gm-reflection

                Comments of a Demented, Out-of-Clue, Naive Person?        I did a double take. Was Pope Leo okay? What on earth is he talking about? After all, the numbers are brutal. According to Lawrence Keeley in War Before Civilization , 90–95% of societies have engaged in war at some point in history. Hard to argue with those numbers. But Raymond C. Kelly, in Warless Societies and the Origin of War , challenges that view. He suggests war isn’t universal. Many early societies thrived on peaceful relationships — trade, intermarriage, and shared work. War came later, he argues, once wealth accumulated and fences were built. So, which is it? Are we born to war, or are we just stuck in the current story? At first, I dismissed Pope Leo’s sentiment as naïve. “War is not inevitable?” Come on. But the more I sat with it, the more it gnawed at me. Maybe he’s not entirely wrong. Maybe he's saying something we've forgo...

  “They say I’m the poorest president. No, I’m not. Poor are those who want more... because they’re in an endless race.” — José Mujica In my previous post, I looked into the “black mirror”: power almost always wins. The revolution becomes the regime. The wheel spins back to hierarchy.  But what if… not everyone played that game? What if—amidst the palace walls and propaganda machines—there were a few who remembered what power was meant to be? A burden, a service, a duty! A good man recently passed away. His life gave me hope. His example inspired me to look for many others—well-known and lesser-known—who held power but chose to be servants of the people. We’re talking about José Mujica , President of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. He walked into the office as a poor man. He walked away a poor man. Mujica lived on a small farm, drove a beat-up VW Beetle, and donated most of his salary. He governed with quiet resolve—legalizing marijuana, investing in the poor—not from a palace, bu...

  “If there is no transformation inside of us, all the structural change in the world will have no impact on our institutions.” -  Peter Block We’ve believed for centuries that once power falls and the oppressed rise, all will be made right. We imagine a world where everyone sings campfire songs and roasts marshmallows. But that’s not the reality. Let’s look back at recent history - these examples are still fresh. Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot... they all rose on the backs of the oppressed, only to become the very tyrants they once fought. Mussolini rose as a revolutionary socialist, a man of the people, before morphing into the architect of Italian fascism. Stalin took the Soviet dream of worker emancipation and turned it into a machinery of purges, show trials, gulags, and fear. Pol Pot promised power to the peasants but ended up emptying the cities, banning books, and murdering nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population in pursuit of a purified agrarian utopia. Anyone r...

 Power believes itself invincible. It evolves, adapts, absorbs criticism, and neutralizes rebellion. It manipulates fear, manufactures consent, and numbs critical thought. And yet—every empire, every system, every gleaming juggernaut eventually cracks. Not because the rulers plan it. Not because the oppressed suddenly become perfectly organized. But because power always carries within it the seeds of its own destruction . The Anatomy of Fracture 1. Internal Contradictions: Power’s Fatal Flaw As Walt Whitman wrote: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." Humans are built for plurality—for conflict, for paradox. No system has ever existed without its own contradictions, because no human being is a pure, single idea. Every system that survives by stifling imagination and dissent eventually becomes too stupid to evolve—and too rigid to survive. But the deeper flaw isn't just in the rulers; it’s in human n...

  It was 2011, and I was working as a mobile veterinarian in Oregon. Occupy Wall Street had erupted, and soon Occupy Portland followed. The excitement was palpable in every liberal-minded home I visited. Conversations buzzed with hope: finally, the time had come. The great machine of corporate greed was cracking. Change was not only possible—it felt inevitable. That was then. Now it’s 2025. Corporations are thriving—better than ever. They have not only survived; they have reshaped the political landscape to suit themselves even more comfortably. -Agencies once created to protect the environment now step gingerly around polluters. -"Drill, baby, drill" is back in fashion—cheered on by people who also anoint Elon Musk as their messiah. -Sales of electric vehicles climb steadily in deep-red states; how strange is this world  So the question becomes unavoidable: Why? Why, after so many revolutions, movements, protests, and crises, does power not only endure—but thrive? T...

  In the previous blogs, we've explored a planet strained by relentless extraction—a world where some consume far too much, and yet millions still go to bed hungry. We’ve seen the suffering that comes from overconsumption in one corner and desperate scarcity in another. But why? Why does this imbalance persist, despite centuries of innovation, technology, revolutions, and activism? Why, in a world rich enough to feed and shelter everyone, do some continue to accumulate more while so many others are left behind? The answer isn't simply greed. It isn’t merely capitalism or corruption, either—those are symptoms of a deeper design. It is about power : who holds it, who shapes it, and who quietly consents to it. This is where our story must go next. Because to understand consumption, inequality, and environmental collapse, we must first understand the structure of power itself. In the upcoming series, "The Structure of Power: Why It Persists, and Why It Cracks," we’l...

  Blog 7 of the “Living in the Thoughtsphere” Series “The planet is collapsing under too much, while millions still wait for just enough.” That line, from the last blog, won’t leave me. It hovers—quiet but constant. Like a radio signal I can’t quite turn off. Because here’s the truth: I don’t know what enough really means anymore. I’ve seen people add three extra spoonfuls of rice to their plate without thinking. I’ve also seen people stretch one bowl across three children. I’ve lived in places where food was dumped without a glance, and places where tea leaves were reused, quietly, a third time. Enough, it turns out, is a moving target—cultural, circumstantial, deeply personal. But what makes this moment different is that now, it’s also planetary. When we talk about overconsumption—and I do—it’s easy to sound like we’re just saying: “We all need to take less.” But that’s not true. Not all of us have enough to take less from. Not the 800 million still going hungry. Not th...