Month: March 2016

• March 21, 2016

  There Shall Be No Home For Us

  All these years I’ve carried around with me the idea that I’ll ultimately find a home and that I’ll stay there for as long as my days will allow. This despite the fact that since I turned 18 I’ve not lived anywhere for longer than two years at a time except for the three and a half years…
• March 18, 2016

  ‘Mattering Matters’

  We can’t pursue a human life unless we believe that we matter. So argues Rebecca Goldstein on The Edge and in Free Inquiry. Some 30 years ago, she says, she was inspired by a view offered by the protagonist of her novel The Mind-Body Problem. There seem to be at least three claims she wishes to make.…
• March 12, 2016

  Splitting Open Reality

  The most apparently ordinary occurrences can make us shudder and fill us with dread or awe. When asked about his weekend, a man replies that he had taken mushrooms and discovered the plentitude of becoming. A woman doesn’t know why she feels her home is uncanny to her, treating it like a train depot, yet uncanny it remains. A man…
• March 8, 2016

  The Tedious Thoughtlessness of Political Discussions

  There comes a time when a question loses its force, becoming rather tired-sounding in our mouths. The fundamental question of the left has for some time been: “Who is getting screwed over, by whom, and what ‘infrastructure’ can be built to right this wrong?” It’s not the case, surely not, that people have ceased getting…
• March 1, 2016

  A Zen Reading of the Book of Job

  There is an easy way and a number of dense and difficult ways of reading the Book of Job, a book that foregrounds the question of unjust suffering. I’m going for the easy way. Recall the main premise: that Job is an “upright and blameless” man who ends up losing his children, his wealth, his…