Reading Time: 4 minutes There’s the world we want to live in, and there’s the world we have. In many conversations here on OnlySky, I’ve noticed that one of the biggest mental blocks in activist discourse is our frustration that people won’t think or do differently right now. Why should we cater to their ignorance, or their obstinacy? There’s […]
M L Clark
GLOBAL HUMANIST SHOPTALK
M L Clark is a Canadian writer by birth, now based in Medellín, Colombia, who publishes speculative fiction and humanist essays with a focus on imagining a more just world.
Posted inCulture
Fighting exploitation in the Amazon calls for new alliances…even with missionaries
Reading Time: 5 minutes An ounce of gold is currently worth almost twice as much as an ounce of cocaine. That reality has changed the funding formula for guerrilla and paramilitary groups in Venezuela and Colombia. Where narcotrafficking once brought in the lion’s share of resources for groups like ELN and dissident FARC, two heavily-armed movements that occupy densely […]
Posted inScience
Can we make science journalism better for everyday readers?
Reading Time: 8 minutes Every person with an active interest in the natural world has their personal bugbear when it comes to the way journalists write about science. Maybe it’s neuroscience. Maybe it’s a common engineering problem. For me, it’s evolution. I cannot stand the way that most mainstream media reports on evolution for the everyday reader. And since […]
Posted inEnvironment
What degrowth is, and why it matters
Reading Time: 11 minutes In Livermore, California, there is a light bulb that never goes out. It was installed in 1901 in a fire station that didn’t realize for many decades what a wonder it had on its hands. The bulb was made by the Shelby Electric Company, with a patented-coil carbon filament eight times thicker than the tungsten […]
Posted inCritical thinking
The messy problem of scientific illiteracy
Reading Time: 8 minutes Pity the poor bipedal ape. We’re a strange species, to have grown so much in shared knowledge, and still be so limited by the fragility of individual noggins. Though I have never been religious, and never believed in a god, still I share with theists the same neurological “meat” that can make personal conviction feel […]
Posted inCulture
Wellness is systemic: A podcast episode for mental health
Reading Time: 4 minutes When I first recorded episodes for Global Humanist Shoptalk last year, I had no idea what 2022 was going to hold. I did suspect that far-right legislation would continue to pose problems, and that pandemic wouldn’t be over so easily after all. But I certainly wouldn’t have put money on a full-on war in Ukraine […]
Posted inEnvironment
Solarpunk humanism: How we dream bigger than despair
Reading Time: 5 minutes One unspoken tenet of anti-theist discourse is that we are limited by the religious stories at the core of our culture. For that slice of the nonreligious spectrum, it’s not enough not to believe, personally, in a god. The nature of religion poses a narrative problem that anti-theists feel must be confronted at every turn. […]
Posted inScience
There is hope, too, in the well
Reading Time: 5 minutes A common belief in journalism is that you have to emphasize the horror of a situation to spur action. If people aren’t driven by an existential threat, how can we ever expect them to act for a better world? But the well of our world’s suffering runs deep enough with sorrow. We still have a […]
Posted inSex & Gender
The secular humanist’s guide to trans advocacy
Reading Time: 16 minutes I really didn’t want to have to write this piece. Amid pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, along with famines, the ravages of climate change, and other global conflicts, did the U.S. really need to exacerbate human trauma by introducing so much harmful legislation lately? Gosh. Even writing that, it’s hard to pin down which […]
Posted inWar and Peace
Remaking the Western goal of peace
Reading Time: 7 minutes In my last three pieces, I explored some of the historical myths, economic complexities, and alternative approaches to peace that we as global humanists need to reckon with in pursuit of a better world. In a pat, self-congratulatory series, this would be where we sum up. This would be where bandaid solutions and vague hopefulness […]