I have been reading Leonard Shlain’s fascinating book, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict between Word and Image. I wish I had encountered it before I had completed my now book. I have been referring to Iain McGilchrist for the last year or so as my primary source for the divided brain model, but Shlain has described the same dichotomy, using a completely different style, telling historic stories without adding any clinical data. I find his work just as compelling as McGilchrist’s. In this book, Shlain traces the many shifts between the two brain hemispheres that have occurred over… Read More
Continue ReadingHow to Use “Sustainability” Properly
I am patiently awaiting the arrival of my new book in August. It develops the idea of flourishing far beyond my previous works and ties both the sources of our present unsustainable state and pathways to escape from future disasters to an understanding of the way the human brain works. I do not plan to write many posts elaborating these ideas until the book is out. But I was reminded that I have two other books that have led up to the story I am now telling by seeing a quote from the first, Sustainability by Design: A Subversive Strategy… Read More
Continue ReadingFinding and Making the Right Choice
We, in the US and other so-called modern, capitalistic, market-driven nations, need a different framework for the way we discuss and decide our political choices. The traditional polarization between left and right, or liberal and conservative, or some other pair no longer enables anyone to find and examine the real issues facing everyone on the Planet. Any conversation that takes economic growth for granted, whether implicit or explicit, creates a blindness that will make whatever choices are made eventually exacerbate the problems for which the choices are believed to be the solution. The planet cannot stand any additional material growth… Read More
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