thoughts on life

A friend from philosophy grad school days tells me about how he was contacted recently by a scam-publishing outfit, offering to publish a book they proposed. All he had to…

I heard a learned astronomer say recently, “We are atoms that are aware that we are atoms…we are the universe aware of itself.” That’s a profoundly religious declaration, without reference…

The only way one can speak of the horrendous situation in the world today is if wisdom is stirring in human heart, and not just surging darkness. Otherwise, what’s the…

In the not very distant past—decades, not centuries ago—there was space on the earth for man to make his primeval mistakes of separation, division and rapaciousness. The question of the…

I learned a new word the other day–Weltanschauung. Obviously a German mouthful, it means “a comprehensive conception or theory of the world and the place of humanity in it, a…

Having attended compulsory Mass, in Latin no less, six days a week in elementary and junior high school, I learned a thing or two about guilt. By my later teens…

Here’s an interesting thought experiment. Imagine the beginnings of planning in human evolution. When did the first people communicate to each other, undoubtedly through signs: “I’ll go this way, you…

Perhaps in part because I haven’t had children, I recoil when I hear a parent say something like, “kids questions reflect that time between innocence and experience.”