Brilliant as always, Jason. Thank you. I love the flip that it’s dogs that make us human. Makes perfect sense to me. It’s always said that they evolved around us but this suggests it’s the other way around. Of course it is. I appreciate your generosity to include me in your list of my favorite writers here. ☺️ Thanks for all you do.
Another absolutely splendid essay, Jason. Your writing is so powerful and so spot on. I'd like to comment on three things specifically.
First, calling the obscenely wealthy yet humanity-poor industry barons and political tools as "power hungry fools" couldn't be more accurate. Although they are quite deliberately exploiting and destroying people in their quest for more wealth and power (and out of an obvious lack of caring for other humans), I don't think they are deliberately destroying the biosphere. Yes, they are demolishing it, but not because they want to. What even semi-rational being would shit in his own nest? Even penguins know better. I think instead that these people are suffering from a severe lack of perspective. They don't understand that human life -- in fact all life -- owes its existence and continues to exists in a very precarious state only because it is protected from certain death by the very thinnest of atmospheres. These people fight over scraps of land and tussle over money, like ants over a beetle carcass, with apparently no understanding that the incomprehensibly vast universe is basically 100% vacuum and deadly radiation, and certain death lies only a few miles over our heads. One big asteroid and we go the way of the dinosaurs.
Second, your description of the paths we choose is a stark reminder that no particular way is dictated by our existence. Every path is a choice we layer on the world. It is a very Taoist perspective, and it reminds me of this beautiful passage from the short story My Old Home, by the Chinese author Lu Hsun: "As I dozed, a stretch of jade-green seashore spread itself before my eyes, and above a round golden moon hung in a deep blue sky. I thought; hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like pathways over the land. For actually there were no paths originally, but when many people traveled one way, a road was made."
Finally, I have to disagree that humans learned empathy and how to live with each other from wolves. I think it is normally in our nature to have empathy, to understand how others feel because we know how we feel. Empathy and altruism are normal traits in many animals, especially those of higher intelligence, such as bonobos and dolphins -- and wolves. The traits are evolutionary adaptive. We didn't have to learn it. It's part of our DNA.
Normally, that is. It is unfortunate that their absence in psychologically and emotionally damaged people seems to be one of the mechanisms that allows these people to pursue wealth and power so successfully. If being cruel makes you feel good, and if you cannot feel for others, then you can do anything in your pursuit of money and control. Such seems to be the case with people like Trump, Musk, Koch, and Thiel.
It's a powerful essay, Jason. I shared it to FB. Thanks for continuing to try and bring sanity and perspective to our fractured world. It gives us all some much-needed hope in these dark times.
Relating to the first part of your essay, some readers may be interested in checking out William Rees' ("stands to reeson" in Substack) post from yesterday: an ecologist with a strong evolutionary perspective. ("MTI" refers to "modern tecno-industrial".)
Thank you, Erica. I just looked it up but haven't read it yet. For anyone interested, it's a three-part series called Why Collapse is Inevitable. Here's the link:
Yes, we are in a timeline where greed and hate have been given permission. Both have become contagions, because idiocy spews from the pulpit, and social media runs with it. With a 100% false narrative on repeat. And do not get me started when it comes to Elon Musk. What is he doing with the ; “ vast amounts of sensitive personal data from U.S. government agencies he/ DOGE , just walked in and took, under the guise of ‘task force’ ? It is frightening to think of the possibilities.
Thanks, Jason, for throwing all that evil into the cauldron, over a hot fire. Boiling out the bad stuff, metaphorically speaking, and releasing the beauty. A have only a small amount of writers and photographers I enjoy on Substack. You mentioned a few in your post, here are a few more;
Susie Mawhinney, writes about life from gorgeous hill top in France. Some of the very best audios I listen to while walking my path through the forest. David Knowles, as you know, literally a human jewel from Mallerstang Edge.
Thank you so much, Lor. I can't believe I forgot to mention Chloe, who's really a guiding light here in this digital maze. I'll look up Foster and remind myself to return to Susie's work.
And thanks for the image of me rendering something useful out of all this administration's rancid meat...
About ten years ago while swimming in the Pacific I noticed that I was breathing in as I rose on each swell and out as I sank into the next trough. The metaphor in this haiku has encouraged me since then. And thank you for this article.
I am trying so damn hard to remain happy and productive despite the nations horrible descent into fascism. They may succeed in destroying the nation, but I refuse to let them destroy my spirit and faith in the goodness of humanity. America has sadly lost its way but the rest of the planet will have to carry the torch of advancing humanity from now on.
We do seem to be fully on the dark side of the historical not-so-merry-go-round, don't we, Andy? Only a couple generations ago we had a pretty clear idea about what fascism is and why we put our lives on the line to stop it. Now the lessons come around again, with no clear outcome. The sizeable majority of us in this country want nothing to do with this nonsense or its motivations, but we've lost the vocabulary at the same time they've gamed the system. But as you say, there's no sense in feeling defeated when there are so many good folks and good things being done. So on we go...
I got sober from alcohol 3 years ago, the post covid years were my rock bottom. I got therapy, got diagnosed for adhd and properly medicated and my anxiety and depression disappeared. 2024 was the first time I was genuinely optimistic about my future since I had been a child. Biden was finally taking steps to address climate change which is an existential threat to our species. Then 76 million selfish idiot Americans ate the billionaires propaganda and re-elected Trump ( and 90 million enragingly fucking stayed home) despite his extremely obvious intentions to destroy the country and after he tried to coup it once already. Then the tarriffs liberated me from my decent job and I have been drowning financially ever since and can't find another non starvation wage job because they apparently don't exist anymore because the billionaires want a nation of serfs and have their pet AIs now. If I allowed myself to feel the true depths of my rage at all that has happened this past year I would fucking lose it. I have no hope for the future anymore, climate change is certain to collapse society in my lifetime now. I spent years painstakingly fixing myself after tons of misery and then the nation decided to committ suicide right when I was ready to live again. The only thing keeping me going at this point is spite for the billionaires and the brainwashed racists and rubes who did this to us all. Watching Trump repeatedly fuck them isn't particularly cathartic because I am also getting fucked, but its all I have left. No amount of zen philosophy will make me forgive or forget any of this. But I have decided to try to be happy anyways because control over my own mind is truly all I have left. Fuck, I am so tired of the universe testing me. Being a mentally healthy person with actusl morals in a nation being run by evil fascists is an excruciating experience I would not wish on anyone. God speed to you and good luck to us all, we are all going to need it.
There's so much suffering to go around, Andy, but it's clear you've had more than your fair share of it. And you've come through it. Maybe that makes you a bit of a guide for what's coming, I don't know, but thanks for being here so honestly and fully. Good luck to us all, indeed.
It was cathartic to actually write that all down. Sometimes all you really need to do is vent a little, I was holding more inside than I realized. Thank you for your kindness and understanding, I come to substack primarily to remind myself I am not alone and that others do feel the crushing weight of our nations moral failures this past year as well. I am just one man and in truth I still often feel powerless and afraid of what comes next because I know my history but the evil forces of this world can't take my mind and my words from me so I will keep persevering. They only truly win if I give up and become a cynical alcoholic again, but I already tried that and it wasn't very fun. So I am going to keep trying to carve another path even if it kills me.
Oh, you're definitely not alone. You're in a crowd of tens of millions in this country and a few billion elsewhere who already know what's afoot. And despite the election there are a hell of a lot more here who live in the same skin but are adrift in a culture that redirects our truths about a decent life toward misery and distraction.
Plenty of paths carved by others ahead of us that we can follow. For instance, and this will seem random, and might not be as good a fit as I think, but I happened to listen today to an older Wild Card interview (an NPR podcast) with the author John Green, and at one point I remembered this conversation with you. He's particularly articulate about translating existential dread into an enthusiasm for living in the time we've been given. (https://www.npr.org/2025/03/27/1244131628/author-john-green-interview-tuberculosis-the-fault-in-our-stars)
Yeah, theres so much wisdom out there to learn from if you actually start looking for it. I never used to care about philosophy back in the day but now its practically all I read. Knowledge is power, for sure.
Oh my goodness: "After all, it’s not the U.S. empire that defines this age. It’s the human empire and its enslavement of “resources” better known as the fabric of life, which even in our enlightened moments we still divide into bioregions, ecosystems, and species." Ugg. It's true. Even when I think I'm embracing life, I'm still in the colonial mind.
And still wonder, indeed. Thank you, Leah. As for the colonial mindset, it's nearly impossible to get outside of it. We live these comfy, enriched lives because of all that has been and all that continues to be extracted. We can live mindfully and with restraint within the system, but we're still within the unrestrained system.
I like that you locate sanity and moral authority in Nature. If there ever was a time for humans to understand this, it is now, even as we drift farther and farther away under the guidance of tech madmen. If they seem deranged it's because they are: out of range of the natural sanity embedded in the living earth and its ways. Could that natural sanity be a center around which a new movement and consciousness might cohere? It sounds dreamy, but I can't think of a better basis.
No better basis, Rob, and there are plenty of voices speaking beautifully from that rational hill, among the plants and animals, but we're largely an urban and plugged-in species now and I don't know how to bridge that gap at scale and in time. Maybe the new consciousness centers around some sense of urban ecology? Or maybe the dope-slap we'll keep getting from crossing planetary boundaries will wake us up. One function of the Anthropocene is/will be a realization of real-time cause-and-effect between our behavior and the Earth's reactions, so one way or another culture will have to reshape around that reality. As you know, the question is how long it takes and what can we save along the way. Thanks as always for your hard work toward that wake-up call.
In your list of trailmakers and prophetic voices you left out a wonderful, compassionate, and contemplative voice: Leah Rampy. If you don't know her voice you must.
This is lovely, as always. The fantasy of rationality that you mention makes me think of an old film from Argentina, The Man Facing Southeast. The idea that the Man of the title comes to deliver is that rational behaviour does not look like the monstrous things we do in its name. Rational behaviour IS kindness and altruism, etc. I'm not sure that it's always so easy to know what is actually rational, but I am fairly sure that the cruel people running the show in the US don't have an effing clue what is genuinely rational or reasonable, or even good for them.
Nicely said, Jo. I think "rational" has various shades, from logical Spock to notions of sanity to what we believe is commonsense. I guess I'm working with the latter category, looking to how the real (natural) world works and setting it up as a baseline for how we should live.
And no, the right-wing confederacy in charge at the moment has so many false assumptions about people and power that it's almost impossible for them to act in a way that anyone without the same agenda can respect. But power begets hubris and blindness, right?
This, your discussion of the regressive nature of current policies and actions and the backward arc of our current trajectory, rings all too well with me.
Thanks so much for bringing that song in. If only we knew in the 90s how much worse things might get... Actually, probably better we didn't know. But what matters now is that we have the songs to sing when we need them.
And now that I went to watch the song's video it's going to be stuck in my head for a while.
Brilliant as always, Jason. Thank you. I love the flip that it’s dogs that make us human. Makes perfect sense to me. It’s always said that they evolved around us but this suggests it’s the other way around. Of course it is. I appreciate your generosity to include me in your list of my favorite writers here. ☺️ Thanks for all you do.
Another absolutely splendid essay, Jason. Your writing is so powerful and so spot on. I'd like to comment on three things specifically.
First, calling the obscenely wealthy yet humanity-poor industry barons and political tools as "power hungry fools" couldn't be more accurate. Although they are quite deliberately exploiting and destroying people in their quest for more wealth and power (and out of an obvious lack of caring for other humans), I don't think they are deliberately destroying the biosphere. Yes, they are demolishing it, but not because they want to. What even semi-rational being would shit in his own nest? Even penguins know better. I think instead that these people are suffering from a severe lack of perspective. They don't understand that human life -- in fact all life -- owes its existence and continues to exists in a very precarious state only because it is protected from certain death by the very thinnest of atmospheres. These people fight over scraps of land and tussle over money, like ants over a beetle carcass, with apparently no understanding that the incomprehensibly vast universe is basically 100% vacuum and deadly radiation, and certain death lies only a few miles over our heads. One big asteroid and we go the way of the dinosaurs.
Second, your description of the paths we choose is a stark reminder that no particular way is dictated by our existence. Every path is a choice we layer on the world. It is a very Taoist perspective, and it reminds me of this beautiful passage from the short story My Old Home, by the Chinese author Lu Hsun: "As I dozed, a stretch of jade-green seashore spread itself before my eyes, and above a round golden moon hung in a deep blue sky. I thought; hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like pathways over the land. For actually there were no paths originally, but when many people traveled one way, a road was made."
Finally, I have to disagree that humans learned empathy and how to live with each other from wolves. I think it is normally in our nature to have empathy, to understand how others feel because we know how we feel. Empathy and altruism are normal traits in many animals, especially those of higher intelligence, such as bonobos and dolphins -- and wolves. The traits are evolutionary adaptive. We didn't have to learn it. It's part of our DNA.
Normally, that is. It is unfortunate that their absence in psychologically and emotionally damaged people seems to be one of the mechanisms that allows these people to pursue wealth and power so successfully. If being cruel makes you feel good, and if you cannot feel for others, then you can do anything in your pursuit of money and control. Such seems to be the case with people like Trump, Musk, Koch, and Thiel.
It's a powerful essay, Jason. I shared it to FB. Thanks for continuing to try and bring sanity and perspective to our fractured world. It gives us all some much-needed hope in these dark times.
Relating to the first part of your essay, some readers may be interested in checking out William Rees' ("stands to reeson" in Substack) post from yesterday: an ecologist with a strong evolutionary perspective. ("MTI" refers to "modern tecno-industrial".)
Thanks again, and all the best!
Thank you, Erica. I just looked it up but haven't read it yet. For anyone interested, it's a three-part series called Why Collapse is Inevitable. Here's the link:
https://reeswilliame.substack.com/p/why-collapse-is-inevitable-7bc
Thanks for fleshing that out for people! :)
Yes, we are in a timeline where greed and hate have been given permission. Both have become contagions, because idiocy spews from the pulpit, and social media runs with it. With a 100% false narrative on repeat. And do not get me started when it comes to Elon Musk. What is he doing with the ; “ vast amounts of sensitive personal data from U.S. government agencies he/ DOGE , just walked in and took, under the guise of ‘task force’ ? It is frightening to think of the possibilities.
Thanks, Jason, for throwing all that evil into the cauldron, over a hot fire. Boiling out the bad stuff, metaphorically speaking, and releasing the beauty. A have only a small amount of writers and photographers I enjoy on Substack. You mentioned a few in your post, here are a few more;
Susie Mawhinney, writes about life from gorgeous hill top in France. Some of the very best audios I listen to while walking my path through the forest. David Knowles, as you know, literally a human jewel from Mallerstang Edge.
Jonathan Foster, from Sweden.
And of course, Chloe Hope.
Thank you so much, Lor. I can't believe I forgot to mention Chloe, who's really a guiding light here in this digital maze. I'll look up Foster and remind myself to return to Susie's work.
And thanks for the image of me rendering something useful out of all this administration's rancid meat...
A feast table. Palms together and head bowed. Gratitude.
May this new year be kind, Master Jason.
Thank you.
And thanks as always to you, David, for your kind observations and observed kindnesses. Be well.
beyond the breakers
I trust my breath
to swell and trough
As should we all, Mark. Thank you.
About ten years ago while swimming in the Pacific I noticed that I was breathing in as I rose on each swell and out as I sank into the next trough. The metaphor in this haiku has encouraged me since then. And thank you for this article.
That sound marvelous, Mark. I can really feel why that had to find its way into a poem. Thanks for sharing it here.
I am trying so damn hard to remain happy and productive despite the nations horrible descent into fascism. They may succeed in destroying the nation, but I refuse to let them destroy my spirit and faith in the goodness of humanity. America has sadly lost its way but the rest of the planet will have to carry the torch of advancing humanity from now on.
We do seem to be fully on the dark side of the historical not-so-merry-go-round, don't we, Andy? Only a couple generations ago we had a pretty clear idea about what fascism is and why we put our lives on the line to stop it. Now the lessons come around again, with no clear outcome. The sizeable majority of us in this country want nothing to do with this nonsense or its motivations, but we've lost the vocabulary at the same time they've gamed the system. But as you say, there's no sense in feeling defeated when there are so many good folks and good things being done. So on we go...
I got sober from alcohol 3 years ago, the post covid years were my rock bottom. I got therapy, got diagnosed for adhd and properly medicated and my anxiety and depression disappeared. 2024 was the first time I was genuinely optimistic about my future since I had been a child. Biden was finally taking steps to address climate change which is an existential threat to our species. Then 76 million selfish idiot Americans ate the billionaires propaganda and re-elected Trump ( and 90 million enragingly fucking stayed home) despite his extremely obvious intentions to destroy the country and after he tried to coup it once already. Then the tarriffs liberated me from my decent job and I have been drowning financially ever since and can't find another non starvation wage job because they apparently don't exist anymore because the billionaires want a nation of serfs and have their pet AIs now. If I allowed myself to feel the true depths of my rage at all that has happened this past year I would fucking lose it. I have no hope for the future anymore, climate change is certain to collapse society in my lifetime now. I spent years painstakingly fixing myself after tons of misery and then the nation decided to committ suicide right when I was ready to live again. The only thing keeping me going at this point is spite for the billionaires and the brainwashed racists and rubes who did this to us all. Watching Trump repeatedly fuck them isn't particularly cathartic because I am also getting fucked, but its all I have left. No amount of zen philosophy will make me forgive or forget any of this. But I have decided to try to be happy anyways because control over my own mind is truly all I have left. Fuck, I am so tired of the universe testing me. Being a mentally healthy person with actusl morals in a nation being run by evil fascists is an excruciating experience I would not wish on anyone. God speed to you and good luck to us all, we are all going to need it.
There's so much suffering to go around, Andy, but it's clear you've had more than your fair share of it. And you've come through it. Maybe that makes you a bit of a guide for what's coming, I don't know, but thanks for being here so honestly and fully. Good luck to us all, indeed.
It was cathartic to actually write that all down. Sometimes all you really need to do is vent a little, I was holding more inside than I realized. Thank you for your kindness and understanding, I come to substack primarily to remind myself I am not alone and that others do feel the crushing weight of our nations moral failures this past year as well. I am just one man and in truth I still often feel powerless and afraid of what comes next because I know my history but the evil forces of this world can't take my mind and my words from me so I will keep persevering. They only truly win if I give up and become a cynical alcoholic again, but I already tried that and it wasn't very fun. So I am going to keep trying to carve another path even if it kills me.
Oh, you're definitely not alone. You're in a crowd of tens of millions in this country and a few billion elsewhere who already know what's afoot. And despite the election there are a hell of a lot more here who live in the same skin but are adrift in a culture that redirects our truths about a decent life toward misery and distraction.
Plenty of paths carved by others ahead of us that we can follow. For instance, and this will seem random, and might not be as good a fit as I think, but I happened to listen today to an older Wild Card interview (an NPR podcast) with the author John Green, and at one point I remembered this conversation with you. He's particularly articulate about translating existential dread into an enthusiasm for living in the time we've been given. (https://www.npr.org/2025/03/27/1244131628/author-john-green-interview-tuberculosis-the-fault-in-our-stars)
Yeah, theres so much wisdom out there to learn from if you actually start looking for it. I never used to care about philosophy back in the day but now its practically all I read. Knowledge is power, for sure.
Thank you for your words.❤️🙏❤️🌻
David Knowles is an amazing writer. I highly recommend his Substack.
Absolutely. Thanks for helping to spread the word.
Oh my goodness: "After all, it’s not the U.S. empire that defines this age. It’s the human empire and its enslavement of “resources” better known as the fabric of life, which even in our enlightened moments we still divide into bioregions, ecosystems, and species." Ugg. It's true. Even when I think I'm embracing life, I'm still in the colonial mind.
And still. Wonder.
Thank you for this powerful essay.
And still wonder, indeed. Thank you, Leah. As for the colonial mindset, it's nearly impossible to get outside of it. We live these comfy, enriched lives because of all that has been and all that continues to be extracted. We can live mindfully and with restraint within the system, but we're still within the unrestrained system.
Alas, so true. And we must keep naming and acknowledging that. 🙏
I like that you locate sanity and moral authority in Nature. If there ever was a time for humans to understand this, it is now, even as we drift farther and farther away under the guidance of tech madmen. If they seem deranged it's because they are: out of range of the natural sanity embedded in the living earth and its ways. Could that natural sanity be a center around which a new movement and consciousness might cohere? It sounds dreamy, but I can't think of a better basis.
No better basis, Rob, and there are plenty of voices speaking beautifully from that rational hill, among the plants and animals, but we're largely an urban and plugged-in species now and I don't know how to bridge that gap at scale and in time. Maybe the new consciousness centers around some sense of urban ecology? Or maybe the dope-slap we'll keep getting from crossing planetary boundaries will wake us up. One function of the Anthropocene is/will be a realization of real-time cause-and-effect between our behavior and the Earth's reactions, so one way or another culture will have to reshape around that reality. As you know, the question is how long it takes and what can we save along the way. Thanks as always for your hard work toward that wake-up call.
In your list of trailmakers and prophetic voices you left out a wonderful, compassionate, and contemplative voice: Leah Rampy. If you don't know her voice you must.
Thank you for that reminder, David. I do hope readers are flocking to Leah's work.
This is lovely, as always. The fantasy of rationality that you mention makes me think of an old film from Argentina, The Man Facing Southeast. The idea that the Man of the title comes to deliver is that rational behaviour does not look like the monstrous things we do in its name. Rational behaviour IS kindness and altruism, etc. I'm not sure that it's always so easy to know what is actually rational, but I am fairly sure that the cruel people running the show in the US don't have an effing clue what is genuinely rational or reasonable, or even good for them.
Nicely said, Jo. I think "rational" has various shades, from logical Spock to notions of sanity to what we believe is commonsense. I guess I'm working with the latter category, looking to how the real (natural) world works and setting it up as a baseline for how we should live.
And no, the right-wing confederacy in charge at the moment has so many false assumptions about people and power that it's almost impossible for them to act in a way that anyone without the same agenda can respect. But power begets hubris and blindness, right?
Indeed!
Nota bene - such a fine phrase! Thanks for your thoughtful and insightful words. We can make difference in helping promote a better, more just world.
Thank you, David.
This, your discussion of the regressive nature of current policies and actions and the backward arc of our current trajectory, rings all too well with me.
More and more I find myself in this position:
And so I wake in the morning and I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream from the top of my lungs
"What's going on?"
4 Non Blondes, 1992
Thanks so much for bringing that song in. If only we knew in the 90s how much worse things might get... Actually, probably better we didn't know. But what matters now is that we have the songs to sing when we need them.
And now that I went to watch the song's video it's going to be stuck in my head for a while.
May we stay human,
love, “act in service to life.”
“Choices make a path.”
...
Repair/replace work,
underwater, underground.
And “at the surface.”