I have addressed appropriate technology many times throughout this blog. For the developing world it is easier to see what extra technology will do to help people that are in many cases living at or just slightly up from preindustrial age technology. Do they need iPhones and upper end Tesla Read more…
I was talking with a group of supposed environmentalists about a future sustainable society, and what struck me was how they kept going back to talking about a centralized global system to make everyone do the ‘right’ thing, namely being sustainable. I remember feeling a tad stunned that they felt Read more…
I have been accused of talking about sustainability as a form of fantasy utopia. OK, forget about some Hollywood fantasy with everyone singing Kumbaya in some idyllic community that looks like heaven on Earth. Not that picture couldn’t exist, but not in any world humanity lives within for the foreseeable Read more…
I love reading about billionaires telling us how magnanimous they are in giving away their money to help better human the condition. The big game for these people is called ‘philanthropy.’ Once upon a time, businesses before globalization created a new ruling class of billionaires had an expectation that some Read more…
If you are making a fortune doing something, and that something was harmful to the planet but in a somewhat invisible way, what would it take to get you to stop completely? What would make you pick your better angel, especially if you were already a sociopath, or worse a Read more…
I many times make reference to going down the rabbit hole. To do so with any expectation of success, fully requires an open and discerning mind. I believe I have that, but even then, I am often faced with things that stop me in my tracks and make me have Read more…
I have written about needs hierarchies and the need for purpose in our lives (e.g., PERSONAL SOVEREIGNTY 3 – Overcoming Life’s hurdles and Becoming Happy and Free yet still Connecting, Contributing and Creating Positively {}). The needs models (e.g., Maslow, Alderfer, Murray, Atkinson) all state that sense of purpose or Read more…
“The practice of discernment is part of a higher consciousness. Discernment is not just a step up from judgment. In life’s curriculum, it is the opposite of judgment. Though judgment a {person} reveals what {she or he} needs to confront and learn. Through discernment, one reveals what has been mastered” Read more…
I have talked about Intentional community before (e.g., New Ways of Living Together 2 – Intentional Communities {October 2018}) as a new way of living. It’s literally an intention to rebuild community, and that’s what ‘Intentional Communities’ are all about – living with cooperative intention instead of just living with Read more…
The acquisition of consumer goods (stuff) to make our lives more comfortable and luxurious succinctly describes the consumer mindset. (Consumerism – a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.) But it has come at a high price in which those few (the Read more…
For the last couple of centuries, the urban environment has been designed to push nature back beyond the edges of the human built world with manicured parks and tree lined roads within the urban boundaries. We even design many of our modern buildings with heat and air conditioning to keep Read more…
Years ago, when I first started teaching environmental science, it seemed a lot simpler (although anything environmental has always been an uphill struggle) with mainly a push for non-polluting green technology, trying to get business to adopt a better set of practices (e.g., Triple Bottom Line), and a need to Read more…
A few weeks ago, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee voted overwhelmingly to add another $25 billion to an already inflated Pentagon budget request by President Biden of $715 billion. It is not my point to debate whether the military of the largest armed force in the world needs more Read more…
Sustainability is about sovereignty, service in cooperation with each other and the natural world, and a spirituality that understands connectedness. For humanity, it is also about being kind. Kindness is defined as the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Being kind is doing intentional acts that help, it involves voluntary Read more…
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – this is a well-known phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence. I doubt the founding fathers of the new United States in the 1780s envisioned a time could occur when the government would conspire with corporate interests to cause a loss Read more…
If you are still debating whether to get jabbed or not, my advice, DON’T. It will not be any surprise to regular readers of my blog that I think something more serious than the Covid (C-19) pandemic is going on. My reasoning for this is in this blog post. I Read more…
“We seem to understand the value of oil, timber, minerals, and housing, but not the value of unspoiled beauty, wildlife, solitude, and spiritual renewal” Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes). We live in a global societal system (or systems if you want to separate further) that seems to dwell on the Read more…
“If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve the people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only ONE thing: you can better yourself” Leo Tolstoy. I Read more…
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it” Robert Swan At the core of everything, as I said in several posts recently (Coming Back into our Sovereignty {March-June 2021}), is our individual sovereignty. Do you seek to be told what to do, or Read more…
“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” ― David Graeber. I saw a cartoon this morning that showed lemmings as a flowing crowd leaping off a cliff. One was trying to push back against the flow Read more…
Throughout the Earth’s long history of life, there have been 5 mass extinctions due to cataclysmic conditions. (A mass extinction is usually defined as a loss of about three quarters of all species in existence across the entire Earth over a “short” geological period of time. Given the vast amount Read more…
I was again looking over The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent who really does have fascinating insights into how humanity has historically created our worldviews and the cultural norms we take for granted (see earlier post Cultivating a Flourishing Future 3 – Manifested New Perspectives {November 2018}). Lent shines a Read more…
We live on an amazing planet full of teeming and diverse life forms with replenishable resources we can use to give us wonderful lives. Being spiritual means to care for the planet, because if we do, it will nurture us as well. But we cannot go on as we have Read more…
Think about our global economic system. Who and what does it serve? It’s a human construct yet it has a life of its own and we are all but servants (or slaves) to the wants and needs of this system. Despite illusions that we make the decisions concerning the economy, Read more…
“Most people do not have the willingness to break bad habits. They have lots of excuses and they talk like victims” Carlos Santana. We have this story that is shared by all our modern cultures, but not the indigenous ones, which we just ignore because we can call then primitive Read more…
Back during the Roman times, soldiers were often paid in ‘Salt’ (it is the Latin origin of the word salary), which they could barter for other goods they wanted. Salt has an intrinsic value and has multiple uses besides spicing up your food – one of its primary uses for Read more…
“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, that you can walk with Love and Reverence” Henry David Thoreau. Sovereignty is about having the right to choose what you do, and I might add, the willingness to do so. You may not like the choices but when you are sovereign being Read more…
“One of the ways that humanity is controlled and contained is by manipulating us to live vicariously through the ‘cool,’ the rich, the famous. This is fundamental to predatory marketing constructs. The more identified we are with someone else’s (allegedly) amazing life, the more disidentified we are with our own. Read more…
“The Problem isn’t a lack of money, food, water or land. The problem is that you’re given control of these things to a group of greedy psychopaths who care more about maintaining their own power than helping mankind” Bill Hicks: The Mind Unleashed. I was reading one of the many Read more…
Your beliefs are just thoughts that you keep thinking. Yet, they are so entrenched in most of our psyches, that we take them to be literal descriptors of who we come to think we are. This is how we are conditioned to be the people we think we are. Wherever Read more…