Darwinian Interlude

Welcome to DarwinianInterlude.org

“Three billion years ago, life was then a community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information so that clever chemical tricks and catalytic processes invented by one creature could be inherited by all of them.

Evolution was a communal affair.

But then, one evil day, a cell resembling a primitive bacterium happened to find itself one jump ahead of its neighbors in efficiency. That cell separated itself from the community and refused to share.

The Darwinian interlude had begun.

Now, after three billion years,

the Darwinian interlude is over.

— Freeman Dyson

Excavating Our Biases

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism
– Walter Benjamin

It is increasingly clear that our current approach to nature, our culture, ourselves, and each other is not working.

We’re a species that’s 250-300 thousand years old. New assumptions slowly baked into our worldview over the last five thousand (1-2% of our full species-span), such as that of unending progress or the perfection of our species, worked well in the short term but are now a liability.

(Thanks, Elon, but living forever on Mars as a decanted brain is quite possibly not a viable plan.)

Beer!

This article is dedicated to my brothers and sisters in the Madison High School class of 1970.

As a result of my recent dive into Bronze Age archeology, I have learned some interesting facts about beer. The first is that modern chemical analysis and genetic testing can actually determine what was in 5000 year old beverages. The second is that beer was a lot weirder 5000 years ago. Third, it is extremely likely that agriculture, i.e., cultivating a garden-sized patch of grain, was invented roughly 9000 years ago to make beer, not bread.

Learning from Disaster continued: Reverse Engineering Sharp Joy

This article builds on a previous: Sharp Joy: emotion, two communities, a slow-rolling book report, and some reflection. That article looks at some projects I’m involved in and then considers how we behave in natural disasters. It uses Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disasters to add general insight. The quotation below used in that article is a good summary of where the article lands.

We need ties, but they, along with purposefulness, immediacy, and agency, also give us joy—the startling, sharp joy I found in accounts of disaster survivors. These accounts demonstrate that the citizens any paradise would need—the people who are brave enough, resourceful enough, and generous enough—already exist.

Sharp Joy: emotion, two communities, a slow-rolling book report, and some reflection

Embedded below is the deck for a presentation I gave at Solarpunkification 2026 in San Francisco. It looks at some projects I’m involved in, and then gets into the psychological side of our response to disasters. That last point will be the jumping-off point for a piece I’m working on, so I’ll need this for reference and wanted to add it….read it into the record, as it were. The parts highlighted in yellow are particularly relevant; I’ll also add some summary text from it below the deck as Cliff Notes.

(The deck is not really going to be readable on a phone, btw.)

Slides 1-15 – Little USA Solar Community Campus in Union Springs, Alabama. (Aunt Gwen rocks!)
Slide 3 – Intro to disaster psychology / Rebecca Solnit
Slides 16-18 – Working with Ovanova and Alabama’s challenging regulatory environment
Slides 19-21 – Ovanova responds to Hurricane Helene
Slides 22-25 – Analysis of the people’s response to a variety of disasters – Rebecca Solnit
Slides 26-32 – Ovanova as an example of what she’s talking about
Slides 33-36 – Conclusions and a personal note

Crete: in search of the pre-patriarchal Goddess

Folks have been making up shit about the Minoans for 3000 years. My turn:-)

We’re on vacation in Crete, chosen because of a long-term fascination with the Minoan civilization. The attraction: a well-developed pre-patriarchal Goddess-worshiping civilization with fascinating art— art unlike anything that followed in Greece or Rome. Minoan pottery shows few, if any, battles, for example. Greek pottery, beginning shortly after the Minoans, is rife with them.

Of the two designs below, I have a strong preference for the first.

Common Minoan potter design vs a later Greek design: Achilles killing the Amazon Queen Penthesilea, both Public Domain — Common Minoan potter design – Public Domain

A later Greek design on the right: Achilles killing the Amazon Queen Penthesilea – public domain

SideCar: The Minos Myth

This is a single reference point for Greek myths about Minoan Crete.

Starting probably shortly after the Mycenaean takeover of Crete and altered and adapted thereafter (~1450 BCE onward to Roman consolidation of Greek content ~50 BCE), the myth of King Minos comes to us in the following form.

Move over Bicycle Day, Tram Day is coming through

As we move into an era of psychedelic-assisted therapy, it is time to honor the contribution of Susi Ramstein, the first trip sitter.

Image is under Creative Commons by donDSTR

This was published previously on Medium.com, 6/6/2024

Bicycle Day

Bicycle Day, celebrated by the MAPS crowd, is an annual event that honors the first ingestion of LSD by Albert Hoffman, its discoverer, at Sandoz Labs in Basel, Switzerland, on April 19, 1943.

Experiencing profound effects from a dose he thought too low to have any, Hoffman decided to bicycle home, where he’d feel safer.

Hence, Bicycle Day every April 19.

Hoffman did not ride alone.

From Invasive Species to Anchor Species – Point Source Solutions

Creative Commons License. NimoStar https://www.deviantart.com/nimostar/art/Tropical-Solarpunk-Utopia-933615169

Probably everyone is aware of the term ‘invasive species.’ We immediately think of kudzu in the Southeast, quagga mussels in the Great Lakes, or Burmese pythons in the Everglades. There’s one species that tops them all. Us.

Invasive species

Here’s a definition of invasive species according to the Feds (https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov):

1) non-native (or alien) to the ecosystem under consideration, and 2) whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.

That seems a bit humancentric.

Christianity from the Heart

Image generated with ChatGPT — for the real deal, see: https://www.lionsroar.com/how-meditation-changes-your-brain-and-your-life/

Heart

A decade or so ago, I saw a talk by Dr. Richard Davidson. He began by describing an experiment with highly experienced meditators, i.e., Tibetan monks in Dharamsala.

As he and his team were placing a collection of sensors on the skull of their first subject, the monks burst out laughing. He assumed it was because the sight was comical. Then, one of the monks explained that it was because he was hooking up the sensors to the subject’s skull and not his heart!

His message: listen to your heart.

My response: wtf is that supposed to mean? Highly localized sensations in the chest? A generalized buzz? Tap once for yes and twice for no. Some sort of Morse Code? Couldn’t it simply be a clue you’re in for a heart attack? I sent an email asking for hints…c’mon, Dr. Richie, connect the dots for me…but got nothing back.

Pascal’s Wager – Agnostic Variation

Blaise Pascal — copy of the painting by François II Quesnel, which was made for Gérard Edelinck en 1691, source Wikipedia.

Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
— Matthew 7:17–20, KJV

Recently, at a funeral, I was subjected again to “belief in God, heck, it’s just a common sense insurance policy for success in the afterlife”.

(Heck, btw, is where you go if you don’t believe in Gosh.)

It’s pretty much my least favorite argument against agnosticism!

The OG version is called Pascal’s wager. Pascal argues that we should believe in God to hedge our bets.