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Quote of the day
Read more: Quote of the day“Understanding a people’s culture exposes their normalness without reducing their particularity. (…) It renders them accessible: setting them in the frame of their own banalities, it dissolves their opacity.” Clifford Geertz – The Interpretation of Cultures (Basic Books Classics)
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Words of wisdom, cautionary words
Read more: Words of wisdom, cautionary wordsOn creativity: “If too few opportunities for curiosity are available, if too many obstacles are placed in the way of risk and exploration, the motivation to engage in creative behavior is easily extinguished. (…) So, if the next generation is to face the future with zest and self-confidence, we must educate them to be original…
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Quote of the day
Read more: Quote of the day“Plato (…) also discovered the very insecure position of truth in the world, for ‘from opinions comes persuasion, and not from truth’ (Phaedrus 260). The most striking difference between ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want…
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On migration and diasporas
Read more: On migration and diasporas“To live “in diaspora” is to reside in one place but to keep in motion an emotional, cultural, or political relationship with another, whether it is the site of one’s nativity that subsequently became a point of departure or an ancestral “homeland” virtually conjured but never visited. (…) Diasporas (…) are platforms where received notions…
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Quote of the day
Read more: Quote of the day“To yield to the mere process of disintegration has become an irresistible temptation, not only because it has assumed the spurious grandeur of ‘historical necessity’, but also because everything outside it has begun to appear lifeless, bloodless, meaningless, and unreal. (…) Comprehension does not mean denying the outrageous (…). It means, rather, examining and bearing…
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Questions
Read more: QuestionsSetting: Catholic religion class at school. Characters: New teacher – a man. A bunch of 9-year-olds. Open discussion about covenants. (Based loosely on recollection, don’t shoot the messenger!) Girl in my daughter’s class, with genuine curiosity: Why are all the priests men? Why are there no women priests? Teacher, gently: Well, you see, Jesus was…
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Spirituality, modernity and Brownian motion
Read more: Spirituality, modernity and Brownian motionJust a thought… So many of us feel depleted, drained, stressed out. Our beings flogged from within, our lives – our biggest gift – turned into empty chases. Pursuing a zillion things that we can grab and touch and display, but which aren’t real. We live in societies that prioritize task efficiency, competition, action, and the accumulation of stuff over…
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(Post)modern obsessions
Read more: (Post)modern obsessionsHave you noticed how the following themes keep popping up, almost obsessively, in contemporary discourse – in the media, in the public sphere and increasingly in ourselves? This obsession with sex – and complete devaluation of love and tenderness and commitment. This obsession with doing – and complete devaluation of being. This obsession with the…
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The Sacred and the Profane
Read more: The Sacred and the Profane“Just as a modern man’s habitation has lost its cosmological values, so too his body is without religious or spiritual significance. In a summary formula we might say that for the nonreligious men of the modern age, the cosmos has become opaque, inert, mute; it transmits no message, it holds no cipher. The feeling of…
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Quotes of the Day
Read more: Quotes of the Day“When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny. (…) There is danger there – a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all…
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Revisiting the Stoics
Read more: Revisiting the StoicsWell, you know what they say, some things never change. Anxious, dissatisfied, relationship not going well? So what else is new? I’ve recently come across the following, from Epictetus: “There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power.” (…) “Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion,…
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Writer Between Worlds 