I am certain that, of speaking and of listening, — to listen well is the more difficult skill. I was reminded of this yesterday when I heard the old Marvin Gaye song, What’s Going On. The tune is an appeal for careful, generous listening so that we can see “What’s going on.” Marvin’s appeal…
Virulent, half true, untrue rhetoric is a step towards war, real war, not war as a metaphor. A thing begins by the language that we absorb and begin to speak. By our manner of speaking one “chooses a lane,” aligns him or herself with a side and thereby voluntarily ceases to think. Consequently one…
Yesterday a friend and I had a troubling email exchange. At least the words were troubling to me. The friend insisted that I “choose a lane.” What was meant was that I ought to definitively side with the conservative/near fascist collective, of which the President is the figure-head or side with the liberal/socialist minded…
Ray Bradbury, the acclaimed author from Waukegan, Illinois said that the secret to life was knowing how to fall in love and stay in love. (I’ve not read Fahrenheit 451, but plan to do so.) My instincts tell me that Bradbury hit the bullseye with his sage comment. Nevertheless knowing and doing cannot be…
Any one thing is what it is because of it’s relationships with all the other things that define it. The building is the building, because of each of the parts that make it up, but the rafter is the rafter because it is part of the building. — excerpt Taking Back Philosophy A Multicultural…
I did not make the car show yesterday morning. I have a pang of regret. From this angle of view there is no sign of yesterday’s show from my table by the big Starbucks window. The white archway marking the grand entry to 3rd Street, to the promenade by the double line of parked,…
A magnificent morning graces Geneva. The air temperature is a touch cool, a reminder that we are on the cusp of Fall. Seated, by the big window at Starbucks I read this quotation from the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi has been characterized as the Wittgenstein of Chinese philosophy. Once Zhuang Zhou dreamt he…
Questionnaire by Wendell Berry 1. How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons. 2. For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to…
If you are offended when someone says you are wrong, you have no business claiming to be any kind of intellectual. There is a great difference between a sincerely reasoned argument and an unargued dismissal. As English clergyman William Paley (1743-1805) lamented, “Who can refute a sneer? Such attacks do their execution without inquiry.”…
Unsure of what to write this morning. I thought of posting some recently taken photos of a Porsche GT2RS. The photos of the exotic car which I greatly admired on the day the photos were taken, seem a bit obscene this morning. Showing a $350,000 sports car would be a radical disjunction with my…
