Only occasionally do I talk about meditation, and then in the abstract, mostly. Here’s what meditation is: zero-distraction living. 90% of the benefits at a personality level are from simply sitting with yourself, and not permitting yourself to escape. As one sage put it Self-scrutiny, relentless observance of one’s thoughts, is a stark and shattering [...]
Read more →I just read The Atrocity Archives by Stross. I don’t write very much fiction, but The Unplugged has served well over the years, floating around from one place to another inspiring conversations. I’m fascinated and repulsed by horror. I spent one summer as a teenager reading Guy N Smith (I cannot possibly explain my actions [...]
Read more →“Hell of a Life” (fragile video, stable lyrics) really hit a chord. I keep circling around this, trying to be sane in an insane world. It’s breaking me, or at least my ability to function in a lot of what people call normal life. I can’t get one eye off poverty and the environment. I’ve [...]
Read more →November is the month I’m devoting to doing the heavy lifting on The Future We Deserve. The book is in excellent shape, with 94 of 100 pieces in so far, totaling 65,000 words. Well done to everybody who has written for the book – excellent work, girls and boys! You can read the The Future [...]
Read more →My life has grown through increasingly wide circles of concern. It can roughly be divided into four parts. Meditation is largely my focus on myself The Hexayurt Project is about the poor and those affected by disaster The Institute for Collapsonomics is about the rich and our global scientific/technical capacity The Future We Deserve is [...]
Read more →There is a terrain where angels fear to tread. Over and over again it is discovered, and a small professional guild forms around it in the unfortunate field has arrived at the conclusion. The US military has called it VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) Social planners discovered it as wicked problems Later, the military [...]
Read more →When the world’s credit markets have no more money to lend the governments, because good money has been poured after bad, and soaking the taxpayers to the fourth generation wears thin, because nobody is quite sure that they will be any more able to pay than the current generation is, and we weep, and wail, [...]
Read more →So as you know, the hexayurt is basically what I’m about. It’s a deceptively simple shelter – the simplest one can be built for less than $100 and house a family of five – far cheaper and more durable than a tent. The Hexayurt Project is an Free Hardware / Open Hardware project which embodies [...]
Read more →This may help to put the cuts in perspective. (my talk at the Dark Mountain festival in Wales)
Read more →Back in black elephant territory again today. 5 billion cell phones. Over time, much more 3G. What happens in a world where everybody has an internet-connected cell phone but billions live in absolute poverty? Collapse of previously first-world countries like Iceland, Greece, Ireland… and America? How does it feel for 20% of the population to [...]
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