Dave Pollard | SHIFT magazine

Tag Archives: Dave Pollard

The Admission of Necessary Ignorance

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Kari James 2 comments

While the new cult of scientism produces louder and louder assertions of grand theories of everything and promises of immortality and singularity, scientists and philosophers who know “you can’t be overly humble” marvel at the mystery of how the more we know and learn and examine with a critical and open mind, the more mysteries and inextricable complexities we discover, and the faster absolute knowledge of anything retreats from our grasp. As Marshall McLuhan famously said: “Learning creates ignorance.”

Beyond Belief

Posted on November 19, 2015 by Kari James Leave a comment

Although it’s defined a thousand ways, spirituality is ultimately about belief, and faith. For most who call themselves spiritual, it is about belief in something larger and more important than ourselves and our species, and faith that there is a purpose to our struggle and a meaning to our lives.

I don’t understand the need of spiritual people for purpose or meaning or something larger than everything-that-just-is, the need for something to strive for and to progress towards.

Technology’s False Hope

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Kari James 2 comments

Technology’s false hope can bring us only disappointment, sorrow and suffering. It’s time to learn to let it go, gradually but starting now, and give up our dreams of “smart” technologies that are too smart for our own good.

A Complex Predicament – Part One: The Energy Predicament

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Kari James 2 comments

This is the first of three articles on understanding complexity, and how our energy, economic and ecological systems, like unruly children, tend to defy our attempts to change them.

A Complex Predicament – Part Two: The Economic Predicament

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Kari James 2 comments

This is the second of three articles on understanding complexity, and how positive feedback loops are leading inexorably to civilization’s collapse – and what we can and can’t do about it.

A Complex Predicament – Part Three: The Ecological Predicament

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Kari James One comment

This is the third of three articles on understanding complexity and how positive feedback loops are leading inexorably to civilization’s collapse – and what we can and can’t do about it.

THEM, YOU, THEN, NOW, ALWAYS

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Kari James Leave a comment

The Tsilga people cannot tell you their story. At least, not in words.

Like many of the survivors of the Sixth Extinction, now thriving all these millennia after the Great Burning of the Earth, they have no need for words. They have gestures and sounds for the important concepts to communicate: danger, love, joy, anger, pleasure, grief. What more is needed? Their faces will express more to you than you can imagine, or ever hope to say. If you visit them, they will not tell you about themselves; instead, they will show you.

Issue 4

FIREPROOF

Posted on November 16, 2015 by Kari James Leave a comment

This is a work of fiction. The characters are invented, and build upon the characters in the stories Flywheel and Distracted by Dave Pollard, which can be read online at: http://www.howtosavetheworld.ca. The painting is real, and awesome. And the fires were real.

Issue 5

See No Evil: The Morality of Collapse

Posted on November 16, 2015 by Kari James Leave a comment

We need to open our minds and hearts to a much broader range of possibilities, including those that we may in our quiet moments think are ‘impossible’, if we are going to be able to prepare, together, for anything.

The End of Politics

Posted on November 4, 2015 by Kari James Leave a comment

Past collapses and prolonged depressions provide some clues as to how humans will behave in a global collapse. In areas where there remains a hugely inequitable distribution of wealth and power between rich and poor, there is a motivation for the rich to defend their wealth and repress the poor, and a motivation for the poor to seize the wealth of the (presumably unfairly) rich. But in areas where everyone is left poor, and there is little inequality, human nature, it turns out, seems to be to share and help each other.