(235 comments) SHARE        Friday, February 1, 2013
Have We Lost Our Humanity? We have come to think that "spirit" is unmeasurable and therefore not scientific, not worth thinking about. To me, spirit is more real than matter. It is the awe that is at the core of life.

(22 comments) SHARE        Saturday, July 23, 2011
BE PREPARED Be prepared for the shock of the loss of innocence, the thought that "things will work out" they may not.

(9 comments) SHARE        Monday, December 28, 2015
Have We Lost Our Humanity? We have come to think that "spirit" is unmeasurable and therefore not scientific, not worth thinking about. To me, spirit is more real than matter. It is the awe that is at the core of life.

(8 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Is there an alternative to constant economic growth? growth can never be forever. Growing requires dying. How can we change to a sustainable life style -- quickly, while we still can?

(16 comments) SHARE        Thursday, August 30, 2012
Strange, very strange, dangerously strange There are strangenesses, situations, concepts, words, that make me sit up but that few people, if any, even question

(8 comments) SHARE        Monday, October 8, 2012
Money - and why we must learn to do without In America 400 individuals, probably mostly men, own more wealth than the bottom 180 million of us. 'Wealth' today means money. "Own' means that that wealth belongs to those 400 persons only, they can do with it what they want. With that much wealth doing nothing makes it grow. But money is like a drug, people get addicted to it, they want always more. And one of our two parties sees to it that the rich pay a lower tax rate.

(15 comments) SHARE        Sunday, September 16, 2012
How we see others, how they see us We, white people, Americans, have a hard time seeing "worth" in other people. I think it is important that we know how we are seen by others. Maybe they have a hard time seeing our exceptionalism, our worth.

(4 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, April 21, 2010
THE RIGHTS OF MOTHER EARTH global warming, climate change modern civilization versus indigenous people extremes of rich and poor, developed - developing dangerous loss of biodiversity

(3 comments) SHARE        Saturday, August 13, 2011
The Last War, Having vs Being The last war is the Haves against the Have-nots, fought on many fronts as if it is about having. But it is really about BEING. Our being heard, listened to. About Life itself.

(7 comments) SHARE        Saturday, June 19, 2010
War on the World The disaster in the Gulf reminds us that Big oil and all the other Big industries have waged a war on Mother Earth -- and so on We the People of the world

(9 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, May 8, 2012
What do you mean, "ecology?" What exactly is ecology, what does it have to do with evolution? Do we need to know? Well yes, that s how the natural world works.

(38 comments) SHARE        Friday, December 14, 2012
Why we cannot lead humankind to a sustainable world We have known for a long time what we could and should do to perhaps slow down global warming. Easily said not easily done: stop burning oil and coal (and now natural gas); stop producing super polluting gases from factories, from planes, from ships, from cars. We, the US, are one of the two most polluting nations on earth. We are the world's worst polluter per person.

(12 comments) SHARE        Thursday, August 21, 2008
WHAT THERE IS - IS ALL THERE IS Sustainability, "why worry about the price of oil, why not consider how to do without?"

(3 comments) SHARE        Thursday, June 24, 2010
REALITIES One way of trying to understand why we, humans, are busy destroying our planet, the only home we have.

(2 comments) SHARE        Sunday, January 22, 2012
economy <=> ecology the extreme imbalance of both the (world) economy and ecology is a consequence of how we, humans, have removed ourselves from the reality of the planet. Politics will not help, money spent will not help, we need to rethinl who we are in relation to the reality of the planet

(4 comments) SHARE        Sunday, August 7, 2011
Money, money a divided country, split by money -- on one side they have all of it, on the other we the people who get less and less.

(9 comments) SHARE        Friday, July 2, 2010
Evolution -- Devolution That one species (and actually a few individuals of one species) should willfully destroy a planet should be unthinkable to a thinking species. But, that is what is happening here and now

(4 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, June 5, 2012
What domesticating does to us and how to get our from under If one day my cats discover they can catch their own food, they free not only themselves, but they leave me with a bag of catfood that I cannot use. I would love to see the very very rich with trillions in their banks that are worthless, because there are no more consumers; we don't need their money any more.

(8 comments) SHARE        Monday, January 21, 2013
A Wider View There are different ways of thinking. different ways of seeing the world, different ways of thinking of me in my world. Language is the expression of a culture. Imagine that your language has no words for me, mine, his, hers. In that culture you cannot think about your children as "mine" and probably you cannot think of your nose or your toe nails as yours. They are not a possession, they are me. In the Hawaiian language...

(9 comments) SHARE        Friday, October 12, 2012
Climate change? Most of the world knows that climate change is here. Washington, DC is the only place where it does not seem to be noticed. Maybe that is because it is not a political issue, and those who represent us only do politics -- even when they have forgotten that they represent us.

(2 comments) SHARE        Friday, July 6, 2012
Last night's dream; inhuman humans Is the Occupy movement, the 99%, the beginning of our resistance? Here in Hawaii we are as far from the west coast as the west coast is from Washington -- almost as far from DC as DC is from Baghdad. To us it is stories in a newspaper, something on the computer. Exciting, sure. Is it the beginning of learning what our reality is

(11 comments) SHARE        Saturday, July 10, 2010
ADAPT "What can we DO?" Adapt to a rapidly, probably dangerously changing world. Global warming is global-- as our economy -- but the effects, and adaptation will have to be local

(3 comments) SHARE        Friday, September 30, 2011
Fiddling While the Planet Burns Why don't we talk about climate change? Globalization but not Global Warming? We have become a species hell bent on destroying the planet, forgetting or denying that we are of the planet. We are racing full speed to our own extinction, taking as many species with us as we can. According to at least one Holy Book once we were all but erased but cleansed by water; this time it will be by fire and all other extremes...

(4 comments) SHARE        Sunday, October 21, 2012
"Yes, corporations are persons, my friend" Does a fetus or a corporation have voting rights? Is causing the dissolution of a corporation murder: killing a person? How about a corporation who causes the death of one or more people? Or, what it one corporation absorbs, ingests, eats another corporation.: Is that cannibalism? Corporations do it all the time.

(3 comments) SHARE        Sunday, January 30, 2011
"Let them eat cake" this is not about politics, or even religion, it is psychology, sociology, but above all needing to be heard.

(7 comments) SHARE        Sunday, October 28, 2012
What does it cost? The rest of the world already accepts, knows, that climate change is real. It is here. This country seems to be the only country where maybe not a majority but many people don't "believe" in climate change, and the government either does not talk about it or firmly denies that any such thing is happening.

(7 comments) SHARE        Friday, June 29, 2012
"If you don't know how to fix it stop breaking it." We are the only species on this planet that lives by manmade laws that are based on manmade ideas of morality and/or profit. Not only unsustainably but with full awareness suicidal -- worse than suicidal: with full awareness extinguishing other species, destroying the planet.

(7 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, November 9, 2010
NOW WHAT? the gap between the two Americas -- can we talk?

(3 comments) SHARE        Saturday, January 23, 2010
SMILE When John Roberts sat for a photo with the other Supremes he smiled. He could barely suppress from bursting into a guffaw. Smiling is a very American thing. The first thing that any American baby learns is to stretch the mouth on command, and as the teeth come in, show teeth. No other country has so many glaring white teeth to show. In fact, there are many cultures where showing teeth is a sign of aggression.

(8 comments) SHARE        Monday, September 10, 2012
What it means to be conservative Are conservatives blind? They seem to live on another planet. Or perhaps it is that I don't understand their prejudices. A smaller government but endless laws to control women's health. They still think Russia is our enemy; they want to do away with all our hard-fought safety nets. How can I see things so differently?

(7 comments) SHARE        Monday, November 19, 2012
Tamed Maybe climate change is here but first we have to fix our debt, then we have to make some jobs, and perhaps after that we may do something about these storms, droughts, floods. Obviously we have our priorities exactly reversed. If we were to create a green infrastructure now, a green economy, we would create millions of jobs, our debt would evaporate.. Maybe we could even slow down climate change

(4 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, September 23, 2009
War This past summer's supposed 'debates' showed how far some people are willing to go to destroy discussions that should be the ground of a democracy. The 'some people' may be a minority but in a world presented to us by the Media mayhem has a louder voice than we the people.

(13 comments) SHARE        Sunday, March 31, 2013
Immodest Proposals We were not thrown out of paradise. We thought ourselves so smart that we could make a better paradise. We must find a way to get human thinking back to seeking solutions from the bottom up, rather than today's thinking focused almost exclusively on top down, from experts or leaders or the very rich. Nothing in the real world is top down, everything grows from the bottom up. A shift in how we think.

(13 comments) SHARE        Saturday, November 10, 2012
A very immodest proposal Superstorms, droughts, 100 degrees summer temperatures are the new norm. If we go on as we have done this century most of the biggest cities of the world will be flooded, the heating of the planet will pass two degrees C (3.8 - F) in five years instead of thirty. There are a hundred web sites where anyone can find out what those two degrees will mean to humankind. Humankind is in danger. THERE IA ONLY ONE PRIORITY

(4 comments) SHARE        Monday, April 24, 2006
War on Terra We like to think that we lifted ourselves up by our bootstraps. But in reality, of course, we grabbed more of what we wanted by stepping on the backs of others. We have a myth that we conquered an empty land; but of course it was not empty at all. Abusing slaves and other humans by force of gunpowder is bad enough, but the consequences of abusing the land we stole will turn out to be a greater catastrophe.

(1 comments) SHARE        Friday, December 28, 2012
From the end of 2012 looking at 2013 I learned in a long life full of miracles and surprises that impossible is not possible. That is also what I see for 2013. Anything and everything is possible. Expect a wild ride in a zig-zag tunnel with a few windows and many unexpected surprises. Nothing impossible.

(9 comments) SHARE        Thursday, November 8, 2012
Interregnum (again) This is a reminder. Wrote this four years ago, after Obama was elected but Bush was still president for two months and a few weeks. Now, 2012, it feels very much like then. Some things have changed, bur remarkably many have not.

(2 comments) SHARE        Friday, July 23, 2010
What I Look At Looks At Me In an ecology everything is related to everything - and in ecologies there are no bosses - there is no better. We're all in this together.

(5 comments) SHARE        Monday, September 22, 2008
A Modest Proposal We live in the time of lies. The Media have taught us that the slide from advertising to propaganda is really just a matter of meaningless words. The Media also demonstrated that a lie, said with conviction & repeated a few times, becomes accepted fact. We, the people, accept that where there is smoke there must be fire. Oh yeah? And yet we humans are more confused than ever. We drown in the lies from the right & the left

(4 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Memes, Genes and Us Musing on how cultural and personal memes define us - or not.

(1 comments) SHARE        Saturday, January 1, 2011
one one eleven happy new year!

(1 comments) SHARE        Thursday, March 21, 2013
Wars Come In Many Flavors On a world scale we are fighting wars against the planet. Our culture is based on the root idea that we, humans, have taken over. We are in charge, we control the planet. We control everything by killing what we don't like. We have the power to make over plants and animals. We create new forms of life, genetically manipulated organisms.

(2 comments) SHARE        Monday, August 6, 2012
Remember Hiroshima? absurdity may well apply to humans, the smart apes who in a few years can invent a way to send a man to the moon and bring him back safely. We can make ever more lethal weapons but we cannot make peace. We accept artificial intelligence but not our neighbor's beliefs. We cannot stop interfering in other countries nor stop interfering in nature and so we are destroying our only home. Knowing full well what we are doing.

(1 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Titanic World The Captain of the Titanic knew they had hit an iceberg but he also knew that his ship was unsinkable. Today we know the world is rapidly heating up, but we also think that somehow we, humans, with all our smarts and power will precent this world from becoming unliveable.

SHARE        Saturday, September 5, 2009
Eight Months Into a new Administration -- What's Next? We are in the eighth month of a new Administration, a new president, and not much has changed. We still wage some visible and a number of invisible wars. The loudest war is between the two parties —yes, in America we define “democracy” as a two party system. As somebody said, both parties have slid to the right

(6 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Hello! Anybody home? The very first law of all LIFE is procreate, see to it that LIFE continues. But we, humans, know better. We think we must control Life, people, countries, the whole world. Ultimate arrogance.

(2 comments) SHARE        Thursday, July 26, 2012
"Accidents happen" Mr Romney declared that the Aurora horror has nothing to do with "gun control": accidents happen However, murders happen often in this country, more often than in most other countries this size. If it is not accidents will happen, it must be the culture

SHARE        Sunday, June 10, 2007
Questons, questions questions we don't ask -- but should ask, for our own survival

SHARE        Saturday, November 1, 2008
for your entertainment -- a wider perspective energy, entropy, Life, time, Man

(2 comments) SHARE        Saturday, November 29, 2008
Interregnum means between reigns Why this interregnum between election and assumption of power? In this dead season -- I don't know where lame ducks come in --

(5 comments) SHARE        Thursday, March 1, 2012
Worth All our commotion about jobs ignores what unemployment does to us. Not just loss of income but loss of "worth." That can be a serious source of PTSD. We forget our worth as humans. Isn't that what Arab Spring and the Occupy movement is about? Ultimately our worth is our ability to survive. What can be greater worth?

(1 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, January 9, 2013
SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES and changes the planet Many 1000s of years ago early humans discovered how to overcome their fear of fire; learned to use it. Possibly to protect themselves from dangerous animals; most animals seem to be afraid of fire. Fire is warm and it gives light. Probably one of the first steps in leaving the so-called animal kingdom and the first step in our War on Nature. What we now call Climate Change is simply the consequence of burning ancient plants

SHARE        Thursday, October 9, 2008
Money Once there was a saying You have to have money to make money. Now it is: You must make money with borrowed money. That feels unreal to me, somehow dishonest. How about revamping the financial system so that it only deals with what there is, and not with what they wished there were. Borrowing is really gambling on the future, isn't it?

(1 comments) SHARE        Thursday, February 14, 2008
These Times, February 2008 The indigenous people I knew thought important decisions should include the will of all people. It sometimes took a while, but eventually, all agreed on a certain course. That system worked to keep peace for long times. And, incidentally, even in Muslim countries, women were never excluded in times of considering, thinking about, talking about, important issues.

(1 comments) SHARE        Thursday, April 24, 2008
We the People? perspective on primaries and elections and where that leaves We the People

(2 comments) SHARE        Saturday, March 24, 2007
Sailing to the Moon when we, humans, create a world that is not doing well, we -- and others -- feel the stress, making us more extreme. How are we dealing with these manmade stresses.

(1 comments) SHARE        Friday, May 4, 2012
Search for Simple A dream to remind me of the importance of the simplest truth behind all of what we think of as spirituality or religion. We humans make things so complicated, that makes enemies. Simple makes peace

SHARE        Tuesday, October 10, 2006
LOCKS & KEYS Our entire nation--the world--seems to be locked into the idea that better locks give us better protection. Yet, anyone looking at how we live our lives must see that all these multiple, ever more sophisticated locks, don't do much to protect, only make us more paranoid. Thinking "security" makes life unnecessarily difficult and complicated. We talk about protecting our liberty but it is our freedom we sacrifice.

(2 comments) SHARE        Thursday, June 8, 2006
CONUNDRUM; Climate Change, world culture and "democracy." Where western culture, the WTO and globalism go, people essentially lose their identity, their religion, their values. That is a worldwide story. Everywhere westerners have settled, or even visited on a regular basis, cultures and languages have been swept away, leaving people living in a void, between partially remembered song and wisdom, and the crude materialism of western so-called culture.

(1 comments) SHARE        Saturday, July 15, 2006
Politics Is Not Enough how to change, repair, go in a different direction