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Greeley Miklashek, MD's avatar

Nice literary ploy, but you omitted the monumental effort the corporate MSM is making to distract and gaslight us away from facing the existential threat of climate collapse currently underway and gaining steam. Oh, no, Mr. Bill! Gregg

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Michael's avatar

To catch every thing would require a book Gregg! What a mess.

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Michael's avatar

Thanks to everyone who bothers to read my little jeremiad. Likely reactions? Even me?

Q.E.D.

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Walter Tschinkel's avatar

Oh Nooooooooo! The back burner is busted and out of gas !

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Michael's avatar

That comment deserves a thousand likes! Well I guess all we can do is chive on and do our best. I sometimes think, Walter, that we are the Swiss army knife of the tetrapodia: we are good at doing lots of things but not really excellent at anything, except maybe coming up with new flavors for ketchup and potato chips. We are the ultimate amateurs and the planet shows it!

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KB's  FROM THE PETRI DISH's avatar

Did you know that Cunctator was the nickname of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus? https://www.wordnik.com/words/cunctator

Good post

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Michael's avatar

I did indeed. He was the original of the term "Fabian tactics" and I suppose the British Fabian Society, delaying strategies are ancient military practice. The Romans used them, the Russians used them to good effect and I personally use them in my daily life, except that I call the process "procrastinating" -why do today what I can put off till tomorrow? But the strategy demands either geographic, resource base, or temporal conditions to work and we are running out of all three. You are widely read, KB!!

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Neil Barker's avatar

Haha, I remember seeing the old Mr. Bill skits from SNL. good times.

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Michael's avatar

Me too! 🙂

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Heather Hardy's avatar

I like "biopathic", Michael. I might even steal it.

Well... I just did a search on the term and found it used in Reich's orgone theory, so I might need to clarify my usage.

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Michael's avatar

Hi Heather, thanks for reading the essay. I thought I was the first to come up with that term but as it always happens someone else best me to it. Reich and his orgone boxes l-:I remember him from the seventies I think, along with Janov and Silva, Traeger, Rolf, reiki, chakra balancing, polarity therapy,... so many people and ideas that flooded into the mass consciousness in the sixties and seventies. I imagine Reich used "pathic" in the sense of naturopathic or homeopathic- something therapeutic. I used it as a suffix in the sense of pathological- sociopathic, something the opposite. If I hadn't been so lazy and googled "my" new term, I might have seen Reich got there first. Nothing new under the sun alas. Perhaps "Ecopathic" would have been more apt?! Or "ecocidal"?!

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Jason Anthony's avatar

Hi Michael, this is Jason from the Field Guide, actually. I forgot that Heather had signed in... (She's about to start her own Substack with nature-based songs.) Sorry for the confusion.

I thought you'd find the overlap with the orgone energy thing amusing. But I'm sure you're right about his usage of "pathic", so your neologism is solid. Ecopathic is a good one too, and ecocidal is already in use.

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Michael's avatar

Hey Jason! I'm googling everything from now on before I claim ownership!! I'm not googling right now when I'm guessing that even Reich wasn't first. Maybe if we went far enough back we'd find this term has been used repeatedly since we're dealing with Greek roots. Nothing new under the sun most times!

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