Category Archives: Our Culture / Ourselves

Against Mythology, Reality Contends in Vain

artwork by Simeon Netchev (CC BY-NC-ND) from World History Encyclopedia The title of this essay is plagiarized from Aurélien’s latest, which plunges into the treacherous subject of myth. Myth, sadly, for reasons Aurélien takes pains to explain, often trumps the … Continue reading

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Ten Important Things I Learned From Very Intelligent Women

images of Alice Walker and Ursula Le Guin, CC-SA 2.0 from wikimedia Women write just over half of the books that are published each year, almost double the proportion of just a generation ago. These books are skewed towards fiction, … Continue reading

Posted in How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 12 Comments

Not Longing For Anything To Be Different

(This chart is yet another attempt to create a model of how human conditioning works. This article is focused on the fourth example — situations that make us long for what we believe and imagine “could be”, or what we … Continue reading

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

Links of the Month: July 2024

yep, whether you look at us through a moral lens, a scientific lens, a philosophical lens, or a satirical lens, we cannot help be only and exactly what. and who, we are; cartoon by Will McPhail Everyone’s obsessed with the … Continue reading

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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 … Continue reading

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

What We Say and What We Do

Yep, that annoying graphic again. If the subject of free will and conditioning doesn’t fascinate you, give this post a pass. There is something terribly counter-intuitive about the idea, contained in the above graphic, that while our behaviours can condition … Continue reading

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Links of the Month: June 2024

cartoon by Michael Leunig from his fans’ FB page If you’re looking for The Truth, you won’t find it here. Just opinions. Stated or implied by what is included in the links below, and perhaps more importantly what is excluded. … Continue reading

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

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, … Continue reading

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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 … Continue reading

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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 … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, Our Culture / Ourselves | 2 Comments