I have a feeling that the healing of Earth, that we all want so much, is going to require a sacrifice. We are going to have to sacrifice the identity of being on the moral, ethical, right side. Nearly everyone imagines themselves to be. For things to change, an awful lot of letting go is […]

Solutions to the problem of global warming lie outside the energy box: while it is important to “get the prices right”, many of the decisions and behaviours that determine the level and pattern of energy use in society are decisions and behaviours that are not themselves sensitive to energy prices or energy policies; urban planning, […]

Nor must any synechist say: ‘I am altogether myself, and not at all you.’ If you embrace synechism, you must abjure this metaphysics of wickedness. In the first place, your neighbours are, in a measure, yourself, and in far greater measure than, without deep studies in psychology, you would believe. Really, the selfhood you like […]

Society convinces us that what’s good for the economy is good for us too. This message is delivered to us by every magazine, television, newspaper, and billboard, at every bus stop, grocery store, and airport. It finds us in our cars, it’s made its way onto our clothing. Happiness, we learn, is just around the […]

Those who oppose the novel most vociferously today are of the opinion that intermingling with a different culture will inevitably weaken and ruin their own … The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and […]