Rules of Engagement

When we are “consuming” a cultural artifact and it creates discomfort, even emotional pain, we tend to value the experience. We feel the artist has done something worthwhile. We feel we have participated in something that adds richness to our lives. Yet when we are confronted with a social interaction, a mediated interaction at that,

Images, Projections, Reflections; Perturbations on the Surface of Sorrow

In this second segment of a video-taped dialogue Krishnamurti speaks of sorrow and compassion, death, and the sacred. At one point David Shainberg, who sits in for “every-person,” makes a connection between images and the surface of the sorrow that underlies existence. He suggested that images were like waves upon this river of sorrow. I

Complicity and Contingency

We live somewhere in tension between complicity and contingency. It’s not a linear polarity, this space. These are not categories with any sort of rough equivalency. Complicity is a state. We are within a relationship to the forces that seek to destroy. Some of these we are aware of, others are hidden from us, some

Fighting Injustice/Confronting Abuse, part II

The first part of this essay dealt with setting the stage, in a way, finding our home position. Let’s take that groundwork and begin to look at what’s hinted at in the second half of the title, Confronting Abuse. In our stressed, fight or flight states we jump right past the significant aspect of confrontation

Fighting Injustice/Confronting Abuse, part I

I was recently reminded of the “value of anger.” “How else can we motivate ourselves to fight injustice?” How can anyone be against such a notion! And then to go on and actually question not just the role of anger, but fighting injustice itself? Inconceivable! Yet, that’s exactly where I find myself. I’ve written on

A Short Note on Anger,

Dwight Towers recently blogged this quote from a book we’ve both been reading: When we complain about what someone is doing that annoys us, we are really not complaining about him at all. We are complaining about our own character. We make a fuss about what he is doing, but that is useless as he

Why I Write the Way I Do

Why do I use this archaic and ponderous style of writing? Why do I insist on trudging along from equivocation to aside? Why do I avoid the stirring hook? I’ve got to say the main reason is because this is the voice that shows me more than I would have found if I denied it.

The love of the Fire-hose

The sign that we’ve arrived is to be complemented – and self-congratulating – on our capacity to “drink from the fire-hose.” The elite universities are fire-hose drinking academies. Their graduates’ claim to fame, ticket to success, that they can thrive at the fire-hose. The Future! is always seen as a place where even greater fire-hose

Reflection/Projection

I’m not sure what to call this post, even of what to say. It’s time for introspection and time to reflect on media. People whose thoughtfulness matter to me are struggling with the form their expression should take. “We” – an amorphous “group” that might only exits as a projection in my head! – are

Not Individuals, Not Groups

One open question around the brain/mind formulation is what it does to our conception of individuals and groups. It seems easy to criticize a practice of attention that opens us to mind and sees the conditioning of the brain – thought in Bohm‘s characterization – as an impediment; either as swallowing up the individual into

“Movement” toward Dialogue

Along with other actions in which we allow a switch from striving-to-become to simply manifesting an experience of Being, this form of dialogue nurtures the conditions that help us get out of the illusions of Ego and the habits of our brains. Beyond that, it is a fulfillment of our interconnectedness and a refusal to treat the “other” as a commodity, or a means to an end.