John Michael Greer's Blog, page 10

An Unfamiliar World

Last month’s post on the future of warfare in the deindustrial era mentioned in passing one of the most significant factors changing the world we know to one that most of us have never even imagined. That factor is demographics: in particular, the immense shift now under way from growth to contraction in human numbers worldwide.  Nearly everyone alive today grew up hearing about the population boom; it requires a major shift in mental gears to adjust to the imminence of the population bust.

A tw...

February 2024 Open Post

This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly open post to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers. All the standard rules apply — no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no paid propagandizing, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank — but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic — with two exceptions.

First, there’s a dedicated (more or less) open post on my Dreamwidth journal on the ongoing virus panic and related issues, ...

A Life Remembered

I don’t get into personal matters in these essays very often. Partly that’s because I’m a fairly private person, partly it’s because the cult of personality that pervades today’s literary and creative scenes is so dreary; this whole notion that literature and the arts exist so that writers and artists can “express themselves” belongs in the trash heap, since writers and artists are no more interesting than anybody else.  The most important reason, though, is that there’s so much else to talk abo...

On Hiatus

I am going to have to suspend posting here for a few weeks due to an urgent family issue. I expect to begin posting again by the beginning of March. More later. — JMG

Deindustrial Warfare: A First Reconaissance

This January has five Wednesdays, and in the usual way of this blog, the fifth Wednesday gets an essay on whatever topic the readers select by vote. As usual, it was a lively contest, but this time one of the perennial underdogs—warfare in the deindustrial age—came out on top.

That didn’t surprise me greatly.  The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have been on many minds recently, not least because neither of them has been working out the way that our politicians and pundits insisted they woul...

January 2024 Open Post

This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly open post to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers. All the standard rules apply — no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no paid propagandizing, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank — but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic — with two exceptions.

First, there’s a dedicated (more or less) open post on my Dreamwidth journal on the ongoing virus panic and related issues, ...

An Anthropocene Worth Having

For more than two years now I’ve been trying to figure out how to introduce a way of thinking about humanity’s relationship to nature that cuts straight across nearly all of the conventional thinking on that subject. It’s been a challenge. I’m glad to say, though, that a project now being lauded by the corporate-enabler end of the environmental movement offers a very good way to talk about the way of thinking I have in mind. That’s not because the project in question embodies that way of thinkin...

The Ritual of High Magic: Chapter 9

With this post we continue a monthly chapter-by-chapter discussion of The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Lévi, the book that launched the modern magical revival.  Here and in the months ahead we’re plunging into the white-hot fires of creation where modern magic was born. If you’re just joining us now, I recommend reading the earlier posts in this sequence first; you can find them here.  Either way, grab your tarot cards and hang on tight.

If you can read French, I strongly encoura...

The Three Stigmata of J.R.R. Tolkien

Understand the thoughts that a person or a nation won’t allow itself to think and you grasp something crucial about that person or nation. Find the source of the barrier that keeps either one from entertaining those forbidden thoughts and you know something even more important. As America stumbles blindly forward into an unwelcome future, the self-imposed cognitive deficits that keep so many of its inmates from doing anything constructive about their current trajectory have become a massive poli...

December 2023 Open Post

This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly open post to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers. All the standard rules apply — no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no paid propagandizing, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank — but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic — with two exceptions.

First, there’s a dedicated (more or less) open post on my Dreamwidth journal on the ongoing virus panic and related issues, ...