Shifting the Paradigm
With his 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn launched the concept of paradigm shift which could be applied to a variety of historical cultural changes as well as desired future ones.
Society
Rabelais in Russia, or the man on a chair in a hat
I’m beginning to embrace the notion that there are hierarchies we cannot simply transcend through history, and that they must be honoured. But, per Rabelais and Bakhtin, that doesn’t mean we can’t invert and relativize them, make fun of them and insist on keeping them at arm’s length while we get on with the more important business of the people’s life and livelihood.
What Could Possibly Go Right?: Episode 100 Riane Eisler
Riane Eisler is a social systems scientist, cultural historian, futurist, and attorney whose research, writing, and speaking has transformed the lives of people worldwide. She answers the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”
From San Juan to Cali to Hiroshima to Oakland to Hilo
Creation begins in the hungry darkness of chaos, the web of life begins in the sea. Words appear from nowhere, phrases form…
Human Nature Odyssey: Episode 1. Self-Help Guide for Society
In this first episode of the podcast, Alex Leff takes you back in time to a fateful childhood summer when the world was a magical place to explore, yet seemed like it was ending just as he was getting to know it. It was then that Alex first read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, the book that begins the quest of Human Nature Odyssey.
Black rides matter: Diverse cycling groups show that biking is for everyone
Biking isn’t just for the White, male, able-bodied, heterosexual, and privileged; it’s for everyone.
Creating A Community Of Change Agents-through the climate action lens
While it may take a community to make a change, it is possible for a single person to change a community. Might you be that person?
The Pandemic Portal View
In so many other ways, our society has refused to relinquish old and odious thinking and is instead “dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred” through the portal of the pandemic.
Crazy Town: Episode 71. How Ecomodernists Hijacked the Environmental Movement: Technotopian Bullshit and a Raging Case of God Complex
Meet Stewart Brand and his band of merry dematerialists, the Silicon Valley salesmen who undermined environmentalism with planet-saving fantasies that reek of technofetishism. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.
How parking ate North American cities
The consequences of car parking include the atrophy of many inner-city communities; a crisis of affordable housing; environmental damages including but not limited to greenhouse gas emissions; and the continued incentivization of suburban sprawl.
Democracy Rising 28: AI, Gossip, and Our Epistemological Crisis
ChatGPT and its successors and rivals, whatever their virtues, are the latest agents in the corruption of the public sphere by digital technology, threatening to extend and deepen the misinformation, fabulism, and division stoked by Twitter and other digital media.
20 Theses for Liberation
Below, we propose some basic insights, claims, and commitments that all seekers of new societal relations might choose to further develop and refine. The 20 theses are not ours per se, but come from many movements over years, decades, and even centuries.
