A system of values and beliefs that organize a society and result in various practices and artifacts that are associated with the general characteristics of that society.
Giving thanks at Thanksgiving dinner continues as an ingrained ritual. At some holiday tables, those present state in turn what makes them most thankful. At others, the most senior member gives a Thanksgiving prayer. In most cases, that is about as far as reflection on the meaning of this peculiar American holiday goes. Nobody mentions, … More Giving Thanks for what?
Another in the series of occasional rants by the Mad Jubilado. Over two hundred kilometers per hour? That’s more than 124 mph! Well, we seemed to be going pretty fast. It was no Shinkansen (the Japanese “Bullet Train”) rocketing the 330 miles from Tocho-Mai Station in Tokyo to Kyoto between 150 and 200 mph. In … More On the Rails Again: Euro Trains are No Amtrak
I was an undergraduate student in anthropology when I saw a remarkable documentary film depicting the lives of the !Kung people. Also known as the San, they lived in the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa as hunter-gatherers, still undisturbed by outside forces in 1952-3 when some Harvard ethnographers shot the film. The social structure of … More Our Grand Illusions vs. Survival
This was Eve Ensler’s response in Time Magazine to the women who support the elevation of an alcoholic misogynist plutocratic predator to the highest court in the land. The struggle continues, though it seems, has just begun. A Letter to White Women Who Support Brett Kavanaugh By Eve Ensler, TIME 05 October 18 n Oct. 2, … More Eve Ensler Said It Best
Even if a couple of Republican senators were to revolt and vote against confirming the nomination of Brent Kavanagh to the Supreme Court of the United States of America, the “culture war” over the subjugation of women would escalate. How could it not? A Predatory Patriarchy still rules the nation. Kavanagh rightly called his confirmation … More Whitewashing the Predatory Patriarchy Cover-up
Rape is a violent crime of domination. Violence, of course, is the ultimate act of domination. We tend to see violence as an act of physical force leading to either physical injury or death, and it often is. But violence can also take on more subtle forms. Not all domination directly entails physical force. Some … More Mind of a Rapist
One of the many drawbacks of living in the intermediated world of industrial consumerism is that we have pretty much abandoned aesthetics. Form and function are mostly industrial products too. Marketing psychology drives them, like almost everything else. Diverse commercial and political interests present a pre-formed world to us on the flat digital screens of … More Aesthetics Abandoned
Can we do it ourselves? If we recycle everything and take shorter showers, install some solar panels, buy low-emissions products, etc., etc., can we avoid climate catastrophe? Sorry. Absolutely not. The problem runs much deeper than that – it involves the entire Earth System. The climate crisis is endemic to industrial civilization itself. That means, … More Individual Climate Ethics and Global Change
I never liked the term, “lifestyle.” It reflects an extreme version of the American obsession with personal individualistic consumerism, which ultimately is at odds with the hard facts of life on planet Earth. The unattainable “lifestyles of the rich and famous” promoted and enthusiastically accepted in the industrial era are built on illusion and propel … More On the Urgency of Abandoning Lifestyle
Another Entry in the Mad Jubilado series It is the always-present never-ending question of life. Sure, we have good intentions and sometimes they work out – as planned or not. Yet each moment is contingent. The future never arrives; it’s always out there because we are always here, in the present. We have our To-Do … More What To Do Now
