Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Chris Smaje There’s nothing much we can do about this world-as-it-might-be symbolic capacity we have, simultaneously humanity’s blessing or genius and also our curse. Writing, farming and so on were not the cause of our malaise but the result of it.
One major hangup in subscribing to a physics-based universe of material monism is that it appears to remove human agency as typically conceived in our culture. If atoms and their interactions are making everything happen, abiding by rules they (or we) cannot violate, is there any room left for human intervention or free will?
Jason and Asher replace Rob with a much more humane and humble co-host, Elon Musk, to explore the feasibility of harnessing the entire sun to power AI superintelligence. We come away perplexed that not much of the excellent reporting on the environmental, energy, and financial risks of the AI boom address the googleplex-sized elephant in the room – that both AI success and failure lead to immiseration.
For those of us seeking post-capitalist futures: rather than burning ourselves out Doing — the energy of the capitalist system we are trying to topple — why not try Being, the energy of degrowth?
If Calvo is out at the front, all the same, he’s not there on his own. Colleagues in the field also believe that the ‘machine metaphor’ of body and brain is getting in the way of understanding—even preventing us from seeing what’s in the data we see in front of us.
An ExxonMobil-backed initiative, Carbon Measures, is pushing to reshape how the world does the math on climate change. Their system, outside analysts point out, leaves consumers holding the bag.
As long as water is treated as a problem to be drained rather than an ally to be welcomed, it will abandon us when we need it most and strike when we are least prepared.
Admissions of extreme, eco-caused national security threats foreground importance of climate adaptation to bring much needed urgency and agency.
It’s not rare for people to be left behind by profit-driven corporations, or even overlooked by underfunded and understaffed government agencies. In that case, we must learn to turn to each other. And in preparation for such times, we must bolster community resilience through initiatives like community gardens, tool libraries, and the like.
As large systems strain and loosen, smaller systems already begin to form. People create pockets of care, work, learning and shelter that operate by different rules. These efforts remain partial, local and imperfect, yet they matter.
Beyond its immediate content, the Empathy Project ricochets out echoes and ripples, negotiating both structures and surfaces: tracing the lines of a whole, out of kilter, system of interconnected, interdependent components that needs realignment, and “empathy” is probably the best way forward.
“The Machine is, rather, a tendency within us … [manifesting] today as an intersection of money, power, state power and increasingly coercive and manipulative technologies, which constitute an ongoing war against roots and against limits … and it will not stop until it has conquered and transformed the world.”
