Ironically, what is potentially most promising about our situation today is that the same circumstances that confront us with social collapse and possible extinction also conspire to present us with an unprecedented opportunity to finally get it right, to live the values-informed existence we have been searching for all along, and that we now require more than ever, as a condition of our very survival. As the Chinese ideograms for the word suggest, crisis is a time not only of great danger, but of singular opportunity, as well.
These words open the final chapter of my forthcoming book Accepting What Is: A Spiritual Revolution of Everyday Life in a Time of Societal Collapse.
But in light of the latest assessment by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the state of the climate, one might suggest that I consider what might be termed a more realistic outlook.
Do our present disastrous circumstances preclude the spiritual fortitude that I call for in this quote? Can we rise to the occasion of this unprecedented Hothouse Earth?...
Sandy Golden takes me to task for not practicing what I preach. While appreciating Ms. Golden's reminder of the importance of walking the talk, a reminder I can always use, I would also argue that my essay is not a good example of my failure to do so. In...
The political reality of our times is that the Republican Party has gone rogue. It is no longer an honorable opponent of the Democratic Party, one that respects the Constitution and plays by the ethical norms of a democratic society. Instead, it has become an incipient fascist outlier. Because...
What concerns me about hate groups is how their hate seems to infect, or bring out the hate in, those who oppose them. That's depressing, because then hate wins. There's got to be a third way beyond the hatred of the bad guys and the hatred of the good guys.
Proving once again that the pen is mightier than the sword, Iowa's Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, signed into law on March 9 the first of what could be a nationwide avalanche of voter suppression laws that surpasses anything like this since the Jim Crow era. With 253 similar bills being pushed by Republican legislatures in 43 states, the assault against democracy by the increasingly desperate Grand Old Party continues. The Republicans have become a minority party that cannot win elections...
I am pleased that Danny Taylor is running for the Athens Selectboard and road commissioner, and recommend that my neighbors and fellow Athenians join me in voting for him at Town Meeting. What particularly recommends Danny's candidacy to me is his honesty and personal integrity. On the basis of my own experience, I have found him to be a person I can trust. Danny doesn't lie when he talks with me. He is honest. I can take him at his...
A general strike is the only appropriate response to any attempt by the Trump/Putin forces to fix the election or otherwise foment a coup. Shut the country down. This begins with the students, especially those attending colleges and high schools. (Can you imagine Brattleboro Union High School Principal Steve Perrin handing out detentions to patriots trying to save what's left of our democracy?) As they are doing with the climate and Black Lives Matter crises, young people need to continue...
I am assuming that for all of us, there is no question what we'll be doing on Nov. 3. If we haven't done so already through mail-in ballots, we will be participating in what is unquestionably the most important act that we as citizens of this country have ever done. We will be electing the next president of the United States, and in so doing, deciding the fate of our threatened democracy. But what happens after Election Day? What will...