Essay

We Grew Up Too Comfortable to Take Risks

What if Japan, the face of the future, is showing us who we are becoming – as a kind of proverbial 'canary in a coal mine,' a Cassandra of our trans-cultural futures.

Roland Kelts
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13 Aug 2008
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24 comments

Essay

Susan Sontag

When the life Sontag loved fell away and the death she feared took over, relaxation set into her body for the first time, a smile appeared on her lips and her brow unfurled.

Caroline E. Winter
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05 Aug 2008
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4 comments

Susan Sontag was terrified of cremation. For the American writer and theorist, being reduced to particles of ash was the ultimate confirmation of extinction. Being whole was closer to being alive – and she had no desire to be anything but alive. Sontag went so far as to stray from the relentless honesty of her life's analytical writing in order to deny the realities of her fearful battle against blood cancer.

Essay

The Revolutionaries

Amidst all the hoopla of ad campaigns, business news and growth projections, a close examination of our consumer culture reveals a very ugly truth: it thrives on the death of nature, and charges the cost to future generations.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We still have time to redesign our economic model. All it takes is a critical mass of visionaries to step forward.

Essay

Feminism and the Mastery of Nature

Val Plumwood saw the danger of the western attitude towards nature decades before eco-consciousness went mainstream.

Shira Bick
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28 Jul 2008
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9 comments

Essay

The Death of Nature

Minds bend and break under the strain of a cultural disconnection from the natural world.

Elecia Chrunik
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14 Jul 2008
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22 comments

ecopsychology

Our entire evolutionary span is a result of our ability to work with and within natural systems and patterns. Until recently, humans have necessarily fostered an intimate relationship with other forms of life. So what happens to us as human beings when we remove an essential part of our relationship with existence? What happens to our ability to cope when we break away from nature?

Essay

The End of Childhood

Children who spend more time inside than in the wilderness experience poorer health in adulthood. We must let them roam free.

Paul Cooper
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16 Jun 2008
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12 comments

As a kid, I had the good fortune to be hauled along on my dad's annual canoe trip into the wilds of northern Canada. For one or two weeks a year, we navigated river and trail, ran rapids, struggled along back-breaking portages, and on rare, happy occasions caught sight of the local inhabitants: a beaver chewing on a log, a few moose wading in the shallows, the odd wolf or black bear.

Essay

Facebook Suicide

The more Facebook infringes upon people's privacy, the more people need to kill their connection with the social-networking site.

Micah M. White
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04 Jun 2008
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34 comments

You'll never find me on Facebook. You may scoff at my refusal – I used to do the same, rolling my eyes whenever my elders claimed resistance to the latest internet phenomenon – but Facebook is a scary, commercial dead-zone that's killing our real-world relationships.

Essay

Our Electric Brain

The Blue Brain Project aims to solve the epic problem of consciousness. But will it let us catch consciousness in the act?

Clayton Dach
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25 Apr 2008
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14 comments

Photo: EPFL/BBP.

If you’ve been fussing over a birthday gift for the sci-fi nut or armchair transhumanist in your life, consider a ticket to Lausanne, Switzerland. That’s where, in one corner of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, an IBM supercomputer is quietly making some fitful first steps toward consciousness.

Essay

Technoslave

Trapped by our cell phones, email and iPods, we need to clear our minds from the clutter and stop being technoslaves.

Eric Slate
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21 Apr 2008
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15 comments

Photo: Peter Funch.

Once, while I was riding on a crowded bus, the man sitting next to me threw his cell phone out the window. When his phone rang, instead of dutifully answering it, he casually tossed it away. I was stunned. He looked at me, shrugged and looked away. I had no idea if it was his, if it was stolen or if he even knew what a cell phone was. But in one seemingly careless motion, he managed to liberate himself from something that has completely consumed me.

Essay

Waiting for D-Day

Mary and Dave are getting divorced after 25 years of marriage. My question is, what's the rush? Why did they wait 25 years?

Stan Chung
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10 Apr 2008
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26 comments

Photo: Larry Sultan

Mary and dave are getting divorced after 25 years of marriage. My question is, what's the rush? Why did they wait 25 years?

I don't want to get into specifics here, like Dave's billion-dollar putter collection or Mary's aspiration to sell her pottery at the next craft show. I don't want to tell you that Dave's goal in life is to upgrade his home theater and that Mary's goal is to find herself, especially far away from Dave.

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