Creatively Advancing into Novelty
Passing judgment on the veracity of Whitehead’s new concept of nature requires first deploying it, experimenting with its effects in the world, establishing its relevance to the values of actual life. Materialist enemies of his philosophy tend to lack the negative capability required to pursue the consequences of Whitehead’s unbifurcated image of the universe; they…
“When I ask my students, ‘What is the opposite of beauty?’ they very quickly respond, ‘ugly.’ That’s what society tells us. But what if I say it’s glamour? We start seeing that glamour is the most dangerous thing because it disguises itself as beautiful, attracts us to it, ensnares us in false hopes and superficiality,…
To make that more tangible: when I look outside my window at home, I can see a lake (Champlain), mountains (the Adirondacks), darkening blue sky with an airplane crossing it, a few boats on the water, some trees, a family of bicyclists riding along the bike path down below, and so on. Or, alternatively, I…
Preempt the time spent on television and organized activities and have them spend it instead on claiming their imaginations. For in the end, that is all we have. If a thing cannot be imagined first — a cake, a relationship, a cure for AIDS — it cannot be. Life is bound by what we can…
When Bertrand Russell was eleven he craved certainty. Because he had heard that geometry proved things beyond doubt, he asked his brother to teach him Euclid. His brother began with the usual self-evident axioms but young Bertrand quite properly refused to accept them. He demanded to know their proofs. His brother firmly told him that…
“This permanence is the result of a process that researchers call ‘chunking’: a person using drugs or alcohol experiences a burst of the activating neurotransmitter, dopamine, encoding memories and stimuli associated with that high in the brain. As substance use turns chronic, those same networks in the brain are increasingly engaged, and eventually the habit…
The Mute Monk is a captivating parable written by Jake Bouma that will have you contemplating themes of grace, forgiveness, memory, and fate long after you’ve finished listening. Jake is an ecclesial junkie, aspiring polymath, and cancer survivor who currently serves as Director of Youth & Family Ministry at Faith Lutheran Church in Des Moines,…
“We use machines to make our labor more productive. Productivity is a measure of the amount of use-value created in a span of time. Since, for Marx, value is determined by labor time an increase in productivity (in use-values) does not create a corresponding increase in value. The same amount of value is created, just…
The world has a surplus of food, but still people go hungry. They go hungry because they cannot afford to buy it. They cannot afford to buy it because the sources of wealth and the means of production have been captured and in some cases monopolized by landowners and corporations. The purpose of the biotech…
Don’t talk to me about spirit. Without me, you’re just a couple of hippies on welfare. I’m the one who gives you credibility, all right? You’re ready, Gene? Get snapping. –Sister Ingalls The above quote comes from season 2 of the great Netflix show Orange Is the New Black. The episode is titled “Take a…