Tag: philosophy

  • Beauty All the Way Down

    This is a post about structures. It is a post about illusions. It is a post about what lies beneath the apparent beauty of our privileged culture, and what else might be possible. It is a post about beauty as a way out of our current crises. What is in a rose? This flower that…

  • A Litany for Agnostics

    In the beginning… We start as a DNA blueprint, a set of instructions for how to construct the magic of consciousness from nothing more than the molecules that surround us. The environment is not just a soup that we swim in. It’s what we are made of. We are built entirely from materials that we…

  • Morning with The Dilettante

    I am gazing out the window at my cat. He is doing something in the snow. Sniffing, investigating. He sits and stares across the river. I wonder. How does he decide what to do next? How does he choose which scent to indulge, follow, investigate? Can he be said to have will? I turn to…

  • Ten Fundamentals

    Welcome to the March Carnival of Natural Parenting: Natural Parenting Top 10 Lists This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared Top 10 lists on a wide variety of aspects of attachment parenting and natural living.…

  • On scripts, social performance, and knowing your place in the world

    “We are all born naked. The rest is drag.” Rupaul* We have these dual drives within, for Society and Self. Acceptance and Agency. We hear the messages: Strive… but not too high, or you will become vain. Succeed… within these boundaries. Find your tribe, and then stick with them. They know the ropes. But we…

  • What is True?

    Follow your dreams! Do what you love and the money will follow! The universe has a plan. What makes you so special? Everybody else just sucks it up and goes to work. The universe is meaningless. There is a God, and we know what He wants. There is no God. There might be a god,…

  • I Love You. Whatever that means.

    I find myself in the car, caught up in deep conversation, and I am hit by a wave of emotion. I look at my partner sitting next to me, and I put my hand on his knee. “I love you.” He grins. Then I say, “Even though I have no idea what that means.” And…

  • Keeping On Keeping On

    I’m not supposed to be here. Well, I’m supposed to be here, at my desk. But I’m supposed to be over there, in my word processor, working on my proposal for a radio documentary on E.F. Schumacher and appropriate technologies. But man. Demoralized. Here I am, reading a book that was published the year I…

  • The Inevitable Path

    I promised an article on Repetitive Stress today, but I’m having technical difficulties. You’ll understand if I manage to resolve them, or I’ll explain if I don’t. Like many of you, I have spent the weeks since Christmas cleaning all the things.(1) This included giving away many of the things. Yesterday, I gave away the…

  • Why Dilettante?

    Dilettante: (according to Merriam Webster): an admirer or lover of the arts a person having a superficial interest in an art or a branch of knowledge When I first drafted this post, I began with a list of the projects and activities that I have worked on, played with, or investigated since July, but it…

  • Never underestimate the power of a good bumper sticker

    Somewhere in southern Ontario, there is a black jeep whose bumper proudly proclaims, “Not all those who wander are lost.” I know this because I was behind it one day. I turned to my friend beside me and asked, “What do you think that means?” She said something witty about not following them. It happened…

  • In defense of Theory

    This is a very long article (word count 1800)  that I wrote several years ago to explain why I spend so much time immersed in theory, even though I am deeply concerned with practical implications. The examples are specific to education at the university level, but the idea of the connection between theory and practice…