Reading Time: 9 minutes Although I never needed to “deconvert” from a religious tradition, I was fascinated by New Atheism’s debate circuits at the turn of the century: The eloquence of its speeches. All those witty rejoinders. The rallying of knowledge from a range of disciplines to out-fact an opponent. It was easy to fall prey to the idea […]
global humanism
Posted inHistory
Fascism in India: The role of Nazis in Hindu nationalism
Reading Time: 8 minutes When writing on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in Hindu extremism, I committed the cardinal sin of not defining a key term: fascism. This was a conscious choice, because I’ve written before on how quickly we mire ourselves in political word games. Better to start with the government figure that Western media keeps centering, as […]
Posted inHistory
Fascism in India: Who’s ‘in charge’ of 1.4 billion?
Reading Time: 9 minutes There’s something fascinating, if also disturbing, about Western incuriosity around the world’s largest democracy. 1.4 billion of our world’s 7.8 live in India, a country a third the size of the US, which has under a quarter of India’s population. How can the fortunes of so many mean so little? Nevertheless, India exists in the […]
Posted inWar and Peace
Beyond Ukraine: The global response to (un)civil wars
Reading Time: 6 minutes With Western attention on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s easy to forget the added pain of people from regions where crimes against humanity have been raging all this time. But it’s a whole different level of heartbreak for many to witness European borders suddenly opening wide, stronger sanctions put in place, and international organizations rallying […]
Posted inCulture
Learning to love our messy activism: A podcast on quinoa
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 […]
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 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 inWar and Peace
Peace lessons from Colombia’s long night of war (and still-arriving dawn)
Reading Time: 7 minutes Sometimes I forget that I used to live in a place where national news didn’t routinely bring me word of an assassinated social leader, or another death related to civil-conflict violence. Colombia is the second-most biodiverse country in the world, and even within specific departments (states) afflicted by cartel and guerrilla violence, there is quite […]
Posted inWar and Peace
The cost of uneasy peace and economic warfare
Reading Time: 7 minutes In recent bouts of economic sanctions against Russia, many average citizens are just now learning about the extent of oil imperialism in their lives. But it’s not simply a matter of countries leveraging energy markets against one another. Oil companies stand gleefully at the ready to boost profits and political positioning even as our governments […]
Posted inHistory
The future-history that we want, and the future-history we deserve
Reading Time: 6 minutes Picture it. The Un-seceded States, formerly of the United States, pre-Southern Separation. The year is 2122. A suburban history class is in session, in a converted mall that also serves as home for many families displaced by rising sea levels. The mall generates enough solar energy to contribute to the surrounding grid—at least, when increasing […]