John Halstead

12 Things to do Instead of Calling the Cops

Twelve common situations where people call the police and suggested alternatives.

“Making Peace With Extinction” by Dayan Martinez

As news of the climate crisis and mass extinction currently underway underscore the gravity of the moment, it is natural to turn toward despair and defeat. However, taking a deep-history perspective, which includes five other mass extinctions and re-frames our role and participation in worldwide ecosystems helps to move beyond grief. We enter a dynamic peace where our present blessings and future joys can dialog with the deep, ancestral history of extinction and apocalypse on Planet Earth, through our varied consciousness and experiences. We learn to speak with and through the pain of loss, and hopefully, to transmute this apocalyptic moment into a different tomorrow, beyond disaster.

What the Heck is Fascism?

But what does “fascism” mean? Given how increasingly common the term is, we should figure it out.

Debate with a Technoptimist

After viewing Michael Moore’s latest film, “Planet of the Humans”, I got into some intense discussions with progressive friends who really disliked the movie as well as my promoting it online. One progressive friend, Mark Green, wrote a response, and there followed a back-and-forth series of posts between us, which I think was very illuminating.

Black Lives Matter … to the Planet

Whether it’s climate change or White supremacy, it’s not about changing one thing. It’s about changing everything, together.

Are Solar Panels Really Sustainable?

In order to be truly sustainable, solar panels must offset the harms done in their creation and disposal, as well as enough energy to replace themselves at the end of their lifetime. Not only are solar panels not sustainable, but they likely never will be.

News from the Other End of the World: July 2020

A (more or less) monthly newsletter for AnotherEndoftheWorld.org where I introduce new friends I have met in the Deep Adaptation community, give an update on current and future projects and essay ideas, and share what I’m currently reading and watching.

“What it means to be alive in a time like this” (by Patrick Farnsworth)

If you want to engage in political action and social change, what kind of action is worthy of our love, dedication, and rage in a time like this?

Anarchism for Civilians

Unitarians taught me about small-scale democracy. Bonobos taught me about the naturalness of taking care of others. Midwives taught me about the availability of alternatives to the state and capitalist order. And pirates, those violent criminals from our bedtime stories, taught me about the violence of civilization itself.

What Pirates Taught Me About Anarchism (Anarchism for Civilians series)

Civilized societies are not less violent than non-civilized societies–-though they may appear to be the more privileged citizens. One of the defining characteristics of civilization is the depersonalization of violence.