The Fisher King: Sacrificing The Oceans In Pursuit Of An Unholy Grail, By Jay Griffiths

The Fisher King: Sacrificing The Oceans In Pursuit Of An Unholy Grail, By Jay Griffiths

The Fisher King, keeper of the Holy Grail, is an enigmatic figure in literature: a rich king wounded by his own spear. The earliest sources show him suffering a moral wounding—a result not of accident but of his own ethical failings. The wound does not heal. Worse, its effects creep out, killing everything around him so the abundance and richness of life is reduced to barren waste.

Welcome To The New Normal: Poor, Not Special, But Here And Not There, By Carolyn Baker

Welcome To The New Normal: Poor, Not Special, But Here And Not There, By Carolyn Baker

Those who are willing to name our predicament not merely as the collapse of industrial civilization but as mass suicide by our species—who are willing to prepare logistically, emotionally, and spiritually will not be spared suffering; however, they are more likely to become students of their plight and metabolize the meaning of it rather than become engulfed in its madness.

Resilience: Why So Many Parents Today Are Getting It Wrong, By Annie Lussenburg

Resilience: Why So Many Parents Today Are Getting It Wrong, By Annie Lussenburg

You see, resilience comes out of a struggle. That’s it, there’s no other way to get it. Take the wrong bus and end up at the wrong stop will build you resilience but only if you aren’t able to place a rescue call for someone to pick you up. Failing math and having to try harder: There’s a good one. Having to go to another soccer game and try again because the last time you mucked up and everyone is mad at you. Realizing that a course or activity you thought you’d enjoy is just terrible but sticking with it anyway, even though you’re sometimes miserable.

Optimism Bias: What Keeps Us Alive Today Will Kill Us Tomorrow

Optimism Bias: What Keeps Us Alive Today Will Kill Us Tomorrow

Still, you can’t always get what you want. In the end, all that’s left is what you need. And we know that, unconsciously. It’s just that in the meantime we like to be sitting pretty. And not think about the fact that this very attitude of ours will hasten and worsen the end. We’re creatures bent on instant gratification. Which is, come to think of it, precisely why we have our optimism bias in the first place.

You Can't Say That! By Richard Heinberg

You Can't Say That! By Richard Heinberg

So the real trade-off, the real choice we face, is not between climate protection on one hand and economic growth on the other. It’s between planned economic contraction (with government managing the post-carbon transition through infrastructure investment and useful make-work programs) as a possible but unlikely strategy, and unplanned, unmanaged economic and environmental collapse as our default scenario.

Living With Contradictions, By Charles Eisenstein

Living With Contradictions, By Charles Eisenstein

A Human Potential Visionary Talks About Our Infinite Potential and How We Also Block Progress…Joseph Chilton Pearce, one of the elders of the human potential movement, lives with the contradiction that everything is possible, yet nature’s plan has gone awry.

Our Dependence On Oil Puts A Glass Ceiling On Economic Recovery, By Victoria Johnson

Our Dependence On Oil Puts A Glass Ceiling On Economic Recovery, By Victoria Johnson

In a new report out today we explore the impact of sustained high oil prices on current prospects for economic recovery. We argue that economic prosperity is predicated on the availability of cheap oil. This is not just based on simple correlations. In recent years a number of economists have begun to re-write the very foundations of macroeconomic theory, demonstrating that energy plays the most important role in economic growth. This is supported by warnings in the past year from the IEA, IMF and G7 that high oil prices have likely been constraining economic growth and economic recovery from the recession.