Political Failure, a Clarification

There’s a critical piece missing from the last post. That is, what does political failure entail? If we look at it from within the assumptions of “the game,” the conclusion that what is needed and inevitable is a grand failure will be misunderstood. Saying that any one leader, any one party should fail, is just

Shadows, Murmurs & Inklings

an anecdote about Martin Luther King, who apparently said to Harry Belafonte, just before he (i.e., King) was assassinated, that he thought he might have been making a big mistake; that he sometimes felt like he was herding people into a burning church. This is a very different insight, quite obviously, than the notion that

Coherence

I’ve recently come upon Peter Kajtar‘s work and then I had a wonderful opportunity to talk to him over Skype. His site, The Order of Thought, covers his work in progress, a book by that same name on the work of David Bohm and J. Krishnamurti. It cannot be a surprise to anyone who’s read

The Urge to Start Over

What I’m asking… * What I’m asking… is to fulfill the frustrated need I had as a child, to be able to trust, and receive without doubt, guidance and direction. Guidance and direction I could accept as being in my best interest. This is probably the most important request I have after a childhood need

Staying in the Drama…

Whew, I’ve spent years thinking what synchronicity might really mean. It is an interesting topic, but difficult to discuss, as language is structured on something like causality. Poetry, maybe… Getting the outside and inside to resonate synchronously: making the outside like the inside and inside like the outside. This actually, is what is irking me

Consensus and Dissensus

Once again, Dwight Towers has suggested I use a comment I’ve made on that site as a post here. This time I may go a little long, adding further comment and breaking any chance at pithiness, so admired in certain quarters…

Innovation as Impermanence

Watching this BBC documentary about the Islamic History of Europe I came across the Islamic roots of Convivencia, a term I’ve associated with Ivan Illich, perhaps its most recent heir, himself part of an Hispanic tradition going back to Al Andaluz. This film is a refreshing look at the contributions of Islamic Culture to the

The World, or the world…

I’ve attempted to carve out distinctions and definitions on a regular basis here. Then I’ve backslid and muddied the waters again and again by letting ambiguity and habit blur these distinctions. Maintaining a vocabulary requires the patience of an archeologist, wiping away the dust of the millennia as a current erupting volcano sifts down a

Aloof

Reading Simon Winchester‘s Atlantic, I came across an etymology for the term, aloof, deriving from a-luff, the order to maintain a course with sufficient distance for safety off a lee shore. Let’s unpack that. A lee shore is a danger that is downwind, a-lee, of our position. If we lose way, we are in danger

The Real Trouble with Secrecy

Secrecy is an approach to power. It holds that there are short-cuts to achieving one’s will and that they are hidden. It’s followers believe that a self-generated aura of mystery, the tingle of insider knowledge, will put them in touch with the roots of power. It’s a cargo-cult as ridiculous and sad as any other. Too bad it has our entire culture under its sway.

Charmed Particles

I believe that the interleaving ecology of our relationships is one of the mechanisms driving what Jung alludes to in his statement about Fate. The compounding of illusions and denials distorts our relationships; our own, and our partner’s. Each of these brings forth a corresponding error from the other in a cascade of self-fulfilling projections that take us further and further from our intentions and bring us seemingly inexorably towards the outcome we fear most.

A Politics of Profound Disillusionment

Cheering “liberation” by proxy, is no more ethical than fighting wars of repression by proxy. We do a disservice in either case. In both cases we are condescending to our “lessors.” Instead we should be working on our own disillusionment while hoping that our example as it gains authenticity might “travel.”