Outside the Walls

By Damaris Zehner, Integrity of Life

Our civilization will eventually fail – through resource exhaustion, overreach, and hubris. The fact that many people counter that claim with the Panglossian insistence that we’ll think of something, that our technology will enable us to go on isolating ourselves from the laws of nature, is just proof of what I’m saying: a lack of exposure to the natural world makes humans stu– well, not as smart as we could be. And I predict that in the near future we will need to get smarter in a hurry.

Progress and Amnesia

By John Michael Greer, Ecosophia

There are certainly things that can be done to deal with the realities of stagnation and decline; some of them even involve adopting renewable energy technologies, on the one hand, or making sensible preparations for a range of non-apocalyptic but still serious troubles on the other.

Brexit: Stage One in Europe’s Slow-Burn Energy Collapse

By Nafeez Ahmed, Insurge Intelligence

The energy turning point is unequivocal. In the years preceding the historic Brexit referendum, and the marked resurgence of nationalist, populist and far-right movements across Europe, the entire continent has faced a quietly brewing energy crisis.

America and Russia: Stirrings in the Borderlands

By John Michael Greer, Ecosophia

To my mind, one of the main sources of collective stupidity in modern American society is our pervasive bad habit of short-term thinking. It’s embarrassingly rare for anyone in American public life to stop and say aloud, “Hold it. What’s going to happen if we keep on doing this for more than a few more years?”

The Queen and the Philosopher: What we can Learn Today from the Story of Boudica’s Rebellion against the Roman Empire

By Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's legacy

We know very little about Queen Boudica of the Iceni (20 AD (?) - 61 AD) and most of what we know is probably deformed by Roman propaganda. But we may still be able to put together the main elements of her story and how it was that she almost threw the mighty Roman Legions out of Britain.

Traditionalism through the Lens of Cultural Ecology

By Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute

In a time of such ferment, most socio-political forecasts are foolhardy. However, I'll venture one: the least likely outcome for America is a return to the liberal, secular, consumerist order that characterized the post-WWII decades.

Perched on the Wheel of Time

By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report

The conventional wisdom of our era insists that modern industrial society can’t possibly undergo the same life cycle of rise and fall as every other civilization in history; no, no, there’s got to be some unique future awaiting us—uniquely splendid or uniquely horrible, it doesn’t even seem to matter that much, so long as it’s unique.

Make America Poopable Again: The Great Toilet Debate That Wasn’t

By Allan Stromfeldt Christensen, From Filmers to Farmers

The transgender restroom debate is a red herring, whose solution lies in the question affecting all of us: "What do we do with our effluents as industrial civilization collapses?"

The Suicide of the American Left

By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report

If the best you can offer the voters is a choice between what they have now and something worse, and what they have now is already pretty wretched, you’re not likely to get much traction.

An Affirming Flame

By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report

According to an assortment of recent news stories, this Thursday, June 18, is the make-or-break date by which a compromise has to be reached between Greece and the EU if a Greek default, with the ensuing risk of a potential Greek exit from the Eurozone, is to be avoided