Category: Not the Monthly Post

On the Education of Desire

John Michael Greer163 Comments

As I mentioned a little over a month ago, the competition over which theme would get the fifth Wednesday post in December was almost unparalleled in the enthusiasm it generated and the number of votes the top three themes generated. All three of the themes are worth a post, and I decided well before cognitive…

Evil Makes You Stupid: A Case Study

John Michael Greer329 Comments

Yes, as most of my readers are probably aware by now, I’ve relocated. It’s been a little less than two years now since my wife Sara died; it’s been a rough road since then but I’ve dealt with it about as well as I’m ever likely to, and over the holidays just past it became…

Situationism: The Road from Raswashingsputin

John Michael Greer360 Comments

Two weeks ago, in our ongoing exploration of the ideas of the Situationist International and their application to the ongoing crisis of industrial society, we ended up face to face with a point of immense importance. I didn’t develop that point in that earlier post, partly because it took the rest of the post to…

Why The Left Can’t Meme: A Second Interlude

John Michael Greer312 Comments

The exploration of the no-ego ego trip and its relevance to contemporary culture a few weeks back has implications that reach far. The discussion that followed, lively as it was, barely scratched the surface of the subject. This week, before we return to the Situationist movement that set this sequence of posts in motion, we’re…

Situationism: Laughter from the Empyrean

John Michael Greer347 Comments

Tolerably often, when I’m reading any of the documents that came out of the original Situationist International, I end up feeling as though the author is caught up in a desperate struggle between his own Marxist presuppositions and the world as it actually exists. That’s common enough in 20th century Marxist literature from outside the…

Situationism: A Voice From The Fringes

John Michael Greer402 Comments

There’s much to be learned from studying movements that thought they were the wave of the future, and weren’t. To begin with, there’s a distinctive tone of strident triumphalism that most movements doomed to fail seem to adopt, some at the very beginning of their trajectories, others once they pass their peak and start down…

Talking Back to Flying Heads

John Michael Greer312 Comments

As a writer with an unruly muse, I’ve gotten used to accepting inspiration no matter the quarter from which it arrives. Even for me, though, this essay is a little odd. We’re going to be talking about one of the weirdest movies of the early 1970s, which is of course saying something; about a widely…

Climate Change: An Unwelcome Future

John Michael Greer362 Comments

The audience reaction to the last two essays I’ve put up here turned out to be something of a surprise to me. A month and a half ago—has it been that long already?—I posted the first of two parts of an essay on climate change, listing three things that each side of today’s climate debates…

The Fall and Rise of Peak Oil

John Michael Greer279 Comments

It’s now been close to fifteen years since the Peak Oil movement collapsed and lost whatever temporary grip it had on public awareness. We could doubtless have an interesting conversation along the lines of “did it fall or was it pushed,” and there may be a point to that conversation a little further down the…

Parsifal: The Solution Assessed

John Michael Greer226 Comments

As we saw two weeks ago, Richard Wagner’s last opera Parsifal makes use of most of the same symbols as The Ring of the Nibelung, and thus provides a mordant commentary to the theme of that vast and sprawling work. The magic treasure, the magic spear, the antagonist who wins power by a terrible renunciation…