Image by Leo from Pixabay| Do the Math
From Boston Public Library via Wikimedia Commons.Daniel Quinn returned to the theme that “food makes babies” so often in his writings that it would seem he was continually dissatisfied either with the clarity of his case, or with objections people had, or both. I get it. I often return over and over to the same thorny themes, each time thinking I’ll finally nail it. The exercise is as much for improving internal clarity as anything.| Do the Math
The colors blue and red are used in the U.S. to represent political left and right, which at the extremes might be said to run from communism to fascism., Yet even that’s a tiny slice of the whole. (Image by Philip Ronan, Gringer; Wikimedia Commons)We are accustomed to a left–right political spectrum. But said spectrum is only a tiny corner of the whole space of possibilities, even though practically everyone you know is wedged into it. Similarly, we use the word “light” to implicitly...| Do the Math
Have I mentioned how important I think Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael is? I reread it recently for the first time in a while, and was again impressed with how many important modernity-challenging ideas are packed into one novel.| Do the Math
Surfing YouTube, I came across an interview of Ezra Klein by Stephen Colbert. He was promoting a new book called Abundance, basically arguing that scarcity is politically-manufactured by “both sides,” and that if we get our political act together, everybody can have more. Planetary limits need not apply. I’ve often been impressed by Klein’s sharp insights on politics, yet can’t reconcile how someone so smart misses the big-picture perspectives that grab my attention.| Do the Math
Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay| Do the Math
Image by Shelley Evans from Pixabay| Do the Math
This is the final installment in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. We have arrived at the part where people say: “yeah, but what can I do?” I hope that I can offer solid suggestions that are more satisfying than frustrating. But I’m just winging it, here. Shutting down modernity is not something any of us have experience doing, so w...| Do the Math
This is the fourteenth of 18 installments in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. We have arrived at the episode whose concept inspired the name of the series. Though no metaphor can perfectly capture a complex reality, by comparing modernity to metastatic cancer I hope to provide a useful framework that counters the usual modernity-boosting...| Do the Math
This is the thirteenth of 18 installments in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. This episode unpacks the great Wes Jackson aphorism that modern humans are a species out of context. Well, what’s the right context, and how are we out of it?| Do the Math
This is the eleventh of 18 installments in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. This episode looks at various reasons why renewable energy and recycling are not our way out of the predicament modernity has set out for us. It’s just a doubling-down that can’t really work anyway.| Do the Math
I am excited to announce a new effort that will attempt to provide a crucial set of perspectives on modernity. It is to be a series of video shorts (5–10 minutes is my target) called Metastatic Modernity.| Do the Math
