New Stories to counter the Thaumaturgy of Destruction

…every malign spell has a lie at the heart of it, and if you can expose the lie in a way that the person under the spell can see and understand, the lie dissolves and takes the spell with it. It’s like the old claim that a demon can never change itself wholly out of

Carving Spaces

Chris, excellent. The one quibble I have is that I don’t think you’re considering the full implications of what you’ve suggested: “It’s a recognition of the total futility of any effort for victory for the side of ecology, conservation, or Gaia, on this civilization’s terms.” The last four words — on this civilization’s terms —

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

Religion, Mental Proprioception, and the Implicate Order.

JMG has repeatedly pointed out that a religious impulse is always at work. There are many avenues for this impulse to work through. There are many places it can hide in plain sight, as it does in civic religions. As it does in our belief in science/technology, distinct from the practice of science. There are

Meaning & Action

” … minor twists of fate and individual decisions very often have much more dramatic consequences in dark ages than they do when the settled habits of a mature civilization constrain the impact of single events.” JMG “Failure provides clarity. We perceive that our knowledge is incoherent.” David Bohm Two comments that circle each other

It’s Religion

In a recent post John Michael Greer has continued to bring to light how a religious impulse underlies the current governmental crises. Not as the superficial coverage narrates a battle between conservatives and progressives, but how all these contending forces share in the overall religion of Progress. Reason with a capital R, as much as Fundamentalism,

“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

Staying in the Drama…

Whew, I’ve spent years thinking what synchronicity might really mean. It is an interesting topic, but difficult to discuss, as language is structured on something like causality. Poetry, maybe… Getting the outside and inside to resonate synchronously: making the outside like the inside and inside like the outside. This actually, is what is irking me

Isaac Newton Wasn’t a Newtonian, Socrates wasn’t Plato…

Perhaps a little one, as insights go, the title of this post came to me last week. I’ve long railed at the power of a reductivist, Newtonian world view that has given those who see the world as a series of problems to be solved the tools, from ballistics to The Calculus, to run down

Nature is a term for that which was born

I’ve studied the meaning of “nature” for forty odd years. I took a class on it in 1972, when there were few such courses. I’ve been as confused over what it could possibly mean as anyone, caught between all the assumptions that have stuck to the term. Then in the first week of this year,

Dissensus

This kernel of insight was unavailable before. This mechanism has always worked, but its workings were outside anyone’s awareness. This is one of the key new factors we carry with us into this uncharted territory we face.