Month: January 2013

• January 24, 2013

  Loneliness and presentness

  Yesterday, in the middle of a philosophical conversation about a conversation partner’s sense of loneliness, it occurred to me that loneliness just is the experience of not being present. Loneliness is the word we typically use to designate this nebulous feeling of lack: the other is not there, the past in which love was is…
• January 23, 2013

  Good news from conversation partners

  Some good news from a handful of current and former conversation partners in my philosophy practice: One is leaving behind professional work to start an organic farm in the country. Another is, after a long hiatus, completing a master’s thesis on sustainability. Another is launching an artist retreat and craftsmanship school in 2014. Another has rented…
• January 21, 2013

  Self-sufficiency in rural Appalachia

  In rural Appalachia (the penultimate syllable pronounced like the ‘a’ in ‘apple’, not like the ‘a’ in ‘staple’), self-sufficiency is not an essential characteristic of Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, the divine unmoved around which everything else moves. Nor is it the intrinsic property of Spinoza’s substance, that which is ontologically independent for its existence. For generation…
• January 20, 2013

  Iago’s power exposes powerlessness

  A mountain storm ill-prepares one for its sublime power. Within hours, the power flicks on and off and is out. Night has long fallen, and the mountain–a Iago–shows another, more fearsome side of itself. Its power exposes our powerlessness. Days without power and without adequate supplies reveal how little one who has acquired an excellent…
• January 17, 2013

  Searching is not search

  Nicholas Carr begins his blog post, ‘The Searchers,’ as follows, When we talk about “searching” these days, we’re almost always talking about using Google to find something online. That’s quite a twist for a word that has long carried existential connotations, that has been bound up in our sense of what it means to be conscious…