"The world is in a permacrisis currently with the COVID-19 aftermath, the war in Ukraine, climate change issues, political instability, the energy crisis in Europe, recession and the cost-of-living crisis."

That's a quote that appeared in the Millennium Post Newspaper (Nexis) on 18 December 18, 2022 and that is one of 3 quotes the OED chose to exemplify the word "permacrisis," which, it announces today, it has just added to its dictionary.

The definition is obvious: "A situation characterized by constant and significant turmoil or instability; (now) spec. one that is widespread across a society and caused by an ongoing series of events such as war, economic recession, a pandemic disease, etc."

I think of "permacrisis" as as a political strategy to make people feel that we are always in special dire circumstances, justifying unusual emergency measures, and warranting the sacrifice of our personal pleasure and freedom.

I can't help thinking: "Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

"Although [Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions] has spawned thousands of worshipful articles and books, it remains for me, at best, like Pet Rocks—a fad."

"When I first wrote this, I received instant criticism from my editor and others: fads are short-lived, while enthusiasm for Kuhn’s book has persisted for half a century. And unlike Pet Rocks, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was never sold as a forting companion, a solution to urban loneliness in a post-industrial society. So not exactly Pet Rocks. Maybe what emerged was more of a cult. With Kuhn as leader, dispensing his own brand of pernicious intellectual Kool-Aid. (In John Milius’s 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian, a peddler tells Conan about the cult of Set: 'Two, three years ago, it was just another snake cult. Now you see it everywhere.')"

Writes Errol Morris in an excerpt from his book "The Ashtray (Or the Man Who Denied Reality)."

The second link goes to Amazon, where you can pre-order the book (it comes out on the 22nd) and where it says: "In 1972, philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn threw an ashtray at Errol Morris. This book is the result.... Morris wants to establish as clearly as possible what we know and can say about the world, reality, history, our actions and interactions. It’s the fundamental desire that animates his filmmaking, whether he’s probing Robert McNamara about Vietnam or the oddball owner of a pet cemetery. Truth may be slippery, but that doesn’t mean we have to grease its path of escape through philosophical evasions."

"[Filmmaker Errol] Morris studied history and philosophy of science under [Thomas] Kuhn at Princeton in the early 1970s and ended up loathing him."

"Morris suggests in a recent podcast that Kuhn’s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has contributed to 'the debasement of truth' and even the election of Donald Trump. Morris states: 'I see a line from Kuhn to Karl Rove and Kelly Ann Conway and Donald Trump.'"

From "Second Thoughts: Did Thomas Kuhn Help Elect Donald Trump?/Scholars debate filmmaker Errol Morris’s attack on Kuhn’s influential philosophy of science," by John Horgan in Scientific American.

Morris's podcast is here: