Tag: history

Briefing for the Descent, Revisited

John Michael Greer414 Comments

It’s long been a source of wry amusement to me that some of my critics like to insist that I never admit it when I’m wrong. What makes that amusing to me is partly that it’s not true—I’ve discussed my mistakes tolerably often in these online essays—and partly that it’s very clear that what actually…

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…

Cognitive Collapse: A First Reconnaissance

John Michael Greer418 Comments

As most of my readers know by now, when there are five Wednesdays in a month, it’s up to the readers to suggest and then vote on the theme for the post I put up on the final Wednesday. Sometimes most of my readers vote for a single theme, sometimes there’s a quiet little contest…

Situationism: Laughter from the Empyrean

John Michael Greer347 Comments

Tolerably often, when I’m reading any of the documents that came out of the original Situationist International, I end up feeling as though the author is caught up in a desperate struggle between his own Marxist presuppositions and the world as it actually exists. That’s common enough in 20th century Marxist literature from outside the…

The Fall and Rise of Peak Oil

John Michael Greer279 Comments

It’s now been close to fifteen years since the Peak Oil movement collapsed and lost whatever temporary grip it had on public awareness. We could doubtless have an interesting conversation along the lines of “did it fall or was it pushed,” and there may be a point to that conversation a little further down the…

A Case Study in Stimulus Diffusion

John Michael Greer240 Comments

From an outsider’s perspective, the sibling rivalry between Christianity and Islam is a fascinating slice of religious and cultural history. Though the propagandists of both faiths tend to deny this heatedly, they have many more points in common than differences, especially when compared to religions elsewhere in the world. Both developed in the eastern penumbra…

The Nibelung’s Ring: The Twilight of the Gods 2

John Michael Greer152 Comments

Siegfried’s betrayal of his ideals and his love for Brunnhilde, the central theme of our discussion three weeks ago, is also the hinge upon which the entire story of The Ring turns toward its end. Our blond and brawny hero was doomed the moment he took the Ring from Fafner’s hoard, Alberich’s curse guarantees that,…

The Nibelung’s Ring: Siegfried 1

John Michael Greer143 Comments

Before we go on with the third of the operas in Wagner’s vast tetralogy The Nibelung’s Ring, I’d like to take a moment to talk a little about my trolls. Yes, this sequence of posts has gotten a fair amount of trolling, and I’m sorry to say that none of it has been interesting enough…

The Nibelung’s Ring: The Valkyrie 2

John Michael Greer186 Comments

Let’s take a moment to review our story so far.  In mythic terms, it’s a straightforward fairy tale: the gold from the bottom of the Rhine, stolen by the dwarf Alberich and turned into a magic ring, was then stolen from him in turn by the god Wotan, who then had to hand it over…

The Nibelung’s Ring: The Valkyrie 1

John Michael Greer181 Comments

Yes, I know we had a presidential election here in the US yesterday. The remarkable thing about it, after a campaign season so packed with improbabilities and absurdities, is that it was a normal election, with no more than the usual amount of vote fraud and a winner declared by sunrise. While everyone recovers from…