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Archive for the ‘Manifestos & auguries’ Category

Equinoxx

Posted in Climate change, Manifestos & auguries, tagged , , , , , on March 24, 2021 | Leave a Comment »

Equinoxes and solstices are geometrical phenomena. They mark the passage of time in ways that are easy to understand and more or less universal. I understand people’s desire to watch for them, to mark them out, and to even reclaim them as somehow more primordial than other kinds of temporal passage points. But changing seasons […]

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Another cheap ecocultural manifesto

Posted in Climate change, Eco-culture, Manifestos & auguries, tagged , , , , , on March 8, 2021 | 2 Comments »

Manifestos are back in style (if this one, this one, and this one are any indication). Here’s my latest crack at a fairly simple statement of principle. The lesson of the field of environmental studies, to which I’ve dedicated more than three decades of my life, is that there’s a civilizational task ahead of us. […]

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America is waiting: Meme magic & the spiritual practices of the Interregnum

Posted in Cultural politics, Manifestos & auguries, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 6, 2020 | Leave a Comment »

One of the things I study is spiritual practices – which I’ll define (for simplicity’s sake) as the things people do to enhance their capacity to live in accordance with chosen ideals. Those ideals can be defined in religious terms (for instance, as salvation, enlightenment, or unity with God) or in more secular and philosophical […]

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Generalized Floating Dread Event (GFDE)

Posted in Manifestos & auguries, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 30, 2020 | 2 Comments »

Rather like the Airborne Toxic Event in Don Delillo’s 1980s novel White Noise, these days seem, to many of us, suffused with a kind of Generalized Floating Dread. I’ve picked this sense up from students, from colleagues, from friends and neighbors. It is as if there is a cloud of dark matter around us, whose […]

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Creation of the world in seven days

Posted in Manifestos & auguries, tagged , , , , , , , on September 15, 2020 | Leave a Comment »

On day one, I poked an eye open. And shut it tight. On day two, I tried again, looked around, grasped for something, clutched it tight. Then I ate it. On day three (a lot of things happened between days two and three), I started thinking.

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Thought exercise (democracy & reality)

Posted in Manifestos & auguries, tagged , , on September 11, 2020 | 1 Comment »

See how far you follow my line of thinking here: (1) Democracy (institutional and not just majoritarian/representational) is better than the alternatives. Let’s live with it (and defend it). (2) Democracy as practiced in the U.S. today is partial, compromised, and somewhat muzzled, but still better than the alternatives. Let’s fix it up. (3) Democracy, […]

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Russian roulette (on a daily basis)

Posted in Manifestos & auguries, tagged , on June 27, 2020 | 1 Comment »

Yesterday was a perfect illustration of how exciting (and bewildering) it can be to read the U.S. national news. Here’s a multiple-choice quiz about it. Which of the following occurred yesterday?

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We are all tuteishi (or, on not being posthuman)

Posted in Cultural politics, Manifestos & auguries, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 17, 2020 | Leave a Comment »

A social media conversation prompted me to dig up something I had written in my notebook years ago after reading Serhii Plokhy’s masterful book on “premodern identities” in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Which in turn prompted me to realize that coronavirus provides an answer to the question I had just finished writing an article about […]

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The machine has stopped: what now?

Posted in Manifestos & auguries, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 19, 2020 | 5 Comments »

The “reopening” of the world’s economies, locally and nationally, piece by piece, after the sudden and massive stoppage of the entire economic system, is raising important questions about whether the system can be put back into motion selectively and into a more viable direction than it had been moving beforehand. Some observers have suggested, optimistically, […]

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Earth Day dream, with St. Leonard of Westmount

Posted in Manifestos & auguries, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 22, 2020 | 1 Comment »

I dreamt that Leonard Cohen appeared by my bedside. He smiled and reassured me that things will be alright: “They will all have been beautiful in the end.” I wanted to ask him something, but wasn’t sure what. Then he was gone. The radio (it was Radio Moskva, from back when I spent a fall […]

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The state of things

Posted in Manifestos & auguries, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 9, 2020 | Leave a Comment »

I have many friends who are despairing that, with Bernie Sanders’s exit from the presidential race, the United States has lost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to elect a leader who is honest, reliable, and completely untethered to the vested interests that keep our whole system careening towards catastrophe (climate change, ecological collapse, mass extinction, out-of-control AI, […]

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More on pandemic politics & future scenarios

Posted in Climate change, Manifestos & auguries, tagged , , , , , , , on April 6, 2020 | Leave a Comment »

There’s a lot of interesting thinking going on in response to the coronavirus pandemic and how it will “change everything.” Here’s the beginning of a curated sampling. It takes for granted that there will be suffering, a lot of it, unequally distributed and with a preponderance of it coming down on first responders and low-wage, […]

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