Max Weber’s definition was that something is “a ‘state’ if and insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds a claim on the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence in the enforcement of its order.” I’ve found this definition not to aid my thinking about conflict areas and state failure, where monopolies of any kind [...]
Read more →The problem at the heart of all edgy political movements is that the government is doing the wrong thing, but ignoring the government has three worse consequences: the government will punch you in the head, other, evil groups (racists, say) will also ignore the government, and often simply being free is not enough, you want [...]
Read more →Raygun Soaps n., Star Trek, X Files, Warehouse 13, Stargate and all the rest. Fix the gadget, fight with the bad, have a beer with your mates in 10 Forward at the end of the show.
Read more →Buckminster Fuller and Mahatma Gandhi showed that single individuals could transform the world. When I really got started in this game, in 2002, with the invention of the hexayurt, I searched hard for some model of how to be effective. Here’s roughly what I came to. Institutions which own humanitarian problems have been ineffective for [...]
Read more →1-Don’t speak that which is not true 2-Don’t take that which is not offered 3-Don’t be a pervert 4-Practice to be psychic 5-Don’t kill anyone or anything By those lovable weirdos, Die Antwoord. I haven’t seen this level of high weirdness in quite a while.
Read more →Disaster at the Top of the World (ugh, regwall) By Thomas Homer-Dixon, via Eldan. Policy makers need to accept that societies won’t make drastic changes to address climate change until such a crisis hits. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing for them to do in the meantime. When a crisis does occur, the societies with [...]
Read more →The Future We Deserve is my attempt to mobilize more people towards creating the future we deserve. I want to find a community to discuss and learn about other perspectives on the future. My hope is that out of that conversation might come new ways of actually creating these positive futures. What might that look [...]
Read more →We have the ability to transform the world. Previous generations had the possibility to transform society, but since the technological breakout of the 20th century we have attained the power to transform the world. Our first real transformative step was to leave the planet a desolate husk, devoid of life, a quiet radioactive wasteland with [...]
Read more →EUfugee, n. – a refugee with an EU passport who is legally entitled to reside and work anywhere within the EU. This is a bookmark for something which may be important if Greece has political violence.
Read more →We are in crisis. One third of the population of our species live in abject poverty and horror. They watch their children die young. They die young themselves. You know these people are out there. The world is on fire. We have climate change. We have massive destruction of the natural world, mass extinction that [...]
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