When I was still teaching about sustainability, I sometimes used the simulation program Sim City. The first time I used this program was back in the early 1990s. (SimCity is a city-building and urban planning simulation game.) What becomes clear from doing this kind of simulation is that there are Read more…
I am amazed that I have to actually say this but the transition requires us to make a decision away from the consumer paradigm. WE don’t have to leave all the creature comforts and luxuries behind – let me dispel that ridiculous notion straight away – but we have to Read more…
I have spoken of the desperate need to rethink and change our global economic systems (see previous post The world Economy – are we really doing better? Measurement is everything!). Bhutan has metrics in place since 1998 to measure Gross National Happiness (GNH) using over 9 major metrics instead of Read more…
I was able to do a lot of reading over the holiday period. As we begin a new year, a little backtrack to emphasize much of what we all seem to keep forgetting. All of the ideas I express in this post I will cover in more depth in the Read more…
The mainstream news is not about what is working well, but only about what is NOT working. If the mainstream is all that you hear then you can be forgiven for thinking that the world is heading to hell in a hand-basket. Don’t get me wrong, we have passed, or Read more…
A key aspect of a flourishing culture is one that allows people to be the creative beings they know themselves to be, in whatever form that takes for any one individual. I really believe that we are not meant to be just existing with no purpose. Societies all around the Read more…
I have informally counseled many people over the years. By far the most popular comment that always comes up is that everyone feels a need to do something ‘useful’ in life and the big question, “Why am I here and what is my purpose?” This is usually spurred on by Read more…
We have two choices. We can spend our resources on war, security, walls, fences, borders or we can spend our resources meeting the needs of ALL people by creating an economy of sustainable abundance, which would make obsolete all of those needs for security. Which do you choose? Chris Agnos, Read more…
Human power comes from every human being on the planet. The reason that the ultra elite-hierarchy or Cabal have such power is that we collectively give them our power. We can happily exist without this super hierarchy – we don’t need them. They make us believe that we do, but Read more…
Heretic – original use of the term, “Someone who is in possession of the facts and is able to choose.” Anyone in the world following politics in the USA will have noticed the final acts of ‘civic disengagement’ occuring. Since the 1950s, ongoing dialogue within towns and neighborhoods was slowly Read more…
We are at a crucial juncture in human existence. Besides the need to grow spiritually (and for those that haven’t read my earlier posts on this, I emphasize that this does not automatically include religion, which itself is a control system) we need to regain control of our own society. Read more…
Many scholars support the idea that all we need to do to solve the world’s problems is to reform what we currently do and just promote more laws and regulations to curb humanity’s worse tendencies. As a broad generalization, many reformers perceive that humans will only behave sustainably if they Read more…
Main future view categories (numbers in parentheses are percentages for each category – 25 years and 100 years, with question three overviews in the narrative within each question). 1. No real change over 25 years (or even 100 years?) (0%/7%). An intriguing category because these people recognize that environmental changes Read more…
“The only thing that can save us as a species is seeing how we’re not thinking about future generations in the way we live.” Erik Erikson In my academic past-life I was doing some research on how people perceive the future might be. My logic was that based on a Read more…
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. William Shakespeare BioDiversity is known to be a complete interaction of all the species in an ecosystem. Modern science accepts that an ecosystem is a complete and interactive and dynamic collection of species (from the micro to especially the micro levels, which we Read more…
“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wears you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” Muhammad Ali Recently I received the Comment: “You actually make it seem really easy along with your presentation however I find this topic to be actually something that I feel I would by Read more…
“The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the ad handle because it was made of wood and they thought it was one of them.” Anon There seem to be three main areas of geoengineering: 1) modern accepted techniques – Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal Read more…
Let’s face it, we all like food. It has been the primary human occupation throughout humanities history. It is the primary drive for all of nature. Yet how many of us in the MDCs could actually find food if it wasn’t neatly packaged in a grocery store? Once we were Read more…
Over the years, during lectures and many talks I have given, one question that always comes up is could we actually make the transition to sustainability or is it just a pipe-dream. Obviously the question usually comes from people who think a sustainable future is some half-life of a harsh Read more…
About a week ago I posted on Facebook a cartoon from ‘Collectively Conscious.’ In it a young boy asks his mother, “Why do we have wars?” The mother answers, “Because we are ruled by an elite group of psychopaths who own the banks that control the government and the media. Read more…
We like to blame the dumbing down of society to the electronic joy we are now inundated with in our lives. While this is somewhat true, it is not a new phenomenon. Throughout history, the people who controlled the information controlled the people. This is not conspiracy, it is simply Read more…
A caring, sharing, collaborative world “Our civilized culture is failing us. And to change things we have to start with our children, showing them the importance of love and kindness, of faith and hope, of compassion and non-violence, treating each other with dignity and respect, not as bodies to be Read more…
POPULATION, ECONOMICS, CHOICE and MORALITY I didn’t get to complete my thoughts on this in the last post because of a keyboard problem. Countries that have invested in female education and family planning have demonstrated major drops in total fertility rates. Regardless of which counties are used as comparisons (e.g. Read more…
I decided to subtitle this post a world of possibilities. There are many options for us and many are more desirable than what we currently have. I didn’t say probabilities, which are more likely occurrences, because to get to probabilities we have to have more firm intention of what we Read more…
What makes the Leaver worldview unique is that it is completely community oriented. Our current westernized culture thrives on competition, individualism, and reliance on authority to solve problems. I need to be careful here – I am NOT condoning some Ayn Rand way of looking at the world, that is Read more…
Like most technology of the last 70 years, we start with what sounds like a great idea and then rush it to mass production without any real consideration of long-term consequences. Then when consequences arise (as they always seem to do) we find that big money, scientists funded by them, Read more…
Many years ago, I attended a weekly, evening, continuing education course about Creative Writing. The instructor as you might guess focused on creativity and its expression. During one class discussion we had to think of a subject on which to write about things to do at a Caribbean resort. There Read more…
Jared Diamond writes in his book The World until Yesterday about how indigenous peoples lived for most of human existence in tribal societies. He doesn’t paint a utopia, yet explains why the tribal system worked overall. Relatively recently in human history we moved from hunter-gatherer tribal systems into farming communities Read more…
It is estimated that 90% of people intensely dislike the working week, which is a product of efficiency for the industrial revolution and machine system of living. So, 10% of people have a living that is ideal for them. They could work 15 hours a day and still love what Read more…
If we are to move towards a sustainable world, we most certainly will have to find ways to live more harmoniously with each other. We will not have to become saints to live together, but we will have to find respect for all our differences, and compassion will have to Read more…