Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A society knits itself together through the stories it tells itself. A rigid uniformity in those stories leads to stagnation and a suffocating of creativity and needed change in society. However, if the stories are too divergent, we will be unable to find common ground.
The true value of the internet is being revealed in the public response to the coronavirus pandemic. In bringing people together and keeping them informed, the internet and digital culture in general are doing things few or probably none of their detractors could do.
A professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and a former political adviser, Nichols argues that the country has shifted from a healthy skepticism of accepted knowledge to a proud, self-satisfied ignorance and active hostility to the very idea of expertise. Across American society, intellectual authority is resented, resisted and disregarded, with every opinion ostensibly holding equal weight.
This week, activists in Portland, Oregon, employed non-violent civil disobedience to delay the departure of a Royal Dutch Shell ship delivering equipment essential for commencing its oil-drilling operations in the Arctic Sea. Eye-witness account and analysis.
It could be said that journalism, the world over, is in a bad place these days.
For all the value of knowledge, it is of no use without the courage to face difficult realities.
•Reuters’ climate-change coverage ‘fell by nearly 50% with sceptic as editor’ •Polar Thaw Opens Shortcut for Russian Natural Gas •Arctic methane ‘time bomb’ could have huge economic costs
