“[I]t turns out that extending rights to other-than-human beings is much harder for most people to imagine than giving rights to a corporation. The reason is that we’ve all been indoctrinated in a particular theory of rights: classical liberalism.”
Author Archives: John Halstead
The Police Aren’t Here For You
“The police are an increasingly militarized arm of an increasingly fascist state, hired thugs for capitalist oligarchs, the modern-day version of slave catchers, a terrorist organization. When I came to see this, then abolishing the police didn’t seem so crazy anymore.”
What Anarchism Taught Me About Unitarianism
UUism has got to be one of the most democratic religious institutions on the planet. Yet, it is hardly democratic at all.
The Avengers Won the War, But Lost the Argument: How Our Heroes Doom Our Future
Thanos saw a universe populated by beings who had exceed the limits of the nature. As he saw it, there were only two possibilities, either voluntarily check the growth of life or let nature do it for us. Thanos chose the former path, because the latter would involve incalculably more suffering. The Avengers movies are fiction, but the dilemma posed by Thanos is a real one.
The Wizard & the Prophet … and the Microbiologist?: 3 Visions of Our Future
Two different visions of humankind’s relationship with the natural world: the one viewing nature as a something to be bent to the will of humankind, the other viewing nature as something to which humankind must bend.
“Another End of the World is Possible”: Practicing the Yoga of Despair
What will it take for human beings to change? I think, maybe, it would take dying.
“Die Early and Often”: Being Attis in the Anthropocene
“We are not going to be saved.”
“What If It’s Already Too Late?”: Being an Activist in the Anthropocene
“We’re f**ked. Now what?”
Post-Mortem: Living Collapse
It’s been a rough few years, emotionally, spiritually, and even physically. I’m sure a lot of you can relate.
Pandora & Prometheus
Hope is a curse because it keeps us from foreseeing our doom. It is what keeps us chained to our fate, as surely as Prometheus was chained to the rock.
Another End of the World is Possible 