You can be skeptical of anything but the one true failure of humanity. Imagine for a moment that you could understand all of the Big Problems of humanity, and nobody would have to get nailed to anything to see where we have gone wrong. David Spero wrote a wonderful assessment…

It used to be all in good fun… Once upon a time in America, the majority of people lived their lives of quiet desperation and a few got famous for being in the right place when the cameras came on. …

This is a reference placeholder for future use, and hopefully it helps me to not have to repeat myself so much in other stories. Human: An ape-like mammal (Primate) that builds a model of the universe in its overgrown nervous system and upon physical maturity, moves a model of itself…

Systems create evil actions by preventing skepticism. We are all stuck in the System molasses of the past and present, dreaming of the future, but unable to imagine what our future self will want. “It’s been difficult to see humans as anything other than selfish, greedy, environmentally destructive parasites. There’s…

Fooled by Randomness and Money This was started as a rambling response to Tessa Schlesinger’s excellent post on the power of the Rich to exploit climate change risks. We have a difficult time contemplating value in the modern world. Capitalism/mercantilism has given us the brain-numbing shortcut of “price as value”…

“Efficiency is the straightest road to Hell.” -James Howard Kunstler Convene. Convention. Convenience. Many hands make light work. You are what you create, and you can’t have “create” without “eat”. Doing it alone is killing us. A simple story about being vegan helped clarify something I have been trying to…

The media refuses to discuss real needs. My biggest concern in the climate/fossil fuel debates is that the things we are burning fossil fuels, wasting electricity and manufacturing resources on are mostly unnecessary (most things invented after the Lever; anything that wouldn’t sell without advertising). Someone said, “We can’t start…

Don’t blame guns for the behavior of your abusive ‘free’ market society. Can we change Car Culture? Brand Culture? Sports Culture? War Culture? Using guns to express competitive feelings of power and abuse, as well as to set a narrative, is a philosophy sold to humans who are trying to…

There are a lot of great writers already. What kind of pretty picture would you like to see? A cat sucking its sibling’s toes? A baby on a pony? Ray Katz posted a notable essay about protests being ineffective. I wanted to write some smart reply, but all I can…