Tag: economics

On the Education of Desire

John Michael Greer217 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…

The Rowling Effect

John Michael Greer293 Comments

Yes, I know I was supposed to go on this week to discuss downward mobility as a way to freedom, the next of the themes that took the three top spots in this month’s fifth Wednesday competition. It’s a topical subject, not least on account of the wrenching changes now under way in the political…

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…

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: Siegfried 1

John Michael Greer143 Comments

Before we go on with the third of the operas in Wagner’s vast tetralogy The Nibelung’s Ring, I’d like to take a moment to talk a little about my trolls. Yes, this sequence of posts has gotten a fair amount of trolling, and I’m sorry to say that none of it has been interesting enough…

The Nibelung’s Ring: The Valkyrie 2

John Michael Greer186 Comments

Let’s take a moment to review our story so far.  In mythic terms, it’s a straightforward fairy tale: the gold from the bottom of the Rhine, stolen by the dwarf Alberich and turned into a magic ring, was then stolen from him in turn by the god Wotan, who then had to hand it over…

The Nibelung’s Ring: The Valkyrie 1

John Michael Greer181 Comments

Yes, I know we had a presidential election here in the US yesterday. The remarkable thing about it, after a campaign season so packed with improbabilities and absurdities, is that it was a normal election, with no more than the usual amount of vote fraud and a winner declared by sunrise. While everyone recovers from…

The Nibelung’s Ring: The Rhinegold 2

John Michael Greer149 Comments

In the last post in this sequence, two weeks ago, we watched Alberich steal the magic gold from the bottom of the Rhine.  This reenacted in symbolic form the process by which our Western civilization, like every other civilization in recorded history, abandoned the traditional human relationship with nature as a community of persons and…