Good TV?!
Favourite tv shows, anyone? Post your favourites below. I do hate tv, but I love documentaries and history shows, and I make an exception for certain things, like Star Trek,…
sociology
Kindred Spirits & “Civilization”
Thinking about questions of human society and what is “civilized” or “civilization” makes me realize again how much I agree with Chomsky, Gandhi and Thoreau. They have all been deeply…
The end of civilization? I’d like to see its beginning
Civilization? Technology does not define it. Morality does. That makes all empires uncivilized, because they are based in conquest, plunder, mass murder and theft. Amazing… Scholars still talking about…
History Repeats: The Decline & Fall of the Western Corporate Empire
“The Goths remained on Roman land and would ally themselves with the Roman army. Later, however, one man, a Goth and former Roman commander, rose up against Rome – a…
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…
Video Calls: Communication In A Hyper-Connected & Deeply Dissociated Society
Thoughtful commentators to the Smithsonian and BBC recently “recommended limiting video calls to only those that are necessary. Petriglieri adds that positioning the video screen to your side may make…
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…
The Real Resistance: Lessons From History
It does not require a majority to defeat tyranny and defend liberty, but only a small and dedicated minority – as we saw in the American and French Revolutions,…
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…
Angkor Wat: Reflections On Our Modern World
~*~ Angkor Wat is the crown jewel of a 400 square kilometer set of temples and holy sites, set in the jungles of Cambodia. Built as a Hindu temple in…
Rules For Good Communication – Both In Writing, and Verbally, and In The Arts (Along with core points on the philosophy of language, knowledge, perception, consciousness, ontology and epistemology, and the nature of being and reality – and lessons on how not to be long-winded!)
Here are a few thoughts on writing and verbal communication, and all forms of communication. As an author, writer, reader, lover of books, and philosopher, I believe I have some…
Social Psychology & Meditation On Death
Montaigne said of fear, “There is no emotion which more readily ravishes our judgement.” That would seem to be the best explanation of our current mass social psychology: the great…
The Myth Of Progress – Pricking The Bubble
Again and again, I am reminded of the need for humility, as well as dignity and confidence. I am reminded not only by my own faults and errors, which are…
The Most Dangerous Epidemic Of All
Just over 100 deaths in the US from the coronavirus, and what is the government response? Fascist lockdown. The pattern is the same across the Western world, mirroring the…
Gender, Hierarchy, Civilization & Collapse: A Few Thoughts
What did Sumeria ever do for us? Invented writing, our concepts of time, irrigation, cities, created the first literature…little stuff like that. Sumeria predates ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and…