In the Lord of the Rings story by JRR Tolkien, the cartoon version has a scene of orc infantry being marched to war. While supervised by an officer wielding a whip they sing, “Don’t want to go to war today,–but where there’s a whip there is a way.” The scene came to mind as…
It is raining today. It is also “raining” in Parkland Florida where the funerals continue for the 17 killed in the latest school shooting. No one can grieve for anyone else. Grief is solitary work. No one can imagine the sorrow of a parent who feels the loneliness of having a child murdered. So…
I had an awful dream in the early morning hours. I was with others swimming, enjoying a calm pond; the water was warm, I felt family and friends were close by. In the distance a rickety old building stood on the shore of the pond. The kid in me has always been curious, so…
The narrower a man’s intellectual grasp, the more power he is able to grab in his country. I tell you, Lieutenant, there is only one way to survive here. And that is not to imagine anything. A Russian who uses his imagination is done for. I certainly never use mine. My job is to…
Yesterday, I arrived at Starbucks at my customary time of 7AM. The evening snowfall was ending and the roads were treacherous. The parking lot was not plowed. I was the only customer in sight. Several staff had arrived and were preparing for the morning rush. I offered to grab a snow shovel to clear…
The pervert claims direct access to some figure of the big Other (from God or history to the desire of his partner), so that, dispelling all the ambiguity of language, he is able to act directly as the instrument of the Other’s will. In this sense, both Osama bin Laden and President Bush, although…
There is nothing more terrible, and more truthful than a mother weeping for her stillborn child. Words absolutely fail to convey anything of the meaning of the experience. One observes and understands nothing of what is happening. To weep is a natural, appropriate response to death, the passage of something or someone who is…
Instrumental rationality— namely the calculation of the most efficient means for achieving a given desire— has overwhelmed Western thinking for the last 300 years……….. We must change the aesthetic tone of the world. –Adbusters Nov/Dec 2017
“Hello, do you hear me?” Is the channel working? Are we both using the same code? Thus we understand the outbreak of public violence in Charlottesville, home to the University of Virginia, with Monticello nearby. And the mass slaughter at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs Texas….. There was and is no underlying…
Axiom: there is no simple “reality.” I remember the promise of the internet. Ease of connectivity would produce greater understanding. Instead what we got was not the spread of democracy but “mobocracy.” We are being fractured by a firehose of falsehood. Facebook estimates that 126 million Americans, about 40% of the population were reached…
