Intention, Sincerity & the Works of I

This post is a departure for Horizons of Significance. Instead of an essay, this post is a poem. There have been times when while writing fiction or essays, I’ve felt what was coming out might really be a narrative or expository poem instead. Coming off the last post, which seems to have brought some sort

Algorithms and Intention

Algorithms. While teaching a week-long course in half-model making and marine drafting I came across a tangible definition of an algorithm. In drafting we use splines, long, thin wooden battens that we bend around control points held by lead weights called ducks or whales. The shape, density and grain of the wood influences how it

from Intention to Attention

Intention gets in the way of attention. It begins an inexorable drift from what is, and finding ways to engage what is, towards building an edifice of will and illusion upon what is desired. There is a push to give intention primacy, “We intend, therefore we are!” Yet, before we have any intention, we attend.

On Intention, Stumbling towards a Loose Rigor

Here’s a series of statements, let’s see where they lead. My intention is to be effective. To be effective is to avoid futility. Intentional striving is futile. To be effective requires letting go of intention. * Is this squaring the circle? Or describing a paradox?

Probing Intention

Intention, Will… How do we untangle intention from willfulness? How do we untangle will from the desire to control? How do we avoid hubris while promoting an active humility that searches out ways and means to embody intention? And so it goes, around and around.

Investing in Trust

Investment is generally taken to mean following a strategy that allows us to siphon off value. A way of taking value from a living system and turning it into a quantity of abstract financial counters that we can then hold so as to use these at will to gain advantage. We strip a living web

Musing on Medusa, Reflections on the Gorgon’s Head

Those of us who fear chaos, through our efforts to control chaos, bring about more chaos, a more virulent chaos, a more violent chaos.

“Relax! Take it easy.”

We hear this often enough. These days it probably sounds like good advice. Yet behind it is a troubling assumption. One that touches on how we keep running in circles, returning to the same traps again and again. We confuse ease with relaxation. What does it mean to be relaxed?

Learning how to see

If we have relatively good eyesight it’s easy to think that’s all we need, “I know how to see! Just open my eyes and look!” One of the first lessons from learning to draw and paint was that I had no idea what was involved in seeing. Not just that I was lacking techniques useful

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

Drawn to Create

Drawing has a series of definitions. We tend to think of drawing as a form of representation or even simply a notation. It is also a physical act. Not only does the artist draw a line. The archer draws a bow and a blacksmith draws metal. Let’s look into this kind of drawing. It forms

On Form

There’s a connection and relationship between the way we internalize honesty/deception and how we relate to form. Form is the means by which error is recognized and the means by which correctness is recognized. There are, it seems, two Muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of