Crisis Point: Leadership Needed From…Anywhere, Now
Imagine if real leadership from the grassroots comes now from the moderate, democratic/republican right, and not the centre or the left. Considering that the centre and left, almost without…
jtoddring
Cognitive Dissonance, Mass Insanity & Covid Hysteria
Check the numbers. The disease is not ravaging us, is not unprecedented, but has killed 1/3rd the death toll of a typical year of the common flu. DOES ANYBODY FACT-CHECK…
Neoliberalism & The Death Of The Middle Class
The death of the middle class is due to a very conscious, four decade class war, known as neoliberalism. (See Chomsky, Profits Over People, and, Requiem For The American Dream.…
Nostalgia For Simpler Times
I generally am not one for nostalgia, having a strong preference for living in the present, and looking to the future. Further, I rarely write in conversational colloquialisms. But I…
Kindred Spirits: Tuscany, Navarre, and Captain Picard
I was curious about Navarre, after watching Star Trek TNG “Family”, and seeing that Captain Picard is from (outside) a small village in Navarre. What a fascinating place, rich in…
De-cluttering The Mind – And Our “Civilization”
If we had only Socrates, Shakespeare, Montaigne and Thoreau as guides, to direct our course, and tell us about the world and how to live in it, I think we…
Unplug: Nine Weeks To Basic Clarity
Important, extremely useful books here. A brain washing, in the sense of clearing away the fog and gaining some clarity and perspective, is critically needed, now more than ever. What…
Digital Dystopia & The Killing of Cash – and – Advice For Hard Times
Here is another aspect of the unfolding fascist power grab we are seeing globally in 2020 – along with sweeping powers for governments, suspension of all constitutional rights and freedoms,…
No Question: We Have Returned To The Dark Ages
Witch burning, anyone? Suspicion equals proof. Indefinite detention on suspicion alone. Maybe we should break out the rack, the Inquisition, and a little Hieronymus Bosch, and really get this…
The Bridge of Montaigne; and The Roots of Our 21st Century Crisis
What a delightful bridge Montaigne has been, and is: not only between the present modern world and the Renaissance, which is stupendous treasure enough, but also, in another short span,…
The Death of Modern World – Or the Death of the Planet & the Human Species
“The causality of the One was frequently explained in antiquity as an answer to the question, ‘How do we derive a many from the One?’ Although the answer provided by…
Coronavirus & Common Sense
“We were once distressed by crimes: now, by laws”, wrote Tacitus. How relevant is that today? Extremely so; but the sheep are trained not to think; and see, therefore, only…
On “Natural Religion”
Both deism and orthodoxy are cloudy. Experience, in terms of inner experience, outweighs both reason and so-called empirical evidence, since the former can conjecture or rationalize anything, and the latter…
Angkor Wat: Reflections On Our Modern World
~*~ Angkor Wat is the crown jewel of a 400 square kilometer set of temples and holy sites, set in the jungles of Cambodia. Built as a Hindu temple in…
Rules For Good Communication – Both In Writing, and Verbally, and In The Arts (Along with core points on the philosophy of language, knowledge, perception, consciousness, ontology and epistemology, and the nature of being and reality – and lessons on how not to be long-winded!)
Here are a few thoughts on writing and verbal communication, and all forms of communication. As an author, writer, reader, lover of books, and philosopher, I believe I have some…
The Consolation of Philosophy
I am officially in love with Montaigne – as well as Etienne de La Boitie, Thoreau, Emerson, Blake, Boethius, Plotinus, Aristotle, Socrates, Heraclitus, Spinoza, Hume, Bertrand Russell, Kropotkin, Jesus, the…
The Maxims of Empire
(And the Maxims of Liberation) There are at least five known, central maxims which all emperors understand and employ, which have been used for millennia by the elite in order…
Coronavirus Questions – and Explanations
Can anyone do basic math? Does anyone fact check? Does anyone question the media or the government? Another $2 trillion was just announced by the US Federal Reserve to…
The Failure of the “Left” – Continued
In addition to the giant blunders that I’ve already written about, and the clear absence of leadership on the left, there is the even more glaring indictment, which is…
Social Psychology & Meditation On Death
Montaigne said of fear, “There is no emotion which more readily ravishes our judgement.” That would seem to be the best explanation of our current mass social psychology: the great…