Simple, key advice
You have to refuse, categorically, hurry, worry, self-recrimination and blame. You do your best, and live in peace. I had accomplished that state of mind, four years ago. It is…
Psychology
On The Ruts In The Mind
The Road Less Travelled By “When I observe the ruts in a road, I am compelled to think: how much deeper the ruts in the mind?” – Henry David Thoreau…
Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Mariana Mazzucato and Robert Skidelsky propose a new economic framework in which our elected governments actually set priorities and ensure that development is…
Balance
Oy. Sometimes I just want to bury my head in the sand. The state of things is terrifying and grotesque, especially if you understand what is really happening with this…
Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Ari Rabin-Havt argues that any available means of treating COVID-19 need to be viewed as public goods to be made available to all,…
Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Josh Eidelson writes about the fleecing of American labour in general over the past five decades, while E. Tammy Kim discusses the systematic…
Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Eric Cadesky writes about the psychology behind adherence to – and deviation from – the social distancing rules needed to keep us all…
Distance Yourself From Evil, Not People
The Boycott Big Tech Movement Begins Here First rule: Question everything, and think for yourself. Second rule: Don’t support your slavers. (Gandhi, MLK and Thoreau would understand. It’s time for…
The Plague: Then & Now
Europe did not respond well to the biggest plague in its history, in 1347-1351, to put it mildly – with anti-semitism, pogroms, scapegoating, witch trials, burning heretics at the stake,…
Moral bankruptcy in a time of “plague”
20,000 children die a day of hunger, and nobody notices, nobody makes a peep: outcry is basically zero. But a new strain of the flu (statistically less dangerous than…
Bad-Asses Wanted
Sometimes you have to be a little bit bad-ass – just to be a decent person, and do what must be done to help and protect others. Gandhi was…
“Unprecedented” – Reality vs Delusion
Every year a tragic event happens. 300,000 to 500,000 people die globally of the flu. Most are very old, very ill, or immune compromised. In 2020 fewer people have died…
Work and Workaholism: Puritanism, and A Day Off
This morning when I got up, feeling exhausted again from the on-going 30-year stint of sleeplessness and insomnia, I thought, I should take a day off – considering I pretty…
Nostalgia For Simpler Times
I generally am not one for nostalgia, having a strong preference for living in the present, and looking to the future. Further, I rarely write in conversational colloquialisms. But I…
The Dangers Of Denial
When someone fails to realize that China is a deeply authoritarian state, or actively denies it, or likewise does not realize that the US, Canada, the UK and Europe have…
Importing From China: A Virus? Or A Totalitarian Model Of Elite Control?
Someone prescient once said, “Those who would sacrifice a little freedom for a little security, deserve neither, and will lose both.” We would do well to remember those words now.…
Fantasy and Indoctrination: Rough notes on a few fantasy novels: part two
Here are two more fantasy books that I could not get through. That makes three in a row. And to think, I had a love affair with Terry Brookes’ Shannara…
Reflections On Stillness & Action
We need stillness and action – both, and urgently so. This should be becoming perfectly clear. I’ve travelled through 20 countries, but still I find stillness the greatest adventure, and…
Culture Shock – and The Culture of Puritanical Excess
I backpacked around Mexico and Central America in 1989. I think I’ve been in culture shock ever since. Since returning to la-la land, that is. I went to Latin America…