Pulling out a dictionary might seem like an innocuous act, but frequently it isn’t. Often the motivation behind the turn to the dictionary is not a desire for greater understanding, but a desire for control. Dictionary worshipers do not want to understand how others use words; rather, they want to control how others use words.
Author Archives: John Halstead
We’re all monsters.
All of us are monsters. This system makes us monsters. We are complicit in an unimaginably vast and complex system which consumes people and places and excretes carbon gas and plastic junk. I do want a different world, a better world. But even if that world comes to happen, I know I’m not going to live there. There is no place for me in that world.
Elite Over-Production (Peter Turchin)
“It’s too late. The problems are deep and structural—not the type that the tedious process of democratic change can fix in time to forestall mayhem.”
Where the Sidewalk Cracks: Ricochet Resistance & Interstitial Insurrection
I was amazed how a BLM protest could end up creating the conditions for a counter-protest and possibly even politicizing a group of people who may have never engaged in a political demonstration otherwise. While everyone was congratulating me on a great event, I was privately wondering if the most significant impact we had was to energize and mobilize people on the opposite side who might otherwise have stayed home. That was the last demonstration I organized. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to make sense of what happened.
Confessions of a Recovering Progressive by Michael Dowd
“Those of us who hold liberal values or progressive values … it’s going to take intention and heartfelt energy to continue to shepherd them, because the environment’s not going to be selecting for that.”
Accelerationism: So close, and yet so far
There’s so much I agree with Accelerationism about, including the diagnosis of our civilizational predicament, the critique of capitalism, and impotence of much of progressive and Leftist politics. But then it takes the weird turn of suggesting that we need to double down on the same things that created this crisis: unrestrained growth, faith in technological progress, and a dream of human transcendence.
“Welcome to the Smugosphere” of Mainstream Activism by Dwight Towers
Smugosphere [sməɡ ō sfir]: 1. “the protective fog of (unjustified) self-congratulation and complacency that surrounds any ‘community’ of people claiming to be making the world a better place, but which lacks commonly accepted an utilised measures of success and failure”
Seeking a Community for the End of the World
The community I want to be a part of would agree on the following as a starting point …
Hospice for the Human Species
Rather than focusing on trying to save our lives or save civilization or save what we have currently, Post-Doomers ask “How can we live with this awareness of the end of the world, meaningfully and productively, in community with each other and with the planet?”
A Year on the Planet of the Humans
There is no version of 8 billion humans that survives. There is no version of this level of consumption that survives. There is no version of capitalism and economic growth that survives. There is no technology made by industrial civilization that can save the planet from industrial civilization.
