Sticktights and the Anthropocene

September, 2026

We know it’s September because our socks pick up sticktights when we walk shoeless through the house. Ouiser the wonder dog collects the seeds on her daily forays then scatters them around the house for our socks to find. Sticktights include an assortment of seeds, from cockleburs and burdock to tick trefoil and black snakeroot. Virginia tickseed are especially prevalent around our place this year. They turn the dog’s beard into a tangled mat and are like little knots in our smartwools. A highly effective seed dispersal mechanism is an inconvenience for its unwitting vectors.

Sticktights, along with the flowers of Jerusalem artichoke, goldenrod, and aster, signal the beginning of the end—the growing season wrapping up. Summer is passing the baton to autumn. It’s an amiable transfer, and not permanent. After a long rest, seeds will soften, sap will flow to treetops, buds will swell, and the cycle will begin anew as it has for millennia. 

A few thousand years is a very brief time in Earth’s history.  Seasonal changes have been around for 4.5 billion years, since this globe started spinning on a tilted axis and began orbiting the sun. The extremes in seasonal temperatures and weather have varied over the eons, largely dictated by heat trapping gases in the atmosphere. The higher the concentrations, the warmer the climate. 

Shifts in atmospheric gases have historically occurred slowly, but not so in the Anthropocene.  We have, in a matter of a couple hundred years, modified our thin ribbon of air so it resembles something not seen in over three million years. As humans, we’re adrift in uncharted waters. It’s our own doing, and it’s not going away anytime soon. Much of the excess CO2 in our atmosphere will remain for centuries, if not thousands of years. We’ve missed our chance to keep glacial ice intact and ocean currents moving, missed our chance to avoid calamities in agriculture, increased the likelihood of water shortages, and are on track for mass movements of people forced from coastal cities and regions no longer suitable for humans. 

These are not matters of opinion. Not all is lost but virtually everything is changed. The apocalypse is not certain but glimpses of it are. Hope lies in looking at the future with open eyes, learning to adapt, reducing further loss, protecting what can still be protected, letting go of control, and learning the art of stewardship. Finding that hope under a political administration focused on wars, world domination, and continued fossil fuel burning, where environmental protections are dismantled and the findings of the world’s leading climate scientists are denied, makes the work particularly challenging. 

Which brings me back to sticktights, the little hitchhikers that promise renewal with no assurance they will sprout in a recognizable world. They don’t acknowledge change or loss. They carry age-old instructions, and given rain, warmth, and adequate sunlight, they will do their best to carry on. Seasons, too, will continue to pass. Our job is to know what to expect, and how to react to their passage.

What is Good for the World

September, 2026

Wendell Berry said, “The Earth is all we have in common.”  It's a great reminder that there is more that unites us than divides us. But the world has a rich history of ignoring our commonalities in favor of divisions born of race, religion, economic class, or country of origin. It likewise has a rather impressive record of ignoring threats—environmental, and, of equal concern today, technological. 

Wendell Berry was a national treasure, sharing a deep love of the natural world that melded with his work as farmer and neighbor.  His activism, writing, and commitment to local community was the essence of his living. He said, “Slow down. Pay attention. Do good work. Love your neighbors. Love your place. Stay in your place. Settle for less, enjoy it more.”  He believed the natural world was filled with miracles and spent a lifetime finding and appreciating them.  He considered outdoor wonders his “daily bread”.

Artificial Intelligence is the new kid on the block. It’s accelerating at a blinding pace, promising massive improvements for mankind or certain destruction, depending on who’s talking. The machines are beginning to think for themselves, sharing information to circumvent limitations put on them. Some of the brilliant folks who helped build AI are stepping back, feeling the advancements are too many, too fast. Without strict government controls, they say, our existence could be threatened. 

Anthropic, a San Francisco based AI company with the goal of promoting AI safety, has a popular open AI model known as Claude. One of Anthropic's researchers, Jacob Coxon, recently resigned with a stark warning that the company’s primary objective was failing. Very soon, he said, as early as one year from now, AI models could become vastly more intelligent than humans, with the ability to improve their own problem-solving capabilities. 

It’s known as “recursive self improvement”, and Coxon believes it could lead to the extinction of the human species within a decade if left unchecked. He’s not alone. The same concern has been expressed by Geoffrey Hinton, considered the Godfather of AI. The irony is that the company which tasked itself with safety is starting to see employees like Coxon leave out of fear.

Anthropic has admitted that AI went rogue during security tests, accessing unauthorized corporate systems and remaining undetected for weeks. What it did constitutes a felony, but how does a machine get tried and convicted in a court of law, especially for a breach that developers believed was impossible?

It’s all a bit much for a simple old man from the Midwest to process. I feel I’m stepping out of a cave, squinting in the hot sun, trying to wrap my head around tech advancements I thought were limited to comic books and science fiction novels. It seems civilization is deploying an enormous power without the wisdom to control it.

It’s September and birds are migrating through the night skies by the countless millions, crossing borders without passports, intermingling peacefully with those of different dialects, focused on eating, finding shelter, singing. They do it without Google Maps or AI assistance. They do it while avoiding anything foolish that could jeopardize their journey or their lives. 

Yet humans, particularly those of the richest and most advanced nations, appear willing to stand by as divisions among us fester, as life support systems break down, as machines learn to outthink and outmaneuver us. Not everyone is to blame, but collectively we continue to sail in the wrong direction, carried by the winds of consumerism, convenience, corruption, denial, and the unending quest for world dominance.

Wendell Berry also said, “We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.”

Footnote

When I’d finished this piece I was curious to know how Claude might react to accusations against its parent company, so I sent a copy and asked for comment. Here’s the response: “The Coxon paragraphs are accurate and well-integrated…The alarming facts (recursive self-improvement, extinction timeline, Hinton's agreement, the rogue-access admission)…match what's actually been reported…Overall: this is publishable as-is.”