Beliefs or images of reality, as distinct from reality
In recent weeks, I have had the experience of being in some very large chunks of the “built environment.” The airports in Houston and Mexico City are just huge, if not spread out as far as the terminals at Denver. Even looking out the bay windows in an attorney’s downtown 16th-floor conference room at the snow-capped … More On the Ground Again: Enchanted in Lyon
Obsessive self-importance may be the new normal, and it is not pretty. We have all seen over-inflated egos expressed, from the poorest streets of our cities and dying towns to the elevated offices of CEOs and the White House itself. Likely as not, we have all tried to demonstrate our own self-importance. Why is something … More Self-Importance Is the New Normal
Wake up call for federal employees: In the era of Trumpery, life is really lived on the edge of insolvency and pain. Forty percent of the American people cannot cover a single $1,000- emergency. Most federal employees, though slightly better paid than their counterparts in private industry, live maybe a couple of paychecks ahead. The … More Messy Democracy vs. Painful Plutocracy
(continued from January 11, 2019 post) After a few days and a couple of back-and-forths with Seff Ramirez, locating a source of Huanacaxtle near La Peñita didn’t work out, so I tried another tack. I’d seen what appeared to be a tiny carpinteria in Los Ayalas, a small nearby beach town dominated by hotels and condos. I went … More On the Road Again: Huanacaxtle and Martín
Once again, the world’s “leaders” have met and accomplished next to nothing to mitigate the most extreme existential crisis humanity has ever faced. It takes a child… Here is the transcript of a stunning speech the other day near the end of the COP24 climate meetings in Katowice, Poland, condemning global inaction in the face … More It Takes a Child to Challenge Deniers of Climate Chaos
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?
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
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
“According to polls, most Americans think the nation is more divided than it’s been since the Civil War. And these divides are getting worse…” Really? Exactly what divides America? Well, there are polls and there are polls. In November 2016, a Gallup poll suggested shortly after Trump’s election that 77% of the people perceived the … More America’s False Divide
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
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 