Essays and reflections — replies welcome.
The thinking of 1500AD and the Pope’s Doctrine of Discovery influences our thinking today. Do you remember Kipling’s poem, The White Man’s Burden? “Take up the White Man’s burden/ Send…
Three hundred years after the Doctrine of Discovery was published, its ideas about White Male Euro dominance provided justification for the thinking behind the formulation of the American Constitution. It…
Do you know about the Doctrine of Discovery? It was published in 1493 by Pope Nicholas v. And is still considered the basis for White Male Christian supremacy. In that…
For over a month we have put pause to our lives because of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. For much longer, I have watched another pathology spread across our country, one…
I’ve been watching interviews with Victor David Hanson, the author of a historical study I much admire: A War Like No Other (2005) about the Peloponnesian war. Hanson is the…
I’ve been reading a lot about the ways people have been trying to approach the study of consciousness even to the most recent notion that it can be examined mathematically.I…
I've encountered several uses of the word “gaslighting” in the media recently. It’s become a journalist’s cliche`, but I couldn't quite grasp the way it was being used, so I…
As one who has played in the game of education all my life, I wish people could begin to think about professionalizing teaching, not licensing. We license plumbers and electricians.…
I've never liked the cultural dominance of the idea that we should give our lives to a career. When I was twenty-five and newly married, I liked the idea of…
Give yourself a gift. Watch this interview with George Will for 36 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR4RCBBW27k He is the friendly, incisive, thoughtful, learned, conservative I’d most like to have dinner…
In my experience, and I find this especially true of the media, the words “to forgive” most often mean “to pardon or absolve,” but for centuries it has also meant…
In a NY Times article entitled "The Earth is Just as Alive as You Are," published on 4/20/19, Ferris Jabr writes about Gaia, the Earth, being a living thing. He…
Not much. Do we understand it? Maybe not, yet free play brings us together. If relationships were based on free play it would fill our lives. The problem is that…
I surrender. I surrender to the digital world, the world of zero and one, of 0 and 1, of logarithms and equations. I am of the typewriter generation. If, on…
The other day a live performance celebrating Black History Month came to OLLI at Clemson University. OLLI is Clemson’s successful long life learning program with some 1500 members. A major…
Take a look at my nomination for the most powerful, most courageous, and smartest speech in the last two years. Before you watch, imagine who might have given this extraordinary…
I have had to deal with trigeminal neuralgia for seventeen years. It is a savage, intolerable pain not touched by opioids. At first, my excellent doc tried Tegretol with ever…
Is composting bodies a good idea for this culture? In parts of India/Persia the dead have long been put out on a platform on a mountain top and left for…
There’ve been too many changes, and it’s not just tech. The never-before-in-human-history cultural changes together with the tech changes of the last generation have overwhelmed many of us in the…
Hey there, Friends and Lovers, we are in the time of Saturnalia. From December 23 to 25th, depending on your historian, the Romans raised hell. Before them our ancestors celebrated…
Have you noticed the frequent talk in the media about “identity politics?” There’s a piece in today’s NYTimes that illustrates what I’m talking about. A reader writes that "he cannot…
A few minutes ago we brought our entire family together on Facetime in images (almost everyone, Liam had tech problems so we could only hear him) and words and good…
I've just been reading an interesting conversation at On Being with the eminent journalist Anand Giridharadas that focused on the dangers of too much power in the hands of the…
I’ve come to know my place in the universe. From the day I rejected the doctrines of childhood at age 18, ’til I experienced the unimpeachable answer to that question,…
Just finished Brief Answers. Lucy’s tribute to her father brought a tear. I admire Hawking’s ability to clarify. No one has better clarified Space/Time. I understand the concept clearly at last.…
I have struggled for forty years with the way one word is understood. I know transcendent is the appropriate word for me to use, but dictionary definitions do not include…
People ask, “What’s wrong with you? You can’t possibly win a seat on Oconee County Council. They don’t want to hear from a Democrat” I don’t argue. l smile. I…