Tag: the future ain’t what it used to be

The Twilight of the Monofuture

John Michael Greer390 Comments

I’m pleased to say that my post here two weeks ago, on the way that belief in progress depends on a certain kind of historical amnesia, got a lively and mostly thoughtful response. Oh, I fielded and deleted some saliva-flecked denunciations, to be sure, but that always happens when I try to pose hard questions…

The Long View

John Michael Greer395 Comments

For more than three years now, the themes of these online essays of mine—here, and in my previous blog The Archdruid Report—have had a relatively tight focus on the events of the present day. That hasn’t been accidental by any means. In 2016, strains that had been building for years within Western industrial civilization burst…

March 2019 Open Post

John Michael Greer340 Comments

As announced earlier, this blog will host an open space once a month (well, more or less!) 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…

November 2018 Open Post

John Michael Greer588 Comments

As announced earlier, this blog will host an open space once a month (well, more or less!) 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…

A Tune for Mountain Dulcimer

John Michael Greer270 Comments

For some time now I’ve been thinking about one of the core patterns underlying recent history here in the United States.  It’s a pattern that can be traced from colonial times onward, and it offers unexpected insights into the mess the United States is in just now; the one difficulty with it is that nearly…

February 2018 Open Post

John Michael Greer456 Comments

As announced earlier, this blog will host an open space once a month (well, more or less) 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…

The Dream of a Perfect Diet

John Michael Greer408 Comments

I’d meant to spend the last couple of days writing an essay about the astral plane, because this is the fifth Wednesday of the month, and we’ve established an informal tradition on this blog that my readers get to suggest topics for fifth Wednesday posts. My muse, though, is an opinionated lady; she inspires what…

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…

The Worlds That Never Were

John Michael Greer167 Comments

In order to finish sorting out the foundations for the project this blog will pursue, I want to talk a little more about science fiction. That’s not the digression that it may look like at first glance. Much of the work that’s involved in midwifing the birth of ecosophy—of a way of wisdom that draws…