Category Archives: Our Culture / Ourselves

Links of the Month: August 2020

Posted on August 8, 2020 by Dave Pollard

Turn away from your animal kind, Try to leave your body just to live in your mind. Leave your cold cruel mother earth behind, Gaia. As if you were your own creation, As if you were the chosen nation. And … Continue reading →

Posted in How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves, Preparing for Civilization's End, Radical Non-Duality | 2 Comments

The CoVid-19 Endurance Test: Will We Pass It?

Posted on August 6, 2020 by Dave Pollard

brilliant illustration by Nan Lee in the New Yorker The global social distancing effort has been one of humanity’s greatest collective achievements. I don’t think any human endeavor has ever saved so many lives in such a short period of … Continue reading →

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

The Wonderful, Messy Process of Self-Organization

Posted on July 30, 2020 by Dave Pollard

pedestal left after statue of slave trader was removed in Bristol, UK; image from NPR taken by Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP We humans seem to like order, and there are several ways of achieving it. We are inclined to prefer simpler, easier-to-understand … Continue reading →

Posted in How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves, Preparing for Civilization's End | 1 Comment

A Canadian Sorry

Posted on July 29, 2020 by Dave Pollard

drawing by Elliot Keeler Perhaps uniquely, Canadians say “sorry” almost automatically when something goes wrong; it does not (often) imply an admission of guilt, or of remorse. In fact, this is so Canadian that our lawyers had to craft (I … Continue reading →

Posted in Creative Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 4 Comments

Changing Things That Don’t Make Sense

Posted on July 28, 2020 by Dave Pollard

I coined Pollard’s Law of Complexity nearly 20 years ago, to try to sum up what I thought was the most important practical learning from my years of study of complexity theory. Here’s how I worded it: POLLARD’S LAW OF … Continue reading →

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Collapse Happens Slowly… and Then Very Suddenly

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Dave Pollard

David Ehrenfeld, in Beginning Again (1994), describes our civilization as a ragged flywheel, over-built, patched and rusty, spinning faster and faster and beginning to rattle and moan as it comes apart: There goes a chunk — the sick and aged along with … Continue reading →

Posted in How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves, Preparing for Civilization's End | 10 Comments

Links of the Month: July 2020

Posted on July 19, 2020 by Dave Pollard

cartoon by the late Dana Fradon, in The New Yorker, way back in 1976 One of the signs of social collapse is, ironically, the simultaneous emergence of autocratic demagogues and a soaring distrust of perceived ‘leaders’ of all kinds — … Continue reading →

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No Shame, No Blame — Just Lame

Posted on July 18, 2020 by Dave Pollard

Forecast CoVid-19 death curve for British Columbia. Sources: Historical data: BC CDC; 270 additional excess deaths probably attributable to CoVid-19 in March & April per Statistics Canada; Forecast per UW/IHME as at July 14; they assume the next complete shutdown … Continue reading →

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Evolution’s Misstep

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Dave Pollard

another ramble about radical non-duality Radical non-duality is not a theory or an idea or a state. It’s a description of an utterly different sense of reality that is (apparently) obvious to those who do not share the perception of … Continue reading →

Posted in Our Culture / Ourselves, Radical Non-Duality | 2 Comments

There Is No Trade-Off

Posted on July 10, 2020 by Dave Pollard

The mainstream and social media, and most politicians and corporations, keep telling us that as long as CoVid-19 is with us we have to find a delicate balance between looking after our collective health (ie saving lives) and salvaging the … Continue reading →

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