Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“The salient idea of process philosophy is that the world consists of—and must, in consequence, be understood in terms of—changes rather than fixed stabilities. But from the time of Pythagoras, various philosophers have taught that while the world’s phenomena may be ever-changing, the laws that govern the comportment of these changes are stable and fixed…
“Well first of all, there is present in the structural pattern in the development of human consciousness and culture what we might describe as the dialectic of “progress and pathology”…for every new set of advances, for every new worldview stage that emerges beyond what came before, we find that there is pathology, or problems, or …
“In the “Fragment” Marx imagines an economy in which the main role of machines is to produce, and the main role of people is to supervise them. He was clear that, in such an economy, the main productive force would be information. The productive power of such machines as the automated cotton-spinning machine, the telegraph…
“Art is like masturbation. It is selfish and introverted and done for you and you alone. Design is like sex. There is someone else involved, their needs are just as important as your own, and if everything goes right, both parties are happy in the end.” –Colin Wright I had a conversation with a friend…
“The genesis of this book has been a long-standing belief that the problems facing the world today—poverty, inequality, environmental degradation, hatred, violence and more—cannot even be addressed properly, much less resolved, within the confines of a capitalist economic system. Based supposedly on competition, even at its best capitalism must generate losers as well as winners….
“Here is where Bellah’s approach becomes really interesting. He posits that early hominids developed the first ritual activities out of complexified forms of play, and that once our symbolic capacities developed sufficiently, these ritualized activities took on religious significance. Religion, then, grows out of the implications of ritual. Religion is not therefore primarily something you…
“[Relaxation and rigidity are at opposite ends of the spectrum], and the rigidity of our quantitative way of understanding our world has boxed things and set up very complicated, but still linear, relationships. This is a product of industry, of mechanization, [and] this kind of thinking goes way back. And the problem with this thinking…
“But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.” –Luke 23:28 I am a big fan of artist Paul Soupiset’s Lenten Sketchbook projects. Every year he usually does one and this year it has been great as usual. The image Paul has created…
“The Bible is not the Word of God. Jesus is the Word of God. We go to the Bible because of the testimony of the saints that the Word of God can be encountered there through faithful reading which is an active process of interpretation not passive reception. Readings of the Bible which hurt people…
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” –Matthew 7:12 … “Why, then, was the law given? It was given alongside the promise to show people their sins. But the law was designed to last only until the coming of…