Category: Our Present Culture
-
Surveillance Capitalism
Never have I been so frightened by a book as I have been with The Age Of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, a fascinating and scary description of how capitalism has shifted in the past thirty years, essentially since the development of the World Wide Web and the digital age. A brief review is available…
-
Responding To The Social Issues
It has been a while since my last post. Amongst other aspects, I decided to drastically limit my attention to email and other distractions. For about two months now, I am only opening emails from those whom I know personally — all the others are trashed immediately. As a result, I find myself more relaxed…
-
The Climate Movement: What’s Next?
In June 2019, the Great Transition Initiative (GTI) organization sponsored a major forum The Climate Movement: What’s Next? which “takes stock [of] and debates strategy for a vital new phase in the struggle for a livable, resilient planet.” From my perspective, the organization is highly reputable, and I believe the contributions to be very valuable,…
-
12 Years, Much Less Actually
We are running out of time. The 2018 IPCC report, for example, indicates we have until about 2030 (12 years, not 11) before we exhaust out climate budget for staying below 1..5°C, our best chance of avoiding major tipping points. Many believe that to be an optimistic assessment, such that we have perhaps much less…
-
Our Uncertain Future
Resilience.org has recently presented an excellent forum entitled Uncertain Future Forum (20190715-20190726) highlighting “If collapse is imminent, how do we respond? Each is short, succinct, and pertinent to the issues. Dancing with Grief, Dahr Jamail, 20190715 I have the greatest respect for Jamail as one of the most authentic writers of the issues of climate…
-
We Are Failing As A Culture
What follows are a multitude of links to the many aspects of how we are failing as a culture. Each is well written from my perspective. I am aware that more and more we are talking about the climate crisis, yet we are still mainly at the stage of talking; we still fail to come…
-
Canada Fails
An email received (20190621) from The Climate Mobilization, an organization I support, has this description of the Canadian response to climate disruption: “Canada fails on Climate Emergency.“ This portrayal is consistent with my own experience of Canadian and international politics. The grassroots Climate Emergency Movement in Canada has been a global leader, with 404 governments…
-
A Strange Culture
My news sources have recently been dominated by American politics related either to a) what to do about the Mueller report or b) speculation about presidential promises of the hopeful. For the most part, I have lost interest in both of these as I have no way of discerning important information from speculation. Canada is…
-
What Will It Take?
For the most part, I have given up reading about the political gyrations of politics — for the most part, they are simply a distraction that hides the larger picture that faces our species. This post looks a few of these larger issues, unfortunately with a degree of pessimism, of what will it take for…
-
To What Do We Devote Ourselves
As readers of this blog will know, I am a member of The Climate Mobilization. I strongly believe that we face an existential crisis as a species, and that we are at risk of extinction, especially if we delay action for too long a period. Gradually major organizations, cities, and countries are coming to this…
Awakening From Your Anger 