There seems to be something of a plausible inevitability to depression and psychological suffering. Being that our minds have been sculpted by long-term evolutionary biases towards survivability in a probabilistically uncertain and materially dangerous world, there is something of a hard-coded orientation towards pessimism (or at the very least – pragmatism) within us all. Culture […]
Context: Climate change: 2020 in a dead heat for world’s warmest year Climate change has been off the radar for a while, it seems and while the shit-show and train-wreck of 2020 rolls on into 2021, there are some things which seem painfully obvious to me but which also, for whatever reason, seem to be […]
It is something of the core nature of narrative human consciousness that reflexively defines itself by and through difference and ontological separation from an Other or World that we perceive and process information in ways that obscure the bigger picture of competition, adversarialism and war. That gestalt information and energy-processing (i.e. computational) system of interpersonal […]
Even while we all actively generate endless tides of digital self-representation (as images, data points, digital footprints, biometric and geolocation records, corporate and institutional identifiers or classifications) of self-identity we find ourselves simultaneously slipping away from reality, certainty and any notion of existential closure. This irreducible uncertainty and quicksilver spectre of endlessly self-inflected introspection as […]
Insecurity is implicit to – and irreducible in – technology. There is absolutely no way to guarantee complete and permanent closure of *any* communications system because the indefinitely-extensible logical and material basis of accelerating technological innovation is simultaneously the proliferation of increased probabilities of vulnerability and critical incidents. While there is something of a booming […]
Context: The Future of Life Institute The endemic and omnipresent enlightened self-interest of human psychology is generally such that, while we may already and for the most part possess the technical and cognitive or linguistic and technological tools necessary to architect our own freedom and a shared, peaceful and sustainable future – we are so […]
To what extent does the concept or operational implementation of boundaries and nation states quite necessarily both depend on and inadvertently amplify the ongoing and relentless human displacements we currently observe? We might say that the existence and sustainable continuity of boundaries and associated patchwork quilt of international relations (quite beyond the intermittent discontinuities of […]
It is something of a mystifying etymological alignment that a word that describes an absence of overarching governance and order has become synonymous with chaos, destruction and rioting. It might even be something of an irony that the periodic cycles and returns of large-scale social collapse as revolution or civil war are themselves inevitable consequences […]
How to alienate and enrage 99% of the world? Tell them that almost all of their contemporary cultural practices, beliefs, interests, hobbies and pastimes are shallow, superficial assertions of tribal identity that do little more than provide temporary comfort in an ultimately hostile, selfish and uncaring world. It is not that these cultural practices and […]
The greatest irony of every instance of civilisation collapse has probably never been that it comes without warning or time to avert impending catastrophe, as even then when disaster looms it is never entirely unexpected or unforeseen by those bearing sufficient intellect to observe its impending arrival. It is much more likely that we will […]
The most mystifying truth of all is that we live in a world that defines value and success in such limited terms, as being little more than successfully replicating the patterns and conventions of behaviour and thought that we encounter and through which we learn to play a game of simple (or – often enough […]
Implicit and endemic grey-zone ambiguities mean that this might never be attributed to anything other than (yet) another heartlessly self-serving criminal enterprise that is leveraging the inflated value of hospitals and health data during a public health crisis. I expect there are some logical and legal hurdles in defining acts of war this way. Not […]
