Category: Uncategorized

Ecological Collapse, Intentional Communities, Politics & Culture, Uncategorized

Three C-Words We Need to Embrace: Contraction, Community & Cleanup

Like all creatures, humans have made their way in the world so far by trial and error; unlike other creatures, we have a presence so colossal that error is a luxury we can no longer afford. The world has grown too small to forgive us any big mistakes. Ronald Wright Because the future has no image, the utopian imagination must reclaim, must resurrect, past ruins … Continue reading Three C-Words We Need to Embrace: Contraction, Community & Cleanup

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Ecological Collapse, Intentional Communities, Modern Money Theory, Politics & Culture, Uncategorized, Universal Basic Income

Recapitulation: How to Save the World

The order which has been taken for granted suddenly appears queer and contingent. There is an appearance of the contingency of order. This is the main value of utopias. At a time when everything is blocked by systems which have failed but which cannot be beaten…utopia is our resource. The utopia seems to say something plausible, but it also says something that is crazy. By … Continue reading Recapitulation: How to Save the World

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Politics & Culture, Uncategorized

Polarization triggers the abortion bomb

Therefore the Lord said, “These people draw near to me with their mouths, and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is but rules taught by men.” Isaiah 29:13 Of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst. C.S. Lewis As anticipated, the SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade this week, bravely on a Friday afternoon … Continue reading Polarization triggers the abortion bomb

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Politics & Culture, Uncategorized

The Big Lie vs. The Big Steal: Of Insurrection and Polarization

There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution. John Adams, 1780 People like you are still living in what we call the reality-based community. You … Continue reading The Big Lie vs. The Big Steal: Of Insurrection and Polarization

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Ecological Collapse, Intentional Communities, Politics & Culture, Uncategorized, Universal Basic Income

Avoiding Armageddon: (2) Cracking the utopia code

The development of new, alternative perspectives define utopia’s most basic function. May we not say then that imagination itself – through its utopian function – has a constitutive role in helping us to rethink the nature of our social life? Is not utopia – this leap outside – the way in which we radically rethink what is family, what is consumption, what is authority, what is religion and so … Continue reading Avoiding Armageddon: (2) Cracking the utopia code

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Politics & Culture, Uncategorized

Season of Schmaltz (or… how I learned to stop worrying and love Hallmark Christmas movies)

We are homesick most for the places we have never known. Carson McCullers Something strange happened to me a few years ago. I’m not sure what triggered it, probably nothing specific. And I’m not even sure exactly when it happened. It was definitely pre-Covid, and likely just a tick before I hit the half-century birthday marker. What happened to me? Well, for some reason, I … Continue reading Season of Schmaltz (or… how I learned to stop worrying and love Hallmark Christmas movies)

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Ecological Collapse, Intentional Communities, Politics & Culture, Uncategorized

Rescuing the Future – Part 2

Our way of life doesn’t need to be saved. The planet needs to be saved from our way of life. Lierre Keith (Bright Green Lies, 2021) In Part 1, we looked the landscape of our bankrupt popular visions of the future, visions that have been exposed as detached from reality, as Covid, Trumpism, and ecological destruction have shredded any shared sense that things might ever … Continue reading Rescuing the Future – Part 2

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Coronavirus, Ecological Collapse, Economics, Intentional Communities, Politics & Culture, Uncategorized

Rescuing the Future – Part 1

What if this ongoing fear of ‘collapse’ … is a narrative designed to quell a worse fear: that things might not collapse, but continue like this? That the Earth’s final wild frontiers may be tamed and diluted, ravaged and destroyed, and that we would not care much because we were too busy following the logic of our narrative to its endpoint, becoming our machines – … Continue reading Rescuing the Future – Part 1

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Coronavirus, Ecological Collapse, Economics, Politics & Culture, Uncategorized, Universal Basic Income

Utopia Now! Model communities & UBI: our last off-ramps to a sane, realistic future

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Albert Einstein We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are. Talmudic Proverb Many thinkers…have argued that studying philosophy is learning how to die. If that’s true, then we have entered humanity’s most philosophical age — for this is precisely the problem of the Anthropocene. … Continue reading Utopia Now! Model communities & UBI: our last off-ramps to a sane, realistic future

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