Meditations

As I see it, the question of consciousness on earth boils down to one of two possibilities. Either we are, as I heard an astronomer say recently, “the universe aware…

Questioner 1: These are strange and unprecedented times. Could we inquire into the connection, if there is one, between the global climate crisis and human consciousness?

Men are lost in America. Most no longer know what it means to be a man, and don’t know what to do in this obsessively externalizing society in which everything…

Questioner 1: It’s hard to believe that it has been 14 years since 9.11. America is stuck in a negative feedback loop, making it seem like the attacks happened last…

The light is changing with the season, and the season is changing with the light. Arriving at the creek late in the afternoon, I’m struck by how the sun streams…

I had a fine conversation with a Polish émigré in town today. She spoke vividly of fleeing Poland as a dissident college student in 1988, the year before the Berlin…

The basic conservative’s worldview is reflected in the statement: “We have inherited certain life scripts from evolution and culture, and there’s a lot of wisdom in following those life scripts.”

Even when I was in grad school in philosophy, I stayed away from Kant. Most philosophers think of him as the Everest of Western philosophy; my instincts told me that…