by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Apr 8, 2022 | beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Bureaucratic quixotic, Climate Change, Communication, Decolonization, Discursive Gap, duh, eating animals, Environmental Justice, Fake Freedoms, folly, Industrial Epidemics, meat, Priorities, Systems thinking, the real, Wolves in sheep's clothing
You would think that at Erasmus University, that those trolls wishing the end of the world so that they don’t have to examine their own lives would have the good sense to keep their mouths shut. Unfortunately, that seems to be an unfounded belief. The me-first...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Mar 30, 2022 | Fake Freedoms, fake loops, Perverse Incentives, Priorities, Side-effects, silence, Syndemics, Systems thinking, the real, Unpleasant Design
We can’t afford to grieve in our contemporary culture. There is literally no space, time, or network to allow for us to process the wrongs done, to atone the righteous rage we feel at a degraded earth and the waste of our own lives. Without the capacity to grieve, how...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Mar 30, 2022 | agroecology, Aphorisms, beyond idealism, Biophilia, Decolonization, deep ecology, Indigenous Peoples, Uncategorized
Pat McCabe, Weyakpa Najin Win (Woman Stands Shining) of the Diné (Navajo) Nation describes the difference between lighting a fire by hand, versus with a standard plastic or metal lighter: “the machine takes out the tenderest part of feeling.” It’s not as if nothing is...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Mar 29, 2022 | beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Conflicts of Interest, Decolonization, Discursive Gap, duh, exploitation, Fake Freedoms, Industrial Epidemics, parasitism, philosophy of science
So, I came across this brilliant comedian on Facebook the other day, and Facebook, in all of their infinite wisdom censored it from me, according to their factcheckers (who have done absolutely nothing to curb climate change, by the way). Toni Bologna claims Vanguard...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Mar 29, 2022 | Uncategorized
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Mar 27, 2022 | Uncategorized
From Eric Holthaus’s newsblog interview with Ketan Joshi in The Phoenix: What I’d love to see is a major company, instead of buying offsets and greenwashing us, is to be up front and unambiguous and say: “We are not going to fully reduce our...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Mar 22, 2022 | beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Climate Change, Decolonization, Discursive Gap, Environmental Justice, Environmental Political Theory, glyphosate, Greenwashing, Harm Reduction, Industrial Epidemics, Syndemics, Systems thinking
Chemical Colonialism: Environmental justice and industrial epidemics I’ve got a new blog in the Environment & Society blog loosely connected to my 2021 paper in their journal. It builds on my interest in environmental history, particularly having read Fabian...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Mar 15, 2022 | Climate Change, Discursive Gap, Industrial Epidemics, Normal is Over, normalization, Priorities, Public Health, Side-effects, Syndemics, Systems thinking
Environmental philosopher and public health scientist Yogi Hale Hendlin will discuss the relationship between climate and viruses during this webinar and argues for a drastic change in behavior instead of treating symptoms. Is our relationship to flora and fauna not...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Mar 6, 2022 | Uncategorized
A collection of some of my favorite humans who have ever enlarged our imagination: (in no particular order, last date updated 5 March 2022) Alexander F. Skutch – ornithologist and naturalist Hannah Arendt – chronicler of the human condition Kalevi Kull...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Mar 3, 2022 | Conflicts of Interest, e-waste, Fake Freedoms, Harm Reduction, Industrial Epidemics, parasitism, Public Health, Publications, Side-effects, Syndemics, Tobacco Industry, Verschlimmbessern, Wolves in sheep's clothing
One of my old colleagues, a lawyer at UCSF once said that the tobacco industry finds loopholes in the law and exploits them until someone closes them. And then moves onto the next one. Our new Open Access paper in Tobacco Control discusses some of these problems....
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Feb 9, 2022 | beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Decolonization, deep ecology, duh, Fake Freedoms, Industrial Epidemics, Normal is Over, normalization, pollution, Priorities, Public Health, Side-effects, Syndemics, Systems thinking, Uncategorized, Verschlimmbessern
(Background NYTimes Article for Reference) As I’ve always said, the NYT is 5-10 years behind the times (their feedback loop doesn’t extend beyond New Yorkers making 5M+). This has been a subject psychologists have been dealing with for at least 20 years in the west,...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Feb 5, 2022 | Industrial Epidemics, Syndemics, Systems thinking
Of the academish books I enjoyed the most in 2021, these are among my favorites. Most of them have to do with systemic modes of looking at intractable or wicked problems, suggesting that wicked problems themselves are wicked only because of those factors or...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Jan 24, 2022 | Bad Advertising, beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Climate Change, deep ecology, exploitation, Normal is Over
For my 41st birthday, my family went skiing at La Rosiere, in the French Alps. Today, I got to go skiing into Italy and back – no passport checks necessary! Truly a unique experience! I hadn’t gone skiing for years, since I was visiting my friend Josh in...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Jan 16, 2022 | Aphorisms, beyond idealism, Biomimicry, Decolonization, deep ecology, Discursive Gap, duh, exploitation, Fake Freedoms, folly, Fragmentation, Interspecies Communication, Naturverlassenheit, Uncategorized
When we farm fish, do we think that, perhaps, we’re being farmed as well? If not? Why not? When we bind life to fulfilling one function: delivering to us what we think we need; do we ponder whether our life also is bound to what someone else desires? When we...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Jan 16, 2022 | Uncategorized
Planned Obsolescence is just the verso side of perpetuating fossil fuels. GM’s buying up and then sitting on patents for electric cars in the 1960s is but an example of how the fossil fuel industrial complex has retarded energy evolution. The fossil fuel...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Jan 6, 2022 | beyond idealism, Bureaucratic quixotic, Dante Alighieri — 'The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.', Discursive Gap, duh, Fake Freedoms, folly
Predictably, more surveillance and bigger data is the answer to dealing with terrorism, this time domestic. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/white-house-jan-6-lessons/2022/01/04/10970c9c-6cd2-11ec-a5d2-7712163262f0_story.html In many ways, this is...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Dec 17, 2021 | agroecology, Bad Advertising, beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Bureaucratic quixotic, Climate Change, Conflicts of Interest, death, Decolonization, deus ex machina, Environmental Justice, Environmental Political Theory, Extended Producer Responsibility, Fake Freedoms, glyphosate, Greenwashing, Harm Reduction, Industrial Epidemics, Industry Documents, Perverse Incentives, philosophy of science, pollution, Public Health, Side-effects, Syndemics, Systems thinking, Talks
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Dec 1, 2021 | Uncategorized
My new paper co-authored with the excellent scientists at the Union for Concerned Scientists “The disinformation playbook: how industry manipulates the science-policy process—and how to restore scientific integrity” appears in the Journal of Public Health...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Oct 22, 2021 | beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Conflicts of Interest, deus ex machina, Discursive Gap, Extended Producer Responsibility, Fake Freedoms, glyphosate, Industrial Epidemics, Industry Documents, Perverse Incentives, philosophy of science, pollution, Public Health, Publications, Side-effects, Syndemics, Systems thinking, Tobacco Industry, Verschlimmbessern
My recently published paper in Environment & Society “Surveying the Chemical Anthropocene: Chemical Imaginaries and the Politics of Defining Toxicity,” draws on Sheila Jasanoff’s notion of “sociotechnical imaginaries” to describe how...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Sep 27, 2021 | animals, Bad Advertising, Bees, Climate Change, Discursive Gap, Interspecies Communication, Naturverlassenheit, pollution, Publications, Side-effects, Syndemics, Systems thinking, Uncategorized
In an Earth Day issue of Time magazine (April 26/ May3 2021), we have an advertisement from the RJ Reynolds (or Reynolds American) tobacco company “Natural” American Spirits proclaiming “in more ways than one, bees are worthy of our love.” Yes,...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Aug 10, 2021 | beyond idealism, Fragmentation, Semiotics, Systems thinking
My kid doesn’t play with Legos the way that Lego wants you to think that people build Legos. Instead of those lush displays with those thousand dollar co-branded sets with odious media corporations that only have pieces that you can use in one way once and then it’s...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Jul 15, 2021 | Biosemiotics, Communication, Publications
My co-edited book with Jonathan Hope, Food and Medicine: A Biosemiotic Perspective, was just published with Springer Nature (2021). This volume explores how the most basic processes in our everyday lives – the material engagement with food and medicine –...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Jun 1, 2021 | Uncategorized
Responding to an article in The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/01/wuhan-coronavirus-lab-leak-covid-virus-origins-china the medical ethnobotanist and philosopher Stephen Buhner had the following astute observations (posted in Facebook):...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | May 18, 2021 | Biosemiotics, Decolonization, Interspecies Communication, philosophy of science, Plants, Publications, Uncategorized
I’m happy that a paper I first drafted in 2015 made it to the light of day in Environmental Values this week: “Plant Philosophy and Interpretation: Making Sense of Contemporary Plant Intelligence Debates.” This paper grew out of an Austrian Science...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Apr 19, 2021 | Uncategorized
Some entitlements are deserved: added respect and deference for those who have dedicated their lives to the common good; accommodation for the elderly, pregnant women, children, and those who need it; respect for those who have sacrificed their own good and interests...
