Greetings from the Omni-Hugger!

Hello! I’m honored you’ve found something about my little corner of the web interesting enough to stop and take a closer look at. Welcome, and I hope you find something personally valuable and thought-provoking here.

Folks call me the Omni-Hugger—or I’d like them to, at any rate. Why? Because while I’m very definitely an environmentalist, I believe that a non-zero-sum, positive future for the whole planet—trees and people—is possible. I no longer buy, as I once did, the great lingering myth of modern culture that one has to lose out to advance the other—such thinking not only shows an ugly form of tribalism, but a distinct lack of creativity, hope and love, qualities that our species is in desperate need of right now. You can also call me Ran-Zhen Rui, if you prefer—it’s close enough to my actual name.

 I’m from the Seattle area in Washington State and I’m a recent graduate of the University of Washington, class of ’09, BA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences—a research-oriented degree. Basically, my training is in how to efficiently examine huge amounts of data from academic disciplines traditionally considered separate, and find the interconnections between them. As you may have gathered, I’m a free-thinker above all else.

I believe for many reasons that our species is on the cusp of a new era of evolution—but whether for good or for ill is for us to determine, and we must do so now and choose to come together to make it happen. Therefore, at this most critical moment of transition, with globalization bringing us closer together and forcing us to remember our common identity as a species, I’m passionately concerned about the urgent problems standing in the way of a good future for us and the planet that nurtures us. Though I may be personally biased here, I feel that interdisciplinary thinking is necessary to sort through them.

For example, consider global climate change, probably the most widely-discussed of the issues I’ll be talking about. This is most frequently portrayed in the media as an environmental problem (which it certainly is), but it is also a sociological problem, an economic problem, a political problem, the catalyst for new movements in culture and the arts, etc. Fixing it or minimizing its negative impact will require dialogue between all those disciplines, plus a hearty dose of common sense and good ethics founded on compassion and love. In that spirit, I created this blog as a place to write about my own interpretation of these problems, and hopefully stimulate discussion about possible solutions. Short expository articles will be the main focus, but you can also expect to see some journalism on more local events.

Needless to say, I’ll be covering a lot of territory. The now-global influence of top-heavy corporate power structures—and their increasingly overt partnership with the world’s political and military powers—will be a huge and recurring topic, as will the consumer culture that supports it in its current form. Another will be the rampant, ongoing environmental destruction that so often results from both. The imploding world economy, its effect on people’s lives—and how we can build a better one once the dust clears—will be another huge one. That’s only for starters, of course.

I’m setting a goal to publish here on at least a weekly basis. Along with writing, I’ll post links to helpful resources for taking action and for further information. Also, I want to reiterate that I do not consider this blog to be a pedantic “Ran-Zhen Rui only” soap-box—I welcome and encourage constructive, participatory comments and feedback of all kinds, and again it is my sincere hope that my writing serves to generate discussion.

One final thing: despite the often grim subject matter, I want to try and keep the tone of this blog as positive as possible. I know from long personal experience how demoralizing the “gloom-and-doom” stance on global analysis that our media tends to embrace can be. All my articles will end on a positive note, focused on what we can do, and it is my hope that people will try and keep their comments focused in that direction as well. Remember, we can do it, and nobody has to lose out to make it happen (put emphasis on lose, not change).

If you’ve stuck around up to this point, I’ll take it as a sign that you’re interested. Good! Thanks again for reading, stay tuned, and let’s get this all figured out, fellow humans!