“How do you wake up from the matrix when you don’t know you are in the matrix?” Tristan Harris (Center for Humane Technology) I seem to be unusual when it comes to my electronic joy. Friends try to contact me via my cell phone (phone, text, email, etc.) and more Read more…
“It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry. We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship Read more…
I have talked how our reality is shaped by the stories we tell ourselves. This is also about how we use specific words to describe our reality. “The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; Read more…
When we watch movies about wizards and witches, they are always making things happen by casting ‘spells’ using strange ancient magical words in arcane languages. Yet, the reality is that all Words, in whatever language, have power. All of us wield this power every day with impunity not recognizing the Read more…
“One way to pick a future is to believe it is inevitable” Richard Bach. I find it amazing that most people I talk with really want a better world that is sustainable and harmonious with the natural world, and also where everyone lives in unity and harmony. Yet, in the Read more…
“The last person to trust with power is someone who is dying to have it. The best person to wield power is someone who is reluctant to do so, but who will do it for a while as a civic duty. That is why term limits should make it impossible Read more…
“We must be careful not to believe things simply because we want them to be true. No one can fool you as easily as you can fool yourself.” Richard Feynman. A question I have asked often of my readers is, “do you want to thrive or simply survive?” And if Read more…
The problem with industrial farming is that it is a one size fits all kind of situation, but different areas with different ecosystems and microecosystems do not really lend themselves to that mentality. In the last post, I mentioned that large scale agriculture will still be needed in the future, Read more…
Most people do not associate food with their sovereignty, but it is one of the most crucial freedoms we have. For most people it is a simple process of going to the grocery store, but stop and think about the process that controls the food you find on the shelves. Read more…
So, what is personal sovereignty? Plain and simple, just being you, or more the you would want to be if you were not busy running in the proverbial rat race. Being you is being part of something beyond yourself without losing your individualism and being mindful of all life. The Read more…
“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” Janis Joplin – You got nothing left to lose…you can leave it all behind for its the anchor that holds you down…from being free. For many decades the consumer dream, driven by a deeply flawed economic system, has been captivating. But Read more…
If this past year of 2020 (and continuing in 2021) has taught us anything, it should be that we need to become more self-sufficient as individuals and as communities that live in the same area. What does seem to have happened though is that we have fallen into using big Read more…
“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control people” Henry Kisinger. I fully intended to just do a localized food growing post, but I watched a short news interview with noted Indian sustainability scholar-activist Vandana Shiva, and ended up exploring yet another rabbit hole – that of Read more…
The title of this post, Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics, has been attribute to Mark Twain when he was commenting on the role of politicians in our lives, whose job it seems is now to cover up, white wash, or simple mislead people as they go around doing their daily Read more…
“The Great Reset is an attempt to create a plausible impression that the huge winners in this system are on the verge of voluntarily setting greed aside to get serious about solving the raging crises that are radically destabilizing our world.” Naomi Kline The above quote comes from an article Read more…
I have spent many posts recently emphasizing connectedness. The only people I have ever met who say they do not want to be connected are people who are angry and hateful at the negative aspects of the world as it is currently experienced by them. Loneliness is a modern disease Read more…
“Grapes must be crushed to make wine. Diamonds form under pressure. Olives are pressed to release oil. Seeds grow in darkness. Whenever you feel crushed, under pressure, pressed, or in darkness, you’re in a powerful place of transformation and transmutation. Trust the process” Lalah Delia. You are not responsible Read more…
I have been reading a lot these past few months, on all kinds of media (Left, Right, Mass, and Alternate), about something called the ‘Great Reset.’ This ‘Great Reset’ agenda sounds OK on the surface until one looks more closely at what is being said and who is saying it. Read more…
As most of you will realize in reading my blog, I spend more time talking about our collective cognition as the problem and not just the technological problems we create through our lifestyle choices. Environmental Educator David Orr talks about how we try to tweak ourselves out of our problems Read more…
Only through illumination of the past does a new future become visible. Here is where I take an incredibly complex idea and distill it down to an essential 100 words. I have been sat at my computer this past first week of January 2021 observing all the incredible goings-on. Obviously, Read more…
When people are afraid of losing something they need either physically or psychologically, they can be controlled. People with nothing left to lose can be dangerous to those in charge. The controllers placate them with enough things in their lives so they fear what little they do have may be Read more…
There is no shortage of great thinkers and researchers who have illuminated the risks being imposed up on us with consumerist worldview. Michael Pollan has clearly expressed the problems with our industrial food systems (see earlier post Relocalization and Community {Jan 2018}). Avoiding processed food and non-organic produce is a Read more…
In May 2020 I talked a bit about vaccines (posts Vaccines: part 1-5). With the push to release the Covid-19 (C-19) vaccine, in keeping with my current risk theme, here is a long update summary from what I have studying within and outside the mainstream. I am posting early this Read more…
(I have been asked to list the dates {month, day, year} for previous posts I refer to in my blog to help readers find them without having to scroll the now lengthy list of blog posts on this site.) First, let me reiterate my key comments from the last four Read more…
In the last post I emphasized how despite all the technological advances (and actually because of), we do not live in a risk-free world, and never will. I love hearing people quote anecdotal stories of gramps who smoked 40 cigarettes a day and drank a quart of whiskey a day Read more…
Quoted material without a citation is from my Environmental Communication textbook. In general, we accept risks we choose to accept (or do not know about), complain about risks that are we know are imposed up on us, and bemoan when faced with Acts of God. It is the middle group Read more…
In my last post I outlined how experts and everyone else view risk differently. Risk experts like to talk about numbers that reflect mortality and morbidity, while non-experts view risk on a set of personal heuristics (outrage factors) to decide if a risk is acceptable or not. What is considered Read more…
“To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while “ John-Paul Sartre It has been fascinating to observe how government officials have been drafting up all manner of draconian laws to ‘protect’ us all from a virus (Covid-19), and even more fascinating to observe Read more…
I am not a doomsayer, but we are on the cusp of an economic crisis unprecedented in human history. We’ve had major depressions like the one precipitated by the 1929 stock market collapse, and several major recessions during the last 200 years, but what we are looking at now is Read more…
“Progress is impossible without change, and those that cannot change their minds cannot change anything” George Bernard Shaw. For many years, in my Sustainable Living textbook and when I was at conferences talking about my positive views of a sustainable world, people would come up to and ask why I Read more…