Tag: decline and fall

The End of the Bureaucratic Era

John Michael Greer383 Comments

For several years now I’ve had readers ask me from time to time about my opinion of the current media and investment frenzy surrounding so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI). The first thing I’ve had to explain in each of those cases is that the label is a misnomer; generative large language models, to give these bloated…

On the Education of Desire

John Michael Greer335 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 Greer330 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…

A little further offline than usual

John Michael Greer237 Comments

Well, that was an entertainment I didn’t need. As I think most of you are aware by now, I’m relocating, and going through the usual shuffle of changing phone and internet providers. Here in Rhode Island, my service was via Cox, and I made the mistake of giving them advance warning about shutting off service,…

Cognitive Collapse: A First Reconnaissance

John Michael Greer418 Comments

As most of my readers know by now, when there are five Wednesdays in a month, it’s up to the readers to suggest and then vote on the theme for the post I put up on the final Wednesday. Sometimes most of my readers vote for a single theme, sometimes there’s a quiet little contest…

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…

Lords of the Fall

John Michael Greer366 Comments

It’s been nine months now since I set aside the other preoccupations of this blog and launched a project I’d had in mind for many years—a discussion of the political and economic subtext underlying Richard Wagner’s vast operatic cycle The Nibelung’s Ring. All things considered, nine months ago was a propitious time for such a…

The Nibelung’s Ring: The Twilight of the Gods 2

John Michael Greer152 Comments

Siegfried’s betrayal of his ideals and his love for Brunnhilde, the central theme of our discussion three weeks ago, is also the hinge upon which the entire story of The Ring turns toward its end. Our blond and brawny hero was doomed the moment he took the Ring from Fafner’s hoard, Alberich’s curse guarantees that,…

The Nibelung’s Ring: The Legends

John Michael Greer263 Comments

When I commented two weeks ago that we had strayed into a Wagnerian period of history, I wasn’t anticipating events like those of the Saturday just past. Nonetheless, here we are, with an apparent fluke of circumstance only an opera composer could get away with being acted out in broad daylight, sending the destiny of…