Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“…we can no more bring to consciousness the operation of our brain than we can bring to consciousness other aspects of our own biology. We can invent stories about what the liver is trying to achieve, speak as if the immune system is confused by tissues from our own bodies, or talk of genes being…
“[W]hen we survey the living world, animal and vegetable, there are bodies of all types. Each living body is a society, which is not personal. But most of the animals, including all the vertebrates, seem to have their social system dominated by a subordinate society which is ‘personal’… Thus in one sense a dog is…
“The ontology of this Marxian framework treats society as a complex of social relations among social individuals. This primacy of relations enables Marxian thought to avoid the unreal dichotomy of “the individual” versus “the society.” There are no real individuals standing outside of and prior to the relational nexus: each becomes a specific individual in…
“From the perspective of environmental ethics, astrology might seem irresponsibly otherworldly and anthropocentric, not unlike other spiritual traditions. Even if it touts a stewardship ethic or ecofeminist care ethic that would mitigate it’s anthropocentric focus, wouldn’t such an astrological application of such a caring ethic entail ethical attention to planets other than Earth, and couldn’t…
“Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” – Salvador Dali I know lots of people who have made relatively honest and minor mistakes at their workplace and have then been disciplined for it. These sort of scenarios always get me thinking about human nature and how, when we talk about mistakes, excellence,…
“The rise of the buffered identity has been accompanied by an interiorization; that is, not only the Inner/Outer distinction, that between Mind and World as separate loci, which is central to the buffer itself; and not only the development of this Inner/Outer distinction in a whole range of epistemological theories of a mediational type from…
“For Wittgenstein, the problem with Cartesian dualism isn’t the distinction between mental and physical states. The problem is the metaphysical understanding of that distinction in terms of an inner-outer dualism. We use the word “inner” in everyday word use to talk about mental states, sensations, thoughts, images, moods, intentions, etc. That’s fine. The metaphysical problem…
“Evil is not eliminated by a destructive retributive judgment, but by an aesthetic synthesis of intensity, order, and harmony. Whitehead’s God is not a cosmic judge; rather, God is a cosmic artist. The many poor paintings of individual lives and events are transformed in a continuous aesthetic process of harmonizing the parts with an ideal…
“I look at you, and what I see is pathetic. We ain’t nothin’ alike. You’re just a child.” –Teddy speaking to Craddock, Westworld Season 2 ep. 3 I wrote a fb post recently expressing some thoughts on Westorld Season 2 after watching ep. 4. My friend Kev and I had a great chat and ended…
Regular Tendencies Settled Into I tell myself to think of something else and find that I’m back there with you, alone, by the window talking to the wind. A lonely and anxious fear. Tightness that I would like to untie, but the fretful anguish arrives; natal homing, not unlike a salmon riding on the back…