Caravaggio’s 1601 painting The Incredulity of St Thomas, based on the biblical story that gave rise to the expression “Doubting Thomas”. Image from wikipedia, in the public domain.| how to save the world
(this is a continuation of yesterday’s review of Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen’s 1997 book Figments of Reality — Part One can be found here)I concluded the first part of this essay by saying that:| how to save the world
Lately I’ve been trying to integrate Gabor Maté’s ideas about attachment and authenticity, with my thinking about what I’ve called Civilization Disease — the mental illness that seems, to a lesser or greater extent, to have afflicted all of us living in our now-global industrial civilization. A disease and mental illness which has led to an absurd and unsustainable population of 8 billion humans who have managed to destroy the planet’s carrying capacity for most if not all life, in...| how to save the world
cartoon by Michael Leunig from his fans’ FB page| how to save the world
https://howtosavetheworld.ca/images/tardigrade3.mp4| how to save the world
Monthly Archives: May 2024 | howtosavetheworld.ca
image by AI of səl̓ilw̓ət (Burrard Inlet); my own prompt In a recent interview by Krishnan Guru-Murthy, comedian-musician Tim Minchin reviews his nine life lessons for uni graduates from his acclaimed convocation speech. Here is the one that most hit … Continue reading →| how to save the world
This is #45 in a series of month-end reflections on the state of the world, and other things that come to mind, as I walk and hike in my local community. A woman stamps her feet and jiggles her now-closed umbrella, and … Continue reading →| how to save the world
‘reconstructed’ image of Homo neanderthalensis, in the Neanderthal Museum, from wikipedia, CC-BY-SA 4.0 One of the functions of this blog — in addition to chronicling collapse and making sense of how our world and its complex systems ‘work’ — is to document … Continue reading →| how to save the world
a murmuration of thousands of starlings briefly takes the form of a giant bird; photo by James Crombie on Loch Ennell, Eire Twenty years ago I wrote a whole series of articles on James Surowiecki’s then-new book The Wisdom of … Continue reading →| how to save the world
selfie c.2020| how to save the world
Monthly Archives: May 2025 | howtosavetheworld.ca
Image from wikimedia by Nick Hobgood, CC-BY-SA 3.0| how to save the world
image by amira_a from flickr, via pixhere, cc by 2.0| how to save the world
There’s plenty of reasons these days to be depressed or discouraged, and it’s always tempting when you feel down to seek solace in things that are addictive or self-destructive (you know what I’m talking about). Here are ten better things to do, that can also make you feel better: | how to save the world
Monthly Archives: April 2024 | howtosavetheworld.ca
Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is a series of articles on some of these signposts.| how to save the world
Monthly Archives: August 2025 | howtosavetheworld.ca
artwork by by fellow collapsnik and NTHE-Love founder Wendy Bandurski Perhaps it’s just a sign of old-age crotchetiness, but I am told, and I accept, that my take on many things is now decidedly more negative than it has been for … Continue reading →| how to save the world
This is a work of fiction. image by AI; my own prompt Little Gregor was five when he had the first of the hallucinations. Until then he’d been a perfectly happy little boy to all appearances, if somewhat engrossed in … Continue reading →| how to save the world
… or, Everything you thought you knew about Homo neanderthalensis but is actually probably wrong. (And a book review explaining why that’s so.) This is the tenth of a series of articles summarizing some remarkable and little-known facts about a … Continue reading →| how to save the world
In the earliest days of the blogosphere (over 20 years ago!), one of the most popular blogs was the Friday Five, in which the blog host invited you each week to answer … Continue reading →| how to save the world
drawing by Chaz Hutton People have been writing about whether the internet is a form of ‘commons’, and hence whether it is prone to the ‘tragedy of the commons’, for almost as long as the internet has existed. But … Continue reading →| how to save the world
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Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is the tenth of a series of articles on some of these signposts.| how to save the world
the Inlet Theatre in Port Moody, near my home; photo for Google Maps by Malvina| how to save the world
quote from a James Taylor song; photo is my own, taken out my window| how to save the world
Monthly Archives: April 2025 | howtosavetheworld.ca
Monthly Archives: July 2025 | howtosavetheworld.ca
Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is the ninth of a series of articles on some of these signposts.| how to save the world
This is a work of fiction.| how to save the world
image: creative commons CC0 license from pixabay| how to save the world
Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is the eighth of a series of articles on some of these signposts.| how to save the world
image produced by AI; my own prompt| how to save the world
image by AI; not my prompt| how to save the world
image by wannapik, CC licence| how to save the world
Monthly Archives: March 2025 | howtosavetheworld.ca
“GOT MINE!” — An AI depiction of DOGE and Private Equity as twin vultures; my own prompt| how to save the world
the three-circle ‘Venn model of Purpose’ from my book, designed to help you find ‘the work you’re meant to do’| how to save the world
from the memebrary| how to save the world
Screen cap from a brilliant mashup of the top pop songs of 2008 by Dj Earworm that kinda touches on the subject of this post.| how to save the world
the pictures in this post are Midjourney AI’s attempts to mash-up two selected elements of my Ikigai; other than these three images, Midjourney did not do particularly well; these are my own prompts| how to save the world
AI’s self-portrait as a super-hero; my own prompt| how to save the world
It’s been a while since I posted about the collapse of our industrial civilization. Background is here if you’re interested in my take on how it will occur, due to the interconnection between our global economic and energy systems and the planet’s vulnerable ecology.| how to save the world
I am reposting, in their entirety, the ten articles I wrote that were published in SHIFT magazine (which is now on hiatus) between 2013 and 2015, since some of the links have changed and so that my blog contains the full text of these articles (useful for searches etc.) Thanks to SHIFT for the graphics (much better than my originals), and for publishing and editing my work.| how to save the world
my attempt at a cartoon; AI generated, prompt and annotations mine| how to save the world
AI-generated recent ‘photo’ of ‘me’, writing. Looks a lot like me, yet somehow not like me at all.| how to save the world
Human behaviour, even at its worst, doesn’t seem all that difficult to explain. Our behaviour seems to be entirely the result of our biological and cultural conditioning, given the circumstances of the moment. Our biological conditioning seems to drive us to maximize our physical pleasure and minimize physical pain. Our cultural conditioning would seem to drive us, similarly, to maximize our emotional and intellectual pleasure and minimize our emotional and intellectual pain. And all of tha...| how to save the world
photo of my friend Mike’s new shirt, courtesy of his partner Angelina| how to save the world
Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is the seventh of a series of articles on some of these signposts.| how to save the world
C’mon Dave. I’m over here trying to be the bad ass, tough guy, nazi doomer… and you’re proving me out to be a phony, lol. I just got done crying like a baby while reading your beautiful 2005 eulogy for Chelsea.| how to save the world
AI image of billionaires Musk, Buffett, and Bezos as slumdogs from Gokul Pillai’s instagram| how to save the world
If you think the evidence that we have no free will is faulty or flimsy, or if you have a strong religious or moral sense of personal responsibility, you are likely to find this article annoying; you might even not want to read it. The very word “responsible” is triggering for a lot of people. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything, just trying to get straight in my own mind why I’m coming to believe that the guilt and shame I feel over my actions, and my inaction, in a world f...| how to save the world
image by AI; my own prompt| how to save the world
I‘ve written before about why I see our species as being pathetic, in the original sense of the word — meaning deeply suffering.| how to save the world
photo by my friend Angelina, taken at a Banksy exhibition in Seattle| how to save the world
image from pxhere, CC0 public domain| how to save the world
I have often written that I think what humans (at least modern humans) seek more than anything else in their interactions with others are: attention, appreciation, and reassurance. But I’ve never speculated on why that might be the case.| how to save the world
Dave’s four worldviews, 1951-date. My current beliefs are resting on a crag stretching out from worldview III towards Radical Non-Duality worldview IV, but there is seemingly no bridging the chasm between them. | how to save the world
my own photo, taken on a trail on the west coast of Bowen Island| how to save the world
Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is the sixth of a series of articles on some of these signposts.| how to save the world
modern Australian version of Japanese configurable house, with engawa deck and amado sliding doors opening the space to the outside| how to save the world
AI’s take on “pointing the finger of blame”| how to save the world
This is #40 in a series of month-end reflections on the state of the world, and other things that come to mind, as I walk, hike, and explore in my local community. | how to save the world
Beneath that fire that lights your eyes so red| how to save the world
image from The Daily Show; “this Canada place is kind of in the way, and they have this giant water faucet, so let’s annex them too… what do you mean Greenland belongs to Europe?”| how to save the world
the remnants of Musk’s latest failed space launch burn up over the Bahamas last week; photo by Reuters/BBC| how to save the world
Renaee says: | how to save the world
ChatGPT’s (DALL-E) representation of Ozempic, with the following explanation: “Here’s a molecular representation of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic. It shows the peptide backbone, fatty acid side chain, and key functional groups that enhance stability and receptor binding.” I have no idea if this is accurate, an AI ‘hallucination’, or a complete fiction.| how to save the world
map and headline via the Vancouver Sun| how to save the world
Image from wikimedia by Nick Hobgood, CC-BY-SA 3.0| how to save the world
charts from Business Insider (top) and CNN (bottom); the Dow has lost over 1,000 points in the last two days| how to save the world
Pew Research surveys of other countries’ view of China, over time; thanks to Indi for the link| how to save the world
This is #39 in a series of month-end reflections on the state of the world, and other things that come to mind, as I walk, hike, and explore in my local community. | how to save the world
Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework (2021). Adds liminal domains, points of uncertainty or paradox, notably the aporetic domain, from whence, notably, NZ’s Jacinda Ardern chose to cede decision-making authority to health experts as being better equipped than politicians to determine the most sensible next steps to deal with the pandemic, buying time in a chaotic period of crisis and keeping options open.| how to save the world
Photo: Luke MacGregor for Bloomberg| how to save the world
This is a satire. It’s just for fun. Really.| how to save the world
In a very general way, we know what we want. We want to live as wild, free beings in a world of wild, free beings. The humiliation of having to follow rules, of having to sell our lives away to buy survival, of seeing our usurped desires transformed into abstractions and images in order to sell us commodities fills us with rage. How long will we put up with this misery? We want to make this world into a place where our desires can be immediately realized, not just sporadically, but normally. ...| how to save the world
There seems to be two main types of reaction to the chaos that Trump and de facto VP Musk are creating all over the world: A wait-and-see reaction and a deer-in-the-headlights reaction.| how to save the world
artwork by fellow collapsnik and NTHE-Love founder Wendy Bandurski| how to save the world
Tim Morgan recently posted about our apparent lack of agency in the face of all the economic and other crises we are facing in the early years of this century.| how to save the world
Photo: Luke MacGregor for Bloomberg| how to save the world
image by Willgard from Pixabay, free for use under Pixabay’s content licence| how to save the world
no one should have to pay| how to save the world
Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is the fifth of a series of articles on some of these signposts.| how to save the world
AI image; my own prompt| how to save the world
photo by Burkhard Müche, on wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0| how to save the world
a Palestinian boy in Gaza with both legs amputated after being bombed by the Israelis, uses roller skates as prostheses to navigate the rugged terrain between tents; screen cap by Caitlin Johnstone from this video of him; a recent Guardian survey found “virtually all children in Gaza now feel their deaths are imminent, and half of those surveyed said they wish to die”| how to save the world
ChatGPT/DALL-E’s portrait of the great ancient Persian philosopher Siyavash Abdolrahimi, my friend’s namesake.| how to save the world
famous line from The Princess Bride| how to save the world
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,| how to save the world
The front page from one of Canada’s largest-circulation ‘newspapers’, the extreme-right-wing tabloid National Post, shortly after the Gaza insurrection. Racist and hate-mongering editorials full of misinformation regularly and unabashedly appear on the front page of this ‘newspaper’ as if they were somehow ‘news’. Thanks to Indrajit Samarajiva for the image.| how to save the world
photo from Pexels, free license| how to save the world
One of the things my study of our culture and human behaviour has led me to believe is that, from early childhood, we tend to do what those we trust do, more than what we’re told to do. This can be observed in wild animals, where youngsters observe and emulate what their mother eats, and don’t touch what she doesn’t eat. It’s an essential lesson, and an essential behaviour.| how to save the world
a very simplified description of some of the feedback loops and interconnections in our civilization’s major systems, just to show how massively complex these systems are, how the feedback loops between them make them so difficult to change, and how collapse of any of three huge systems spells ‘END GAME’ for our civilization| how to save the world
Top: YouTube’s way of making you feel “guilty” for not watching their ghastly and often-fraudulent ads (yes, there are ways around it, but still). Bottom: The latest weasel-y development from Amazon: If they discover (usually because of massive numbers of customer complaints) that a product on their site is fraudulent, rather than banning the vendor from the site (which might entail costly investigation and/or litigation) they put this innocuous message on the product listing. | how to save the world
from GapingVoid.com by Hugh Macleod — In his comment on this cartoon, Venkatesh Rao wrote: “Organizations don’t suffer pathologies; they are intrinsically pathological constructs. Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves.”| how to save the world
(right click to open chart in a new tab, or click here, to view full-size)| how to save the world
Pew Research surveys of other countries’ view of China, over time; thanks to Indi for the link. These polls seem to track very closely the prevailing tone of stories in the media about China. According to ChatGPT, only about 3% of residents of these countries have ever visited China. | how to save the world
propaganda posters used as covers by The Economist; exposé by Indrajit Samarajiva| how to save the world