Horizons of Significance

John Cline commented on the last post, Coherence is Provisional: I really like what you are saying. I wonder, though, what would happen to human personality if this model of thinking was the norm. We are mostly tribal in our actions. We gravitate too easily toward charismatics, and like lemmings wil

Ideology works through the process of consensus. Someone’s ideas gain followers and a movement is born to support these ideals and find ways to garner wider support; either through negotiated agreement or through some form of overt or covert coercion. Some movements gain broad support. Others limp a

This latest post on Boats for difficult times connects with the stream of concerns we delve into here. Filed under: Creativity, Critique of Culture Tagged: Awareness, Competence, Craft, Crisis of Expertise, Design, Difficult Times, Enormity, Fear, Futility, Integrity, Mastery, Perspectives, Value

In Qi Gong, at least in the ad hoc mongrel form I practice, there are three opening phases in our relationship to Qi, to the life force. I do not approach Qi Gong, or anything in life, from within whatever might pass for a mystical view. I do not willingly bring beliefs to any confrontation [...]

We all know what that means! What does it mean? To make is to put together. It’s not quite the same as create. Not as pedestrian as assemble. It does imply a matter-of-fact doing. The emphasis is on competence and taking things as they are and putting them together so the result will function as [..

Nothing exists solely to fulfill a single purpose or to take a singular role in a single process. How can I realize that the “answer” is not to remake the world in my image, that no singular image of what the world “should” be is either possible or beneficial? If these are true, then what [...]

My father was eleven years old when the Titanic went down. He would tell his own simple story of hearing about it, living in Portugal at the time…. He was telling it as an old man to a young boy around the same age as the boy he had been then. There were fifty-one years [...]

When we are “consuming” a cultural artifact and it creates discomfort, even emotional pain, we tend to value the experience. We feel the artist has done something worthwhile. We feel we have participated in something that adds richness to our lives. Yet when we are confronted with a social interacti

Sometimes writing is an act of excavation. Sometimes it is digging things up. Sometimes it is digging one’s self out…. What is writing? What is it for? Why? How? Once asked, these questions proliferate. Looming over them all, Why ask? Who is asking? These all circle around and bring us back to langu