Sylvia Shawcross Sometimes when it is grey and damp and the air is heavy with the taste of a dreary day you can go down to the other side of town where buildings are small and old and cluttered and the cement seems to meld into the houses that crouch along the sidewalks. And there, …
JR Leach “The art of living… is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.” Alan W. Watts This festive season I thought …
Edward Curtin “The most incomprehensible talk comes from people who have no other use for language than to make themselves understood.” Karl Kraus, Half-Truths & One-and-a-Half Truths Things, possessions, life on the installment plan or credit card. This is the season to buy, to accumulate more folderols, to give things to one’s children and each other, …
Charles Chevalier To what extent was Enlightenment one of human emancipation? As Hampson (1968) describes the period “an embarrassment of wealth for the historian and the danger of being buried under his own treasure”, this essay in the explanation of the question is in danger of not only being buried by treasure but embarrassed by …
Edward Curtin “Ditto,” said Tweedledum. “Ditto, ditto!” cried Tweedledee. Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking-Glass Sometimes a trifling contretemps can open a window onto significant issues. As a case in point, The New York Times, a newspaper that regularly publishes U.S. propaganda without a bit of shame or remorse, recently reported on a controversy involving Simon …
Edward Curtin “We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!” T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men” When many people share thoughts, speech, or conduct that is frequently repeated and becomes automatic, it is fair to call it a social habit. Such habits tend to become invisible and unspeakable. …
Edward Curtin “I cling like a miser to the freedom that disappears as soon as there is an excess of things.” Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays. Let me tell you a story about a haunted house and all the thoughts it evoked in me. Do we believe we can save ourselves by saving things? Or …
Todd Hayen One thing this global awakening (at least an awakening for me and my fellow shrews) has made me realize is that we all have been living in utter hell for quite some time. I won’t speak for you, but for me it seems all of the advancements in technology have not really done …
Edward Curtin “Begin then with a fracture, a cesura, a rent; opening a crack in this fallen world, a shaft of light.” Norman O. Brown, Love’s Body Being sick for the past few weeks has had its advantages. It has forced me to take a break from writing since I could not concentrate enough to do …
Edward Curtin This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the theologian Paul Tillich’s famous book, The Courage to Be. Widely read in the days when an educated public read books, it is long forgotten. In it, Tillich surveys the history of anxiety and fear and their relation to courage, religious faith, and the meaning of …
