Tag Archives: interesting times
The Election Has Taken Place
In these columns, I’ve preferred to stay clear of the politics of the day. It’s been my experience that honest people do differ, and sometimes even over the most vital issues. I haven’t wanted to use “Dear Abbie” to acquire … Continue reading →
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, agnosticism, alienation, American politics, anthropology, anti-semitism, appreciation, art of living, atheism, authenticity, autonomy, bad faith, Biblical God, bigotry, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, childhood, chivalry, Christianity, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, ethnicity, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, fatherhood, female power, femininity, feminism, filial piety, films, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, Hegel, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, Jesus, Jews, journalism, Judaism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, martyrdom, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, Nihilism, nineteenth-century, non-violence, novels, ontology, oppression, pacifism, past and future, peace, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, poetry, political, political movements, politics, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, power games, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, race, racism, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, remembrance, repairing the culture, roles, romance, romantic love, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, slave, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, terror, terrorism, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, time, Truth, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
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Tagged 2024 election outcome, 2024 politics, 2024 vote, all-gender bathrooms, believing your lying eyes, Bob Woodward and Trump, Bob Woodward interview, Bob Woodward’s War, brainwashing, choice of evils, consequential elections, demagoguery, elections and international relations, elections and the economy, elections that make a difference, Evangelicals and Trump, fashionable views, gender and fashion, gender and social construction, grievance politics, groupthink, growing in office, honest political differences, interesting times, international relations, Is rape irrelevant?, isolationism, Israelis, January 6th, nationalism, partisan claims, partisan outlook, partisan readership, philosophical argument, political argument, political differences, political divisions, political fallibility, political hopes and fears, political implications of rape, political preferences, political versus philosophical argument, populism, post-election recriminations, public relations, reasons on both sides, risking one’s career, sex change and personal experience, single outlook readers, testimony under oath, the election, the election and Israel, the election and Ukraine, Trump and the rule of law, voter fallibility, voting for the loser, vulgarity in politics, women’s jail cells, women’s sports
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Interesting Times
There is a well-known curse, supposedly Chinese, that goes: May you live in interesting times! In my childhood I lived in a New York City that snowed in winter. We schoolkids built snowmen and went sledding in the park. Life … Continue reading →
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, agnosticism, alienation, American politics, anthropology, anti-semitism, appreciation, art, art of living, atheism, authenticity, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Bible, Biblical God, bigotry, books, bureaucracy, childhood, chivalry, Christianity, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, ethnicity, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, fatherhood, female power, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, Hegel, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, Jews, journalism, Judaism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, martyrdom, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, mysticism, Nihilism, nineteenth-century, non-violence, novels, ontology, oppression, pacifism, past and future, peace, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, political, political movements, politics, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, race, racism, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, remembrance, Renaissance, repairing the culture, roles, romance, romantic love, romanticism, science, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, slave, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, terror, terrorism, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, time, Truth, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
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Tagged academic bureaucracy, American philosopher, anti-semitism and loss of cultural self-respect, anti-semitism as replacement for personal defeat, anti-semitism in England, anti-semitism in higher education, anti-Zionism and Western cultural demoralization, anti-Zionism as loss of cultural self-defense, antigenocide turned on its head, Battle of Trafalgar, Bernard Harrison's Blaming the Jews, Big City childhood, British nineteenth-century cultural flourishing, building snowmen, Chautauqua movement, Chinese proverb, civilizational cycles, dark romanticism, demoralized generation, edifying educational retreat, English philosopher, going along to get along, Hebrew Bible as Jewish memory, Hitler’s anti-Judaism, Hitler’s genocide, Hitler’s racial classifications, ideal world vs real world, interesting times, Israel's 1948 Declaration of Independence, Israel’s will to survive, Jews as remembering their history, Jews not a race, Jews recording their history, Jews seen as a race, memory gap, moral balance, New York City childhood, overt vs implied anti-semitism, philosophic colleague, predictability of anti-semitism, safe and solid childhood, seeing what you expect, sledding in the park, suppressing chronological memory, the English defeat Napoleon, the makings of an anti-semite, too much of a good thing, transatlantic conversation, UN anti-zionism, uplifting vacation, wholesome group activities, wholesome uplift vs wicked world, William James, William James’ What Makes a Life Significant?, World War I demoralizes England, World War II and British cultural exhaustion
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The Big Picture
This morning at brunch, Jerry asked me what I thought were the big philosophic problems of our time. What are the great questions and concerns? I had to take a few moments to squint at the sky and describe whatever … Continue reading →
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, Biblical God, bigotry, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, childhood, chivalry, Christianity, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, eighteenth century, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, femininity, feminism, films, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, Hegel, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, Idealism-, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, Jews, journalism, Judaism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, martyrdom, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, medieval, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, nineteenth-century, non-violence, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, peace, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, poetry, political, political movements, politics, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romantic love, science, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, seventeenth century, sex appeal, sexuality, slave, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, terror, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, time, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
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Tagged Advaita Vedanta, ancients v moderns, Antonio Gramsci, Aristotle and teleology, Asian religious systems, Biblical Israel and history, brute power v functional power in Plato’s Republic, class of intellectuals, Confucianism, Copernican Revolution, cultural heritage, current philosophic problems, Dante’s physics, Dante’s worldview, Darwin’s survival of the fittest, deciphering history, decoding the unconscious, deconstructionism, discovering nature’s laws, discovering nature’s ways, Eastern religious systems, Eric Voegelin, erotic patterns, escape from history, fact/value split, facts and values, Freud's unconscious, Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two World Systems, globalization and cross-cultural awareness, globalization of cultural influence, God and mathematics, good faith and the unconscious, Greek philosophy, groupthink, health and the mind, holistic medicine, how to be healthy, human rights, hypocrisy and the unconscious, iatrogenic illness, intellectual class, interesting times, Israel and the duty to remember, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Jean Francois Leotard, judgmentalism, Kepler’s God and mathematics, living in history, living one’s philosophy, living rightly in nature, maintaining health, marital conversations, meaning of history, Michel Foucault, mind and matter, mind and mechanism, Modernity, modernity and human values, moral rank-pulling, natural healing, natural science and philosophy, nature and history, nature and human beings, nature and purposes, Newton and the Enlightenment, Nietzsche’s will to power, nocebo effect, one’s place in history, Paris, Parisian philosophers and thinkers, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, philosophic distinctions, philosophic questions, philosophical conversation, philosophy and the sciences, placebo effect, post-modern fashions, postmodern opinion shapers, postmodernism, preserving nature, pretend revolutionaries, quantum mechanics, quarrel between ancients and moderns, recording the story, regions of experience, remembering the story, respecting one’s body, respecting the other, revolutionary pretense, rights of individuals, ruining nature, saying what you believe, seekers for truth, self-knowledge, seventeenth century, society and nature, speaking truth to power, spoiling nature, spontaneous remissions, the Bible and divine commands, the Bible and memory, the big picture, the idea of history, the observer and elementary particles, the post-modern unconscious, the Ten Commandments, the unconscious and hidden agendas, transcendence and immanence, truth-seeking, unconscious motivations, understanding the other, Western philosophy, wheel of karma
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