The Cult of Civilization
This post offers ten heretical statements that seem obvious to me, but tend to produce emotionally charged reactions by members of the cult of civilization. Watch yourself, now.
religion of progress
From religion to science, and back
The challenge is to unleash these spirits of enquiry and autonomy from the realm of blank collective control which, nowadays, is bound up in state-backed corporatism and narratives of human progress.
Men Unlike Gods
The vision of humanity made omnipotent through technology—Men Like Gods, to borrow the title of one of H.G. Wells’ drearier novels—is on its way out. The question we face is what will rise to replace it.
2016: Toward the Deep Future
One of the oddest features of contemporary industrial society, it seems to me, is the profound ambivalence it displays toward the future. It’s hard to think of any society in human history that has made so much noise about the future, or used images and ideas of the future so relentlessly as rhetorical ammunition in its political and cultural controversies.
When the Shouting Stops
More generally, if the Left wants to get the people who voted for Trump to vote for them instead, they’re going to have to address the issues that convinced those voters to cast their ballots the way they did.
An Afternoon in Early Autumn
I think it was the late science writer Stephen Jay Gould who coined the term “deep time” for the vast panorama opened up to human eyes by the last three hundred years or so of discoveries in geology and astronomy.
Earth Church Is Not Cool
This frees us from the need to answers to the question “how should we live?”, at least in any grand manner.
Striving for “dis-sensus”: Economics, Energy and Environment Conference review
Greer, others speak at London School of Economic Science.
Life Preservers for Mermaids
The new religious sensibility I began to sketch out in last week’s Archdruid Report post is a subtle thing, and easy to misunderstand.
Well and Truly Fracked
Heinberg makes four points in the book, each of which could usefully be put on the business end of a branding iron and applied to the tender backsides of pundits and politicians alike.
The Ritual Theater of Progress
This habit of drafting my ideas on the future of industrial society right out here in public has its disadvantages, to be sure, but there are benefits as well.
Not Written in the Stars
When Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God—in less metaphorical terms, the collapse of the Christian faith that had provided the foundations for European social life since the Dark Ages—he saw that event as a turning point in human history, a shattering and liberating transformation that would open the road to the Overman. That hope turned out to be misplaced, and it’s worth keeping in mind that any equally grandiose claims that might be made about the consequences of the death of progress will likely face disappointment along the same lines.