Category Archives: How the World Really Works

AI and the Arts

Posted on March 23, 2023 by Dave Pollard

I‘ve been playing with one of the new AI bots called Midjourney, which is specifically oriented toward the creation of images — ranging from the photorealistic to the abstract. I’m still working on an older version which lacks some of … Continue reading →

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

Grooming Us to Hate and Fear

Posted on March 18, 2023 by Dave Pollard

image from piqsels, CC0 My last article talked about how we’re biologically and culturally conditioned to love the music we love (and perhaps the people we love). This time around I want to explore the shadow side of this — … Continue reading →

Posted in How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 1 Comment

Accounting for Tastes

Posted on March 16, 2023 by Dave Pollard

This is a bit of a follow-up to my post last fall exploring why I love sad songs (and romantic comedies). still from dance-practice video by Japanese-Korean hip-hop/R&B group XG Some of my favourite YouTube channels offer analysis of music, … Continue reading →

Posted in How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 1 Comment

Links of the Month: March 2023

Posted on March 13, 2023 by Dave Pollard

cartoon by Michael Leunig Letting go of the idea of free will is both liberating and terrifying. As I watch the world devolve into fascism and nuclear brinksmanship, I long to believe this is just a temporary aberration in human … Continue reading →

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 7 Comments

Our Incapacity to Admit Failure

Posted on March 8, 2023 by Dave Pollard

Afghan children, from pxhere, CC0 Recently, the rather dim-witted right-wing leader of Canada’s Conservative party, Pierre Poilievre, whose elected representatives have been hobnobbing with the German neo-Fascist AfD party, announced a bid to overturn Canada’s new, tepid, right-to-die law. Sufferers … Continue reading →

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 1 Comment

Shameful Pleasures

Posted on March 5, 2023 by Dave Pollard

Chart from Wikipedia by Derek Snider, CC-BY-SA 3.0 There is a lot of controversy about current experiments to decriminalize ‘hard’ drugs. Critics, and long-time supporters of the horrific “war on drugs”, argue that it’s a road to perdition, and that … Continue reading →

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 3 Comments

What Government Is For

Posted on March 3, 2023 by Dave Pollard

Yes, this is a bit of a rant. The Underhoused: Tent cities in (upper left) Vancouver BC, (upper right) Portland OR, and (lower right) new tents on a street in Nanaimo BC. The Vancouver site was bulldozed and converted to … Continue reading →

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works | 6 Comments

How the Left Was Lost

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Dave Pollard

Jeremy Corbyn before the smear campaign and purge of leftists from the UK Labour Party; unlike Jeremy, his former party now supports escalation of the Ukraine war: photo by Sophie J Brown, CC-BY-SA 3.0  Everywhere you look in the Euro-American … Continue reading →

Posted in How the World Really Works | 3 Comments

The Preteriat

Posted on February 21, 2023 by Dave Pollard

(Another post on political theory) The late David Graeber talks with Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, image from London Real (2015) The adjective ‘preterite’ (rhymes with the adjective ‘confederate’) is an ancient word referring to ‘that which has been passed over’. … Continue reading →

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

Why Humans Struggle With Democracy: A Theory of Governance and Power

Posted on February 16, 2023 by Dave Pollard

This is a bit of a theoretical exploration. I had to write it out to make sense for myself of the two complex articles it attempts to summarize, so I thought others interested in the theory of politics and power … Continue reading →

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