Consensus and Dissensus

Once again, Dwight Towers has suggested I use a comment I’ve made on that site as a post here. This time I may go a little long, adding further comment and breaking any chance at pithiness, so admired in certain quarters…

The Politics of Nostalgia

As any hope of an actual break with business-as-usual fades into the heat and glare of a summer in which discontent does not lead to action to address its causes; but becomes nothing more than a nuisance of disaffected noise signalling on both sides of our political theater that everyone – with the strongest push

A Monopoly on Violence

This is the term of art used to describe and justify government’s control of military and police functions. There is an obviousness, an inevitability to the rationale behind it that leads from, “There are bad-guys.” to “We need to defend ourselves against evil-doers.” to “Stop! Or I’ll shoot!” And, then we accept the entire package,

Cross-Post from Antonio Dias, Attending Quality

Attending Quality

Saying No to Facebook

The Violence Behind Likes and Opinions   I recently removed myself from Facebook. I joined reluctantly and have regretted it since the beginning. Was pushed along by expectation and crowd-mentality. I’ve long felt that Zuckerberg is the worst kind of nerd entrepreneur. Caught-up in fantasies of egotistical superiority requiring that he WIN at all costs

I only exist in so far as I intrude into your view…*

To you I only exist in so far as I intrude into your world-view. As an acquaintance, someone you barely know – we do not share much of a history – I’m; someone who does not appear particularly physically threatening; my existence – in your eyes – is a fleeting and transient phenomenon; my hold

Coherent Action, from unintended consequences to catalytic response.

We struggle with unintended consequences. In frustration we turn to chasing after power to force our will to prevail. We enter a spiral of increasing suffering and greater dislocation as the violence this process unleashes destroys every remaining scrap of coherent life. Blinded to our delusion by delusion, we increase our efforts. We twist and

“Why Is It Important for You That History Have a Direction?”

This question is asked by John Michael Greer in a reply to a comment on his most recent post. He has been slogging through the log-jam of our cultural resistance to abandoning the bi-polar insistence that we are bound either to Heaven or Hell, Utopia or dystopia. That if we cannot have our heart’s desire

Our Gorbachev, The politics of disillusionment.

It was June of 2009 when I first realized that Obama was to be our Gorbachev. June 2010 when I first wrote about it. We are now living through what that means. What happens when the apparatchiks themselves no longer believe their own propaganda? If a people are lucky, and Russia was, to some extent,

Ignorance Wrapped in Knowing. Belief Lacking Compassion.

…no matter how noble the system would be. A mind that has been trained only to know facts, is simply unable to deal with Life in all its diversity, with its subtleties, with its depths and heights. Krishnamurti Thanks to Julien Matei for this quotation. We suffer under ignorance wrapped in knowing. Belief lacking compassion. The tools of the enlightenment destroying any potential for useful

On Wealth

Wealth is an abstraction. It is the taking of value from the realm of the actual, the fabric of a living earth, and creating a gradient of poverty. What is read as wealth is a condition of lesser poverty than those wealth pushes into the maw of destruction and diminishment it shoves along ahead of

Beyond Zombies and Vampires

Zombies & Vampires, Oh My! This post, an essay for Vinay Gupta’s The Future We Deserve, delineated the lay of the land today. We are hemmed in by these two types, both of behaviors and of ways of looking at those around us. But, in the end, is there anything to be gained by remaining