I find myself wondering this morning how many people actually get my work - here we are, 20 years in to me continually writing, teaching, communicating, building - and I can't tell if a lot of people get it and are mostly quiet or if very few people actually got it.
Which is it?
It probably helps if I define it: here is my best short summary.
1) The human race is currently running the world like a death camp for poor humans, and particularly for the other species we farm or drive into extinction.
2) Fixing this situation is possible, but requires will.
That's the core thesis. Then,
3) It is possible, by mass collaboration using any available mechanism (open source, markets, new religious movements etc.) to live without this continuous catastrophic violence.
4) Most of the violence is well hidden from us by the machinery of the supply chain: capitalism is a direct continuation of colonialism.
is my book specifically on embedded violence in supply chains. See also a broader critiquethefutureofstuff.store
5) Systematic mapping of our dependency graphs leads to a clear and precise understanding of not only who we are harming, but how we are vulnerable to harm because of our long logistical tails.
provides logistical mapping tools (in "Dealing in Security")resiliencemaps.org
6) Existing political structures perform extremely poorly because they can't handle technically complex long duration multi-actor conflicts - government as we know it was designed for winning land wars in Europe pre-WW2 and can't handle nukes and climate vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/bigdeal/t…
7) It is possible to dramatically increase our psychological resilience through meditation with a specific emphasis on handling difficult emotions like fear and helplessness. Trained people turn away from the difficult situations less, and cope more.
@Gelada 9) can also be used to map our critical infrastructure, so that our homes are nearly entirely self-sufficient for energy and for water purification, and potentially we could do a lot of our small manufacturing hyperlocally too.
@Gelada 10) My company, @Mattereum is a system for handling accurate information about physical goods: we pay the bills through anticounterfieting work, but have also deployed systems for bundling CO2 offsets with gold bar NFTs to cover their production costs.
@Gelada @mattereum 11) Finally, on a broader philosophical note, I am convinced that we need new human rights far beyond the rights we currently have. I believe the best place to define and implement those rights is by dramatically expanding the human rights of children.
These two podcasts together do a fairly good job of tearing the mask off the western lifestyle - capitalist, socialist, or other - and showing people the real cost of living this way.
12) Extremely deep embedded psychological defense mechanisms prevent us seeing the simple truth that industrial overproduction (and shortage of time) are poisoning our planet and our lives.
People say "polycrisis" to describe this systemic breakdown.
I’ve been thinking hard about “Mammon” as a concept. As you know I don’t much believe in Moloch: I believe that humans have 600,000+ years of overthrowing Moloch lock-in when it arises.
Mammon is a different animal: “the love of money is the root of all evil?"
There’s more
Mammon conceptually is, I think, **the knowledge that money is the only thing keeping you alive**.
Not the love of money. The fear of dying, and only money stands between you and death.
To get there you need to be unable to depend on nature, family, or society to keep you alive
Mammon is the systematic destruction of ties to/from nature, family and society.
You can’t settle by a river and fish and try to catch some deer, in a little log hut. Your downsized parents don’t have a spare room.
Crypto has a fourth, fundamental claim: bitcoin is going to be worth a million dollars when the dollar is basically worthless because of hyperinflation.
You can see how people get there, it might even be true, but that's not making people money these days.
It's a long bet mate.
So let's talk about (4) –– challenging the nation state for who gets to issue the money.
I don't remember the gold standard. It ended in 1971 (Nixon) ushering in the financial system we have today.
1) Klaus is 4 years older than Joe Biden. Also he's allegedly a paranoid megalomanic who refused to do any real succession planning because his successors might replace him.
2) The "sensemaking" crisis: you can't fit 8 billion people's worth of activity into 150 heads.
The biggest meaningful social network is 150 people. Everything after that is strangers with name tags. Each person would have to keep track of 50 million people to have a real map.
Waxed cotton as a material has been dominated by a single brand: Barbour. Barbour are basically c*nts. Like American western clothing brands they’re selling nostalgia for being rich in a time that barely existed: landrovers, wellies, the English Landed Gentry.
C*nt cosplay brand
But get over to eBay and have a look around you will see a near endless sea of *ancient* waxed cotton.
Black is not used much by Barbour. If you don’t specify black you get Barbour.
Barbour takes a superb fabric and drowns it in class cosplay.