When I warned years ago that the climate crisis would be completely forgotten in a few years, I was ignored like some type of attention-seeking “boy cried wolf” conspiracist. But I meant what I said. And I still mean it, and events prove me right. Just look around, even the worst-case scenario didn’t look this … Continue reading Overshoot Deficit Disorder
Our economic system has preyed upon our survival instincts to turn us into insecure consumatrons. The more we define ourselves by what we own, the more this system owns us. We have come to a point in our history where our sense of self-worth is drawn not from self-respect, but from our level of access … Continue reading The Consumatronic Dystopia
The short-term nature of this civilisation is evident in its short-term economic system: impulse buying, instant gratification, single-use commodities and single-use natural resources are all manifestations of a mindset that systematically ignores long-term repercussions. Our psychological coping mechanisms and addictions seek short term relief in unhealthy foods, drugs, and habits that make us feel good … Continue reading Live Fast, Die Young: The Great Procrastination
Our naturally dismissive attitude towards impending disasters is woven into the geological history of this planet. Our brain did not evolve in the midst of catastrophes, but during one of the most climatically stable and abundant times in Earth’s history. Resources were infinitely plentiful in relation to our consumption, and the climate remained stable enough … Continue reading A Brain from Another Time
Our brain has a dangerous affinity for stability: it desperately wants to believe in an unchanging world, even as the world changes. This make-believe stability evolved as a survival mechanism that was fundamental to our feelings of safety, allowing us to "keep calm and carry on" even as our world went through mayhem. Our brain … Continue reading Collapse Denial and the Trauma Response
Genuine forms of happiness have been exchanged for counterfeit versions originating in the world of machines: goods owned, GDP units earned, number of holidays left. Happiness is being measured in numbers and quantities instead of moments and feelings. Of all human generations who have lived before us, we are the least capable of answering the … Continue reading Happiness In the Machine Age
Had we been too quick to roll out the red carpet for technology? Had we passively accepted all the conveniences for the price of saying goodbye, forever, to essential parts of our biological being? Like a patient waking up in an operating theatre wondering whether all their parts are still in place, humanity found itself … Continue reading Welcome to Your Prosthetic Life
With any economy, the faster you grow and expand, the sooner you die, just like an obesity patient. There is, however, one economy in the world who has got it right. It neither grows nor dies, and actually manages to stay the same, or at least it did, until recently. It is the oldest economy … Continue reading The Biggest, Oldest Economy In The World Is Burning
Humans suffer from the perversion of perfectionism, which leads to insecurity, greed, selfishness, jealousy and conflict. But our nature is to be imperfect. In fact, all of nature is imperfect. Yet it continues, it survives, without ever looking back or looking down. All that matters is now. Humanity has been torturing itself since its very … Continue reading On Intelligence
Along with relinquishing much of our freedom to technology, we have exchanged true happiness with counterfeit versions which only make sense in a machine world: we quantify happiness based on the number of consumer goods we buy and on GDP rather than on meaningful existence, exactly because we emulate machines: focusing only on the numbers … Continue reading Happiness In the Machine Age: An Exclusively Human Problem
George Tsakraklides 