Caitlin Johnstone: Until you have let go of your world, you are in no position to help it

The old ways have failed us, and yet we keep trying to preserve them.

We sit on the brink of extinction, as great a failure as a species can possibly attain, yet still we look to the past for advice.

The ancestors built a system which rewards sociopathy, and now we are ruled by sociopaths.

The ancestors made exploitation profitable, and now we are all being exploited.

The ancestors made ecocide profitable, and now we are watching our ecosystem collapse.

The ancestors made war profitable, and now we are on the precipice of nuclear annihilation.

The old ideas have led us to this point, yet still we take advice from the writings of dead men.

Life is ever-changing. Life is alive. Life isn’t where the dead ancestors left it.

Trying to navigate through life using the ideas of dead men is like trying to navigate the earth using a map of Pangaea.

Your entire understanding of the world is based on the long-dead thoughts of long-dead men. Your language. Your history. Your culture. Your government.

The knowledge of dead men can be useful for learning concepts. But the ability to navigate life with wisdom and skill is not a concept.

The way out of this mess isn’t in the direction that we have been walking.

The direction out of this mess will be new and unprecedented, wildly divergent from the old patterns. This will mean a great leap into the unfamiliar.

Leaps into the unfamiliar are always frightening. But leap you must if you want to be of use to the world.

If you want to help save your world, you must let it go completely. Everything you’ve ever known, right down to your most foundational beliefs about reality.

You must relinquish your attachment to everything you’ve ever known, because all you’ve ever known are the dead ideas which brought us here.

Take the leap into the unfamiliar. Let it all go.

Trying to help the world guided by your mental understanding of it is like pulling against a tangled knot; you only make it tighter. You must instead turn around and begin untangling.

Stop pulling at the knot. Stop trying to help. Your helping is only making it worse. Untie your knots first.

Caught up in old conceptual frameworks, you will always be acting based on the same deluded perceptions which got us here. Free from your world of dead concepts, you can see clearly enough to help.

Let your world die. Let your world of dead ideas die so that the real world can get a word in edgewise.

Let death die so that life may live.

All of your attachments to this world are attachments to concepts. Your conceptual understanding of the world is not the world.

Relinquish all your attachments. Overcome your fear of the unknown. If there is any hope for us, it lies in the unprecedented.

Until you have given your world full permission to die, you’re in no position to help it.

Let your whole world die. What remains will guide you.

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“How has serving impacted you?”


the link to this post from the about post is embedded in this date: 2019-05-25
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thorium: no meltdowns, no bombs


“ ... the greenhouse effect has been detected, and is changing our climate now.”
—James Hansen, testimony before the US Senate, June 23, 1988 / reviewed 30 years later in Slate*

For us to halt and reverse climate change at our current level of energy use or higher requires us “to develop a new generation of nuclear-power plants, which use thorium-fueled molten salt reactors [an alternative nuclear technology] that fundamentally cannot have a meltdown.” James Hansen (Rolling Stone, 22 December 2016 )

A prototype reactor of this type was built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and ran continuously for 20,000 hours until the project was defunded. Alvin Weinberg was fired by the Nixon administration from ORNL after 18 years as the laboratory's director because he continued to advocate increased nuclear safety and molten salt reactors (MSRs). Weinberg’s firing put a stop to further MSR development.

starting at 10:11 in the following video, Norwegian nuclear physicist Sunniva Rose demonstrates on a marked-up segment of a table of nuclides that using thorium as a fuel avoids the highly problematic by-products of using uranium and generates only mildly radioactive by-products of little interest to anyone building nuclear bombs


Does a heap of coal contain an energy-equivalent amount of uranium? Yes. Coal is not just a mix of carbon and hydrocarbons but also contains smaller amounts of many minerals, some of them radioactive.

The radioactivity of fly ash passes without comment for the most part.

The two most populous countries have plenty of coal but almost no oil. China and India are each investing in thorium-based nuclear power. Take a look at thorium reactor development in India, for instance.

As for Canada, in Truthdig today Chris Hedges says:

Former NASA scientist James Hansen has warned that if the tar sands oil is fully exploited, it will be “game over for the planet.” He has also called for the CEOs of fossil fuel companies to be tried for high crimes against humanity.

However, as James Hansen says at 2:02 in the video at top, “So long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy then we’re going to keep burning them, and we can’t solve the problem.”

What is needed to shut down all further carbon and hydrocarbon extraction is unbeatable price competition from alternative energy sources, including thorium-based nuclear power.


The above and other documents by James Hansen are listed on the Internet Archive here.

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still image from video of marked-up table of nuclides:



2019-04-28T21:12−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: April 28, 2019
*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*
2021-06-07 / see also Kirk Sorensen‘s very detailed July 2009 Tech Talk at Google*
… and more recently, the item in this tweet:
the two-ton U-233 stockpile comes up in a November 2019 piece by Helen Caldicott: The delusion of thorium*

2022-07-16 / see also an interesting October 2021 article on China and thorium energy in European Scientist*

estimated thorium reserves (tonnes) by country:

source: World Nuclear Association*


Alvin Weinberg fired from ORNL (!?)

thorium (!*)

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January 1944: State of the Union


image copied from here

excerpt, copied from here, follows:

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America's own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

One of the great American industrialists of our day—a man who has rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis-recently emphasized the grave dangers of “rightist reaction” in this Nation. All clear-thinking businessmen share his concern. Indeed, if such reaction should develop—if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called "normalcy" of the 1920's—then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.

I ask the Congress to explore the means for implementing this economic bill of rights—for it is definitely the responsibility of the Congress so to do. Many of these problems are already before committees of the Congress in the form of proposed legislation. I shall from time to time communicate with the Congress with respect to these and further proposals. In the event that no adequate program of progress is evolved, I am certain that the Nation will be conscious of the fact.

Our fighting men abroad and their families at home expect such a program and have the right to insist upon it. It is to their demands that this Government should pay heed rather than to the whining demands of selfish pressure groups who seek to feather their nests while young Americans are dying.

The foreign policy that we have been following—the policy that guided us at Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran—is based on the common sense principle which was best expressed by Benjamin Franklin on July 4, 1776: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

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