When we use the word “happiness” as defined by our philosophy, we’re not in the first place thinking like tired, anxious, and suffering philosophers, inwardly and outwardly at peace in the absence of pain, impossibility, tranquility, the “holy of holies,” at equilibrium, something that more or less has the value of a deep dreamless…
And so it begins! Year by year as the denouement of Christmas Eve nears, I dedicate myself to make sense of the nativity story. God-in-a-manger, stated baldly. I have not attended a worship service on Sunday morning in years so I can hardly be considered “a believer.” Nevertheless I am compelled to revisit the…
Saturday, I have permission to drive subsequent to the heart procedure. I returned to Starbucks. When I reflect, words to describe my feelings come with difficulty, the irregular heartbeat has been eliminated with a minimum of disruption to my life. A “Christmas miracle,” a credit to a host of individuals, especially to those no…
Desperately, I work, seeking the unity of man and the world! On coordinated levels of knowledge, political action, and limitless contemplation! I have to go back to this truth: that life implicates a beyond of light, of beloved chance. My madness—or rather my extreme wisdom— nevertheless reveals this to me: this beloved chance had…
No post was attempted yesterday. At the time I would be writing I was being prepared for anesthesia, several hours of sleep, while a Cardiac Electrophysiology specialist treated a circuit malfunction of my heart that was causing an irregular heartbeat. The method used was indicative of a benefit of knowledge. For human beings knowledge…
And how many new ideals are, at bottom, still possible! —Here is a new ideal I stumble upon once every five weeks in a wild and lonely walk, in an azure moment of sinful happiness. to spend one’s life amid delicate and absurd things; a stranger to reality; half an artist, half a bird…
Uncertain, what to write this morning. Tom, stopped by for several minutes and we exchanged our impressions about “philosophy.” Tom mentioned the slog of reading John Stewart Mill. I agreed with him. Mill was as inaccessible to me as well. I said, that one must pick and choose among the philosophers, selecting material that…
“We will make philosophy dangerous, change the notion of it, we teach a philosophy that is dangerous to life; how can we serve it better? An idea is much more valuable to humanity when it is more costly. If no one hesitates to sacrifice themselves for the idea of ‘God,’ ‘Country,’ ‘Freedom,’ if all…
Think! The admonition, “think, god-damn it, think!” is the hardest, sharpest, heaviest, advisement that can be uttered and received. Many of us born to privilege, in the West, white and almost certainly male are relatively unconstrained by circumstances. A felt compulsion to think, that is, to consider that one’s lifestyle, the purchases, the use…
We live in a time without consecration… Hypercommunication, the noise of communication, desecrates the world, profanes it. Stillness produces nothing. Capitalism therefore dislikes stillness. Information capitalism produces the compulsion of communication. Stillness sharpens our sense for the higher order, which, however, need not be an order of rule or power. Stillness can be extremely…
