Prose

Narrative writings: essays, reviews, polemics, short stories, etc

Revolutionary
... is not that working over the Internet allows us to survive without becoming captives of the infinite growth System. Revolutionary is that we can earn well enough online to extract resources from that System and use them to build a sustainable, resilient, steady-state economy -
We are special!
Ours is the first species that is thrashing the planet so that a few rich individuals can survive in bunkers they build from the profits of that very destruction. The rich. The rich and their armies. The relevant question becomes: What is the mutiny threshold?
Some notes on Paul Mason’s Postcapitalism
In reply to a noteworthy article in the Guardian about the book "Postcapitalism" that is published on July 30. 1 Mason interprets the transition from capitalism to postcapitalism as a parallel to the one from feudalism to capitalism. This serves to explain that such a societal transformation takes many decades and gives rise to 'a ...
... a playful, self-defeating gesture
Real and apparent social hierarchies
The idea is that we get a useful classification of behavioral patterns in primates when we observe what happens when a group gets attacked. For each individual, we will observe some combination of three possible impulses: Seek to protect other members of the group Seek protection from other members of the group Engage in a ...
Shakespeare on sex
There is more between foreplay and orgasm, Fellatio, Than is dreamt of in your philosophy.
Just Make It Sacred
Why do you eat vegetables? I admire the fact that you're conscious of your diet, and of the ecological footprint that is minimal for locally grown seasonal vegetables, and there is no animal suffering... - Because it's cheap. Oh. And why do you live here? You are really living the emerging culture of sharing when ...
Magic in the Moonlight – Woody Allen
I like this film precisely because Woody Allen is repeating himself. I have seen this film many times already. The Purple Rose of Cairo, Scoop, Midnight in Paris. There are a number of lovely reviews on IMDB so I'll skip the remarks about scenery, acting, and storyline (just this much: I think all these aspects ...
Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance This is about overcoming obsolete dichotomies. Cognitive dissonance is the result of a paradox the receiver was unaware of. It discontinues her consequential reasoning. In other words: it stops her in her tracks, catches her off guard, and ideally makes her re-evaluate the basic assumptions of her belief. A paradox alone is not ...