Category: Morality

George Monbiot’s wake-up call!

We are losing our fundamental rights.

I follow George Monbiot, and have had his permission for some time to republish his articles.

I was born in November, 1944, some six months before the end of WWII. Over all these years, I have read countless essays and articles about the state of countries, and the world.

However, George’s latest article is the most serious reflection on the state of things, effected by the rich and powerful, that I have ever read. I’m sure I speak for millions of other people.

Read this now!

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Our 1933 Moment

Posted on the 4th August 2026

At astonishing speed, around the world, fundamental rights are being cancelled at the behest of oligarchs and corporations.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian  31st July 2026

No more resistance in the US. The era of human rights is over, and dissent is once more forbidden. This is what certain billionaires and their concierges want, and this is the model they’re also seeking to project across the world. If we fail to resist, if our new prime minister is as weak and suggestible as the last one, this is what we will get. In fact, we are halfway there already.

Why? Because successive governments in the UK have succumbed to a global campaign to cancel our fundamental freedoms, a campaign led by oligarchs and corporations, the media they own and the junktanks they fund. A campaign that has become definitional for the second Trump presidency.

At a global summit convened by the US government earlier this month, the Trump administration officials Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller and Scott Bessent explained that they were redirecting counterterrorism efforts away from Islamic jihadism and towards “the political left”. Most of the examples they cited to justify this shift were more than 30 years old. Several times they had to dig down to the 1970s to find a sufficiently menacing threat. You could hear the barrel being scraped.

Without producing a shred of evidence, Rubio, the secretary of state, claimed that the Cuban government is “inextricably linked to the far-left groups and movements across and beyond the west”. The following week, his department sought to justify this claim with a report containing a long list of leftwing legislators, journalists and activists that attempted to link them to Cuba in ways that ranged from the tenuous to the hilarious. This is a well-honed tactic, used prolifically by the Nazis among others: they claimed dissenters, by definition, were part of an international communist conspiracy. They insisted, as Rubio did, that “it is time to crush this evil for ever”.

That wasn’t the only crude reminder. Miller, Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, maintained that when you see antifascist protests, “not one of the people that is demonstrating looks like a normal person. Not one looks normal. They’re all deformed in some way – in their appearance, in their dress, in their mannerism … their outer appearance becomes a manifestation of their inner hatred.” I’m just surprised he didn’t say “untermenschen”. The US government, by contrast, promotes “normal, healthy, ordered living”.

But what hit me even harder was Miller’s attack on “jury nullification”: jurors acquitting people who, he said, were “obviously guilty”. Shutting down this possibility has been an aim of illiberal governments and conservative judges around the world. We saw it in the UK in the prosecution of Trudi Warner and others for holding signs that state an ancient principle in English law: “Jurors have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to their conscience.”

We see it in the astonishing prosecution, being pursued at the moment, of Rajiv Menon KC, who reminded jurors of this right at the trial of the Palestine Action campaigners he was defending. He became, as a result, the first lawyer in English history to be charged with contempt of court for a closing speech. If convicted, he faces up to two years’ imprisonment and will be struck off. Prosecuting lawyers for defending their dissident clients is more or less the definition of authoritarianism.

We also saw it in the assault Keir Starmer launched on jury trials as a whole, greatly curtailing, without any coherent justification, our strongest defence against injustice.

Starmer was a weak man, without a clear vision of his own, who was rolled by any powerful state or corporate lobby. He was no match for a well-funded and highly effective international campaign. A network of groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, funded by corporations and billionaires, has been producing “model legislation”. The groups test these laws in sympathetic jurisdictions. If they are found to work, they then press for their adoption elsewhere. The result is a sustained assault on our rights to protest, to political equality and to a habitable planet.

The globalisation of this attack on our fundamental rights is a key conservative aim. As capital operates everywhere, so should its ability to crush our objections. The long series of vicious anti-protest laws in the UK is an outcome of sustained lobbying by junktanks, the media and other governments. The result is a country that now keeps hundreds of political prisoners, a country in which you can get six months in jail for marching slowly down the street.

These oppressive laws have culminated – so far – in an act of parliament passed in April that enables the police to shut down any protest they deem to have a “cumulative” impact on the community. The only protests that have ever succeeded are those with a cumulative impact. Protest is acceptable as long as it’s useless. Let the people have their say, but only if we can’t hear them.

The new laws have been accompanied by that age-old trick, traditionally associated with fascist regimes, of smearing leftwing dissidents as terrorists. As the rights group Liberty has pointed out, the definition of terrorism here has greatly expanded, to incorporate tactics formerly regarded as civil protest. This is what enabled Starmer’s government to ban Palestine Action.

The judge who referred Menon for contempt, Mr Justice Johnson, was also the first – at the same trial – to use the extraordinary powers quietly inserted by the Conservatives into the Sentencing Act 2020. These enable someone tried for one crime to be sentenced for another. The four Palestine Action protesters were convicted of ordinary crimes. But, without informing the jury, Johnson marked the case as having a “terrorist connection”. He then sentenced them for terrorist offences, which means much more prison time.

Already, his example has been followed by another judge: a different group of pro-Palestine protesters, who sprayed red paint and broke some windows of a branch of Barclays Bank, are about to be sentenced as terrorists, though neither they nor the jurors were told of this possibility during their trial for criminal damage. This means, of course, that they were unable to defend themselves against this far more serious charge.

Nothing is safe from the billionaire assault on humanity. None of our rights, however ancient and familiar, are impregnable. Fight for them now or lose them, perhaps for ever.

http://www.monbiot.com

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Congratulations on George Monbiot for writng this. Congratulations to The Guardian newspaper for publishing this article on July 31st, 2026.

Our human rights, everywhere in the free world, have to be fought for.

As George Monbiot says: “Fight for them now or lose them, perhaps for ever.”

Feel absolutely free to republish this post wherever you wish.

Trashing the living world

The latest post from George Monbiot.

In a weird way, this post published by Geo Monbiot on the 24th July, 2026, reveals a similar vein to yesterday’s post about the Save Europe Act. I mean they are both about the unfair and unreasonable power held by those in political command.

Over to Mr Monbiot (and I have his permission to republish):

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Chickened-Out

Posted on 24th July 2026

Trashing the living world on behalf of corporate power: is this really all we can expect from the ministers in charge of protecting it?

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 23rd July 2026

There’s a slightly mean question I often ask British people with an interest in the living world: can you name the Environment Secretary? I don’t intend to show them up: it’s not them I’m testing. I watch the brows knit, a finger go up, the mouth open and close. “It’s, you know, the one who … no, they went, didn’t they? That other one …” It’s been like this for seven years.

Why? Because throughout this period, we’ve not had environment secretaries. We’ve had portals through which corporate lobbyists may pass. The last incumbent to represent the wider public interest (and I can scarcely bring myself to type these words) was Michael Gove. In his other roles, he’s widely remembered with loathing and disgust. Out of office, he continues to poison public life, as editor of the Spectator. But in this role, to general astonishment, he placed the public good above special interests.

Standard operating procedure, by contrast, is exemplified by the final acts of the outgoing secretary, whose name, to put you out of your misery, is Emma Reynolds. To give just one example – which could be seen as an embodiment of everything that has gone wrong here – she spent her last weeks in the post trying to remove the brakes on industrial chicken farming.

In front of a parliamentary committee this month, she railed against the planning constraints holding back yet more giant chicken factories (let’s not grace them with the name of farms). If only these obstacles were demolished, she mused, “there is great investment out there waiting to be made … I want to bring down these barriers as much as you do”. She said she had spoken to other departments to ensure permission for new chicken factories was easier to obtain.

Neither she nor the MPs questioning her gave any hint of why these buildings have run into trouble with the planning system. In fact, there was no mention of any of the problems the factories cause: the MPs’ only apparent interest was in what the industry wanted. What’s the point of MPs if they simply channel corporate demands? But these factories are killing some of our most beautiful rivers. They generate far more dung than the surrounding fields can absorb. The surplus washes downhill into the nearest stream.

The only decision that counts is the planning decision. As soon as permission for a chicken unit is granted, the local tributary, and possibly the main stem of the river it drains into, is as good as dead. It’s not even as if these factories support jobs and growth: by killing the rivers, they help to destroy local economies.

I thought we’d won this argument. But argument, it seems, is no match for economic power. Reynolds’s loyalties appeared to lie not with the ecosystems she was meant to protect, but with the lobbyists threatening them. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising: before she joined Keir Starmer’s government, she worked as a lobbyist, representing the financial sector.

Disturbingly, it was the new environment secretary, Angela Eagle, while working as Reynolds’s deputy, who sought to drive through the “planning reforms” the poultry industry is demanding, telling chicken lobbyists “planning should enable ambition, not stifle it”. Will she now take Burnham’s “circuit breaker” promise seriously, and junk this appeasement of one of our most destructive industries?

At a recent farming festival, Reynolds claimed that boosting the poultry sector would enhance our food security. I don’t know how many times we need to point this out, but isn’t it bleeding obvious that it has the opposite effect? The feed sustaining chickens in these factories must be either imported or grown on land that could otherwise directly feed people. There could be more soya in chicken than in tofu: one report estimates that it takes 109g of soya to produce 100g of chicken breast. Yet this is just one of several components of their diet.

The chicken business in the UK is also controlled by a handful of giant companies: another security red light. If food security were the objective, the government would encourage us to eat fewer chickens and other animals, and more plants. But in parliament, Reynolds also proudly announced that she was disregarding the targets set by the government’s Climate Change Committee to reduce livestock numbers. I find myself asking, over and again: “Are they trying to harm this country?”

To advance their dismal agenda, Reynolds and Eagle set up something called the Farming and Food Partnership Board. Its aim is to encourage “closer collaboration between farming, industry and government”. How could it possibly be closer? The environment department, Defra, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the farming industry. The only members of this new board are government ministers and corporate representatives and lobbyists. Among its objectives is a “poultry sector growth plan”, to address the issue of “planning barriers”.

This chickening out is just one of many examples of how, by working for special interests, the environment department has harmed the ecosystems and the people it is supposed to protect. Another is the government’s “delivery plan” to restore nature, released by Reynolds just before she left office. It’s not a plan, and it won’t deliver: just a catalogue of vague hopes and blandishments. It could be summarised as “do nothing, for fear of offending landowners”. Far from meeting its promise to protect and restore 30% of the land in England by 2030, Reynolds’s department has presided over continued decline. That’s her legacy: less nature, less resilience, less security.

Much worse is planned: Starmer’s government proposed a “regulating for growth bill”, whose text we haven’t yet seen, but which appears to threaten even greater assaults on nature protection. It may contain one of his government’s most alarming proposals: creating a system that could be described as pop-up freeports, in which companies all over the country would be able to operate in temporary “sandboxes”, where the usual rules don’t apply. We should see this as a key test of Burnham’s promise to end neoliberalism: will he drop this nonsense?

I’ll keep asking the question, regardless of who occupies this office: do you know the name of the environment secretary? The answer is likely to depend on one factor: whether they are ready to break the grip of corporate power, and defend us and the rest of the living world. Whether, in other words, they want to do their job.

http://www.monbiot.com

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It makes for grim reading.

Thanks to George Monbiot for revealing the truth as to what is going on with the United Kingdom Government.

Save Europe Act

This is very important to all people, not just Europeans. This is vital for every citizen across the world.

Dan originally sent me the link to this video. I thank him enormously.

Here is the video:

I repeat, all persons who care about freedom, should sign this Act.

Has this UK Government gone insane!

A post by George Monbiot on the 9th July explains.

I looked up quotations about government, and this one caught my eye: “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” — Thomas Paine.

Here is that post by George, republished with his permission.

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In Deep

Posted on 9th July 2026

The numbers are simply mind-blowing: up to £264 billion for a climate “solution” that will increase emissions. Has the government lost its mind?

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 8th July 2026

The new prime minister will be looking for money? Well, here’s £21.7bn lying on the ground. The government could cancel its deranged, disastrous carbon capture and storage (CCS) programme at no cost to public welfare: in fact, it would greatly reduce the harm we will suffer.

Sorry, did I say £21.7bn? That’s the figure the government has been putting in its press releases for spending on this programme between now and 2050. But this covers only the first phase of the project. The climate experts Dr Andrew Boswell and Simon Oldridge worked through the data produced by the government’s Climate Change Committee, which was scattered across different spreadsheets, and discovered that the projected cost of the full CCS programme between now and 2050 is £264bn.

Yes, £264bn. More than a quarter of a trillion. This cost will be divided between the public and private sectors. Given the record of CCS programmes so far, we can expect the public to carry most of it.

An investigation by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee found that roughly 25% of the public costs of CCS will be borne directly by the government, while the remainder will come from extra levies on our energy bills. The government should explain to the electorate that it intends to slap up to £198bn on our bills. Then see how that lands.

Even this might not be the end of it. Buried in an arcane side document is a government commitment to pay a “premium” for the hydrogen produced by the CCS programme for 15 years. This commitment is uncosted, but could run to tens of billions more.

But surely CCS is essential for cutting carbon emissions? That’s how the government has pitched it. On the contrary, this programme will massively increase them. The Climate Change Committee claims that the role of CCS is “limited to sectors where there are few, or no, alternatives”. But this is simply untrue. Its own data shows that only between 5% and 6% of the CCS deployment in the UK will be used to address the emissions of industrial sectors such as chemicals and cement, whose impact is hard to abate (though even here there are partial alternatives).

The great majority of CCS will be attached to new fossil fuel-burning power stations, wood-burning power stations and hydrogen production from fossil gas. In fact, almost all the projects in the government’s first tranche are for fossil fuel-based schemes. But there are abundant alternatives to these highly destructive plans. Given the speed at which battery technology is evolving, enabling a balanced and reliable electricity supply without any use of fossil fuels, the committee’s claim is bunkum.

Its insistence that we need hydrogen made from fossil gas is also baseless. Its own figures show that producing hydrogen from gas with CCS will cost twice as much by 2050 as producing it from the electrolysis of water, using renewable electricity.

The new CCS plants will mean massively more gas use than the UK would otherwise have required. Ultimately, that means more imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). We now know that, thanks to methane leakage along the production and transport chain, LNG has higher emissions than coal. Two-thirds of its greenhouse impact occurs before the gas arrives in this country. So that’s all right then – it doesn’t count towards our national figures.

If the real aim were to cut emissions, we would push fossil fuel use in the electricity sector down to zero, and scale up renewables and battery storage instead. The net effect? Much lower climate impacts and much lower bills. Instead, the programme will greatly ramp up both. Why?

Well, the whole thing has been built the wrong way round. It appears likely to be the result of massive lobbying by fossil fuel companies. In 2023 alone, as the key decision on deployment loomed, the oil companies Equinor, BP and ExxonMobil attended 24 meetings with Conservative ministers to discuss CCS. Why? Because they know it’s the only way they will be permitted to keep burning gas. Governments have sought to find a way of meeting their demands while adhering to the climate budgets, so lo, a £264bn white elephant is born. As the Climate Change Committee admits, “gas with CCS accounts for around half of the remaining demand for fossil fuels in 2050” in the UK. In other words, this is their lifeline.

And now we know something else: that the scientific credibility of CCS as a climate solution was shaped by the oil company BP. Investigative work by ProPublica and Drilled discovered that BP both financed and helped steer one of the most famous of all climate papers. The “Wedges” paper, published in 2004, became a foundation of government policy around the world. It purported to show how climate stabilisation was compatible with continued fossil use. And one of the major policies its plan relied on was carbon capture and storage.

BP’s chief executive suggested the “wedges” concept. Another BP executive was so heavily involved that the scientists suggested he should be named as co-author. He declined: the industry tries not to leave fingerprints. The paper greatly oversold CCS, presenting it as “already deployed at an industrial scale”. In reality, it had barely been tested. Yet it underpinned three of the 15 climate actions the paper proposed.

Since then, there has been a long record of shiny promises followed by partial or total failures. In the UK alone, three attempts (the 2005 Peterhead plan, a 2011 demonstration project and a 2012 funding competition) have been abandoned, thanks to cost escalation and infeasibility. As the Public Accounts Committee remarks, the government “is taking a high-risk approach by backing first-of-a-kind, unproven technologies with large amounts of taxpayer and consumer funding”.

But success is not the point. The point is to provide a gigantic, publicly-funded reason for the fossil fuel industry to stay in business. Guess who the lead operator of the government’s first CCS cluster is. Hello, BP.

So we come round full circle. From cradle to grave, this programme appeases the world’s most antisocial and destructive sector. The wasted money, the lost years, the lost lives: for how much longer will this farce continue? And how many more warnings will the government ignore?

http://www.monbiot.com

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I am towards the end of my days, and we live a pretty frugal (as in use of fossil fuels) life.

However, that does not mean that I am not very concerned about George’s essay. I have a son, a daughter, and a grandson. They are a tangible group who will be affected by this proposed legislation. As will millions of other people.

I really hope, and this is truly meant, that the UK Government does not push ahead with this Act.

Defiance, even when it is not easy.

Learning the skills of resistance.

Saying ‘no’ is difficult. This is an article from The Conversation that talks of our need at times to be the opposite of friendly, to stand one’s ground, and to be true to yourself.

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The science of defiance: A psychology researcher explains why people comply – and how to resist

Defiance need not be aggressive or loud. Sergio Mendoza Hochmann/Moment via Getty Images

Sunita Sah, Cornell University

You’re in a meeting when your boss suggests changing a number to make the quarterly report look stronger. Heads nod. The slides move on. You feel a knot in your stomach: Do you speak up and risk being branded difficult, or stay silent and become complicit?

Most people picture defiance as dramatic outbursts. In reality, it’s often these small, tense moments where conscience collides with compliance.

I first saw the power of defiance not in the workplace, but closer to home. My mother was the ultimate people-pleaser: timid, polite, eager to accommodate. Barely 4 feet, 10 inches tall, she put everyone else’s needs above her own. But one day, when I was 7, I saw a different side to her.

We were walking home from the grocery store in West Yorkshire, England, when a group of teenage boys blocked our path in a narrow alleyway. They hurled racist insults and told us to “go back home.”

My reaction was instantaneous: Stay quiet, avoid conflict and get past them as quickly as possible. I grabbed my mother’s arm, urging her to move with me. But she didn’t. My quiet, deferential, never-confrontational mother did something completely different. She stopped, turned and looked the boys directly in the eyes. Then she asked, calmly but firmly, “What do you mean?”

She wasn’t loud or aggressive. And in that moment, she showed me that defiance doesn’t always roar, and it can come from the people you least expect.

I’ve carried these lessons into my work as a physician-turned-organizational psychologist. For decades, I’ve studied why people comply, staying silent when they don’t want to, and how they can resist wisely. In my book “Defy: The Power of No in a World that Demands Yes,” I offer a framework based on behavioral science research that can help you defy in ways that are intentional, effective and true to your values.

worried woman seated with another looking at a laptop
One setting where the choice to defy or comply can arise is work. FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images

What defiance really is

When people think of defiance, they often picture teenagers slamming doors, protesters shouting in the streets or rebels breaking rules just for the thrill of it. But that’s not the kind of defiance I study or the kind that shapes our lives most often.

Defiance is not about being oppositional for its own sake. It’s about choosing to act in line with your values when there is pressure to do otherwise.

That pressure can come from anywhere: a boss urging you to fudge the numbers, a friend nudging you toward something you don’t believe in, a culture telling you to stay in your place. Defiance in those moments might be as small as saying “no,” asking for clarification or simply pausing instead of rushing along with the group. Other times, it means speaking up, challenging authority or maybe walking away.

Seen this way, defiance isn’t a fixed trait that some people are born with and others lack. It’s a practice: a skill you can strengthen over time. Some days you might comply, other days you might resist. What matters is that you have the awareness and the tools to make the choice consciously, rather than letting fear or habit decide for you.

Why people comply

If defiance is so important, why do people so often stay silent?

One reason is a psychological process I’ve uncovered in my research: insinuation anxiety. It arises when people worry that not complying with another person’s wishes may be interpreted as a signal of distrust. Turning down a boss’s request to “adjust” the numbers might feel like you’re implying they’re dishonest. To avoid that discomfort, you go along – even when it violates your values.

Behavioral science has long documented this pull toward compliance. In the 1960s, for example, psychologist Stanley Milgram showed that ordinary people would administer what they believed were dangerous electric shocks to strangers simply because an authority figure told them to.

My own research has shown surprisingly high levels of compliance with obviously bad advice, even when given by a stranger with no consequences for disagreeing. People feel immense social pressure to go along with what others suggest. That’s because if you’ve never been trained in how to say no, it feels uncomfortable and awkward.

A framework for action

If compliance is the human default, how can you build the muscle of defiance? In my research, I’ve developed a simple actionable guide that I call the Defiance Compass. Like a navigation aid, it orients you in difficult situations by asking three questions:

  1. Who am I? What are the core values that matter most to me?
  2. What type of situation is this? Is it safe to resist? Will it have a positive impact?
  3. What does a person like me do in a situation like this? How can I take responsibility and act in a way that’s consistent with my identity and values?
circular chart with arrows connecting the three questions of the defiance compass
Three questions can help you zero in on whether the time is right for you to defy. Sunita Sah

Asking these questions shifts defiance from a gut reaction to a conscious practice. And here’s what’s important: That third question (“What does a person like me do?”) circles back to the first (“Who am I?”), because how you act again and again becomes who you are.

Defiance doesn’t always mean open confrontation. Sometimes it means asking a clarifying question, buying time or quietly refusing. It can mean speaking up or walking away. The key is to start small, practice regularly and anchor your choices in your values. Like any skill, the more you practice, the more natural it becomes.

Why defiance matters now

Defiance may be risky, but it’s never been more relevant. At work, employees are pressured to meet targets at any cost. In politics, citizens face waves of misinformation and polarization. In everyday life, people struggle to set healthy boundaries. Across all these contexts, the temptation to comply for the sake of comfort is strong.

That’s why learning to defy strategically matters. It protects personal integrity, strengthens institutions and helps sustain democracy. And it doesn’t require being loud or confrontational.

Of course, not every act of defiance is safe or guaranteed to make a difference. Sometimes it comes at real personal cost and some people still choose to act even when the impact isn’t certain: think of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat, or Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. In those moments, the act itself becomes the message. Both of those individuals were deeply connected to their values and the assessment is personal: What feels worth the risk to one person might not to another.

Defiance does require practice: noticing when values are at stake, pausing before you nod along, and choosing actions that align with who you want to be. Each act of consent, compliance or defiance shapes not just your story but the stories of our societies.

If you practice defiance, and teach it and model it, you can imagine a different type of society. You can start to envision a world where, in that same alleyway from my childhood, one of the boys will step forward and tell his friends, “That’s not OK. Let them pass.”

Sunita Sah, Professor of Management and Organizations, Cornell University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Across the range of society there will always be persons who choose to act with poor social values. Some are very senior, such as many politicians, some are towards the bottom of society. That is a fact of life.

Sunita Sah does us proud in writing this article, and I am delighted to republish it, with the permission of The Conversation.

A wonderful poem from Bela

And I am not going to let my words interfere. Just read this.

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Clear the Needle

Who is she,
if she does not even know herself?

Trajectories confuse
when forced
into linear containers..

Like the cosmos —
all spirals and orbits —
we spin and dance,

sometimes skillfully,
sometimes clumsily.

The vinyl record spinning,
fine dust collecting
on the diamond needle.

We must stop
from time to time
and clear it

so that we might perceive sound
more accurately,
truer to itself.

I have collected
more than my share
of detritus.

But I have never been granted
the grace of someone or something
clearing the needle for me.

It remains a reminder
to pause.

Stop the music.
Lift the arm.
Clear the cartridge.

Begin again.

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Not only was Bela’s poem perfect so, too, was the comment left on Bela’s site from Shakti that I am going to share in full.

Hi Bela,

I found in the verse a striking metaphor for the human condition. 

We spend so much of life assuming the music has changed, when often it is the dust on our own needle that has altered the sound. Memory, hurt, ego, assumptions, fatigue—each leaves its fine sediment, subtly distorting how we hear ourselves, others, and the world. 

The most profound act, perhaps, is not to keep forcing the song forward, but to pause with enough honesty to ask: what in me is creating this static? The verse’s quiet power lies in rejecting rescue—no one may come to clear the needle for us. Self-awareness, then, becomes both responsibility and grace. To stop. To clean. To begin again—not as the same listener, but as a truer one

Shakti

“To begin again—not as the same listener, but as a truer one“

As I said, a perfect comment.

Reflections

There is an art to letting go.

Freedom,

Home, as in being at home,

Trust, as in the predominate feeling,

I AM OK.

Health, good diet and exercise,

Safe – I feel safe,

Love, I am surrounded by love,

Peace, yet another predominate feeling,

Calm, and yet another predominate feeling.

Think about these qualities

There’s an art to letting go.

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I wrote this for Jean on March 22nd, 2026.

I ended it by writing that I loved Jean. Very much!

The ‘Free’ Trial

As you are seeing on the Web.

This article from The Conversation really resonated with me. For as the online world is advancing, so too is the darker side of the Web.

Here is that article.

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Dark patterns on the web are designed to manipulate you – why aren’t they all illegal?

Website designs that try to change your behavior cross a line when they outright deceive. Fizkes/iStock via Getty Images

Gregory M. Dickinson, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Institute for Humane Studies

You open a free app to do one simple thing. Before you even start, a full-screen message asks whether you want to try the paid version. The “Start free trial” button is large, bright and hard to miss. The option to keep using the free version is smaller, buried at the bottom. The same prompt appears again tomorrow. And the day after that.

A lot of people look at screens like that and think, “Surely this has to be illegal.” We even have a name for them, “dark patterns.” They feel pushy. They waste time. They seem designed to wear you down. But in most cases, they are perfectly lawful.

“Dark pattern” is not a legal term with a clear boundary. It is a broad label for digital designs that nudge, pressure, confuse or trap users. As a legal scholar who studies consumer protection and digital design, I think the most important thing for readers to understand is that the label “dark pattern” covers a broad spectrum.

Some of that spectrum is just annoying. Some of it is aggressive salesmanship. And some of it crosses the line into deception or coercion. Federal and state consumer protection laws are mostly aimed at that last category. They do not ban every design choice people dislike, only those that trick or coerce.

Annoying isn’t illegal

smartphone screenshot of images of a well-dressed young man
The ‘X’ in the upper right corner of this ad, for users to click to dismiss the ad, appears after the ad has been displayed for a moment. The ad also has an ‘X’ in the upper left corner, which is part of the image in the ad. Some users might click the ‘X’ on the left to dismiss the ad but instead be sent to the ad’s website. Possibly annoying but not illegal. Screen capture by Gregory Dickinson

That reality may sound unsatisfying, but it is not unusual. Offline life is full of things that are irritating but not unlawful. Think of the cashier who asks whether you want to sign up for the store credit card, then points out the discount you are turning down, then asks again. Most people know exactly what is happening. They roll their eyes, say no and try to shop somewhere else next time.

The same is true online. A repeated pop-up can be obnoxious. A guilt-inducing button can be tacky. But consumers recognize ordinary annoyance for what it is. In many cases, the market answer is simple: Close the app, ignore the pitch or take your business elsewhere.

Similarly, law does not ban persuasive sales pitches just because they are effective. A car salesperson who keeps steering you toward the upgraded model is trying to influence your choice. So is the airline clerk who offers travel insurance. So is the restaurant server who asks whether you want dessert. Salesmanship is nothing new. Digital design often borrows from familiar techniques.

That helps explain why lawmakers cannot simply outlaw “manipulation.” And so many interfaces are built to persuade, openly and lawfully.

What crosses the line

What the federal FTC Act and analogous state consumer-deception statutes usually care about is not whether a design is annoying. They focus on whether the design is likely to mislead a reasonable consumer. That is the core idea in modern consumer protection law.

So a design is likelier to be unlawful when it hides key facts, makes an optional choice look mandatory or tricks people about the effect of the button they are pressing. A fake countdown timer, a disguised ad, a misleading one-click purchase button or a cancellation path that looks finished when it is not are all different from ordinary hard selling. Those designs do not just pressure users; they can deceive them.

That is also why the app maker’s intent is not always the key question. In many consumer protection cases, a company does not get a free pass just because no one said, “Let’s trick people.” The legal question is often about effect: What would a reasonable user likely understand from this screen?

Research on dark patterns reinforces that concern. Even relatively mild designs can push people into choices they would not otherwise make. And regulators have increasingly focused on subscription flows, hidden fees and cancellation obstacles for exactly that reason.

image of a website form with a pop-up box in front of it
The instructions for this web form and the pop-up box that appears when users click ‘Continue’ indicate that the form has required fields. The form uses the word ‘mandatory,’ which could lead some users to believe that the form itself is required in order to continue when it is instead optional. Possibly annoying but not illegal. Screen capture by Gregory Dickinson

Why it feels like dark patterns are everywhere

One reason people might think there are no laws against dark patterns is that they see them so often. But that frequency reflects that the term covers a wide range of conduct, from lawful nagging to outright deception.

It also reflects enforcement limits. Regulators cannot chase every irritating screen on every app and website. They have to prioritize the worst cases. That leaves a lot of borderline conduct in the wild, which makes the whole problem feel bigger and murkier to ordinary users.

So when people ask why there is not a law against dark patterns, the best answer is that there already is, but the law does not prohibit every annoying or high-pressure design. It targets lies, misleading cues and coercive obstacles.

That line can be fuzzy. But the fuzziness is not a mistake. It is what you get when the law tries to separate persuasion from deception in a world full of both.

Gregory M. Dickinson, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Institute for Humane Studies

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Gregory Dickinson does us a real service. Especially when the intention is to pass on blatant mistruths.

So many people get sucked into these dark patterns. The legality of these dark matters needs to be re-examined.

The Ten Commitments

This is important (and brilliant).

Jean and I were taken to our regular humanist meeting last Saturday morning. The topic was Christian Nationalism.

Today, I want to explain what these commitments are. Then on Sunday I will post some images.

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Ten Commitments

Guiding Principles for Teaching Values in America’s Public Schools

Altruism

Altruism is the unselfish concern for the welfare of others without expectation of reward, recognition, or return. Opportunities for acts of altruism are everywhere in the family, the classroom, the school, and the wider community. Think of examples of altruistic acts in your experience. What person-to-person and group projects, classroom and school-wide activities, and community service projects might you and your students undertake?

Caring for the World Around Us

Everyone can and ought to play a role in caring for the Earth and its inhabitants. We can directly experience the living things in our homes and neighborhoods like trees, flowers, birds, insects, and pets. Gradually we expand our neighborhood. We learn about deserts and oceans, rivers and forests, the wildlife around us and the wildlife elsewhere. We learn that we are dependent on each other, on the natural world, and all that lives in it for food and shelter, space and beauty.

Critical Thinking

We gain reliable knowledge because we are able to observe, report, experiment, and analyze what goes on around us. We also learn to raise questions that are clear and precise, to gather information, and to reason about the information we receive in a way that tests it for truthfulness, accuracy, and utility. From our earliest years we learn how to think and to share and challenge our ideas and the ideas of others, and consider their consequences. Practice asking “what next?” and “why?” and “how do I/you/we know that?”

Empathy

We human beings are capable of empathy, the ability to understand and enter imaginatively into another living being’s feelings, the sad ones and the happy ones as well. Many of the personal relationships we have (in the family, among friends, between diverse individuals, and amid other living things) are made positive through empathy. With discussion and role-playing, we can learn how other people feel when they are sad or hurt or ignored, as well as when they experience great joys. We can use stories, anecdotes, and classroom events to help us nurture sensitivity to how our actions impact others.

Ethical Development

Questions of fairness, cooperation, and sharing are among the first moral issues we encounter in our ethical development as human beings. Ethical education is ongoing implicitly and explicitly in what is called the “hidden curriculum” that we experience through the media, the family, and the community. Ethics can be taught through discussion, role-playing, storytelling, and other activities that improve analysis and decision-making regarding what’s good and bad, right and wrong.

Global Awareness

We live in a world that is rich in cultural, social, and individual diversity, a world where interdependence is increasing rapidly so that events anywhere are more likely to have consequences everywhere. Much can be done to prepare the next generation for accepting the responsibility of global citizenship. Understanding can be gained regarding the many communities in which we live through history, anthropology, and biology. A linguistic, ethnic, and cultural diversity are present in the classroom and provide lessons of diversity and commonality. We help others reach understanding about the interconnectedness of the welfare of all humanity.

Humility

We must always remember that there’s a lot we don’t know about the universe. There’s still so very much to learn. Science will help us. But sometimes scientists discover surprising things that tell us how some of our old beliefs are false. So we need to be willing to change when our knowledge changes. A good humanist doesn’t try to be sure of things that science can’t show are true.

Peace and Social Justice

A curriculum that values and fosters peace education would promote the human rights of all people and understanding among all nations, cultural and religious groups. Students should have opportunities to learn about the United Nations’ role in preventing conflict as well as efforts to achieve social justice in the United States. They should learn about problems of injustice including what can be done to prevent and respond to these problems with meaningful actions that promote peace and social justice and that protect the inherent human rights of everyone both at home and abroad.

Responsibility

Our behavior is morally responsible when we tell the truth, help someone in trouble, and live up to promises we’ve made. Our behavior is legally responsible when we obey a just law and meet the requirements of membership or citizenship. But we also have a larger responsibility to be a caring member of our family, our community, and our world. Stories and role-playing can help students understand responsibility and its absence or failure. We learn from answering such questions as: What happens when we live in accordance with fair and just rules? What happens when we don’t? What happens when the rules are unjust?

Service and Participation

Life’s fulfillment can emerge from an individual’s participation in the service of humane
ideals. School-based service-learning combines community service objectives and learning objectives with the intent that the activities change both the recipient and the provider. It provides students with the ability to identify important issues in real-life situations. Through these efforts we learn that each of us can help meet the needs of others and of ourselves. Through our lifetime, we learn over and over again of our mutual dependence.

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My mother was an atheist and, consequently, I have been an atheist all my life. With the above values, as they are taught in schools, there is no need for a God.

Our human need to matter

Our survival isn’t enough.

I make no apologies for providing little of my own words and just going straight to this video and the accompanying text.

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What if the deepest human drive isn’t happiness, survival, or even love, but the need to matter?

Philosopher and MacArthur Fellow Rebecca Newberger Goldstein joins Michael Shermer to discuss The Mattering Instinct, her argument that the desire to feel significant lies at the core of human behavior. That drive helps explain our greatest achievements, from creativity and moral courage to scientific and artistic excellence. It also helps explain some of our darkest outcomes, including extremism, violence, and ideological fanaticism.

Goldstein examines why people will give up comfort, status, and sometimes even their own lives to feel that they matter. She questions why meaning cannot be captured by happiness metrics or self-help formulas, and why the same psychological force can produce saints, scientists, athletes, cult leaders, and terrorists. The conversation moves through free will, entropy, morality without God, fame, narcissism, and the crucial difference between ways of mattering that create order and those that leave damage behind.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is an award-winning philosopher, writer, and public intellectual. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Princeton University and has taught at Yale, Columbia, NYU, Dartmouth, and Harvard. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, her work has been supported by the MacArthur “Genius” grant and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Whiting Institute, Radcliffe Institute, and the National Science Foundation. She is the author of ten books of acclaimed fiction and non-fiction. Her latest book is The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us.

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So, please watch this video!