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

BHB: Bigger Home Bases – Reasons why we need to start living in larger groups now

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at. Oscar Wilde For so many of us, the couple form and the job wind up bearing the weight of all of our hopes and dreams and need for human contact, and they were never meant to bear that weight. We need human relationships that extend beyond the romantic or … Continue reading BHB: Bigger Home Bases – Reasons why we need to start living in larger groups now

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

After Trump: Is there any common ground?

Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman As I write this (Jan 2nd), there are … Continue reading After Trump: Is there any common ground?

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Politics & Culture

The Virus Idea That is Eating America

It is difficult and exhausting to try and keep track of the myriad ways in which the current President and his enablers are shredding the fabric of our nation. Conspiracy theories, anti-science, closet and overt racism, calls for imprisoning journalists, election-rigging, and on…and on…and on… We are certainly experiencing the birth pangs of full-throated American fascism. I don’t say this lightly, especially in the current … Continue reading The Virus Idea That is Eating America

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Coronavirus, Economics, Politics & Culture

Narrowing Options

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckminster Fuller The galloping, microscopic horseman of Covid has quickly exposed the fatal flaws in the American system, and the mixed messaging that we’re getting from our leaders cannot obscure the basic facts, which are not too complicated but profoundly terrifying nonetheless. The … Continue reading Narrowing Options

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Coronavirus, Economics, Politics & Culture

The Last Fiction – Part 3

History is not repeating itself, we are unfolding a new page in national life. The past has gone forever. There is no abiding present, it flies while we name it, and as it flies it is our duty to provide for the thick coming future. . . . We are to shape the future. We cannot escape the duty. — William D. “Pig Iron” Kelley … Continue reading The Last Fiction – Part 3

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Coronavirus, Economics, Politics & Culture

The Last Fiction – Part 2

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 saying something … Continue reading The Last Fiction – Part 2

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