A blog series of poems and commentary asking the question “Can love of Natural systems ever be personal?” (The answer is yes, no, and maybe.)
Category: Uncategorised
Jun 04
Thoughts on the 2022 Ontario Election: the Meaning of LEADERSHIP for Human Beings
[If you came across this post in the TWO BUDDHAS sequence, it’s a diversion that belongs with the main sequence of uncategorised posts; just skip it and go on to the next post.] Many of us are trying to make sense of the desperately apathetic response to the greatest challenge of ALL human history revealed …
Aug 28
The Leadership Crisis
The average citizen doesn’t follow science close enough to appreciate the threat of climate change, let alone study science close enough to sort truth from misinformation in today’s social media free-for-all. It is the responsibility of government to pay attention to experts, to set policy according to their advice, and to tell constituents the truth. …
Apr 27
Hiatus
Good morning fellow conservationists, climate activists and rewilders! Well, I think I’ve shot my last bolt for now from the extremophilechoice.com website. There’s nothing new I can feed into our shared new(s)-hungry cyberspace, so I invite you to look over any previous post that interests you, and to engage with me in its comment section …
Dec 27
One Time: No Future Without Understanding the Deep Past as a Visceral Present
“I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man’s power of selection. We have seen that man by selection can certainly produce great results, and can adapt organic beings to his own uses, through the accumulation …
Dec 24
One From the Start
A Christmas message from a Buddhadharma practitioner. At this time, when the sun is returning after deepening darkness, we are being invited to reach into our own silent depths, and here to find the embers of sharing and love. We are invited to find and nurture them, that they might contribute to a Global Spirit …
Oct 21
Mi’kmaw Fishery Isn’t a Threat to Conservation, Say Scientists
Here is what you need to know about the lobster fisheries issue currently playing out in Nova Scotia: https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/local-perspectives/megan-bailey-mikmaw-fishery-isnt-a-threat-to-conservation-say-scientists-511572/? My personal position is this: Although what I have been calling “The Extremophile Choice” would ultimately phase out ALL human dependence on wild species for a livelihood, in favour of hi-tech but maximally non-invasive farming, this …
Sep 27
The Unseen Unseeing Old Buddha: Population Evo-Ecology
At the end of a meditation session, practitioners will often formally repeat something like, “May all beings live in harmony and be free from harm.” But what does this ‘metta phrase’ actually mean, coming from the one being who is free of the harmony of beings eating each other? In a time of species die-back …
Sep 22
Our Ecologically Strange Situation: we alone are the progressive inventors of behaving extensions.
I don’t know why I have been avoiding this technical underpinning to the Extremophile Choice hypothesis in this blog. But here it is. Perhaps, for the evo-eco geeks anyway, it will help make better sense of it all. On the importance of structure vs function from Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice: fifty short essays on what it means to be human …
Aug 04
Extreme Times
Extreme temperatures in the Arctic. Extreme flooding in Bangladesh. Extreme wildfires in Australia and in California. Extremely low water-tables in Syria and in California. Extreme rates of glacier melting. And, most alarming for biologists, extreme rates of species extinction and ecosystem collapse. All caused by human activity over the years. It is becoming more and …
