We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools Martin Luther King, Jr. Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect Chief Seattle Community is the only heaven we can reasonably look forward to, the only … Continue reading We Are Each Other’s Future
Abide not with dualism, Carefully avoid pursuing it; As soon as you have right and wrong, Confusion ensues, and Mind is lost. Edward Conze The only illusion is division. Wald Wasserman As 2023 winds down, the specter of a Trump-centric 2024 looms large. Despite the general suckiness of this past year, I haven’t met too many people eager to turn the calendar page, because they … Continue reading Transcending Trumpism: Breaking the Death Grip of Dualism
People never leave a sinking ship until they until they see the lights of another ship approaching. Buckminster Fuller You have to see it to be it. Billie Jean King Before getting into the meat of this new post, let’s just do a quick recap lap, to level-set our starting assumptions. Evidence is mounting that we’re in the midst of a massive, not-so-slow-motion system collapse, … Continue reading Our Next Way of Life: A Thought Experiment
Utopias are often just premature truths. Alphonse de Lamartine The Bad News I haven’t looked into any concrete stats on this, but my sense is that there is growing popular suspicion that something very big is coming to an end. We might not know what that ‘something’ is, exactly (Civilization? Industrialism? Capitalism?), but with every passing season, the lurking shadow of collapse is taking shape … Continue reading The Cheat Code for Preventing and/or Surviving the coming Collapse (Part 1)
I want to leave my country without leaving my home. Kirkpatrick Sale We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden. Joni Mitchell A couple months ago, my wife and I finally got down to Costa Rica on vacation, for 10 glorious days. We have been trying to get there for a while now, but you know… pandemic and post-pandemic and all that. As we … Continue reading Our Civilization’s Crisis of Place
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
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
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
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
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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