Too Much, too little

I keep running into a single question whenever I consider what might be done. I must admit the question is holographic, its form mirrors its content. It is at once achingly simple and bewilderingly complex. Evidence of its necessity surrounds us and at the same time this question never seems to arise. It’s a questionContinue

On Reflection… part 2

There have been times when it has seemed appropriate to appeal to the metaphor of a snake shedding its skin. This last year brings to mind a different serpentine behavior, stupor induced by the effort to digest an enormous meal. An Anaconda at these times can be mistaken for a fallen tree trunk…. The giant,Continue

On Reflection… part 1

David Bohm and Jiddu Krishnamurti were right in posing that the incoherence of thought is our greatest challenge. Some thirty years later the burning question is; why has their legacy not borne fruit? What did they miss? What’s gone wrong? By miss, I don’t mean to imply negligence on their part or that their capacitiesContinue

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. I could not add a what. Any of the possibilities that come to mind seem too limiting. Not necessarily in the ways we might expect. For instance,Continue

Twists and turns…

…the story of a man who inadvertently got into the role of himself. He saw it as a mistake. That is what people say who fall into a hole. “Hell and damnation, I have fallen into a trap and the trap is myself.” They always treat themselves as the greatest mistakes ever made. Carl Jung,Continue

On Isolation

Isolation. I wrote about it here. * Lewis Lapham has had a seminal influence on me. he’s always been a writer pursuing what lies beyond the superficial. I read Harper’s religiously when I was young, amazed at how anyone could see so clearly, write so well…. His recent remarks remind us of the birth ofContinue

Hanging on

Cognitive Dissonance occurs when perception shows us what we are unable to accept. We fail, actually refuse, to see something because to see it will break something we rely on for our deepest security. This challenge to our world view is too much to bear. It is felt… we just can’t…. Who would have thoughtContinue

The Space We Need

Art school was where I learned that success was a trap. How limited my teachers were. Experts. Hemmed in by reduction. It would take thirty-five years for this to sink in. Not surprising if you consider the trajectory of the intervening decades, beginning with the height of their positions at the time. The accumulated authorityContinue

This is key

I just stumbled upon Donald D. Hoffman’s work in The Atlantic Magazine. It was one of those exceedingly rare moments when a crucial new piece is added to the puzzle. He’s a cognitive scientist. He’s been studying the roots of perception and his research has led to his articulation of a key missing link ifContinue

Ends and Purpose

Division rears its head at every turn. How do we distinguish without dividing? There is a difference. Quality cannot be perceived without some way of making distinctions. It’s what we do with these perceptions that either clarify our relation with what-is or lead us to divide our selves and reduce everything to a set ofContinue

How do we integrate in the face of bad faith?

This title is not rhetorical. How do we? Looking for the salient points that define this present moment what strikes me is a profound surrender to events. The kind of thing we’ve seen in hindsight at the beginnings of cataclysmic wars. Everyone “losing their minds” and accepting that the only way left open to themContinue

Consuming Community, Consuming Our Selves…

There come times when what asks to be done is for there to be silence. This can seem harder to accept than many other demands the moment makes on us. We have momentum. We consider our habits valuable. We expect and we expect others do too. Expect a certain “output.” This gets tricky when theContinue