Joe Tainter: “Surplus, Complexity, and Simplification”
What are the key differences between complicated and complex? How can we better understand energy and society through these key distinctions?
building resilient societies
Unnecessary Work
So I suspect that soon the lure of fulfillment will eclipse profitability — particularly because we all can meet our own needs, while only a few of us have ever profited from this disaster.
Overlorded…
In fact, the only thing we must do is survive this mess. And the best way to do that is to jettison the whole thing and build the lives we need.
Deadly Optimism, Useful Pessimism
Resilience builders may end up making the crucial difference between survivable hard times and utter human failure.
The Greatest Crisis Facing the Nation May Not Be Climate Change (2)
There are no shades of gray in today’s politics. It means that most policy discussions are binary — red or blue — and incapable of compromise. It shouldn’t be that way. If it continues this way, the consequences will be enormous.
Anthropogenic Man: a documentary on the human predicament
I have organized an event each year for our community around Earth Day for the last ten years. This year I was able to do a live event with an all-star lineup, so I decided to dress it up and make it into a documentary so it could hopefully be more alluring to people new to this line of thought.
On the Existence of A Man and Further Exegesis of A Man
Philosophers and mystics throughout time have been showing us that everything is connected, that humans are part of that everything, that unity is fundamental — and sacred.
The Greatest Crisis Facing the Nation May Not Be Climate Change
What’s left once you take facts out of the policy debate? Anarchy, nihilism, chaos — just the sort of conditions aspiring demagogues and oligarchs feed off — and get phat while doing it?
Standing at the edge of change
The world’s population of humans stands at the edge of rapid change and the future appears unimaginable.
Reconceptualising boundaries
In this short intervention, we bring a critical social science perspective to the Planetary Boundaries framework through the notion of societal boundaries and aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of the social nature of thresholds, one that it has the potential to offer guidelines for a just, social-ecological transformation.
Humanity in the patchwork of life
This story is on borrowed time. And it’s just a part of a story, a piece of human and living patchwork. Maybe you can borrow it, and make it part of your story too?
Building Black Wealth: Understanding the Limits of Black Capitalism
Can Black liberation be achieved through individual successes within capitalism — through Black capitalism — as Booker T. Washington suggested? Or can true liberation for Black people in the United States only emerge through a collective struggle against racial capitalism?