Many years ago, when in graduate school, I was asked to write a Credo, a concise statement of the core principles of my life. This was a good exercise for anyone intent upon earning a degree. After all what has one really learned from the exercise of education, — hours spent listening to passionate…
With the final integration of the instinctive and the spiritual by means of human techniques, the edifice of the technical society will be completed. It will not be a universal concentration camp, for it will be guilty of no atrocity. It will not seem insane for everything will be ordered, and the stains of…
Just started a new book, a slim volume by a Brit philosopher/intellectual entitled Capitalist Realism-Is There No Alternative? One thesis of the author, Mark Fisher, is that the premises of Capitalism are so embedded in our consciousness that it is almost impossible to imagine alternative ways of organizing a society. This constitutes an…
Friday morning at Starbucks, the room is a-twitter with rising and falling conversations from tables — not unlike a tree full of blackbirds. The sound of life, the exchange of advice, consolation, the ritual of community. I am fortunate to be here. My sleep of last night was interrupted by a strange early morning…
You run ahead — Are you doing it as a shepherd? A third case would be the fugitive. Do you want to walk along? Or walk ahead? Or walk by yourself? One must know what one wants and that one wants. — excerpt Twilight Of The Idols or How to Philosophize With A Hammer…
Did you play ‘pretend’, when you were about five or six years old? I did. What if a large majority of voters succumb to anti-immigrant, populist propaganda and decide to close the borders make life more difficult for those already inside the country….. and what if in such a country the voters, despite such…
After out patient surgery earlier in the day our daughter was resting. She chose The Matrix film as entertainment. We waited for the medication to arrive from Walgreens and refreshed our memories of this great film from 1999. There are many lines of dialog from the characters Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity that are as…
…in his or her own way of course. As you’d expect, I continue to read Slavoj Zizek — with more care the second time around. The European intellectual wrestles with the problem that confounds me: how to address a virulent ethnic hatred that matastasizes as a ravenous cancer in our society. Our President and…
The emotionally intelligent person – knows that love is a skill, not a feeling, and will require trust, vulnerability, generosity, humor, sexual understanding, and selective resignation. The emotionally intelligent person – awards themselves the time to determine what gives their working life meaning and has the confidence and tenacity to try to find an…
I woke this morning to the chords of Bruce Springsteen’s anthem Born To Run. As you may know the song is a bitter-sweet salute to life-in-America. Also, I am basking in the afterglow of viewing the film Ford vs Ferrari for the second time. The cinematic story telling was superb, featuring Matt Damon as…
