An Ancient Chinese Text That’s Surprisingly Relevant Today
Beyond its interest for historians, Tao Te Ching has special significance for anyone trying to find a sane path in today’s world.
Society featured
The Behavioral Stack
In this Frankly, Nate offers a personal reflection on his learnings about ‘awareness’ vs ‘focus’ and how this knowledge could be used as a guide toward more thoughtful behaviors.
Facing difficult truths
Climate psychology seeks to place citizens of the West under critical scrutiny. It tries to throw light upon our complicity and inaction in the face of the climate crisis and promote greater ethical and political engagement with the issue. It sees the modern Western self as the product of three great separations or alienations – from external nature, from our own physical nature as mortal beings, and from other selves.
Our Tinderbox World: Wildfires and Risk Reduction
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and helpless in the face of the increasing number of wildfires fueled by dangerous climate conditions. But we are not helpless.
The end of paper?
While the world continues to consume paper in ever greater amounts, the idea that we can preserve all our knowledge electronically is catching hold. Is that really a good idea?
A Compelling Theory to Explain a Key Trait of Modern Humans
Paleoanthropologist Curtis Marean has developed a comprehensive explanation based on a synthesis of research and archaeological evidence for what propelled H. sapiens to leave Africa about 70,000 years ago and colonize every part of the world, replacing other existing hominin populations. Key to the process is “hyperprosociality,” by which Marean means the ability to cooperate with people who are not relatives.
On the Ecological Tyranny of Tech and Repairing Our ‘Just Tech’ Age
What can be said about globalized tech when our earthly existence is consumed by viral uncertainties, urgent climatic shifts, and perpetual socio-environmental precarity and violence?
A Lifetime Ago
By putting it in terms of human lifetimes, which we can understand intuitively from personal experience, we can better appreciate how brief this transient behavior is.
2023 In Eight Points: Meditating On Our Planetary Moment
I feel that these are the years that I — and perhaps we — have been born for. These are the moments where we need to show up. Yes, it’s not easy, and that’s exactly why we chose to be here — to be here together.
The Human Predicament in 22 Clips
Following up last week’s Frankly outlining systemic themes for 2024, this year-end special is a reflection on 2023 with a series of clips, which together highlight the increasingly challenging world of which we are a part.
Text substitutions
Over the years, I have developed a number of automatic text substitutions for phrases/platitudes I hear people utter. The filter works so that what I hear is converted into my internal version before processing further.
Ideas for Living through the Great Unraveling
This year Post Carbon Institute has leaned into the “Great Unraveling” as a label for framing what’s happening in modern society and the natural world. In short, the Great Unraveling represents humanity’s comeuppance from overshoot, a time when debts are coming due and the promise of everlasting growth is fading.
