Category Archives: Human Behavior

Thought for Today: Modernity’s Machine of Destruction

17 Sunday May 2026

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Human Behavior, Recommended Reading

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Front Cover – Suicide: The Political and Legal Implications of Creating Endless Mass Death by Roger Hallam with Robin Boardman (UK, 2025)
Photo Credit: Roger Hallam Website

Modernity’s machine – the merging of industrial, bureaucratic, and cultural systems – was hailed as humanity’s savior. Instead, it has become the architect of humanity’s demise. The hyperobject of the climate crisis is the machine’s ultimate creation: vast, uncontrollable, and devastating. It grows from a past riddled with injustice and destruction, erupting into a present where we imprison those who resist it. And this points to a future where our survival hangs by a thread.

[…]

The machine – the complex system that governs us – is where the horror lies. It takes time for us to fully recognize this, especially because it feels so abstract. But deep down, we know. There’s reluctance to confront it, yet the truth is undeniable. If you’re reading this, step away for a moment, take a walk, then come back. It’s time to confront this head-on.

One billion displaced people. That’s the primary scenario we face. It could be more, maybe less. The number is not the point. The point is the scale of catastrophe. This is the reality we’re heading towards.

Excerpts from  Suicide: The Political and Legal Implications of Creating Endless Mass Death by Roger Hallam with Robin Boardman, published by Hard Rain Books, United Kingdom, 2025, pp. 113 & 131-132.  

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The Changing Earth – Balance

10 Sunday May 2026

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Human Behavior, Nature and the Environment

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Tornado outbreak across Missouri to Minnesota – United States of America – April 17, 2026
Photo Credit: Agroinformacion News

This is the fourth article in my series about our changing Earth from interviews with Native Americans shared in We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth, edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth (USA 2022). My presentation does not follow the order of the interviews.

#4: Shannon Rivers (Akimel O’otham) – Balance
      (Chapter 10, pp. 140-158)

Shannon Rivers, a member of the Akimel O’otham (River People), talked with Dahr and Stan in October 2020 from his humble office at the Indian Health Center in San Jose, California. Born in 1966 and raised on the Gila River Indian Community in Southern Arizona, he grew up in poverty, typical of Indigenous reservations.

His stepfather, who entered his life when he was about six or seven years old, was a Korean War veteran. He had an ugly hump on his shoulder from a bullet wound in his collarbone, which shattered and never healed correctly. He drank heavily every day, then awakened at 3 a.m. to work in the cotton fields in the Arizona heat, seven days a week. Though he sobered up around the time Shannon was twelve, there were still issues and dysfunction in the family.

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The Changing Earth – Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine

12 Sunday Apr 2026

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Human Behavior

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Palisades Fire January 2025 – Los Angeles County – California – USA
Photo Credit: CalFire Photo Album
Great Flood Baton Rouge August 2016 – Louisiana – USA
Photo Credit: Climate Central (Photo by Bill Feig/The Advocate)

This is the third article in my series about our changing Earth from interviews with Native Americans shared in We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth, edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth (USA 2022). My presentation does not follow the order of the interviews.

#3: Terri Delahanty (Cree) – Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine
      (Chapter 7, pp. 96-107)

Terri Delahanty, a Cree woman, was interviewed by Dahr Jamail in her home in October 2019, several months before the COVID-19 lockdown. (The majority of the Cree Nation resides in Canada. In the USA, they are primarily located in Montana.) A Sun Dancer for eleven years, she maintains a regular practice of Native ceremonies, meditation, and women’s traditional ceremonies. Also an ordained minister, she is the Native American chaplain for York Correctional Institution, a high security women’s facility, as well as for three of the men’s prisons in Connecticut. She is a founding member of the board of Women in the Spirit and sits on the board of trustees at the Institute of American Indian Studies in Washington Depot, Connecticut.

As a certified parent educator, at the supervisory level, through the National Parents As Teachers Organization, she is the director for Greater Hartford Even Start, a family literacy program. For over twenty years, she is also the director for the extended day program and program coordinator at the University of Hartford Magnet School.

Terri sees her spirit’s journey as bringing knowledge to the Indigenous community about returning to the Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine, lost through patriarchy. “We’ve gotten away from our heart center,” she told Jamail.

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The Changing Earth – Stewardship

08 Sunday Mar 2026

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Human Behavior, Nature and the Environment

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Natural Tar Springs at La Brea – Juristac Tribal Cultural Landscape – California/USA – January 2026
Photo Credit: Protect Juristac Website

This is the second article in my series about our changing Earth from interviews with Native Americans shared in We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth, edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth (USA 2022). My presentation does not follow the order of the interviews.

#2: Alexii Sigona (Amah Mutsun) – Stewardship
      (Chapter 12, pp. 180-192)

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The Changing Earth – Awareness

08 Sunday Feb 2026

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Human Behavior, Nature and the Environment

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Apusiaajik Glacier – Greenland – NASA Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) Mission – 2016-2021
Photo Credit: NASA Sea Level Change: Observations from Space

This is the first article in my series about our changing Earth from interviews with Native Americans shared in We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth, edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth (USA 2022). My presentation does not follow the order of the interviews.

# 1:  Raquel Ramirez (Ho-Chunk, Ojibwe, Lenca) – Awareness
        (Chapter 4, pp. 48-60)

Born on that memorable day of September 11, 2001, Raquel Ramirez is the youngest participant interviewed via Skype during the pandemic lockdown in midsummer 2020. She defines herself as an urban Native American, Ho-Chunk and Ojibwe, and other strong Native family roots. Growing up in California, she’s greatly influenced by the state’s indigenous cultures.

In addressing the crises we face on our changing Earth, Raquel considers awareness as a challenge to confront and overcome. Breaking free of ignorance in society and our own ignorance is, she acknowledges, an emotional and difficult process.

Awareness doesn’t just mean listening or hearing or recognizing. It is very much being present and being conscious of people beyond you!

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You look beautiful!

05 Sunday Oct 2025

Posted by in Human Behavior

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Rosaliene’s Outfit – Dress-Jacket-Hat – September 30, 2025

Since I had two medical appointments last week that consumed my writing time, I did not plan to publish a post today. I began writing this article in bed today at 7:11 a.m. As I stay up late on Saturday evenings for what I call my Movie Night, I usually sleep in until 9 o’clock on Sundays. Today, I woke up early and stayed in bed reflecting on life here in my adopted homeland. In my state of half-awake consciousness, I allowed my thoughts to flow freely. Incidents across space and time—spanning my life in Guyana, Brazil, and here in the United States—came and went.

I recalled shocking a group of black American businesswomen during a networking event held by the Black Business Association (BBA) in Los Angeles, of which I had been invited to become a member. At the time, I had just started my home-based, sole-proprietor business, promoting trade with Brazil. It was the year 2007. Not yet having lost my Brazilian jeito de ser or way of being, I was sharing with them the Brazilian way of doing business. I don’t recall what I said that day, but I remember well one of the women saying, with disdain in her voice: Are you trying to shock us?

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Decapitated: Travails of Motherhood

11 Sunday May 2025

Posted by in Human Behavior, Nature and the Environment

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Aeonium Mint 03/15/25
Aeonium Mint Decapitated 04/12/25

Decapitated
Life cycle interrupted
Obstructing the path

I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, it was just a matter of time that a neighbor would complain to Management about a plant obstructing our sidewalk. It’s not the first time. On separate occasions, I’ve had two neighbors complain about a rosebush and potted palm getting in their way. Since then, I’m usually diligent in trimming excessive growth. This time, I couldn’t bring myself to cut back the glorious bloom of the Aeonium Mint invading our space.

With motherhood comes great responsibility
to raise a child in the world
without guarantees for their safety and growth

Decapitated for being different
for obstructing the path of others
by the bullies, the haters, the abductors
the destroyers of lives
In a natural world abounding with diversity

Rosaliene’s Garden: Bee visiting flowers of Aeonium Mint 04/27/25

The children of humankind
nurse at the breasts of Mother Earth
She gives freely to all
for we are all worthy of her grace
Such is the miracle of being

May your Mother’s Day be blessed.

Thought for Today: The Doorway in the Ruins

09 Sunday Jun 2024

Posted by in Human Behavior, Recommended Reading

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Front Cover: A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit
Photo Credit: Penguin Books (USA, 2009)

Who are you? Who are we? The history of disaster demonstrates that most of us are social animals, hungry for connection, as well as for purpose and meaning. It also suggests that if this is who we are, then everyday life in most places is a disaster that disruptions sometimes give us a chance to change. They are a crack in the walls that ordinarily hem us in, and what floods in can be enormously destructive—or creative. Hierarchies and institutions are inadequate to these circumstances; they are often what fails in such crises. Civil society is what succeeds, not only in an emotional demonstration of altruism and mutual aid but also in a practical mustering of creativity and resources to meet the challenges.

Excerpt from “Epilogue: The Doorway in the Ruins,” A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit, Penguin Books, New York, USA, 2009 (p. 305).

The disasters covered in this book include: Earthquake San Francisco/California/USA (1906), Explosion Halifax/Nova Scotia/Canada (1917), The Blitz/London/UK (1940), Earthquake Mexico City/Mexico (1985), Bombing World Trade Center/New York/USA (2001), and Hurricane Katrina New Orleans/USA (2005).

REBECCA SOLNIT, writer, historian, and activist, is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and urban history, popular power, social change and insurrection, hope and catastrophe. Her books include Orwell’s Roses; Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International, and recently launched the climate project Not Too Late (nottoolateclimate.com).

Thought for Today: Warriors of the Light Never Accept the Unacceptable

05 Sunday May 2024

Posted by in Human Behavior

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Front Cover – Warrior of the Light: A Manual by Paulo Coelho

“Hitler may have lost the war on the battlefield, but he ended up winning something too,” says Marek Halter, “because man in the twentieth century created the concentration camp and revived torture and taught his fellow men that it is possible to close their eyes to the misfortunes of others.”

Perhaps he is right: There are abandoned children, massacred civilians, innocent people imprisoned, lonely old people, drunks in the gutter, madmen in power.

But perhaps he isn’t right at all, for there are also Warriors of the Light.

And Warriors of the Light never accept what is unacceptable.

Excerpt from Warrior of the Light: A Manual by Paulo Coelho, Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa, HarperOne, New York, USA, 2003, p. 70.

PAULO COELHO, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1947, is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist, best known for his novel, The Alchemist (1988). His work has been published in more than 170 countries and translated into eighty languages. His books have had a life-enchanting impact on millions of people worldwide.