Post - Educationalism

An inability to bear suffering is an inability to participate in a real human fellowship [a tenuous construct, at best; the myth of a fellowship is as fragile as a spider's web, we must be agile enough to build, and dance, and play upon a foundation of running water], that is, a fellowship aware of its limits, aware of all potential conflicts that it contains, and ready to set its limits to the test [tests will fail; we will break, mend, and modify these limits]... The more we are incapable of enduring our own suffering, the more easily we endure that of others [the cold hands, cold heart theory; If I can not admit my own suffering, how can I begin to comprehend yours?]. The harder it is for us to tolerate loneliness, the more of it we create. We flee from love, which is or can be a source of suffering, shackling ourselves in a forced cynicism towards the whole field of sexuality, and forced by fear to abandon those enrichments of life which in love are rarely achieved withou...

I felt this first moment deserved a bit of transcription: Here's the problem that I have throwing in my lot with Science.  Science doesn't advance the human condition in any moralistic way, and Jesus did.  My thesis is that if everyone followed the teachings of Jesus Christ we'd have peace on earth and we'd almost be an idyllic civilization.  Am I one-hundred percent sure that Jesus is God? No, but I choose to believe that because the man was so extraordinary in what he did in his 33 years...[it] still resonates to this day.  That, I think, is more powerful [ed note: of course it's more powerful! Reductionism and Simplicity almost always win out over the complex and the real--especially when presented to the masses] than your belief in, "someday we might figure it all out, but in the mean time we're not going to believe in any deity." Whoa...did you see what just happened? Somehow, we got from finding the truth(s) of the universe to advancing pe...

The trust which co-creates the movement of love is not constrained by calculation, demands, or obligations. In the reciprocity of love no one is obliged and no one has rights. Reciprocity is the gift of grace and grace cannot be either earned or demanded: one attains it freely and it is removed freely. In this quality, too, the bond of love transcends all practical communications; it transcends them because it is not a relationship between empirical persons but a meeting, in an effort of mutual exchange, of nonexchangeable and non-conditioned realities. I'm reading Leszek Kolakowski's The Presence of Myth . It's a discussion of the real place that mythologies and myth inhabit in the human culture (see the myth of Love, above). I'm looking for the chapter where he describes the solution to the problem of people getting lost in mythology and losing sight of reality. Yes, there's always an inter-connection (a mythical reality, theoretically), but the last few yea...

I'm absolutely serious. It's funny how these certain revelations come about. We spend our lives learning to cut, to divide (and conquer), to segment, to parse, to trim, to make sense of (what, exactly?), and simplify (there's not much left at this point). We grow up to become Republicans or Democrats (and sometimes a Green); we follow (G)od/Jesus, Allah, Krishna or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. We are strictly for or anti-abortion. We are with, or against. It's easy to forget (or, lose sight of--it's easier to be blind) how bifurcated our lives can become. Now, this isn't me just being an anti-reductionist (I would then be a hypocrite--actually, let me just go and screw everything up by agreeing that I already am one). I get it; a few options are nice (compared to a million). I like chapters, and compartments. Thatwholegenre/styleofwriting--streamofconsciousnessIthinktheycallit nopunctuation...it'scrazy,andIdontknowthatIexactlylikeitallthetime. But I s...

Cross Posted from OLF (9/24/09): It's hard to enjoy the "after" of having completed, and passed, the CFP examination when it seems everyone around you is falling prey to the most ridiculous scams. It's even worse when said person is emailing you from a retirement home, who can't talk on the phone due to hearing problems, and who is utterly convinced that he has won that Microsoft-Yahoo Lottery Sweepstakes (and yes, for everyone who won, I already called to confirm...it doesn't exist...remember that episode of Reno 911?), and who is sending gods-know-who in the U.K. $50 a month to keep his "parcel" from being shipped back to gods-know-where in Africa. But, I don't want to dwell on the negatives. I post the following in the hopes that others might be saved from the evils of hobbit trickery: Hobbit 419 Dear MR BAGGINS, Fellow Conspirator, I am Thorin Oakenshield, descendant of Thrain the Old and grandson of Thror who was King under the M...

I passed. It still hasn't quite sunk in yet. It's kind of hard for it to sink in when one finds out about something on a Monday while the world continues spinning (quickly, at that). It feels like some things aren't finalized until a round of beer has been served around a fire-pit at Raleighs (which I hear has changed hands, sadly). On a terribly unrelated note, Good Omens is a wonderful change of pace from estate planning: "It was then that Marvin got religion. Not the quiet, personal kind, that involves doing good deeds and living a better life; not even the kind that involves putting on a suit and ringing people's doorbells; but the kind that involves having your own TV network and getting people to send you money." "God does not play dice with the universe: He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant ...

At least that's what it feels like. It was only a few moments ago that summer was starting, my birthday was passing...trying to look back in any great detail is difficult, like walking into a storeroom of old film reels, open tins all over spilling forth a no-longer chronological story. And it's strange, because I think I'm finally starting to see why everyone out of college is suddenly feeling that postpartum/age-induced melancholy: The campanile is gone [ed. note: for the non-Berkeley nerds, that's the giant clock-tower in the center of U.C Berkeley's campus]. I don't mean it's literally gone; though I've heard if it were to fall over it would slide all the way into the bay (maybe in the next Transformer's movie). But, some sense of chronology is definitely gone (unless you're finishing a PhD, Masters, J.D., etc.). Otherwise, things have become a little more free-form and abstract. And it's funny. It's funny because when I was ...