The Death of Happiness: How Money, Growth and Industrialisation Made Humans Permanently Unsatisfied

Posted on by George Tsakraklides

The mechanization, automation, and aggressive cloning of human societies across the planet through colonialism - what historians otherwise refer to as “the industrial revolution” - was the chance this civilisation had been waiting for all along to supersize itself into a modern monstrosity of unprecedented, grotesque proportions. This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new … Continue reading The Death of Happiness: How Money, Growth and Industrialisation Made Humans Permanently Unsatisfied

When Art Fails

Posted on by George Tsakraklides

Beware of people who tell you that art and politics should never mix: they have zero values and questionable morals and believe that a pretty picture or catchy tune can be judged in isolation, even though this same picture, and that song, may be instruments for sanitizing reality and funding genocide. Fascism and genocide have … Continue reading When Art Fails

When Dreams Leak Into Reality

Posted on by George Tsakraklides

Where do thoughts go when they die? They end up in our dreams, where they randomly mix with other thoughts, people, places and objects and become actors in bizarre, almost surreal situations. At best, our dreams are the equivalent of “AI slop”: an opportunity for our brain to hallucinate in the safe space of deep sleep. Scientists still … Continue reading When Dreams Leak Into Reality

The Density Threshold: The Parable of The Wolf

Posted on by George Tsakraklides

When wolf packs become large, hunting success increases because large packs enable the specialisation of hunting skills, and allow for maximum collaboration. Birth rates go up as the abundance of food results in high fertility. When human societies become large, resource exploitation efficiency increases because large societies enable the specialisation of skills and allow for unprecedented … Continue reading The Density Threshold: The Parable of The Wolf

The Fishbowl Effect

Posted on by George Tsakraklides

One of the biggest self-delusions of civilisation was the belief that it could one day become a self-contained, self-sustained, and self-sufficient environment for humans to inhabit. Human cities were designed to cater to the optical illusion of abundance of food and shelter, when in fact, they represent the most precarious and fragile environments to live in: … Continue reading The Fishbowl Effect

Economic Comorbidities: Can A Single Cat Scratch Lead to The End of Civilisation?

Posted on by George Tsakraklides

In a recent YouTube interview about my new book The Biology of Collapse, I was asked what timetable I gave for “The Collapse”, as if I was some type of Nostradamus-type guru who can predict the day when the sky will fall. I’m afraid that collapse does not work that way. It is neither a sci-fi moment nor … Continue reading Economic Comorbidities: Can A Single Cat Scratch Lead to The End of Civilisation?

8 Billion Junkies: The Addiction That Is Killing Civilisation

Posted on by George Tsakraklides

Like any substance abuse victim that has reached rock bottom, human civilisation has become utterly ignorant of the pain it is inflicting upon itself. With every addictive personality there comes a point where the addiction takes over, replacing the actual person it infected: the subject is demoted into a host object as the drug becomes an internal parasite … Continue reading 8 Billion Junkies: The Addiction That Is Killing Civilisation

The Five Cursed Rivers of Babylon, and The Five Horsemen of The Apocalypse

Posted on by George Tsakraklides

In Greece there is a proverb that goes: “the river of history never flows backwards” - meaning, what’s done is done, it can never be undone. The proverb is an apt metaphor for the geological history of the planet as the climate crisis unfolds, but also a tragic irony given that it is a literal description … Continue reading The Five Cursed Rivers of Babylon, and The Five Horsemen of The Apocalypse

The Long Flatline: In a Selfish Society, do “Systems” Actually Exist?

Posted on by George Tsakraklides

The world keeps going about its daily business like a zombie pretending it hasn’t burned out yet. But as it whispers to itself through the flames “this is fine”, the corrosive fumes of an industrial civilisation undergoing autophagy become potent hallucinogens. “This is fine” soon becomes “this is normal”. Whoever thought, one could get so tripped out on … Continue reading The Long Flatline: In a Selfish Society, do “Systems” Actually Exist?

Risk Kills. Will We Ever Learn?

Posted on by George Tsakraklides

Human civilisations have been jumping off cliffs since the beginning of their existence: we are the most risk-taking species to have lived on Earth, equipped with the most ambitious, careless, imaginative thought processes that evolved as successful survival strategies. We don’t simply take risks: we devise them in our corporate board rooms, execute them in our … Continue reading Risk Kills. Will We Ever Learn?