The Influence of Neoliberalism Runs Deep Better known in the United States as Libertarianism, neoliberal dogma began as simplistic assumptions in old quantitative economic models, before computers; later economists were not as constrained. Moneyed people glommed onto those assumptions that articulated their inclinations, glossing them with a sheen of logic. Ceaselessly promoted, these assumptions became […]
A graphic depiction of Gaia from Pixabay, showing that we are connected to each other, to our ecology, and to everything else. That everything in the entire universe, not just earth bound systems, all somehow link together. Can We Understand Complexity or Only Sense It? Complex situations affecting humans baffle us and often stir […]
This is one variation of Ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail — doesn’t recognize its own tail.. Here Ouroboros is also shown in the form of the universal symbol for infinity, signifying deep, hidden feedback connections that we might never be able to fathom with human brains. Covid-19 as a Complex Process Most […]
The Economy Critically Disrupts the Balance of Nature Black Lives Matter demonstrations all over the world crowded Covid-19 out of the news, swelling into a pandemic of demonstrations in small towns as well as big cities on six continents. Triggered by the death of George Floyd, many local protests called out police abuses of people […]
Planet of the Humans, movie by Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs Moore and Gibbs’ movie appears calculated to incite controversy. If so, they certainly roiled the environmental community. So far, it’s received little mainstream attention, and a few environmental activists are demanding that it be pulled because it is misleading – and also, […]
Finding Our Real Reserves April 7, 2020 Covid-19 and its economic tailspin presage many more crises to come. We must change how we live and how we think. Our economic objectives have set us up for Covid-19, with more debacles on the way. What we have assumed to be success, isn’t. We yearn to return […]
Legal Creep Or why we think there is no alternative to economic expansion A better sub-title for this essay with two book reviews might be “can we escape our self-deception that economic expansion is necessary?” Whether economic expansion is labeled capitalist or socialist, we insist that we must “grow.” Escaping this mindset stretches our […]
Quality over Quantity, Always (3 minute video) You are invited to our Compression Thinking Series Podcast Follow Up Teleconference #6 On Quality Over Quantity 8:00 pm EDT, Tuesday, March 10, 2020 This is sixth in a series of 12 podcasts followed by teleconferences asking how each podcast topic might relate to your problems. One is […]
Video Conversation on Symbiotic Thinking (13 minutes) You are invited to our Compression Thinking Series Podcast Follow Up Teleconference #4 On Symbiotic Thinking This is fourth in a series of 12 podcasts followed by teleconferences asking how each podcast topic might relate to your problems. One is held every Tuesday evening at 8 pm Eastern […]
What Will It Take for Us to Become Serious? The split between believers in economic development and those pressing for environmental preservation is poised to become the dominant rift in American society. Along with that is the difficulty of translating big picture issues into local action, here and now. Yesterday, on line at home after […]
Most lawns reduce biodiversity.The video is over two years old, but it touches on a subject that popped up in science news three times this past week, here, here, and here. Scientists fear that we are losing insects at a rapid rate, and if they go, with them goes much other plant and animal life. Why […]
Much public discourse, if you can call it that, revolves around keeping economic expansion going, assuming that no alternative exists. Economists refer to the opposite of expansion as contraction, presuming that it’s a temporary blip in inevitable expansion. All their nostrums propose to revive expansion. By contrast, “Compression” proposes living with less, presuming that we have put Planet Earth […]
Most of us like complex matters to be reduced to something that we can readily understand, using analogies that we can relate to. A molecule with its atoms can be represented by little balls that you can see, a false representation, but from it you can visualize a picture of something you can’t see, so […]
Please join the Compression Community. Become a regular. Our first teleconference will be at 11 am Eastern time, on Saturday, February 1. These will continue ever first Saturday of the month unless the Community prefers a different time, any reasonable request accommodated. And we hope to stir more than one teleconference a month. To learn […]
School Food and Existential Crises by Doc Hall This is a nice chat with Alisa Simpson, school lunch administrator in Portage, MI, near Kalamazoo. She peels back the tangled web in which school lunch programs are caught as various interests compete to influence what kids eat, and how long they have to do it (18 […]
The double spiral shown is a computer generated Clothoide, or Cornu spiral. Artistically rendered double spirals symbolize the subject of this article, balance between mysteries: yin-yang, male-female, zero-infinity, and the like. The logo of the Compression Institute resembles an Archimedes spiral, occurring in nature from galaxies to snail shells. Spiral enthusiasts get into generating spirals in […]
Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity, by Denis Noble Book Review by Doc Hall How we explain to ourselves the answers to two big questions underpins the myriad assumptions that guide how we behave: Why are we here? (Our purpose for existence) What is the environment in which we live? (From quantum-scale to […]
The video does not summarize “Psychic Drivers” (5 minute video) Psychic Drivers by Doc Hall Decades ago a popular German business quip was, “Are you acquiring 30 years of experience, or 1 year of experience 30 times?” It was mostly used for admonition: never accept dead-end jobs, and never create them. People want to learn […]
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, by Kathryn Schulz Kathryn Schulz is a professional journalist and writer covering a broad range of topics. This book was her foray into heavier non-fiction topics, and she researched it well. It’s been out a while, and well acclaimed. Obviously leaning on a liberal arts education, she […]
Listen to the podcast; join the follow-up teleconference. This podcast topic is “Deep Changing Our Collective Behavior.” Follow up Teleconference: Of all our existential threats, our biggest is “psychic numbness” – blindness to our situation, reluctance to act, inability to Deep Change. (The psychologist Carl Jung might have called it a “psychic epidemic.”) The desire […]
Listen to the podcast; join the follow-up teleconference. This podcast topic is “Transportation: Stuck in Traffic.” Follow up Teleconference: Only 28% of US energy is used by vehicles, but in American society it is hard to do anything without a car, and we’d be desperate without long-haul movement of materials. The US landscape is now […]
Listen to the podcast; join the follow-up teleconference. This podcast topic is “How Healthy is Health Care?” Follow upTeleconference: Technically, U.S. curative care is tops, but the American health care system is bloated. The system treats 60% of all adults for a chronic disease, and 40% of them for more than one. In addition, […]
Listen to the podcast; join the follow-up teleconference at www.compression.org. This podcast topic is “What Does Clean Mean?” Learn how to address complex issues, think from alternate viewpoints, originate solutions, and dialog with others. Follow up Teleconference: Can you be too clean? Microbiome research suggests that you can; that you need a strong immune system. […]
