Saturday arrives. Brilliant with sunlight, a retention pond just outside Starbucks is full with recent rain, the surface dances white light, a plate of diamonds. Today stands to be a full one. The “big event” will be the pig-roast late in the day. A family member (who constructed the roaster over 20 years ago),…
…we understand our situationas one of high tragedy,alone in a silent universe,without intrinsic meaning,condemned to create value. But at a later moment, the same doctrine, by its own inherent bent,yields a flattened world,in which there aren’t very meaningful choicesbecause there aren’t any crucial issues. The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor, The Slide to…
…authenticity too comes to be understood, as its own goal. It is born, out of a shift in the center of gravity of the moral demand on us: self-truth and self-wholeness are seen more and more not as means to be moral, as independently defined, but as something valuable for their own sake. …the…
…this culture puts a great emphasis on relationships in the intimate sphere, especially love relationships. These are seen as the prime loci of self-exploration and self-discovery and among the most important forms of self-fulfillment. This view reflects the continuation in modern culture of a trend that is now centuries old and that places the…
Continuing to consider what I just finished reading in The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor. My identity, this awareness of agency that I entertain, – can be described as self-creation, an arduous project of construction. The American Psychological Association writes: self-formation as authenticity is the active, intentional process of shaping your identity based…
Sunday arrives… Perhaps a ritual ought to be instituted for greeting a sunrise, a simple and brief gesture, maybe a poem to recognize waking as a beginning, another creation of ourselves, of the world. Sunlight fuels everything. Change is what we mean by the dance of energy, the thermodynamic flow. Would I enjoy earning…
Saturday is yet another gift. Sunshine, mild and comfortable outside. A day of rain would be helpful for vegetation, including vegetables. No matter that everyone is aware of such matters, still I have a background of concern for growing things, in particular those in my backyard. I just finished reading The Ethics of Authenticity…
At last Friday is here. Retired, five or so years are in the rear view mirror, I only have a memory of deadlines, of moral and financial and administrative accountability with co-workers and customers. That was my life. All is change, and everything, no exceptions has its season. All is now, – a flow…
Another chapter from Charles Taylor’s The Ethics of Authenticity. The chapter is entitled The Slide To Subjectivism. He writes at length about the quest for a true self, when there is no horizon of meaning, (no divinely sanctioned king, or gods/God on high authorizing history as having a point, etc..) Perhaps you can get the…
Monday is another gift of pleasant weather and sunlight. I cannot be certain of what the day holds for me, though I have the usual short list of matters to be addressed. With good fortune each dimension, the work will be received as an opportunity to “do some good.” It’s as if the universe…
