Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Biospheric cognition, when brightly lit, always places the biosphere first and central. Always. Biospheric cognition is a context in which understanding and meaning take place as the very biosphere itself (Herself) cognizing with and through us, awake or awakening to itself/Herself as us.
Looting, it seems, has got a bad rap. Because to save the planet, we need to loot it. We must let nothing — not cultural artifacts, not ancient woodlands, nor even entire species — get in the way of this drive to save the planet from its number one threat: Climate Breakdown.
There may be no way to explain how you feel because nobody can inhabit your body with you, and for all the skills of a poet, the mirrored and empty wastelands of fear are a terribly lonely place. We are invisible there, and not being able to find the words makes us feel invisible here.
While the links and mechanisms are not totally apparent, the introduction of synthetic fertilizers broke most of the links between the land, the animals and the people. This separation has many results and impacts on what we eat.
Not only were “modern” elements of enterprise present and even dominant already in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC, but the institutional context was conducive to long-term growth.
Plastic particles and chemicals pollute all of our bodies. But people living on the fencelines of the fossil fuel, plastic, and waste industries face even more life-threatening pollution.
Once we break out of the myth that our minds are separate from our bodies, it becomes apparent that we are the same as all other living beings. We are not special, and therefore do not warrant having mastery over other species or over ‘creation.’
The obvious question, then, is what scale of human activity is Earth capable of supporting? Nobody knows. The best we can do is accept the ride down, in a spirit of humility, finding joy in something other than technology and modernity. Since we were able to do just that for 95% of Homo sapiens’ time on the planet, I think we’ve got the constitution to do so again.
The epidemic of loneliness isn’t just a product of technology or even capitalism — it has its roots in the same fertile ground as the founding of the United States. And it may just be the most important “ism” of all to escape as we enter the Great Unraveling of social and environmental systems.
Critiques of growth are often talked about in the West as an issue requiring economic solutions. However, it has also become evident that a break away from this model will require not merely an economic shift, but the root-and-stem refashioning of our very selves
Nitrogen (N) is on the one hand an essential nutrient for all life forms and the building block for proteins, and on the other hand a pollutant causing many negative environmental and human health impacts.
Artificial intelligence devours vast energy while clouding the human wisdom that might save us.
