The world over there is justifiable outrage about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We demonize BP for careless and greedy practices that make a mockery of their claim to be leaders in developing sources of clean energy. But we are unwilling to shoulder our individual responsibility for demanding cheap oil or to take any meaningful steps toward conservation.

We demand the right to consume at any cost to the environment. We hate the pushers but love the drug. With a modicum of discipline we could take individual ownership of our escalating carbon debt and eliminate most or all of the need for deep horizon oil.

The plan. Require every automobile and light-truck to be fitted with a gauge, such is [...]

I. Prelude: Diagnosis of the Dis-ease

1. Nothing fails like yesterdays solutions.

2. Most social, psychological, and spiritual dilemmas are solved, or dissolved, by expanding the context within which they are viewed.

3. Change your questions and you will alter your vision.

4. What is “practical” depends on your ideology, myth or vision.

5. Policy is always the application of someone’s vision.

6. Mistaking a symptom for the dis-ease worsens the illness.

7. It is only by considering a chaotic diversity of symptoms that we can make a good diagnosis.

8. Hope for significant change emerges precisely within the condition of disintegration that seems to invite us to despair.

9. The present dark night of social anarchy offers a greater opportunity for systemic change than the superficial optimism of the [...]

In The Absence of God: Dwelling in the Presence of the Sacred

Sam Keen. Q and A.

Q. You strike out with a two edged sword against both neo-atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, all of whose books have been on the NY Times best seller list in the past months, and the defenders of religious orthodoxy.  Why?

A. To begin with they are both dogmatic. “True Believers” threaten us with damnation if we don’t believe in their particular brand of “revealed  Truth.” The neo-Atheists insist that all forms of monotheism, even the most liberal and progressive, are murderous, intolerant and irrational and they argue that we should all become rational atheists. Admittedly, a great deal of religion is unintelligent [...]

The Devil’s Notebook.

I have been thinking recently about the evolution of evil.

How innocently it begins, how invisibly it grows.

The D/evil is in the details

His first trick is to encourage a sense of entitlement.

I deserve it. It is my just due.

Add to this a touch of envy. Memetic desire.

I want it (and deserve it) because you have it.

Why should Bill Gates have so much and I so little.?

When my (impossible) expectations are not fulfilled I become resentful,

My sympathy turns into antipathy.

Resentment morphs into paranoia. I imagine that the other –my neighbor, my mate– is hostile to

me, withholding, cheating, not giving me my just share of cash or care.

I give more than I get.

Paranoia leads to creating a fortress —the self puts on [...]