Wicked Problem, or Wicked People?
The current suite of problems facing humanity will never be solved while the lunatics are in charge of the asylum.
Read moreTag Archives: SHIFT
7.3 Billion Excuses and Counting
Have you heard the litany of excuses for not doing anything about fucking, eating and shitting ourselves out of existence? I have been carefully collecting the data since I was birthed onto this planet, and the following is the picture that has emerged.
Read moreHolding Space for the Inner Crisis
As the deep ecology movement begins to recognise the importance of grieving the demise of industrial civilisation, conversations around sacred activism and psycho-spiritual healing are inevitably beginning to surface.
Read moreDetached from our True Nature: Nature Deficit Disorder
The price we pay for our alienation from the natural world is that of our wellbeing – physical, emotional and spiritual. It’s time we paid back our nature deficit and got back in touch with our true nature. It’s time to go home.
Read moreLess Meat = Less Heat
We have known about human-caused climate change for well over a century, and have had in operation a global framework for dealing with it for well over two decades, yet we are still failing to stop or even slow down its advance toward catastrophe.
Read moreFrugal Abundance in an Age of Limits
Like a snake eating its own tail, our growth-oriented civilisation suffers from the delusion that there are no environmental limits to growth. But rethinking growth in an age of limits cannot be avoided. The only question is whether it will be by design or disaster.
Read moreThe Admission of Necessary Ignorance
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.”
Read moreThe Politics of Addressing Climate Change
There is no politically viable response to climate change.
For a response to be politically viable it would have to be politically appealing. A response that politicians know won’t kill their career. That means a response that people would vote for, one that is supported by economists and corporate leaders. And people vote for things they like the sound of, not policies that are likely to pull the rug out from under their way of life.
Read moreThe Top 40 – Sounds of Science
Most important of all: Don’t keep singing the same song to the same people and expect the world to change. I know it’s sad that it didn’t work but I must let it go, that’s science! Psuedo-science and religion and conservatism and fanaticism and dogmatism have no place in the scientist’s mind. Letting go of bad and out-dated ideas is at the core of science.
Read moreTop 10: Critical Thinking Cheat-Sheet
The ability to slice through the fog of misinformation and disinformation, propaganda and quackery, is a vital skill in our information-saturated digital era.
Critical thinking is a powerful tool, and a discerning mind is aware of how our innermost feelings shape our perception of the world. A critical thinker knows what shade of glasses they are wearing over their mind’s eye.
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