Category: Not the Monthly Post

Energy: Predicaments and Prospects Revisited

John Michael Greer250 Comments

A few weeks ago, as regular readers will remember, I glanced back twenty years to my earliest and least accurate overview of the future of industrial civilization. My intention was to use that backward look as a way to talk about where we were, where we are, and where we’re headed as our society moves…

Peak Oil: Specter and Substance

John Michael Greer485 Comments

It’s been a long time now since peak oil dropped off the radar screens of public consciousness. Mention it these days and the reaction you’ll get from the few people who remember it at all amounts to “Yeah, that’s right, weren’t people scared back in the day that we were going to run out of…

Sex, Politics, and Operation Dildo Blitz

John Michael Greer263 Comments

I planned on posting an essay on a different subject today. In fact, I had another essay all written and revised, waiting for whatever fame and fortune a weekly blog post by a writer well out on the cultural fringes can expect these days. That essay is going to be cooling its heels for another…

Companions on the Road: A Retrospective

John Michael Greer387 Comments

“This year’s Earth Day in Ashland, Oregon, where I live, featured an interfaith service at the local Unitarian church, and I wasn’t too surprised to get a call inviting me to be one of the presenters.” That was the first sentence in the first blog post I ever posted, and it crept tentatively onto the…

Minutes of the Grand Council of Five of the Bavarian Illuminati, 18th day of Discord, 5975 AM

John Michael Greer406 Comments

(see note 1) GRAND MASTER CORNELIUS SCHRECK, ILLUMINATUS PRIMUS: Well, I think we can begin at this point. Brother Sentinel, are we secure? GRAND GUARDIAN HENRY JAMES BALOR, ILLUMINATUS PRIMUS: Grand Master, the doors are sealed, the guards are at their stations, and the interdimensional horrors from the Slime Pits of Blagoonah are sniffing around…

The End of the Bureaucratic Era

John Michael Greer383 Comments

For several years now I’ve had readers ask me from time to time about my opinion of the current media and investment frenzy surrounding so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI). The first thing I’ve had to explain in each of those cases is that the label is a misnomer; generative large language models, to give these bloated…

On the Education of Desire

John Michael Greer335 Comments

As I mentioned a little over a month ago, the competition over which theme would get the fifth Wednesday post in December was almost unparalleled in the enthusiasm it generated and the number of votes the top three themes generated. All three of the themes are worth a post, and I decided well before cognitive…

Evil Makes You Stupid: A Case Study

John Michael Greer330 Comments

Yes, as most of my readers are probably aware by now, I’ve relocated. It’s been a little less than two years now since my wife Sara died; it’s been a rough road since then but I’ve dealt with it about as well as I’m ever likely to, and over the holidays just past it became…

Situationism: The Road from Raswashingsputin

John Michael Greer360 Comments

Two weeks ago, in our ongoing exploration of the ideas of the Situationist International and their application to the ongoing crisis of industrial society, we ended up face to face with a point of immense importance. I didn’t develop that point in that earlier post, partly because it took the rest of the post to…

Why The Left Can’t Meme: A Second Interlude

John Michael Greer312 Comments

The exploration of the no-ego ego trip and its relevance to contemporary culture a few weeks back has implications that reach far. The discussion that followed, lively as it was, barely scratched the surface of the subject. This week, before we return to the Situationist movement that set this sequence of posts in motion, we’re…