91) The great unraveling: A horror story of life on Earth
When I started teaching at the UofT, in 2002, I still believed a citizen-led evolution of politics would be enough to reinvent the economy and turn things around. Not in time to save the natural world as we used to know it, but in time to save enough of it that we wouldn’t experience large-scale collapse, leaving humanity to fight each other for the scraps left on a dessicated, charred planet.
I still try my damnedest, day to day, to believe that, because giving up that belief is to give up the belief that “we will make it”. But honestly? Most of me doesn’t believe that anymore; I just cling to it in order to stay somewhat sane in the face of a global holocaust.
73) Dear Ancestors,
Dear Ancestors, thank you for this chance you’ve given me, to live. For the songs you passed on. The babies you nursed at your breasts, taught to walk, and speak, and play, and fish, and build, and love, and read, and forgive. Thank you for your courage, the sacrifices you made in the wars of your time. The wisdom you discovered in silent meditation. The poems. The traditions, dances, beautiful creations of art and worship. Thank you for the recipes you passed down through generations of care-takers labouring over hot stoves, for the endless mouth-watering concoctions we coaxed from the abundance of water and soil and sunlight. Thank you for the luminaries who inspired all who came after, to strive for the Good, to love unto death.
42) Afterbirth in a field: The answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything...
Soften into your true animal body and feel your rawness, your wildness, your strength and your vulnerability, your life. And your death.
If you have not done this, then you should. I would call it as close to a moral imperative as anything Kant ever came up with. Even more important than masturbating, if you can believe that.
36) Jordan Peterson: Prologue - A personal note
I feel it’s important to try here, and share a few thoughts about the whole phenomenon of Jordan Peterson. It’s….complicated to get into, personally, for a bunch of reasons….which is why I’m starting this series of essays with this ‘personal prologue’, because I think it is important to contextualize my views.