This article addresses an issue of growing political importance: the global rise of civilizational populism. From Western Europe to India and Pakistan, and from Indonesia to the Americas, populists are increasingly linking social belonging with civilizational identity—and at times to the belief that the world is divided into religion-based civilizations, some of which are doomed to clash with one another.

The belief that one’s religion trumps other faiths precipitates the stance that it trumps science too. This psychological process is most likely to operate in regions or countries with low religious heterogeneity.

How a lack of religious diversity in a place engenders fundamentalism.

En-‘chanted’ land is not only land that has been sung to, but land who has had its own song listened to and sung back to it: land that is understood for its own specificity. And through that understanding, the land radiates back in true expression of itself, the same way a child beams when understood—or, when sung to.

Standing on the top of Mount Everest, a person can literally look at places where plants and animals happily grow and live and reproduce, yet no species has established a permanent self-sustaining population on the upper slopes of Everest.

Linked above is part 1, here is the link to part 2, and here is the link to part 3. I’d also recommend topping the series off with his tour of the IceCube facility which is the largest experiment at the South Pole and an example of the science they can do there that would be impossible to do elsewhere.

Stateless people do not elect officials, enjoy diplomatic representation, or possess the lucre of a corporate lobby. Without political rights they can exert only so much pressure; activist groups, charities, and NGOs are their main source of support. This makes people without a citizenship uniquely vulnerable to exploitation

Perhaps the biggest of all the snacks the Milky Way has had since the Gaia Enceladus breakfast is the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy which first fell in about 5 billion years ago.

the link between Sinhala nationalism and Buddhist religion based on the conceptual framework of “Geopiety.”

Before this point I had a very naive and simplistic view of the Israel/Palestine issue. I thought of it as a conflict between two religious peoples who had competing claims for the same area of land and occasionally killed one another over it…

Premodern rice farming could plausibly create strong social norms because paddy rice relied on irrigation networks. Rice farmers coordinated their water use and kept track of each person’s labor contributions. Rice villages also established strong norms of reciprocity to cope with labor demands that were twice as high as dryland crops like wheat. In line with this theory, China’s historically rice-farming areas had tighter social norms than wheat-farming areas, even beyond differences in development and urbanization.

Policy-makers often mistakenly view host state security and refugee security as unrelated–or even opposing–factors. In reality, refugee protection and state stability are linked together; undermining one factor weakens the other. Policies to protect refugees, both physically and legally, reduce potential threats from the crisis and bolster state security. In general, risks of conflict are higher when refugees live in oppressive settings, lack legal income-generation options, and are denied education for their youth.

Continuously enfolding the lives, activities, values and times of all its previous inhabitants, the landscape is simultaneously unfolding to its current inhabitant or observer as a corpus of heterogeneous narratives – myths, legends, historical accounts or individual life-histories attached to it. […] ‘Landscape is time materializing.’

East Asians and Westerners perceive the world and think about it in very different ways.

Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.

Remember me, my father sings
to the forest…

To be specific, there are practically thousands of
the aforementioned abiding in perpetual near riot
of wild behavior, indiscriminate coloring, and only
the Good Lord Himself can say what diverse soliciting…

In spite of all reports
Accusations
Predictions
We aren’t gone

… the tourist town
below us, in buildings made old
by the deliberate hand of business,
not the rain, the sun, the untold
billions of raindrops and tear drops…

i am in the backseat. my father driving. from mansurah to cairo. delta to desert…

My windows are your eyes not mine.

The one we tried to jump and failed
The one he jumped and wasn’t forgiven
The one in the books that made animals of us
The ones that told us who we weren’t

I wept in my clothes on the street
where olive trees turned their foil palms.

Every leaf emerges as a green blade
and the cries of life take over the night…

For a similar poem by another Ukrainian poet about life during war, see “We Lived Happily During the War” by Ilya Kaminsky.

Everything is a union of one kind or another.
Foothills know this. Highways too.

Residents of oil-producing communities do more than merely consent to the operations of industry: they actively identify with the oil industry and perceive their interests and the industry’s interests as one and the same. This intense identification is manifest in community members’ vocal defence of the industry and in their adoption of industry-propagated frames of reference for understanding wider energy-related issues.

Fundamental geographic concepts and regions are presented in concise chapters that provide a foundational framework for understanding development patterns around the world. Essential topics include location, the environment, and global economic dynamics. The book focuses on the primary issues that have created our societal structures within a framework for global understanding.

I feel like I’ve fallen off the map yet am, oddly, in the center of the universe…

A journalist writes humorously about traveling the world and what different cultures seem to believe about “the good life.”

It’s a 6-inch circle of soil and a column of air above it. The column is marked by a 6-foot granite ring embedded flush into the concrete…

Texas Longhorns wore the most unruly, belligerent cattle. And so the idea that this little piece of barbed wire could keep them out of anywhere was just laughable.

The story of how barbed wire enclosed the American West

The essay connects the field of Buddhist studies to a larger conversation in the field of global education, arguing that Buddhist studies travel courses must interrogate concepts of global citizenship, address the legacies of colonialism, and teach the principles of ethical travel, in addition to introducing students to the living traditions of global Buddhism.

they imagine that most of us sit around small huts, waiting for the West to deliver another aid package. Or they imagine that, you know, we all grew up with lions and tigers in our backyards. Unfortunately, that’s a myth that has endured now for generations and generations.

It is often said that the increasing availability and applicability of remote sensing technologies has contributed to the rise of what can be called ‘satellite-based activism’ empowering non-state groups to challenge state practices of seeing and showing. In this article we argue that NGO activism is not challenging the sovereign gaze of the state but, on the contrary, actually reinforcing it.

Windowless now, roofless, tucked
under the first, sheltering hill of a range
that ran all the way to Mexico…

Monks, after consideration, that monk is to leave that wilderness grove; he is not to live there.

The factors a Buddhist should consider when deciding where to stay.

in Rangjung Dorje’s poems, the environment is presented as a catalyst for seeing the enlightened “view”. This paper looks at the metaphorical landscape that Rangjung Dorje’s poems evoke, or, to incorporate a helpful term from contemporary literary studies, their “psychogeography”, their “sense of place”.

This research highlights the contrast between religiously oriented understandings of the environment and Green Buddhist representations in their various guises, where they intersect, and how elements of Green Tibetan discourse are being articulated and reshaped in one rural locality.

The authors look at the indigenous environmentalism of rural Tibet through the lenses of local gods and spirits, karma, and sīla/śīla. The article also speaks to modern influences such as capitalist development and government policies.

The mind of man is capable of anything.

A British novel about the “horrors” of colonialism and what Europeans thought about them.

For more about this classic novel, see (for example) the Writ Large Episode on the book and its history.

abíní hoolzish
the low-moon horizon turquoise serenes pink-lit…

An upsurge in Taiwan-based Mazu temple buildings has been observed in China recently. This paper applies qualitative research methods, including participatory observation and semi-structured interviews, to explore the development of Mazu temples in Tianjin, Kunshan, and Xiamen, China in terms of cross-regional connectivity, materiality, and cross-regional locality, to explore the process of transplantation and construction in the mainland. This paper finds that Mazu culture is a reproduction of the vision of “one race one culture” in the cultural space, and this spatial reproduction is realized through cross-strait religious and cultural exchanges.

Their design ideas were radically different but the reaction was the same: people hated it.

On the importance of autonomy and power in interior design.

and no his smile isn’t much
like a skeleton at all. And no
his neighborhood is not like a war zone

People, where they live, their ways of life, and their interactions in different places around the world.

An introduction to the human landscape of Earth. Primarily aimed at undergraduates in the United States, the book should still be appropriate for anyone interested in learning more about the current, physical arrangement of humanity.

The temples were a signal that the previous people who came to Delphi had gotten the truth.

i open the screen door slowly
n wait for Abuela n her red walker
to begin the procession
from the back door out to the street

… they voted unanimously, every person there, that they would not provide labor to allow any drilling or mining to go ahead. These were men who would’ve made money, it might have been years of work for them if oil drilling and mining had gone ahead, but they didn’t want to spoil what many of them—having been to The Great Barrier Reef—knew was at risk

A brief history of the United Nations’ efforts to promote cultural tolerance in the aftermath of World War II.

You have to live your way into a new way of thinking.

An earnest introduction to humanity.

Primarily intended for young Americans, The Art of Being Human has enough perennial wisdom and charming sincerity to make it an enjoyable read for most.

With its tropical climate, lower costs and culture of respect for the elderly, Thailand is attracting families dealing with dementia and Alzheimer’s from as far away as Europe.

Deepa’s Russian pens pals were obsessed with Bollywood

On the cultural exchange between newly-independent India and the U.S.S.R.

… he longed for a place to escape to. And then he found Heyoon.

Even today it has been estimated that nearly half the population of India defecate in the open, a major cause of […] water born disease.

… to create a healthy indoor space, make it more like the outdoors

On mountaintops, in secluded forests and on islands and the like,
Places which are agreeable to the mind and well suited to the season

… this paper aims for a philosophically more nuanced discussion of the case for and against eating locally. I assess, in turn, locavore arguments based on environmental preservation, human health, community support, agrarian values and political concerns

The law of sacred centers imagines space from the inside out.

A fascinating meditation on the way modern culture thinks about space and sovereignty and what is lost, even by the state, when local communities are disrupted.

Nearly incontrovertible in its conclusion, the book inspired a revolution in charity in the West and encouraged many (me included) to donate more to charity than they ever had before.

The tenth anniversary edition is available for free online.

In 94 B.C., the Chinese historian Sima Qian wrote, “In the area south of the Yangtze the land is low and the climate humid; adult males die young.”

The spread of farming from those few sites of origin usually did not occur as a result of the hunter-gatherers’ elsewhere adopting farming; hunter-gatherers tend to be conservative…. Instead, farming spread mainly through farmers’ outbreeding hunters, developing more potent technology, and then killing the hunters or driving them off of all lands suitable for agriculture.

A classic of anthropology and world history, this book answers the simple historical question: Why was Europe able to conquer the world during the Early Modern / Colonial period?

The short answer to this question is the book’s title and the long answer, its contents.

Shrines in parks and woodland shrines,
Well-constructed lotus ponds:
These are not worth a sixteenth part
Of a delightful human being.

Whether in a village or forest,
In a valley or on the plain–
Wherever the arahants dwell
Is truly a delightful place.

Sakka asks what place is truly delightful and the Buddha replies.

…and maybe because of the boiling April sun, he thought about water and ice. Water and ice were made of the same thing. He thought most people were made of the same thing, too. He himself was probably a little different from the corrupt people around him. Ice was distinct from—and in his view, better than—what it was made of. He wanted to be better than what he was made of. In Mumbai’s dirty water, he wanted to be ice.

A haunting and beautiful portrait of humanity, Behind the Beautiful Forevers reads more like a novel than nonfiction. But journalism it is. Of the highest order.

Written after three years of observations and interviews in a small slum of Mumbai, the book follows a few locals as they build their lives amidst the devastating poverty just behind the Beautiful Forevers.