... the ultimate currency of life in the universe may be life itself: The marvelous genetic surprises that biological and technological Darwinian experimentation can come up with given enough diversity of circumstances and time. Perhaps, in the end, our galaxy, and even our universe, is simply the test tube for a vast chemical computation exploring [...]
Tag: Thoughts
For the wanderers who became the Aztecs history was a chorus of voices | Aeon Essays
The Aztec historians, creators of a genre called the xiuhpohualli (SHOO-po-WA-lee), developed a highly effective way of keeping satisfying memories alive. The pictographic texts that Itzcoatl burned were only a part of the Aztec way of keeping history. The glyphs served as mnemonic devices designed to elicit volumes of speech. The image of smoke billowing [...]
No Blueprint for Utopia – Los Angeles Review of Books
Who needs a worldview? Maybe we don’t, as individuals — or some of us do, others not so much. But collectively, we need worldviews as elements in the process of free inquiry and human growth. Such visions inspire while they frustrate. As we muddle through our lives together, we need the friction between quixotic efforts [...]
On Crazyism, Jerkitude, Garden Snails and Other Philosophical Puzzles – Scientific American
Horgan: Why do you write fiction? Doesn't that mean philosophy isn't really that fulfilling for you? Schwitzgebel: Wait, writing fiction can’t be a way of doing philosophy? Sartre, Rousseau, Zhuangzi, Voltaire, Nietzsche and Borges might disagree! Is anyone currently doing better work on the ethics of technology than the TV series Black Mirror? For instance, [...]
Why time feels so weird in 2020
Some days seem to pass very slowly while some weeks, and even months, fly by. A set of simple perception tests illustrate some factors that can distort our sense of time. — Read on graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/TIME/gjnvwwjegvw/
Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World | IndieBound.org
Award-winning Chickasaw poet and novelist Linda Hogan explores her lifelong love of the living world and all its inhabitants. "We want to live as if there is no other place," Hogan tells us, "as if we will always be here. We want to live with devotion to the world of waters and the universe of [...]
Media Literacy & Fake News: A Syllabus | JSTOR Daily
In some ways, the entire mission of JSTOR Daily is about media literacy. Our goal is to provide scholarly context to the news using the methodical thinking that goes into careful research. Any story you read on the site does this work, which becomes more important as disinformation circulates on the internet. That said, the [...]
Francis Fukuyama on the Pandemic and Political Order
Over the years to come, the pandemic could lead to the United States’ relative decline, the continued erosion of the liberal international order, and a resurgence of fascism around the globe. It could also lead to a rebirth of liberal democracy, a system that has confounded skeptics many times, showing remarkable powers of resilience and [...]
For Henri Bergson, laughter is what keeps us elastic and free | Aeon Essays
In 1999, as he was being carried out of his house on a stretcher after a crazed fan stabbed him, the former Beatle George Harrison asked a newly hired employee: ‘So what do you think of the job so far?’ On his death bed, Voltaire allegedly told a priest who was exhorting him to renounce [...]
Accept death to promote health | OUPblog
We all die and, despite some fanciful ideas to the contrary, we will, as a species, continue to do so. Our daily routines tend to distract us from this fact. However, because death is inevitable, we need to think about how we can live healthy lives, without ignoring how they end. Once we accept that [...]
