 … Continue reading

Posted in Illusion of the Separate Self and Free Will, Our Culture / Ourselves, Using Weblogs and Technology | 2 Comments

An Age Which Advances Progressively Backwards

image from piqsels, CC0 What have we to do But stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards In an age which advances progressively backwards? — TS Eliot, “The Rock” (1934) You can’t help but get a terrible sense of … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 5 Comments

The Immanence of Everything

Tardigrade photo by Frank Fox at www.mikro-foto.de, from wikimedia CC-BY-SA 3.0 Recently I’ve been reading more of the work of Parul Sehgal, whose article laying out the dangers of stories inspired my last article on immanence, which is perhaps the … Continue reading

Posted in How the World Really Works, Illusion of the Separate Self and Free Will, Our Culture / Ourselves | 2 Comments