Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“In my experience users react positively when things are clear and understandable. What bothers me today is the arbitrariness and thoughtlessness with which many things are produced and brought to market, not only in the sector of consumer goods, but also in architecture and advertising. We have too many unnecessary things everywhere.” The quote above…
“This becomes clear if only you pry a little more deeply into the N.R.A.’s logic behind an armed society. An armed society is polite, by their thinking, precisely because guns would compel everyone to tamp down eccentric behavior, and refrain from actions that might seem threatening. The suggestion is that guns liberally interspersed throughout society…
“The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is…
Part of the problem with the current economic crisis is that economics is based on an odd sort of faith, expressed tongue in cheek by the term “money-theism,” which has been popularized by comedian Stephen Colbert. There are a few big faith claims, like the ideas that economic deregulation always promotes growth, that tax cuts for powerful corporations…
“But you must just answer a last question. Two equally old trees are growing in a large garden. One of the trees grows in a sunny spot and has plenty of good soil and water. The other tree grows in poor soil in a dark spot. Which of the trees do you think is bigger?…
Paul’s blinding conversion and Jesus’ time in the desert are both examples of graphical entries into Heidegger’s ‘clearing’, of coming up on the truer core of ourselves and the different light that eliminates us there. They are, in the fullest sense, moments of enlightenment. Yet, strangely, they are also within the corpus of what we…
……………… I was recently asked by one of my favorite educator/poet/theologians, Callid Keefe-Perry, to review his new 45-minute documentary film, Made As Makers. I felt honored. ……………… “Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot name them” ~Dana Gioia To paraphrase the illustrative Peter Rollins, many people of faith feel a desire to…
Provisionally eyed, practically alive, mistook sign for signified, And so sins have often tried to run him off a cliff like Gadarene swine Inside my wardrobe seem anchor bent, Wondering whether we were someone better then… Or maybe just better able to pretend, And what better means to our inevitable end? You know, I don’t…
The modern view of the self, the view that dominates within the psychotherapeutic community, is characterized by what Charles Taylor has called the “buffered self.” For a variety of reasons, which Taylor describes in his book A Secular Age, the modern notion of self-hood became introverted and individualistic, the self as isolated and distinct (“buffered”)…
In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it. The above quote comes from German educator Ernst Fischer. His view of art’s purpose and place in society closely…