“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” ~ Proverbs 29:18 In many versions of that passage it says with prophetic vision people cast off restraint, but I think vision works as well on its own and is more inclusive, and perish gives a clearer image of the end result. It doesn’t mean
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A Puff of Absurdity: A Microcosm of Arguments
This thread of comments of how Covid is affecting younger people encapsulates many of the attitudes affecting the people most affected – and general ableism. I used pseudonyms, and I’m not linking because it might not be the thing they want to be known for. It was Elsie’s thread, so
Continue readingScripturient: Seven Faces of Marcus Aurelius
I am going to assume that you, dear reader, already know who Marcus Aurelius Antonius was. I have respect for both the intelligence and education of my readers, enough to feel I can avoid making pedantic explanations and reiterating his biography that is more fluently available on dozens or hundreds
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Frankl’s Logotherapy
The second half of Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning was added in 1962 to provide greater detail of Logotherapy, in which patients must hear difficult things in contrast to psychoanalysts provoking telling difficult things (see the first part here). It’s less introspective and more focused on our place in the world: “Logotherapy defocuses all
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: SARS #1 and Collective Amnesia
SARS #1 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) was a deadly coronavirus that hit Canada in February of 2003. It started in China in November 2002 then entered Toronto in a traveller flying in from Hong Kong. SARS #1 differs significantly from SARS-CoV-2 because the OG killed people faster, so it was easier
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Expectation
How we see our lives and how we expect things to go for us is life or death right now, sanity or madness. This has been an emotionally exhausting week! Not knowing is difficult, and there’s so much up in the air right now. It reminds me of when I was
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Maintaining Firm Categories: Do Labels Matter?
This link about people on the spectrum came to my FB feed as “Sponsored Content,” so I’m wary at the get go, but they present this argument to be addressed: “Autism is a neurological difference in processing, and simply having a collection of traits or quirks without this difference in processing
Continue readingScripturient: Cicero, Seneca and Confucius
As I wrote in my last post, I have been reading a lot of the classic philosophers of late, particularly the Stoics. And I’ve been going further afield. My classical readings have included a lot of Seneca and Cicero of late (plus Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius), as well as interpretations
Continue readingScripturient: Travels with Epicurus
I’m sure it’s not just me who feels this way, but these days I find increasing wisdom and solace in the words of the classical authors: Seneca, Cicero, Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, Horace, Aristotle, Heraclitus, Epictetus, Diogenes, Plato. The writers of classical Greece and Rome mostly attract my attention right now,
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Seligman’s Hope Circuit
Martin Seligman is famous for a learned helplessness study I wrote about a few years back: In a famous experiment, dogs were put in a compartment and trained to jump a barrier when given an electric shock. After one or two tries, the dogs jumped the barrier immediately after being
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On UW’s Mental Health Recommendations
After another suicide on the campus of the University of Waterloo, the university compiled 36 recommendations to try to alleviate the mental health crisis and held (and taped) a forum as well. It really says something about our lives that one of the recommendations is about the process of communicating suicides to
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Hari’s Lost Connections
“There’s violence to knowing the world isn’t what you thought. . . . Sometimes the world doesn’t make a lot of sense, but how we get through it is, we stick together, okay?” – Gloria Burgle, Fargo I watched Joe Rogan’s interview with (interrogation of) Johann Hari about his new
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On the Absurdist Victory: All is Well
A while back I wrote about a video comparing Stoicism and Existentialism. The video also touched on different psychology principles developed from each philosophy. Stoicism is easily seen in CBT and REBT, which start with the premise that when we’re upset it’s because of our perception of things, not the things
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Comparing Existentialism and Stoicism
This summer, I went on one camping trip with a book on Stoicism, then another camping trip with a book on Existentialism, and I was intrigued by the many similarities. Then I came across this video that has some overlap with what I had noticed. As they say in the video,
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Regret
I’ve taken many questionable risks in my life. I lean toward leading a life that’s lived fully over a safe and secure existence. Most I bounced back from easily from typical childhood falling from trees when I’ve climbed too high to dropping out of high school and somehow ending up
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Wasting Time
I had a brief Facebook conversation with Massimo Pigliucci about my decision to fritter away a morning watching the rain and petting my cat. He said, “It’s up to you to determine whether your morning was wasted or not. But from a Stoic perspective the good use of time comes
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Taking Comfort in Stoicism
When thing take a turn for the worst, no philosophy helps me like re-reading the writings of Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. I had a dream last night that I was at a bike show (about bicycles, not motorcycles), talking to a distance rider, when, after a long conversation, I
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Feelings
I was thinking about the fact discussed here that we only started acknowledging feelings as something to be concerned with or a measure of well-being when soldiers returned from WWII, a good half of them with shell shock. Freud had us actually as…
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Feelings
I was thinking about the fact discussed here that we only started acknowledging feelings as something to be concerned with or a measure of well-being when soldiers returned from WWII, a good half of them with shell shock. Freud had us actually as…
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Stoic Environmentalism
I’m doing the Stoic Week thing this week. It’s just a matter of contemplating specific quotations each day. Even though I studied them years ago, and teach about them even, and maybe should have figured this all out long ago, I’m still stuck on the first reading. I’m a slow
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