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

By the time…

By the time we add in the complications and machinations of media it is damn impossible to know what is going on. Some call it Marketing 3.0….

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

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

Wealth makes you stupid.

So much of what we need to do is an exploration of the obvious. Enormity assails us with great predicaments. They should be obvious. We can only miss seeing them with great effort. Yet, they remain hidden in plain sight. How we see wealth is no exception. Civilization holds at its core a promise that

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

“What IS the problem?”

The title comes from a comment made to a recent post. The “answer” seemed too glib, unfair actually, to throw the question back by responding that the problem is our habit of looking at everything as if it were a problem needing to be solved. But this is true. It could be useful to say

The Opportunity to Think

Thinking, the active participation in a creative act of thinking, as opposed to being caught up in reactive entanglements in thought and conditioning, requires peace and quiet and a rested state of mind. These have been scarce lately…. In this statement is a key to how this process works. A triggering situation sets off a

Itching for a Fight!

I keep returning to the centrality of the simple fact that all that we actually have is our attention. The ramifications and repercussions of this realization are profound. This continues to strike at our preoccupation with futures. Seen in this light these are just another set of behaviors that siphon our attention away from the

Utopia is nowhere. Dystopia brings forth our own worst fears.

Perseus and Medusa. Perseus is able to kill Medusa and use her head, with its power to turn all who gazed upon it to stone, to destroy Leviathan and free Andromeda. It’s just struck me in a very straightforward manner that there is a lesson to this tale, we might not have considered. I certainly

Doing No Thing, a Path Past Ego Death

We are caught up in urgency. We do good things. We are good people. What we strive after needs to be done! Yet we are exhausted. We are frustrated. We are pressed by the futility of our actions and have no idea how to change anything in a worthwhile way. Double-binds rear their ugly heads.

Rivers of Blood

Listening to much of the conversation between Paul Kingsnorth, Leire Keith, and David Abram in this podcast from Orion Magazine, I am left with a snippet, I’ve used as a title for this post. Rivers of Blood. I must admit, I can only intuit the context. After listening to most of the first half, I