The One Option Left
The recent round of gridlock in Washington DC may seem worlds away from the mythological visions and spiritual perspectives that have been central to this blog over the last few months. Still, there’s a direct connection.
John Michael Greer
Bad advice: Why the future won’t be like the past
It’s easy to get bad advice from successful people. Here’s why: Successful people assume that the same circumstances that prevailed while they were achieving their success will generally prevail while you are pursuing yours.
Peaches Help Grow Slovenia’s Gift Economy
An amazing initiative happened in Slovenia this summer.
Speak Up
It is no accident that we use the same vocabulary to describe the act of assembling words——as to magically influence events and the conditions of reality—to cast a spell.
Review: The Five Stages of Collapse by Dmitry Orlov
It’s starting to seem like the sensible approach is to get out of the awareness-raising business entirely and focus our energies instead on providing practical guidance to those who are willing to hear it
The renewal of religion
The emotional and intellectual energies set in motion by religious experience very often trump all other human motivations.
Fukushima and our inability to gauge risk
Perhaps the most important energy story on the planet right now is the precarious situation for fuel rods stored in a damaged building at the Fukushima nuclear power station. However, there is another story beyond the immediate danger that tells us something about how we think about risk.
Postcard from the frontline: a Canadian family physician on peak oil
A Canadian family physician’s take on peak energy, peak food and peak population: "I became aware of peak oil five years ago, and since then I have been struggling to integrate this knowledge into my medical practice and family life."
The flight to the ephemeral
The unavoidable tradeoff between efficiency and resilience can be understood easily enough by considering an ordinary bridge. All bridges these days have vastly more structural strength than they need in order to support their ordinary load of traffic. This is inefficient, to be sure, but it makes the bridges resilient; they can withstand high winds, unusually heavy loads, deferred maintenance, and other challenges without collapsing.
Local Abundance!
No longer will I let a “job” define who I am as a person.
Geology beats technology: Shell shuts down oil shale pilot project
The belief that technology can always overcome natural limits just took a big hit this week when Royal Dutch Shell PLC decided to shut down its pilot oil shale project in western Colorado after 31 years of experimentation.
The Arrow of Evolution
If we know what traits can’t cross over this evolutionary boundary—a domineering and rapacious relationship with the earth, for instance—then what will replace them? What does a more evolved human look like?
