Inspired by the daily litany of depressing news (and by reading Latour’s Down to Earth), I’ve succumbed to the temptation of writing a manifesto. Manifestos are cheap, I know, but we have to start somewhere. (And so many questions arise as you write one: about the proper balance between critique and vision, between generality and […]
Archive for the ‘Manifestos & auguries’ Category
The 5 D’s
Posted in Anthropocene, Climate change, Manifestos & auguries, tagged Alan Weisman, capitalism, Countdown, decapitalization, decarbonization, Decolonization, demilitarization, demographic transition, deplasticization, human population growth, overpopulation, plastic planet on April 11, 2018 | 3 Comments »
… that might get humans to pull through the next few centuries relatively intact as a species (if not undiminished or unscathed): Decarbonization, Deplasticization, Demilitarization, Decolonization, and Demographic Transition. The first, Decarbonization, entails a dramatic reduction in industrial production of atmospheric carbon (and other greenhouse gas) emissions. It will keep conditions for the flourishing of […]
The frame game
Posted in Eco-culture, Manifestos & auguries, tagged creative thinking, Edward De Bono, framing, lateral thinking, pluralism, Po on November 10, 2017 | 4 Comments »
Spin the dial and see where it lands. Take several steps in that direction. Look around. Spin again. 1. Struggle, or The World at War Frame: We are at war. The war is between the good guys and the bad guys. We must triumph. (Variations: The war is between those who are plundering the planet […]
R.I.P. Cassini
Posted in Manifestos & auguries, Visual culture, tagged Blade Runner, Cassini, images, moving image, seeing, visuality on September 16, 2017 | 4 Comments »
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…” 62 moons orbiting in and around the grooved rings of Saturn. Winter and spring, hurricanes, jet streams, and auroras. Rivers and deltas pelted by methane rains on Titan. Hydrothermal vented oceans, and geysers shooting plumes of water that fall back as snow on Enceladus. Moons forming spiral waves cresting […]
May Day thoughts: on labor & livelihood
Posted in Manifestos & auguries, Politics, tagged Beltane, green movement, green politics, labor, labour, left, May Day, neoliberalism, revolution, revolutions, right livelihood, Walpurgis Day, Walpurgisnacht on May 1, 2017 | 4 Comments »
May Day (Beltane, Walpurga’s Day, et al.) is a good time for reflecting on politics, ecology, and possibility. The following can be considered part of a series on this blog. When neoliberalism is understood as the alliance between economic liberalization and social liberalization — that is, between those who would “liberate” capitalist markets (who sometimes get called fiscal […]
In search of silver linings
Posted in Manifestos & auguries, Politics, tagged 2016 elections, alt-right, ClimateJustice, Donald Trump, Dugin, future of the university, Garrison Keillor, global environmental catastrophe, liberalism, meme magic, memetic warfare, Naomi Klein, neoliberalism, post-cinema, progressivism, Republicans, Tom Frank, Trump on November 10, 2016 | 8 Comments »
So, Donald Trump will be president of the United States and both Congress and Senate will be dominated by Republicans. Environmentalists and social justice activists, almost universally, find this idea horrifying. But there are silver linings to be found amidst the wreckage. Let’s explore a few of them.
Global disorder, the left, & a new democracy
Posted in Cultural politics, Manifestos & auguries, Politics, tagged cultural left, global disorder, hegemony, leftism, political left on November 1, 2015 | 1 Comment »
The following is something I wrote a while back that I have not had a chance to do anything with. I’m sharing it here simply because it will otherwise languish. It is a reflection on the political left and its failings in a changing global situation, a situation marked by inequality on a global scale, by increasing, […]
4 Noble Truths of Socio-Ecological Suffering
Posted in Anthropocene, Eco-culture, Manifestos & auguries, tagged Anthropocene, buen vivir, carbon capitalism, ClimateJustice, ecological sacrifice zones, environmental justice, Sydney Tar Ponds on May 1, 2015 | 8 Comments »
Some 2500 years ago, a man named Siddhartha Gotama articulated what have come to be known as the “4 Noble Truths”: the truth of dukkha, or fundamental suffering (that there is a basic unsatisfactoriness to life), the truth of its causes (that it arises from an ignorance and misperception of the nature of things, which are […]
Sustainability bottleneck (or, No one here gets out alive?)
Posted in Anthropocene, Manifestos & auguries, tagged Anthropocene, astrobiology, Buddhism, cosmology, sustainability, sustainability bottleneck on January 22, 2015 | 10 Comments »
Astrophysicist and NPR blogger Adam Frank writes about the “sustainability bottleneck” as the state faced by technological civilizations like ours, which have learned how to “intensively harvest” energy, but not how to sustain themselves through the crisis this harvesting sets off. It turns out there may be millions of planets that give rise to life in our galaxy alone. Frank […]