The world is vast and beyond definition. Anything that can be defined can be controlled. There is much in experience that is wild, idiosyncratic, a patient contradiction to the mind. Yet, there it is, undefined, a surd. I think of my day to day responsibility to work with my grand daughter to learn her…
Strangely, all of what you do depends on who you think you are. Just who do you think you are anyway? You are everyone who ever was and everyone who ever will be. Decisions that you make in what we call this present – this here and now – will validate (or invalidate) everything…
Today is another warm fall day, a good time to be out of doors. As with most of the country I watched the speech last night of Vice President Joe Biden, with Senator Kamala Harris acknowledge having won the election. It was a good speech, one that Biden after a lifetime of public service…
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 wrong. Animals…
The problem with lying is that an individual, or even whole societies forget how to live. One becomes entangled in one’s own misshapen world, the mind-managed world, the one we seek to control, that is slipping out of our grasp. One seems deranged, existentially unhinged as the lies grow in number and scale, the…
The words that I just typed into the header caused a chill as I read them trailing the cursor. I knew on Saturday morning that Sean Connery had passed by means of my cell news feed which is almost an instant conduit of information about events. The next day, scanning the New York Times…
Yesterday we celebrated Halloween by accompanying costumed children on a parade through a suburban neighborhood. The homeowners appeared as happy to dispense treats to passing children, as were the children receiving the sweets. Halloween is a day of celebration, a mirthful exercise of imagination, a costumed reminder of our belonging to a wider community,…
In that great fatality called Christianity, Plato represents that ambiguity and fascination, called an ‘ideal,’ which made it possible for the nobler natures of antiquity to misunderstand themselves and to step on the bridge leading to the ‘Cross’… And how much Plato there still is in the concept ‘church,’ in the structure, system, and…
A Thursday morning, still dark outside and I feel exhausted. This morning I’ve nothing in mind to say. I am tired, very tired. The pandemic is gaining momentum, yet a second wave of infections, certain to grow worse with the coming cold months. This was foreseen as the certain result of official rejection of…
38. My conception of freedom.— The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are…
