Month: January 2020
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What Remembrances of Kobe Miss: Aristotle
Many Americans are currently mourning the tragic death of Kobe Bryant, a basketball legend and 18-time NBA all-star. He was 41-years-old and less than four years into his retirement. At this point, we know that the commercial helicopter was flown by an expert pilot, someone with whom Bryant had flown numerous times before, and we…
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Secular Spirituality, Cont’d: Soft Porn As Spiritual Quest
This is a continuation of an earlier post on secular spirituality. That first one was called “Secular Spirituality is, in the End, Spiritual Materialism.” * Something perverse has happened. Where once the boundaries between soft porn and self-care were rigid, now they’re very porous indeed. (*) And then some. Let me explain. Consider the kinds of…
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The Spell of Total Work: A Fairytale
View at Medium.com Casting A Spell Once upon a time, there lived a mischievous magician in a realm just above that of upright, ambulatory, hairless creatures who’d taken to calling themselves homo sapiens. One day the magician, slapping his knee, said to himself, “Well, let me see how wise these top-heavy creatures really are!” “But how?”…
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Wondering Aloud About Efforting
What, let’s gently think about this, do Daoists mean when they speak about wu wei, or “effortless action”? I’d like to come to effort and set aside action. We could begin by wondering about when effort arises. It seems to arise often (always?) in the context of action. I make an effort in order to complete an…
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Secular Spirituality Is, In The End, Spiritual Materialism
We’re entering a particularly interesting moment in history when regular religious observance is, among large segments of the American population, waning while in some milieu spirituality is on the rise. One version of spirituality I’ll be discussing today I call secular spirituality. Secular Spirituality Someone becomes involved in secular spirituality when he or she comes to…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 