Category Archives: How the World Really Works

Links of the Month: January 2024

Posted on January 16, 2024 by Dave Pollard

cartoon by the extraordinary Will McPhail I love Will McPhail’s work. The mole in this cartoon could represent any of the ‘sides’ or actors in any of the current wars. Of course there are atrocities, and it’s tempting to take … Continue reading →

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

A Succession of Failures

Posted on January 11, 2024 by Dave Pollard

Trump as Canute, ordering back the waves; my own prompt* Aurélien has written a series of articles recently on the subject of competence, or, more specifically, its absence in our globalized civilization culture. As many of our political, economic, social, … Continue reading →

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

The Humanity-as-Cancer Metaphor

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Dave Pollard

source: note that OWID has been accused of misrepresenting some data to support the optimistic “the world is getting better and better” ideologies of their colleagues such as Bill Gates and Steven Pinker Since I started this blog I’ve often … Continue reading →

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Illusion of the Separate Self and Free Will, Our Culture / Ourselves | 6 Comments

Interview with Dave on the Reskillience Podcast

Posted on January 6, 2024 by Dave Pollard

I don’t believe we have free will, nor do I believe that our civilization’s accelerating collapse can be prevented or even mitigated. So I no longer provide advice on what people “should do” in the face of collapse. Instead, I … Continue reading →

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

Civilization’s Cycle of Trauma

Posted on January 5, 2024 by Dave Pollard

Lately I’ve been trying to integrate Gabor Maté’s ideas about attachment and authenticity, with my thinking about what I’ve called Civilization Disease — the mental illness that seems, to a lesser or greater extent, to have afflicted all of us … Continue reading →

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Illusion of the Separate Self and Free Will, Our Culture / Ourselves | 6 Comments

Fear of Collapse: Things Falling Apart, Left and Right

Posted on January 2, 2024 by Dave Pollard

“Riding Into the Unknown”: as depicted by Midjourney AI; not my prompt  Much has been written of late about the “collapse of the left” and the global rise of right-wing populism. In many cases this is (somewhat understandably) blamed on … Continue reading →

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

Workable Post-Civ Societies: Ideas from Ivan Illich and Gustavo Esteva

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Dave Pollard

In praise of the vernacular. photo of Ivan Illich (2nd left) and Gustavo Esteva (2nd right), from Radical Ecological Democracy The idea of ‘practicing’ how we might live in the societies that emerge after civilization’s collapse has always interested me. … Continue reading →

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

Can Any Country ‘Divorce’ the US Empire?

Posted on December 23, 2023 by Dave Pollard

This map, from Multipolarista, shows the US-centred Empire bloc of nations (in red) that subscribe to the US-invented Rules Based International Order. The countries in green do not recognize that order, and they continue to support de facto a UN-centred international … Continue reading →

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

Healing From Trauma in the Time of Collapse

Posted on December 20, 2023 by Dave Pollard

I want to apologize for the ads that appeared on of one of my recent posts on the version sent out by follow.it to email subscribers — I failed to renew my premium membership that allows these emails to go … Continue reading →

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

Self-Directed Learning (Sort of)

Posted on December 17, 2023 by Dave Pollard

a photo of my high school, c. 1969 I‘ve written before about my brief, astonishing experience with self-directed learning — aka Unschooling (or “independent study”, as they called it back then) — at the end of my high school years. … Continue reading →

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