Consumerism has turned us into the new proletariat while our devices have switched off our brains
nature
Posted inGeneral
The Rain during Covid-19
* * * The rain has such precise teeth. She nibbles down the paths and through the bushes, along the gutters and around my veranda chair like a cat. Who knows that she is gobbling us up, swallowing us down? When will she finish? When eyes smell the stillness and see the music, droplets […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, Gender violence, General, Health, Media, Tech
Human ‘nature’ as explored in a riveting television series: ‘The 100’
The question, what is dominant, human ‘nature’, or ‘nurture’ (culture), has been the motivating force in a debate that has waged since at least the 18th and 19th centuries — for instance in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see his prize-winning Academy of Dijon essay on the question, whether human morals had improved by, or […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, General, Health, Lifestyle, News/Politics, Tech
Education policy and the future of water
On Tuesday, I watched a video on the deteriorating water situation in the Arabic state of Jordan, which foregrounded to me the imperative, that countries give a central place to essential concerns such as the continued availability of water in their education programmes, from primary school through high school to universities. Unless they pay urgent […]
Posted inEnvironment, General, Health, Media, Tech
The possible destruction of the world as we know it? (And Vaclav Havel’s far-reaching insights)
On a virtually daily basis, one is confronted with more dreadful news pertaining to the destruction of the world as we know it – or knew it – by forces that seem to be, almost irrefutably, related to anthropogenic climate change in the shape of global warming. For example, a report on Yahoo News (27 […]
Posted inGender violence, General, Media, News/Politics, Tech
‘Dark technology’ and human ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’?
In the later 19th century there was a protracted debate among thinkers of various stripes about the question, what ultimately determines human actions — ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ — a debate that is still going on today. But while it was then influenced by the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin, on the one hand, and empiricist […]
Posted inEnvironment, General, Health, Media, Tech
The destructive approach to nature: ‘Geostorm’
We are in Porto, Portugal, for an interdisciplinary international conference, and already we are impressed by the beauty of this old city. As usual, because I find seats on a passenger jet too uncomfortable to sleep, I used the time to catch up on some movies, including I, Tonya, with Margot Robbie’s Oscar-quality performance in […]
Posted inEnvironment, General, Media
The world has not learnt anything from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
This year marks the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s ‘Gothic’ (proto-)science fiction novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, which was published when the author was only 20 years old. It was the fruit of a contest among herself and two other literary figures — her future husband, the poet Percy Shelley, and another poet, Lord […]
Posted inEnvironment, Gender violence, General, Media
The allure of Louisa Punt-Fouché’s poetry
Poetry is alluring. Who is there so insensitive among us that evocative poetic phrases would not move us? Yes, I know – there are indeed such people, but I believe that even they, when given the opportunity to learn from a gifted teacher, would develop a modicum of receptivity to poetry. Blake’s “He who binds […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, Equality, General, Health, Tech
Optimism vs. realism regarding the future
The TIME magazine of 15 January, 2018, titled ‘The Optimists’, is edited by Bill Gates, one of the two richest individuals on the planet – this alone already (at least partly) explains his optimism, which is understandably not necessarily shared with people in positions of less economic power. Reading it is an object lesson in […]
Posted inEnvironment, General, Tech
Selfies, the disappearance of the natural world and nihilism
I don’t like shopping malls; they remind me of the weakness of our species when it comes to commodities that they ‘must have’, according to the spurious ethos of the prevailing economic system. Hence, when the woman in my life asked me to accompany her to that monstrosity known as the Baywest mall, outside the […]
Posted inEnvironment, General, Health, Tech
The technology that is threatening life as we know it
We are currently witnessing a pervasive and accelerating recording, modelling and processing of data pertaining to human beings as well as other living species (and even inorganic things) on a scale that surpasses what most of us can imagine. This has been made possible by bio-technologies which seem as if they are the incipient actualisation […]