I moved. Today at breakfast I moved as far as possible from the droning of Good Morning America television, a mindless going on about how the quiz show Jeopardy. The show now will have two hosts… Who in his/her right mind should care? Clearly inhabitants of our media culture do care. The world is burning! …
Organisms soldier on unwittingly. The difference between how things seem and how things really are is just as fatal a gap for them as it can be for us, but they are largely oblivious to it. The recognition of the difference between appearance and reality is a human discovery. False belief = getting it…
How beautiful indifference was in a world that was not indifferent, in a world that was different, convulsive and contradictory, with stakes and passions. Back then, the indifference of the mind could turn into a stake or a passion, in total opposition to the world. It could anticipate the indifferent future of…
Saturday morning is overcast in Eagle River. I anticipated writing from a coffee shop in town. I arrived and read a sign that said open 7 till 2PM Monday through Friday. Disappointed, I returned to the Best Western lobby. I settled into a chair at a corner table. Yesterday the manager of Inn described…
We are spending several days in Baraboo, Wisconsin. We plan to visit with relatives living in Eagle River Wisconsin, and then on to Willmar Minnesota, to see family that we’ve not seen for many months. For the most part our stay in Baraboo has been delightful. There have been bare glimpses of the ideological…
This morning I am processing the discussion of last night, an exchange of ideas within our amateur philosophers group about the work of Paul Feyerabend. Feyerabend was Austrian. He taught philosophy at the University of California at Berkley for three decades. He passed in 1994. Attracted by Feyerabend’s anarchistic view of the methods of…
It is difficult to impossible to avoid thinking about money directly, or indirectly. Money, the economy, the future cost of housing, of health care, — the enormity of the sum certainly to be required for the basics of retirement will be “front of mind” for anyone in their middle years. Naturally underemployment, or unemployment…
Success is as dangerous as failure. Hope is as hollow as fear. What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure? Whether you go up the ladder or down it, your position is shaky. When you stand with your two feet on the ground you will always keep your balance. What does…
It is the center hole, the emptiness inside, the inner space…that holds me. These phrases from verse eleven of the Tao Te Ching in my mind serve as an anchor chain this morning. I awakened with a high blood sugar reading, which perhaps is not unusual for anyone diabetic. The condition nevertheless is unacceptable,…
I am revisiting the Tao Te Ching, written by Lao Tsu, a contemporary of Confucius. It is old by the standard of my short lifetime. And it is not so old in terms of our Earth, estimated at 4.5 billion years. Thus the text of the Tao Te Ching is both old and not…
