Essay
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Why is IKEA so cheap?
Bulk buying, flat packs, DIY assembly and a tight grip on its supply chain keep IKEA cheap. Here’s how it works, and what it costs forests and the climate.
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On Deep Ethics
Although “ethics” is commonly equated with a set of rules or principles for right conduct, deep ethics has more to do with a simple humility toward others – an attentive openness not just toward other persons but toward the inexhaustible otherness of the manifold beings that compose this earthly world. When we consider the palpable…
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Hope In the Anthropocene
There’s no such thing as the future. Instead, the roads before us stretch in a near-infinity of potential directions. We get to choose the route; in the words of famed cyberethicist Sarah Connor, there’s no fate but what we make. Of course, some of the futures we could choose are better than others. Perhaps we…
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Magic and the Machine: Notes on Technology and Animism in an Age of Ecological Wipeout
A hallmark of the puzzling era we’re now living through is a remarkable juxtaposition of two apparently contrary trends. In many social circles, there exists a buoyant sense of possibility, an upbeat and expectant optimism with regard to the near and long-term future. Yet in other societal spheres, a spreading despondency weighs folks down whenever…
