There’s no“reset button” for civilization,and no viable planfor transforming global infrastructure,agriculture, and energy networksin the next ten to twenty years.And while smart, dedicated, and thoughtful peoplefumble with political machinery that doesn’t work,such as carbon-pricing markets,protests and the United Nations,all of us in the Global Northgo about our business,driving, flying, leaving lights on,running heaters and…
Brain fog this morning. My mind felt on the edge of malfunction, like a slowing old computer hard-drive memory disc. I entered Starbucks without wearing a mask. Fortunately a spare mask was in my computer bag. I remind myself to “settle down,” as if a parent were instructing a small child. Aided by the…
Those lyric lines filled the atmosphere of the Starbucks patron seating area. Under present conditions such language seems to be the apex of irony. On a two hour zoom call yesterday President Biden is reported to have ‘warned’ Putin of Russia that if he attacks Ukraine, he will be sorry… And so goes the…
Yesterday evening I was guest at a birthday celebration for our grandson. Family members gathered to express our joy on the occasion of his turning 7 years old. The event was glorious. Of course gifts were given, enough toys to afford hours of pleasure and learning. Thoughtful aunts gave him clothes too. Our family…
Transparency. Sounds innocuous enough, even desirable. Who does not wish to have daily life smoothed out, obstacles and bottle necks which make realizing our objectives, especially those involved in getting what we need from relationships, — removed? Transparency is a good idea is it not? Transparency is a watchword, a conceptual key to the…
It is the very mind itself that leads the mind astray, –of the mind do not be mindless. –Takuan Sōhō Voltaire once said, “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien,” — the perfect is enemy of the good. A few of us, together around a table at Barnes & Noble last night, and several more…
Like practitioners of the Baroque,we too are irrepressible creators of images,but secretly we are iconoclasts -not in the sense that we destroy images,but in the sense that we manufacture a profusion of imagesin which there is nothing to see.Present-day images – be they video images, paintings,products of the plastic arts, or audiovisual or synthesized…
When things, signs or actions are forced from their respective ideas, concepts, essences, values, points of reference, origins, and aims, they embark upon an endless process of self-reproduction. Yet things continue to function long after their ideas have disappeared, and they do so in total indifference to their own content. The paradoxical fact is…
Since the world is on a delusional course,we must adopt a delusional standpointtowards the world. Better to die from extremesthan starting from the extremes. Excerpt, The Transparency of Evil – After The Orgy by Jean Baudrillard Properly speakingthere is now no law of value,merely a sort of epidemic of value,a sort of general metastasis…
Should I be a Buddhist? I ask the question from time to time. I have two statues of Buddha within the landscaping of our backyard. I am drawn to the physical statuary: a representation of a life Buddha lived, the Indian Prince who rejected the luxurious life which being well born would have afforded. …
