Time's Fool

The attitude toward knowledge exhibited by the extremist supporters of right-wing Republicans seems to be a reversion to the kind of thought that pervaded medieval Europe. It's an anti-modernism. The modernist attitude toward knowledge, which developed in the Enlightenment of the 15th to 17th centuries, with the growth of technology and the emergence of science, relies on reason and empirical evidence developed and tested by a community of independently thinking individuals. The medieval attitude toward knowledge, which had been locked in place for at least a millennium and a half, was that knowledge was only created by the Deity and only revealed in the Bible; thus, no new knowledge could ever be created or found outside the official interpretations of the Bible. Medievalist knowledge is strictly authoritarian and a priori , while modernist knowledge is anti-authoritarian and empirical. Authoritarian knowledge tends to be extremely prejudiced, rigidly unchanging, an...

There is an unacknowledged diversity of sexual reproduction in nature: " Welcome to the world of shelled sea-butterfly sex, in which the all-male population mate, store sperm, then change into females that fertilize themselves." From:  Bipolar Disorder ,  by Gretel Erhlich a review of  Lost Antarctica: Adventures in a Disappearing Land,  James McClintock,  Palgrave Macmillan. onearth, winter 2013    http://www.onearth.org/article/bipolar-disorder

Mature capitalist industrialism has become so intensely commercial, so driven by the profit motive, that its influence intrudes into every corner of our lives. And it's difficult even for us to question whether this is a good thing. (For many of us, at least.) It's "just accepted." To some extent, they bribe us into accepting it, but to some extent, they don't even have to bribe us, we're so inured to the practice. We're deluded --not just by advertising, but by a whole complex of factors-- into thinking that "cost" and "profit" are the most important principles of decision-making. (Not just business decision-making, but political, public-policy, even personal decision-making.) We get distracted from what we really want and what we really need, like health and kindness and creativity and clean air. Money is too easy to count, so its more and more widespread use degrades our ability to reason in a more complex fashion than money allows. ...

The Occupy movement receded because the crisis receded. The Occupy movement is a reactive social movement ; such movements gather in participants when the public space becomes sufficiently chaotic, when distress increases enough to knock people off their normal apathy-balance point and makes them willing to join together in ways which the apathy of normality does not allow. Furthermore, the organizational kernel of Occupy is not the classic rational-hierarchical model typical in the West. This makes it difficult for the bureaucratic-rational mind to understand. Rather, it is the emergent co-operative/distributive model that has only recently been evolving from the Western counter-cultural reaction against the dominative individualism pervasive in Western culture. Occupy is not dead. It has not failed "to grasp the moment." It is in an "in-breathing phase" of creating connections between activists, establishing a workable culture of consensus/participat...

A Monetary Policy for the 99%: Twelve-Year-Old Reformer Goes Viral

Here's a core of my critique of Libertarianism. At least of some flavors of it, since, had that label not already been appropriated by the free-market crazies, I could accept it as descriptive of my own political theory/stance. At least of part of my stance. Cooperative Libertarianism, perhaps. To speak of “the peninsular individual” is to offer a contrast with “the insular individual.” The latter is separated from others; the former is connected with them via the common substrate of the group. The latter is conceived as independent of others, the former as interdependent, connected, receiving-&-providing from/to others. Human beings are a social animal, unlike bears, for example. More like wolves, we run in packs. Unlike a foal, which can stand on its own four feet as soon as it is born, an infant human is totally dependent upon its mother for years after birth. And the mother can hardly care for the child, can hardly survive herself, without the aid and comfort of...

Try out this idea for size: "Leadership" is a reified concept. That is to say, the idea of leadership is constructed from a variety of behaviors (by presumed leaders) and from a variety of experiences by "followers". However, while the concept as a culturally transmitted idea serves useful purposes, there is in reality no such "thing" as leadership. Think about "leadership functions" or "leader behaviors" instead of about "leadership". Then consider for any particular situation or group or organization what might be the optimal distribution/organization of those functions and behaviors. Do they need to be collected together in a single role/status? Or can they most effectively be distributed among the members of the group/organization?? Our culture leads us (!) to assume that a "leader" is needed, when in fact what is needed is that certain functions be satisfied, certain behaviors performed. Maybe they can be sprea...