The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. John Maynard Keynes Sorry, faked you out with the C-word teaser. The word I have in mind is capitalism, that thing that we all swim in for our whole lives, but which … Continue reading Why We Can’t Say the C-Word
When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility. Neil Postman The recent flap over Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is a … Continue reading Stories Are Not the Story: Our Primate Brain Problem
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction. E.F. Schumacher As we have covered many times in this blog, American political and cultural polarization is almost completely a rural-vs-urban split. As the sophistication and cost of political operations have expanded over the … Continue reading A Rural Strategy for Libs
You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time. Angela Davis What lies ahead? Reimagining the world. Only that. Arundhati Roy As Donald Trump sinks further into his dementia-addled, narcissistic hate bubble, and the Democratic would-be king breakers cross their fingers, toes, and every other appendage, hoping that a midterm blue … Continue reading Battle for the Soul of America: A Three-Horse Race
Whether we accept it or not, this will likely be the century that determines what the optimal human population is for our planet. It will come about in one of two ways: Either we decide to manage our own numbers, to avoid a collision of every line on civilization’s graph — or nature will do it for us, in the form of famines, thirst, climate … Continue reading Population Panic & The American Micro-Household
If you alone found out what the lie was, then you’re probably right—it would make no great difference. But if you ALL found out what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference indeed. Daniel Quinn Last time, we looked at how the US is being ruled by dangerous but fundamentally unserious despots. What is it that allows so many millions of … Continue reading The Rule of the Unreal
Entropolitan 