Over the past several day’s I have read and contributed to an email discussion on the topic of greed. There’s no secret that greed, becomes manifest as an approved American virtue. The 1 percent, the uber wealthy are celebrated, feted in print media, regarded as exemplars of an ideal to be emulated. Indeed perhaps…
What we have at present in our country is a ‘dialog of the deaf’. A group of eight to ten friends recently considered the failure of communication between Americans. I mean between those who believe a bygone way-of-life, paternalist, authority based, moral principles as reasonable, the only option for creating a future – and…
It is snowing outside. It is the first snow of the season to significantly cover everything, and the snowplows are out. Snow covered asphalt reacquaints us with the laws of physics. With a warming climate, winter snow, as it happens, comes later, and less of it. I can remember the blinding snowstorms of many…
The wildfires now surround Los Angles are uncontained. This from the update received several hours ago from the New York Times: Los Angeles is surrounded by fire. The city’s major wildfires have spread, and a new one started overnight in Hollywood Hills. It threatened a wealthy neighborhood and landmarks synonymous with America’s self-image —…
Evil was visible, opaque, localized… We have exorcised it, liberated it, liquidated it. But has it, for all that, ceased to be Evil? Not at all: it has become fluid, liquid, interstitial, viral. That is the transparence of Evil. It is not a transparency in the sense that you might see through it. It…
January 20th, inauguration day represents for me a frontier, a line of demarcation in time. Following that day I expect palpable change to swiftly be imposed upon the country. Efforts ongoing to erase the crimes committed by the president-elect are sure to proceed with enhanced efficiency to their revisionistic end. America is to be…
Perhaps I ought to let this go, pass on with nothing to say. And yet, the scene sketched here is cut diamond-like, an illustration of the paradox of our being. Homo sapiens is a troubled and a magnificent animal. I invite you to mindfully read, to consider… Love wishes to spare the other to…
Two weeks. Fourteen days remain and then Trump is inaugurated, his administration installed to pilot the ship-of-state, as per “the will of the people.” Elections and inauguration rituals are considered sacrosanct, a ‘gift of the gods’. The illusion is intentional. The desire of men long since dead was expressed in our Constitution. The institutions…
How many really individual actions are left undone merely because before performing them we perceive or suspect that they will be misunderstood! —those actions, for example, which have some intrinsic value, both in good and evil. The more highly an age or a nation values its individuals, therefore, and the more right and ascendancy…
Both within and beyondthe confines of historywe might imagine that we were listeningto a continual funeral oration: we have buried, and are still burying,all that we have loved best, our thoughts, and our hopes,receiving in exchange pride, gloria mundi—that is, the pomp of the graveside speech. It is thusthat everything is made good! Even…
