thoughts on life

“Tread down my need, and faith mounts up; keep my need up, and faith is trodden down!” – Shakespeare, King John

As the highest principle of political and social life, the nation-state has become completely unworkable. A global polity urgently needs to emerge.

There’s a great deal of confusion surrounding the idea of limits and limitations, including by supposed philosophers. What are limits, and what are our limitations? It’s a question well worth…

Though parochial minds think in terms of ‘the future of America,’ or ‘the future of Latin America,’ or ‘the future of Africa,’ the issue now, as never before in human…

“Doubt,” I once heard a teacher say, “is like having a dog on a leash. You have to know when to let it run, and when to put it back…

The upper branches of a large, leafless sycamore hold the last golden rays of the sun. In the deep shade below, the silvery water gently undulates downstream through banks still…

Do children need to be conditioned? Human conditioning is taken as a given, unquestioned as much as the sun rising in the morning. But conditioning is enslavement, not an immutable…

Following a meditation under the massive old sycamore, I drop down the short, steep bank to the shallow stream. Standing under and little way away from the tree, I see…