I’ve almost finished watching Endgame by Samuel Beckett. The play is my sole exposure to Beckett. I knew of his reputation as a playwright. I was asked why I chose this play. I wanted to take a “deep dive” into waters which required that I swim or else fail. “Drown” is the term, isn’t…
Say: I am real, this is real, the world is real, and nobody laughs. But say: this is a simulacrum*, you are only a simulacrum, this war is a simulacrum, and everybody bursts out laughing. With a condescending and yellow laughter, or perhaps a convulsive one, as if it was a childish joke or…
It is early. There is no sunrise yet. Wondering what to write. Yesterday I began reading an essay by Jean Baurdrillard. The essay is entitled Radical Thought. Here is a short paragraph: The belief in truth is part of the elementary forms of religious life. It is a weakness of understanding, of common-sense. At…
‘ I receive a weekly email newsletter from Professor Scott Galloway. Galloway is a professor in the New York University Stern School of Business. He is a podcast host, and entrepreneur. The professor is philosophically astute, able to see the “big picture.” For today I will excerpt some of Galloway’s words from his No…
THE SOIL…is the great connector of lives,the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by whichdisease passes into health, age into youth,death into life. Without proper care for it we can have nocommunity, because without proper carefor it we can have no life. — Wendell Berry
I have little to say this morning. That is as it should be. Life is replete with conflict, language games, reportage contending for the apex of one’s attention. Often, better that less or nothing be said, — silence is the condition for reflection, a quieting of awareness so that the dispersed energies of life…
Anything written by Nietzsche is approached with apprehension. By reputation Friedrich Nietzsche is a “bomb thrower,” a nihilist who is responsible for the death of God. On a ‘reputation scale’ from high to low, that would be on the low side. Unaccountably in my late 20s I read Nietzsche’s writing with an open mind, overcoming…
But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child? Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea. Aye, for the game of creating, my…
Last night the Socrates Café convened once again. The topic of the evening was “self-actualization” a term introduced into public discourse by the psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908-1970). Maslow presented a 5 step process, a journey starting from the basic need of food, water, shelter, etc, followed by a safe environment, progressing to the final…
Wednesday I picked up the latest issue of Adbusters Magazine at Barnes & Noble. It is a Canadian publication with a global range of contributors. The March/April issue is entitled, The New Left. The title succinctly describes the editorial point of view of the publication. The magazine uses graphic design to advantage, to clarify…
