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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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) 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: 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 Read more…