Uncertainty and Cause & Effect

There’s something tickling out there at the confluence of our refusal to accept uncertainty and our belief in cause & effect. Even here, as I ponder these two concepts, I’m falling into the expectation that relation equals cause. I was about to say that we refuse uncertainty – vehemently, violently, with suicidal insistence – because

It’s Religion

In a recent post John Michael Greer has continued to bring to light how a religious impulse underlies the current governmental crises. Not as the superficial coverage narrates a battle between conservatives and progressives, but how all these contending forces share in the overall religion of Progress. Reason with a capital R, as much as Fundamentalism,

Consuming the Internet

We consume the internet. A movable feast. Lights kept on by a belief that someday it will “pay.” Or. that it is just too good an attention trap to let it go. It’s supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to provide visions of “freedom.” Where free means there is no up-front cost to us. Somebody

What Realism…?

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. Frederick Douglas Looking at a history of Europe and its entry into Modernity in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries one factor stands out. The legacy that lead to Modernism was filled with internalized violence and the passing down of abusive behavior and the

“A Man in a Boat”

The image of a man in a boat in Buddhist iconography represents the combination of name and form. As Alan Watts described it, words bring out shapes. It seems to me this is a description of meaning. It relates, I cannot help but think, to neo-Platonism and the establishment of Christian Dogma. During the first

Salvation and Solve-ation: Two sides of incoherence.

We are trapped either looking for salvation or for solutions. Nothing better shows the deep links between science and civilized religions than this tie. After a few thousand years seeking salvation a splinter group has set off to find solutions and now labels any positive motivation as, “Saving.” This impulse now competes with seeking salvation

Self Mastery, not Self Control

The title of this post is a nod at an earlier post, Mastery, not Control, in which I laid out a case for distinguishing between these two terms and showing the consequences related to each. In the end, that post did rely on distinguishing self-mastery from the will-to-control. This is still the case here, but

Space at the end of the year

The close of this year has me once again in a curious form of free-fall, as if the inertia of past impetus is losing to the sheer force of gravity. I tend to welcome these periods. Without the chance to notice the tug of futility it’s easy to get caught-up in enthusiasms that might entertain,

The Trouble with Routine

Krishnamurti, So let’s come back to the realization that any activity which is repeated, which is directed in the narrow sense, any method, any routine, logical or illogical, does affect the brain. We have understood that very clearly. Knowledge at a certain level is essential, but psychological knowledge about oneself, one’s experiences, etc. becomes routine.

On Conservatism

Humans have been profoundly conservative for most of our existence. That statement is rendered meaningless if we take conservatism to mean what is sold in its name today, or believe in what passes for the span of human existence as our self-professed conservatives would insist it to have been. Let’s pry the term away from

Vulnerability, Ultimate Realism?

Realism is another fraught word. Let’s imagine for a moment that it meant having a perspective on the world that was the best possible match for the conditions we face. To paraphrase John Lennon, “It might be easy if we try.” If we did have such a viewpoint it just struck me that the most

The Trouble with Movements

The student protests in Britain have captured our imaginations. It’s been a long time since a movement of social protest has occurred in the West. Many of us hunger for the imagery and the projected trajectory such events seem to prophecy. As soon as the conversation moves beyond the righteousness of the calls to reject