Again, I apologize to my faithful followers for the silence on this blog for quite a while. No excuses really. I just haven’t felt I have much to say for a while. Some things have changed for me. My wife and I have moved into a senior living community after many decades in a big house. We have yet to finish unpacking, but are feeling very positive about the change. I hope to continue the blog on a more regular schedule once we are more settled. In any case, here are some thoughts i have been having lately. This post… Read More
Continue ReadingTime to Get Moving
I have been lately quoting Marx’s last “Thesis on Feuerbach” which reads: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Much as I admire Iain McGilchrist for his breakthrough work on the brain, I wish he would pay more attention (right-brain) to this timely aphorism. His first book, The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, established the bi-hemispheric brain as the paradigm for the way we attend to the world and consequently act in it. It also pointed out, in excruciated detail, how… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Myth of the Self (2): The Left’s World
Before you read this, you should read the prior post, if you haven’t already. What I say below requires that you have looked at the two tables and the previous discussion. I do believe that the categorization of the behaviors is consistent with the brand features of the divided-brain-model (very left-hemisphere comment). The idea of self (singular) would signify some unitary being, acting metaphorically like a machine, run by a program that can produce a variety of distinctive behaviors. Distinctive according to some criteria that an observer might use to describe an action, but arising from a common mechanism. One’s… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Myth of The Self (1)
I have just completed a course at the lifelong learning institution I belong to about three novels of displacement. Basically they are about how people respond after suddenly being transported from a world in which they have been acculturated to a completely different one. One was The Hunger Angel, by Herta Müller, a Nobel laureate in literature. It’s about an ethnic-German Romanian man who is removed to a Russian labor camp during WWII, and describes how he survives there during the 4-5 years he is interned. Another is Primo Levi’s, Survival in Auschwitz, an actual recounting of his experience. Other… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Irony in “Of Two Minds”
A bit of synchronicity to report. Right after posting the last entry about the death of the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, my wife said I should look at the NYTimes Book Review section. The front page article on yesterday’s copy carried the title, “Of Two Minds.” It was a review of a new book, The Zen of Therapy, by Mark Epstein, a psychiatrist, contrasting two apparently opposing practices: psychotherapy and Buddhist meditation. I have not read the book, so what I write here is based on the second-hand report by the reviewer. Here is a key excerpt from the… Read More
Continue ReadingA Response to David Brooks
Here is yet another rejected oped piece, this one by the NYTimes. I wrote this in response to a David Brooks oped, headlined, “America Is Falling Apart at the Seams,” (click here to see it). He pointed to all the asocial events going on in the US, but could not identify any reason. That was the main thrust of his piece. My attempt to provide a good reason didn’t make it into the editorial pages. How can we, who think we have a solid clue to explain and repair our badly damaged social system, crack the wall that prevents the… Read More
Continue ReadingDrop the Irrelevant Adjectives
Who is Pete Buttigieg? He is the Secretary of Transportation. He is a gay man. His is married to Chasten Glezman. He is the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He is the only child of Jennifer Anne Montgomery and Joseph A. Buttigieg. He is a Christian. He is a Rhodes Scholar. He worked as a consultant at McKinsey. He drives some sort of automobile. He lives in a house with so many rooms. All this and more is in the Wikipedia article about him. So why whenever he is being covered in the news does the commentator begin with… Read More
Continue ReadingFraternal Twins Part 5
The Real Me The last few posts have been concerned with the routine ways we behave within and without institutions when our actions are controlled by the left brain. In this post, I shift to the other side as the master, which change also affects the basic nature of our behaviors. Again I include the table of behaviors for comparison purposes. I am using the word, real, in the sense of the existential use of authentic, but as the table and this series of posts have indicated our various modes of behavior suggest that we have multiple personas, each related… Read More
Continue ReadingBrainwashed Nation
A democratic, free nation can exist only when truth and civility abound. With neither in place, the bonds that hold the polity together shrivel and eventually disappear. The assault on the Capitol attests to that. Some level of shared truth is critical to enable the common good to emerge. Without a clear vision of that good, no collective action can be put forth and enacted by consent. The only alternative is action through force and fiat. Biden’s election will return truth to the White House, but little else. And even that will not matter so long as the body politic… Read More
Continue ReadingToo Much Wealth in the Wrong Place
The Washington Post welcomed in 2012 with this story, “World’s richest men added billions to their fortunes last year as others struggled.” A few of the stunning statistics: The pandemic has forced untold hardships onto many Americans, with tens of millions of families now reporting that they don’t have enough to eat and millions more out of work on account of layoffs and lockdowns. . . America’s wealthiest, on the other hand, had a very different kind of year: Billionaires as a class have added about $1 trillion to their total net worth since the pandemic began. And roughly one-fifth… Read More
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