From Common Ground, Geoff Olson on the Collective Unconscious 2.0: The mythic imagination’s new operating system. John Gray on the end of a dream: Unreality is the defining feature of the fashionable ideas of the past decade — perhaps only a more serious crisis will overturn these delusive fancies. Martin Wolf on the challenges of managing our post-crisis world. From the Worldwatch Institute, a special report on the State of the World 2010: From Madison Avenue to Mad Max? There is talk now of a Digital Dark Ages brought about either by info-hating nomads or some accident — we are as vulnerable now as Europeans were in the 12th century. Arran Gare (Swinburne): Philosophical Anthropology, Ethics and Political Philosophy in an Age of Impending Catastrophe. From Adbusters, glimpsing the Apocalypse: We live in a mythical era, a time that surpasses legend; and an editorial on Philosophy at Zero Point: Have we reached systemic collapse and civilizational crisis? (and a reponse: Ironicality 101: Adbusters’ war on your little sister’s flannel leggings). More and more and more on Megadisasters: The Science of Predicting the Next Catastrophe by Florin Diacu. Does the sweet tooth for catastrophe scenarios really span eras and continents, or is it just one of our self-defeating Western eccentricities? Apocalypse literature now, and then: Writers have been imagining the end of the world since soon after it began, but today's practitioners deliver a new kind of bleakness. Here's a thought experiment envisioning a civilization recovery plan. Five reasons for optimism: As awful as the times may seem, they also contain seeds of hope.
