Brad Jarvis's Page

Recently, two critical efforts to improve the future, healthcare reform in Washington and climate catastrophe mitigation in Copenhagen, hit a wall of compromise that proved (to me, at least) that our current model of relying on “leaders” to solve big problems does not work, and should not be expected to. The status quo simply has too much inertia for any small group of people to successfully challenge, especially if their livelihoods and personal power depends on maintaining it.

Unfortunately,… Continue

Coming to terms with the fact that maximizing individual consumption and power over others is incompatible with maximizing the longevity of our species and the well-being of the most number of people, I’ve become increasingly revolted by the overarching promotion of consumption and competition in the socioeconomic system I currently inhabit.

Emotional reactions typically stem from a clash with one’s values. This might suggest that my values have changed, given that it is a major change from how… Continue

There are at least three ways we can present ourselves to the rest of the world. We can “look good” by hiding or disguising anything that doesn’t match our perception of what’s positive about ourselves (where “positive” is defined by our values). Doing the exact opposite, we can “look bad” by displaying only the parts of ourselves that we don’t like. Third, we can “look true”: enable others to perceive us exactly as we are. In reality, each of us tends to be somewhere in the spectrum between the… Continue

In ecology, “invasive species” are species that evolve in one type of ecosystem and either move, or are moved, into another type of ecosystem. Once there, they typically wreak havoc by outcompeting native species. Humans are arguably the most successful invasive species on the planet; and will continue to be, until we either change, or finish driving ourselves extinct along with as many other species as we can take with us.

Our corporations and empire-building nations are perhaps the most visib… Continue

I recently watched the movie “The World According to Monsanto,” which together with the movie “Flow” illustrates how corporations are acquiring as much power as they can, up to and including controlling the basic necessities of survival. It is apparently anathema to them for anything to be free and for anyone to not be totally dependent on them. This is the path to monoculture, and because it increases both consumption and the vulnerability of the entire population to single points of failure, t… Continue