November 2017 Book Club

John Michael Greer213 Comments

This week’s post is the fifth of a monthly series of open-discussion posts focusing on books I’ve written. Our theme for the present is Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth, and this week we’re discussing “The Fourth Law: The Law of Limits” (pp. 43-53). I’d like to ask readers to keep their questions and comments…

This Thing Called Freedom

John Michael Greer314 Comments

I’m not at all sure how many of my readers are aware that this year marks an anniversary of some importance in the western world’s cultural history. Three hundred years ago, in 1717, members of four old lodges of stonemasons that had met in London “since time immemorial” climbed the stair to a private room…

October 2017 Open Post

John Michael Greer408 Comments

As announced earlier, this blog will host an open space once a month to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers, and this is the week. All the standard rules apply — no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank —…

A Field Guide to Thoughtstoppers

John Michael Greer327 Comments

It occurred to me a while back that one very simple issue is responsible for much of the crisis of our age. No question, that crisis has plenty of causes, some of them recent, some of them much less so; to get a clear understanding of the way that modern industrial civilization has backed itself…

October 2017 Book Club

John Michael Greer213 Comments

This week’s post is the fourth of a monthly series of open-discussion posts focusing on books I’ve written. Our theme for the present is Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth, and this week we’re discussing “The Third Law: The Law of Balance” (pp. 35-43). I’d like to ask readers to keep their questions and comments…

Our Shoggoths, Ourselves

John Michael Greer286 Comments

There are many ways I could talk about the point I want to make in this week’s post, but when it comes to the really difficult issues—and yes, we’re going to be talking about one of those—the indirect routes are generally the most useful. For that reason, I want to start out with a seeming…

September 2017 Open Post

John Michael Greer358 Comments

As announced earlier, this blog will host an open space once a month to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers, and this is the week. All the standard rules apply — no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank —…

The Terror of Deep Time

John Michael Greer197 Comments

Back in the 1950s, sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote cogently about what he called “crackpot realism”—the use of rational, scientific, utilitarian means to pursue irrational, unscientific, or floridly delusional goals. It was a massive feature of American life in Mills’ time, and if anything, it’s become more common since then. Since it plays a central…

September 2017 Book Club

John Michael Greer113 Comments

This week’s post is the third of a monthly series of open-discussion posts focusing on books I’ve written. Our theme for the present is my book Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth, and this week we’re discussing “The Second Law: The Law of Flow” (pp. 26-35). I’d like to ask readers to keep their questions and…

The Death of God: A Speculation

John Michael Greer324 Comments

I have been reading William Butler Yeats’ strangest book, A Vision, for the—how many times has it been now? At least once for each of his twenty-eight phases of the Moon, surely, since I first picked up a battered paperback copy from a used book store in Seattle, one of those cramped and marvelous places…