Coherence is not reasonable.

This statement demands clarification. Coherence it is not a synonym for reason, reasoned, reasonable. Neither is incoherence: unreason, unreasonable, unreasoned. The key to understanding coherence lies at the root of these distinctions. I’ve found this talk given by Anthony McCann valuable in illuminating this distinction. Anthony uses language centered around what he calls Gentleness. His

“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.

Economic Viability, a contradiction

We spread poison and paralysis around us …in that we want to educate all the world around us into reason. C. G. Jung Economic viability, I came across this expression in one of JMG’s comments. A commonplace of Peak Oil debate. I think it deserves a closer look. It is a grounding assumption for just about

The Proprioception of Power

Finding what needs to be said is a challenge. In large part it requires letting go of reacting to things and getting caught-up in complaining. Chasing disappointment… It requires allowing the force of what is not being said to make itself felt. This is a combination of internal listening with sampling what comes to us

Ideological Justification

In recent decades, American politics has been dominated, at least rhetorically, by a battle over the size of government. But that is not what the next few decades of our politics will be about. With the frontiers of the state roughly fixed, the issues that will define our major debates will concern the complexity of

“Why Is It Important for You That History Have a Direction?”

This question is asked by John Michael Greer in a reply to a comment on his most recent post. He has been slogging through the log-jam of our cultural resistance to abandoning the bi-polar insistence that we are bound either to Heaven or Hell, Utopia or dystopia. That if we cannot have our heart’s desire

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

Complicity, not conspiracy

The subject of the last post, questions around exploring our vulnerability and finding the sources of violence, leads to, implies, an examination of the questions of complicity in relation to conspiracy. As the objectivization of thought sends us following projections placing what we strive against outside us, we find it easy to see conspiracies everywhere.

Argo F… Yourself!

We do what we’re good at. Propaganda shows the violence of hegemon’s victims while hiding the violence they react against. Today’s propaganda has a willing audience and volunteers lining up to provide it. No need for a dark “Ministry of Propaganda,” or “Palace of Truth.” In this heyday it can even afford to play with

A Scary Story for Halloween and the Mid-term Elections

We’ve come full circle. The biannual cycle of Halloween scary stories ending not in All-Souls day, but the Ash Wednesday that follows Election Day, when we wake up to the blessed reconsecration of Business as Usual. Let’s not fret. Let’s be sure to maintain our side of the bargain, after all they’re doing it all for our own good, we should be Thankful.

When we mistake fun for joy

Putting on a blind fold and stepping into traffic will cause anyone an emotional toll as they struggle to pit capricious will against self-preservation. Still, in response to the immediacy of the peril – no matter that it’s self-inflicted – we feel an adrenaline rush. To the numbed psyche this is as close to feeling alive as we can get. No surprise that manufactured risk-taking is such big business.

“What Do I Want?” continued…

This question, What do I want? lays just beneath the surface always.  I’m aware of it, but it remains an inchoate, ineffable pressure, building, but for the most part, unable to break through to the surface.  I maintain a certain patience regarding it.  Its immanence feels like a good quality, its inexorable build-up seems a