Everybody sing along! Especially us Americans. (Warning: NSFW language.)
Category: Society & Culture
Why America is not the greatest country in the world (anymore)
If you want some context and commentary to go with this video excerpt — which does a fine job of achieving maximum power right on its own, in my opinion — read this.
Neuroscientific support for the value of introspection
The stream of information and recommendations flowing out of the neuroscience field regarding the real value of reflection and daydreaming, as contrasted with our mainstream culture’s relentless emphasis on focus and productivity, recalls Theodore Roszak’s words in Where the Wasteland Ends about the fatuousness of modern science when it frequently announces “revolutionary” “new findings” about…
The myth of an ending: Apocalypse as a spiritual path
An online friend named Karl, who runs the antinatalist blog Say No to Life, responded to yesterday’s post about the apocalyptic direction the weather has been taking (“Heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods, superstorms: The future is here“) by giving me a word of caution: “Matt, it sounds like you’re urging on the Apocalypse with all your…
Google: Not making us stupid, not making us smart
A recently published essay by University of Virginia professor Chad Wellmon in The Hedgehog Review stands as one of the most elegant, incisive, and persuasive entries I’ve yet read in the great debate over the effects of the Internet/digital media revolution on human consciousness and culture. And I’ve read a fair amount of them. Wellmon…
The future of The Teeming Brain
If you can believe it, I have now been writing this blog for six years. Today is The Teeming Brain’s birthday. I launched it on June 13, 2006, and was surprised and gratified to see a sizable audience come together rather rapidly. In the launch post I said, among other things: The expression “teeming brain”…
The dumbing of American political speech has truly apocalyptic implications
NPR reported it this morning, and I listened with rapt attention during my commute to work: It turns out that the sophistication of congressional speech-making is on the decline, according to the open government group the Sunlight Foundation. Since 2005, the average grade level at which members of Congress speak has fallen by almost a…
Recommend Reading 5
This week’s recommended reading includes articles and essays about: collapse and global crisis; the manipulation of economics and politics by wealthy elites; the mysteries of consciousness; current hot-button topics in religion and spirituality; fruitful ways of regarding paranormal phenomena; and the value of working consciously to live a real human life in the midst of…
Ikea is building a city. Yes, you heard me.
Say what? There are feelings you get when you enter an Ikea store. The vertiginous experience of getting lost in their craftily designed labyrinth. The surprise of wandering into something you hadn’t intended to buy. The discomfiting almost-warmth of a fake apartment. The faintly reassuring sense that your children and your car are in someone…
Bad grammar on PBS: The fall of civilization?
Last night my wife and I watched the new National Geographic documentary “Quest for the Lost Maya” on PBS. At one point the narrator uttered this sentence: Though badly decomposed from the acidic soil, Stephanie can still make out the remains of a human skull, and arm and leg bones. The Maya created a great…