A Sea Change

Since starting this blog in July 2009 I’ve posted 436 essays for a total of well over 500,000 words. Over the past year and a half the frequency of posting has dropped off. While this is not an announcement of an end to this blog I do find it’s time to let you all know

Realms. How we position.

“How we position.” Seems to call for an object, “What?” before we can get into wondering about “how;” or even, who “we” are; we want to know what.

“Let’s be realistic!”

We feel the weight of this admonition upon us everywhere we turn. It stands like a wall between us and it echoes in our minds. We take it as a warning. In fact it is our prison.

From 9/11 to 11/9…

Fifteen years between these two dates. Seventy eight years since Kristallnacht…. Landmarks on the path to disillusionment. A road we’ve not seen the end of…. A road from complacency and an unearned certainty to humility. A humility we may feel we don’t deserve. A humility that brings us no where we wanted to go.

The Politics of Nostalgia

As any hope of an actual break with business-as-usual fades into the heat and glare of a summer in which discontent does not lead to action to address its causes; but becomes nothing more than a nuisance of disaffected noise signalling on both sides of our political theater that everyone – with the strongest push

Lies

We fall for lies because we want to be told what can’t possibly be true. This formulation came to me recently. Shouldn’t be much of a surprise why lies might come into focus these days….

Approaching Conscience?

Perhaps a way to shed light on where this track is heading is to introduce conscience. We think of conscience as the internal touchstone for an externally directed morality. There is a superstructure of Good & Evil and conscience is where this battle is joined inside each of us. This conception of conscience covers any

It’s a Crime, part I

Money is the root of all evil. Sure, we all know this platitude. Why doesn’t it ever sink in? The debasement of language is part of it. What was once an insight is fossilized and words no longer convey meaning. It’s also what happens when a statement is too broad. Its indicators too vague. A

Political Theater

Policing the norms The dynamic in a dysfunctional family maintains itself through elaborate procedures that perpetuate their norm by maintaining a mythology that celebrates the systemic abuse that holds it together. The ongoing dramatizations of these myths maintain their power. Each member has a role to play. And, so long as we remain enthralled by

New Stories to counter the Thaumaturgy of Destruction

…every malign spell has a lie at the heart of it, and if you can expose the lie in a way that the person under the spell can see and understand, the lie dissolves and takes the spell with it. It’s like the old claim that a demon can never change itself wholly out of

This Means War!

Rufus T. Firefly scuttling center stage to make his pronouncement…. There’s always a hidden glee behind the crowd’s reaction. “Before, I had to hold it together. Now? I can let go. A free pass. No resort is too extreme. We’re at war.” The next stage is the rush to, “Get in the fight!” After all,

A Monopoly on Violence

This is the term of art used to describe and justify government’s control of military and police functions. There is an obviousness, an inevitability to the rationale behind it that leads from, “There are bad-guys.” to “We need to defend ourselves against evil-doers.” to “Stop! Or I’ll shoot!” And, then we accept the entire package,