The problem may be more difficult to understand than to solve. Beneath the veneer of civilization, in the trite phrase of humanism, lies not the barbarian and the animal, but the human in us who knows what is right and necessary for becoming fully human. Paul Shepard, “Nature and Madness” As the linguist and philosopher George Lakoff has been telling us for many years now, … Continue reading Fighting Primal with Primal
If change is to come, it will have to come from the margins. Wendell Berry You never change things by fighting the existing reality.To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckminster Fuller Before we get into what could be called a “rural strategy” for de-Trumping our non-urban areas in America, let’s do a quick recap of the overall scheme … Continue reading De-Trumping Rural America
I always say, we have two enemies. We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries. They’re Marxists and communists and fascists, and they’re sick. We have China, we have Russia, we have all these countries. If you have a smart president, they … Continue reading America’s Future: Theocracy or Community?
2500 years is long enough for us to have learned that escape from community, and from the earth, is not a solution, but a root cause of our troubles. John Zerzan In 1949, in his book The Origin and Goal of History, the German philosopher Karl Japsers coined the term “Axial Age,”. In Jaspers’ view, similar ways of interpreting the world emerged in different civilizational … Continue reading The Next Axial Age: Salvaging a workable future from metacollapse
The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. African Proverb Over the past couple weeks, Donald Trump has rapidly ramped up his war against all things foreign, liberal, and modern. I am writing this on the morning of June 14th, so his ridiculous Kim-Jong-Donald military parade is scheduled to run concurrently with the nationwide No Kings … Continue reading Fighting Fire with Fire: Virtual vs. Embodied Tribalism
Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind. King Lear Those who are most asleep think they are most awake, being under the power of vivid and fixed visions, so that those who are most ignorant think they know the most. Theodotus (2nd century C.E.) The dizzying pace of Trump’s rampage through the tattered hallways of American precedent continues. The Walmart Price-Fixer-in-Chief can wreak … Continue reading The Illusory Future of Trumptopia
You are captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live. I think there are many among you who would be glad to release the world from captivity. This is what prevents them: they are unable to find the bars of the cage. Daniel Quinn The child who is not embraced by the … Continue reading Last Chance Moonshot – Part 2: Bigger Home Bases
Every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination. What was obscure comes forward, lies are revealed, memory shaken, new delineations drawn over the old maps: it is from this new way of seeing the present that hope emerges for the future…Let us begin to imagine the worlds we would like to inhabit, the long lives we will share, and the many futures in … Continue reading Election 2024: The Aftermath
As we come down the home stretch of the shitshow that is the 2024 Presidential election, it has become clear that our problem is not just Trump, or his legion of followers, or even the entire American political system, which has tipped over completely into plutocratic servitude. What is really crippling us is a dysfunctional set of ideas, a system of zombie ideas so entrenched … Continue reading Hard to Kill: Zombie Ideas That Need Slaying
An era can be considered over when its basic illusions have been exhausted. Arthur Miller Those who are most asleep think they are most awake, being under the power of vivid and fixed visions, so that those who are most ignorant think they know most. Theodotus (2nd Century C.E.) There is, I think, a growing, deep, general awareness of a massive systems failure in our … Continue reading Strange Expectations: The Age of Magical Thinking Hits the Wall
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