I don’t get into personal matters in these essays very often. Partly that’s because I’m a fairly private person, partly it’s because the cult of personality that pervades today’s literary and creative scenes is so dreary; this whole notion that literature and the arts exist so that writers and artists can “express themselves” belongs in…
Category: Monthly Post
An Anthropocene Worth Having
For more than two years now I’ve been trying to figure out how to introduce a way of thinking about humanity’s relationship to nature that cuts straight across nearly all of the conventional thinking on that subject. It’s been a challenge. I’m glad to say, though, that a project now being lauded by the corporate-enabler…
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
These days I hear a lot of people talking about whether it’s possible to change the world, and if so, how to go about it. It’s understandable that this should be so, since the world around us is such a steaming mess. Nor, despite the bleatings of true believers in progress, is it getting better. …
Science as Enchantment
All things considered, this may seem like an odd time to start talking again about the nature, history, and future of enchantment. That was one of the core themes I explored in posts during the first half of the year, granted, and I had much more to say about it when the pressures of a…
Bracing for Impact
I think it was Lenin who said that there are decades in which nothing happens, and then there are months in which decades happen. It’s a useful reminder that the pace of historic change is not smooth. We’ve all seen immense changes take place over the last few decades, but in the industrial world, at…
A Neglected Factor in the Fall of Civilizations
One of the many reasons I enjoy writing these weekly essays is that they give me the opportunity to look at the world in new ways. Too many writers fall into the trap of saying the same things over and over again in different words—sometimes for a while, sometimes until death taps the author on…
Futurus Interruptus
Most of the time, in writing these essays, I try to treat the decline of industrial society with the seriousness that it deserves. Sometimes, though, the plain raw absurdity of our current situation rises to a point that only raucous laughter can address. I ran into another of those points a few days back, while…
Beyond Thaumatophobia, Part One: A Door Into Springtime
Naomi Wolf, one of the few journalists who responded to the Covid-19 phenomenon by doing what journalists are theoretically supposed to do and asking hard questions about the party line pushed by government and corporate flacks, has continued to follow that shocking act of independent thought into wider territories. It’s been quite something to watch. …
When Nature Gazes Back
It’s been a month since I last posted on the theme of disenchantment, and a lively month at that. The cracks in America’s global empire have become increasingly visible around the world. Here at home the mentally challenged resident of the White House continues to blunder through a vague approximation of his constitutional duties while…
Dancing on the Brink
Back when I was sketching out posts for the first half of this year, I planned to go on this week to talk further about enchantment, exploring the way that the ebb and flow of enchantment seems to track the rise and fall of civilizations and sketching out a tentative hypothesis about why that is.…