West Chicago is not my hometown. It does remind me however of the place where I was born, where I grew to adulthood, Durham, North Carolina. Do I bear the traces of where I grew up, in my DNA? Sometimes I think so. I would visit there more often, if we lived closer. I…
Our philosophy discussion last night was conducted via zoom. Admittedly not as satisfying, but a conference call among six to eight people, their presence indicated by a postage-stamp scale image is better than nothing. Evening comes earlier now, with the chill, precluding our custom of sitting in a big circle of chairs on the…
We are constantly making judgments, what we like and what we dislike. These moments are hardly thought about. Years have passed, we’ve journeyed far down our road of evaluative exploration. As a reflex we simply respond to a visual impression, a scent, a taste, or to an idea either in sophisticated, nuanced, oblique approval…
7. Moral code for psychologists —- Never observe for the sake of observing!That gives a false perspective, a squint and something forced and exaggerated. A born psychologist guards instinctively against seeing in order to see;the same is true of the born painter. He never works “from nature”;he leaves it to his instinct, to his…
Not another obscure, obtuse post…. Everyone knows that it’s not a good idea to keep causing pain to your readers. I’ve been warned by others who care about my happiness. But I knew already the difficulty of the self imposed task to comment upon philosophical concepts regarded as radical, beyond the pale of common…
Sunday morning, I retrieved the New York Times from the end of the driveway. Sorting the sections of the paper, after discarding the advertising inserts I brought the Magazine section to my desk. The first article, entitled After Math is about the musing of a teenager (while applying makeup) about whether math is real…
I slept soundly enough last night. The news late Friday was of the passing of Supreme Court Judge, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Ginsburg’s death is a momentous event, a breaking away of the keystone if you will, of a liberal (humane) democratic society as we have known it, as imperfect as it has been. …
The Socrates Café met earlier this week. Seven or eight of us began by discussing the challenges of listening mindfully, carefully to what someone of a different culture has to say. Listening well is quite difficult. A member of our group asserted that we Caucasian Americans are accustomed to speaking, to the expectation that…
Why Buddhism? We began several sessions to consider concepts entailed in Buddhism; not easy or comfortable for Americans who are natural pragmatists. Habits of thinking by categorizing, labeling experience is our default. Buddhist thought is a bid to move in another direction: reality as seamless, metaphysical monism. There is no purity or pollution, birth…
I have the website for The Leo bookmarked. The Leo is an independent, “alternative” newspaper published in Louisville, Kentucky. The editorial slant is unapologetic and progressive. The coverage of culture and local happenings is extensive and well written. I’ve visited Louisville a number of times and find the town on the Ohio river stimulating. …
