Direct democracy is possible. What other option do we have?
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ May 28, 2021
Watching the foundational culture of the modern era disintegrate as it struggles to deny its fading dominance brings fear, anger, and melancholy. Like watching a large animal in its death throes, fascination and pity are tinged with a kind of horror and sadness at the loss of what once was great.
Experiencing this from inside that culture adds absurdity and confusion. The escalating threat of collateral damage as things fall apart is entangled with changeless cultural pieces and periods of time that support the illusions of survival and complacency.
Maybe it…
Can we survive the death of the nation-state?
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ May 8, 2021
Why can’t we escape the fate that seems dictated for our species? That fate is no hidden and is clearer every day. We are not capable of changing our nature, and that nature is incompatible with a goal of wellbeing for the planet and its life forms.
Part of that problem is our inability to think in any but dyadic form. Things are either mostly ok, or we are on the brink of an apocalypse. …
The Murdoch model media was the connection.
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ November 10, 2020
Some people seem shocked at Rupert Murdoch severing his media empire ties with Trump. Murdoch is an example of late-stage capitalism dedicated to profit in information media without regard for anything else. Late-stage capitalism is profit with minimal or no cost by any means possible.
Trump is probably the most upset at this point, but he was promoted and mined for the bigger goals of massive profit at someone else’s expense. …
Until we admit it’s not repairable, we can’t rebuild
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ June 26, 2021
Why are we pretending the US government is still functional? Biden’s gallant attempt at resuscitation was a long shot, sometimes long shots work but only rarely. Whether admitted or not, everyone knew that Biden’s effort was long on jawboning and short on a commitment to effective change.
Knowing the causes of impending death does little to prevent death if it is impossible to remove those causes. We are hung in the long twilight of imperial collapse. It is difficult to kill a vast social entity. …
The minimal office is more than just a work change
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ June 11, 2021
This summer is, I think, a turning point different from all the turning points we have driven past in the last thirty or forty years. That is the reason for the disturbing tentativeness of things as we emerge from the pandemic.
Things are far better than they were but still not right and not even close to being right. We can’t escape the realization that only the collapse speed has slowed, but there is no change of direction.
While in America and the linked late-stage capitalist countries, the media machines are…
We need to think in different ways to beat misinformation
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ June 3, 2021
The problem with complexity is that an array of diverse things are indirectly interrelated. While this may seem obvious, the important thing and the difficulty are not with the diverse things but with our inability to maintain all the relationships.
This is exacerbated by our tendency to worry about things first and relationships between those things second. I can only assume this is a product of our instinctive linearity in ‘slow’ or analytical thinking.
Our evolution has programmed us for fast thinking, quick pattern matching. At the same time, our current…
The elite propaganda machine is correcting our thinking
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ May 27, 2021
We have learned many diverse lessons since the pandemic sabotaged us in 2020. Many of these were brutal and ugly lessons about political incompetence, structural racism, oppression, and the true extent of the capitalist economic disaster.
We also learned many diverse lessons about our families and ourselves as we discovered what we could do without and what was really important in our lives. The world is now divided between those who can work from home and those who cannot. Those who cannot seem to sicken and die at a higher rate…
Wishes don’t control the world
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ May 21, 2021
The pandemic is not over. No one wants to hear that, and I’m sorry to say it. Even medical professionals, epidemiologists, and the people who know what is going on are compelled to say what people want to hear. And they know the shakiness of the premature release from the rules of the pandemic.
We are nowhere near 70% vaccination in America and will probably never get there given the significant percentage of our population’s slide into political insanity. …
The first try was educational but failed . . .
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ May 17, 2021
Making democracy work now has different requirements than we have been taught. This should be obvious because the old idea of democracy worked only partially and has now become septic. The modern world political and economic structures built on the French Enlightenment, the British empire, and Prussian militarism are now pathological and a disease vector.
That this civilization based on caucasian racism has been a constant theme for hundreds of years should not be surprising. It came so far in overcoming crude racism, and ethnocentrism is one of the great positive…
But it might really suck for many of us
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ May 14, 2021
Are we doomed or are we on the road to utopia? Damned or saved? Irrationally optimistic or cynically pessimistic? In times of constant brutal change and paradigmatic shift, the news is often shocking but includes amazing technical and medical advances. Which will it be?
In these times there is a constant clamor for good news. This opens the opportunity for writers, critics, and commentators to claim that things aren’t really so bad, just look at the good things happening. …
Mike Meyer
Educator, CIO, retired entrepreneur, grandfather with occasional fits of humor in the midst of disaster. . .
