Tuesday morning, when I customarily compose the day’s post, I will be under the influence of anesthesia, Propofol most likely. I can attest that the drug produces a dreamless sleep. When the drug is administered, consciousness winks out. There is no sliver of fading, just light and then nothing. Waking is not unpleasant, as…
…this sluggish paradise. A human being protected from all normal and natural hardship simply is not alive. We inhabit insecurely a world which must of its intransitory nature be insecure. The tyranny of mindless technology. It is well to use the wheel. But it is fatal to be bound to it. We are trapped…
More rain and some pics from today’s NY Times. And then there is a need that each should understand where he came from and what he is—- and what will become of him. –Wulfstan, Archbishop of York from 1002 to 1023
One can wonder what our ancestors did for recreation absent video screens. After a steady rain in the evening, the morning dawned with light rain and a gusting wind. Out of doors plans made little sense under these conditions. To remain dry and warm the day would be spent indoors. Like many middle class…
When you cut off arterial blood to an organ, the organ dies. When you cut the flow of nature into people’s lives, their spirit dies. As we plunge into cyberspace and strive to replicate the “real” world in the “virtual,” we lose sight of one fundamental fact: nature is totally missing in the digital…
The following quotations are from Sarah Sekula’s outstanding article TURTLE POWER Endangered species spawn on Florida beaches, USA TODAY. Sarasota county has the highest density of turtle nests on the Gulf Coast, with as many as 6,000 nests a year, while the east coast of Florida hosts as many as 40,000. Seeing hatchlings emerge…
How do I not ruminate on the meaning of Easter? Raised a fundamentalist Christian, I was and am shaped by the stories of the Bible, especially those of Christ’s passion. The facts of the story are grim, and the happy ending has been added by interpretation, a after-the-fact postscript. Life is like that though. …
What a philosopher is, that is hard to learn because it cannot be taught: one must “know” it from experience. —Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil #213
A interesting quote. The absurd is productive as a stimulus toward the creation of beauty and significance. But…………… What happens when a majority of us embrace the absurd as a intellectual and moral habitat?
Beyond Good and Evil, Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, final section, What is Noble, concludes with a number of aphorisms which seem quite personal. It is as if the author says—“and now the heart of the matter.” I was drawn to Nietzsche from a upbringing of religious fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is both right…
