On Secular and Radical Buddhism
In a number of influential books and articles, Stephen Batchelor has proposed, developed, and defended something he has called (among others) âsecular Buddhismâ and âBuddhism 2.0â. The idea of such a secular or scientific or naturalistic or otherwise not traditionally religious kind of Buddhism isnât new â it has been especially popular among 20th and 21st Western converts to Buddhism, but there have been Asian precursors as well. Nevertheless, the idea is also somewhat controversial. Adherents of âsecular Buddhismâ like Batchelor typically consider it a return to the roots of Buddhism and to the original teachings of the Buddha, but...
The Possibility of a Revolution
(This is part 6 in the No Time for Utopia series.) In The Ethics of Climate Insurgency I argued that an insurgency aimed at overthrowing the enemies of our children is not morally justified because it is unlikely that â in the present situation â such an insurgency can succeed. It may seem that that conclusion also makes a discussion of the possibility of some kind of revolution to avoid catastrophe and establish something like the Lesser Dystopia is moot, but that is not exactly the case for (at least) two reasons. Firstly, in considering the possibility of a revolution...
Some Remarks on Truth and Justification
The notion of truth is probably one of the most central notions in science and philosophy, if not in humanityâs engagement with the world in general, but it is also a somewhat problematic notion that is prone to confusion. And consequently, not all talk about âtruthâ is really about truth. A revised version of this article has been integrated into part II of A Buddha Land in This World (Punctum Books, 2022). A couple of years ago, I wrote a paper titled âRecognizing âTruthâ in Chinese Philosophyâ on the difficulty of recognizing concepts of âtruthâ and philosophical theories about truth...
The Ethics of Climate Insurgency
(This is part 5 in the No Time for Utopia series.) Letâs say that you want to avoid the Mad-Maxian hell of societal collapse that climate change is making increasing likely, then how can and should you try to do that? Youâd have an incredibly powerful and well-connected enemy, and just asking them to give up their short-term profits in order to save the planet isnât likely to have any effect â at least, it hasnât had any effect thus far. Then what? Very many different answers can be given to that last question, but I want to focus here...
Michael Mann versus the âDoomistsâ
Last month, Breakthrough Australia published a paper by David Spratt and Ian Dunlop that claims that âclimate change now represents a near- to mid-term existential threat to human civilisationâ. Climate scientist Michael Mann was quick to put down the paper as âoverblown rhetoricâ. He was quoted as saying that âI respect the authors and appreciate that their intentions are good, but as I have written before, overblown rhetoric, exaggeration, and unsupportable doomist framing can be counteractive to climate action.â The quote by Mann raises a number of questions. Is the report by Spratt and Dunlop âoverblown rhetoricâ indeed? Does Mann...
Enemies of Our Children
(This is part 4 in the No Time for Utopia series.) In the previous two episodes in this series I argued that there are two possible futures for mankind and our planet. One is global societal collapse, which may take place within a matter of decades. The other is the âLesser Dystopiaâ, a set of policies and adaptations intended to avoid societal collapse and the massive suffering it would cause. The Lesser-Dystopian path is a rather narrow path, however, and significant deviation will inevitably result into a slide towards the Greater Dystopia of global societal collapse. To some extent, both...
The Lesser Dystopia
(This is part 3 in the No Time for Utopia series.) In On the Fragility of Civilization, I argued that due to the slowly compounding effects of an increasing number of relatively localized ânaturalâ disasters caused (directly or indirectly) by climate change, a vicious circle of failing disaster management, economic decline, civil unrest, and hunger will trigger a cascade of collapsing societies, eventually leading to global societal collapse in roughly 25 to 30 years from now (give or take a half decade). The world during and after collapse will be very different from what most of us have ever experienced,...
The Stories We Believe in
We all believe in stories. Stories about ourselves, stories about the world around us, about the societies and communities we are part of, about our histories, and so forth. We tend not to think of these stories as âstoriesâ, however, because we hold them true â thatâs what it means to believe something: to hold it true â and we tend to think of stories as untrue. But at least some of them are untrue. We donât all believe the same things, so at least some of us must be wrong. Furthermore, many of the stories we believe in â...
On the Fragility of Civilization
(This is part 2 in the No Time for Utopia series.) Doom has always been a major attraction for some, perhaps even many people. There are whole subgenres of extreme (heavy) metal built on the aesthetics of death, doom, and decay. But âdoomâ in the form of extreme pessimism about the (near) future is also increasingly common in discussions about climate change and its effects. In Stages of the Anthropocene I tried to look into the more distant future. Whether what I found is an example of âdoomâ in this sense is debatable â at least I didnât predict human...
No Time for Utopia
Most political thought is âideal theoryâ: its arguments are based on an idealized world in which important aspects of reality are abstracted away. Abstraction isnât necessarily a bad thing â in the contrary, it is often necessary in science â but it isnât self-evident that the results of abstractions and idealizations are (always) applicable to the real world, and if theory doesnât descend from the ideal world to reality it turns into an intellectual game without practical relevance; or worse, as the case of neoclassical economics illustrates. In that case abstraction and idealization resulted in a âtheoryâ that explains nothing,...
Dao and Second-Order Consequentialism
After king You of Zhou fell in love with Bao Si he exiled his wife, Queen Shen. The disgraced Shen family retaliated in 771 BCE by attacking and killing king You. The Zhou dynasty never recovered â although nominally it remained in power for another five centuries, this period was characterized by failing authority and nearly continuous war. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was also the most fruitful period in the intellectual history of China and is commonly recognized as the Golden Age of Chinese philosophy. Confucius, Mencius, Mozi, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, and many other of Chinaâs most famous philosophers lived...
Stages of the Anthropocene
preface (2022) There are major mistakes in the predictions and calculations involved in this article. For an attempt to come up with better predictions (and thus, an update of this article), see the SotA-R series. The model results presented in the last episode thereof, suggest 3°C to 5°C of average global warming. (Original post) â Climate scientists donât often look at the distant future and when they do, their âpredictionsâ are so vague that they hardly count as predictions at all. Most published work on climate change focuses on the current century. There are good reasons, for this, of course...