Blog Stats
- 2,835,934 readers since June 2008
Recent Comments
- Joshx45 on Feminism for Beginners
- Roger lynn mason on Blogging UFOs: What Do You Make of Professor Robert Jacobs’s Bizarre UFO Testimony?
- geoenergymath on On the Far Right, Ann Coulter and Mitt Romney Are Not Conservative Enough!
- John Mack on Would Friedrich Nietzsche have admired Ayn Rand?
- Can We Learn From History? – Critical News Autoblog on Howard Nemerov and Learning from History
- Mathilde on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Manly Man Joe on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Robert Stewart on David Berlinski defends God’s role in the Holocaust: “God did not protect his chosen people…[but] did…smite their enemies, with generations to come in mourning or obsessed by shame.”
- David on Clit Rubbing Bonobos: A Clue to the Evolutionary Origin of Human Homosexuality?
- Philosophers on Evolutionary Psychology - Assignment Ninjas on Feminism for Beginners
- Vincent on Trump’s New Cancel Culture: Cancelling Black Voters
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
Top Posts
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Clit Rubbing Bonobos: A Clue to the Evolutionary Origin of Human Homosexuality?
- Walt Whitman: "To be indeed a God!"
- What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- UFOs, Aliens, and Religious Art
- Matthew 27:51-53: The Bible's "Night of the Living Dead" Passage
- "We Rule You, We Fool You": Classic 1911 Poster Depicting Capitalism Titled "Pyramid of Capitalist System"
- "The Vision of Christ That Thou Dost See": William Blake on the Many Faces of Jesus
- Ludwig Wittgenstein for Beginners
- Dissipation-Driven Adaptive Organization: Is Jeremy England The Next Charles Darwin?
-
Recent Posts
Recent Haiku Tweets
- @abrahampiper Yahweh as a frustrated deity, much to be pitied! Abraham Piper's insight here, if thought about as a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 5 months ago
- RT @tbonier: More than 80M votes cast and we're not done yet. Thoughts: - It's too late for an "October surprise" to have a significant imp… 10 months ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: 1. Want to thank @DanielNewman for using his HUGE platform for this work. I want to clarify what this is. In the voter… 1 year ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Tell me again about how old and feeble Joe Biden is??? twitter.com/ProjectLincoln… 1 year ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Remember when you had a chance to choose country over party and you chose party @SenatorCollins? Well, @ProjectLincol… 1 year ago
Tag Archives: consumerism
Can You Have Your Lent and Capitalism Too?
This past week, have you been indulging or denying yourself? The warring sides of human existence—the selfishly sensual and the altruistic—are brutally depicted in the below painting by Pieter Bruegal titled, “The Fight Between Carnival and Lent” (1559). At left … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Ayn Rand, capitalism, Catholicism, charity, Christianity, consumerism, God, Jesus, lent, love, selfishness
2 Comments
Shopping Rage: Black Friday’s Competitive Shopping Road Rage
From the Los Angeles Times today comes this disturbing little item worthy of a scene from Dante’s Inferno: In Porter Ranch, a woman pepper sprayed customers at a Wal-Mart in what authorities say was a deliberate attempt to get more “door … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged America, black friday, Charles Darwin, competition, consumerism, evolution, shopping, survival of the fittest, wal-mart
Leave a comment
In Philadelphia, Opera Singers Interrupt a Marketplace
A bit of guerilla opera in Philadelphia: Hmm. Do you suppose that the inward experience of death might be like this? Perhaps you’ll be walking along one day when an epiphany of light and song will break in on your life, and … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged consumerism, death, happiness, life, love, music, NDEs, near death experience, opera, song, the sacred, worry
3 Comments
Today’s Question: Is the Goal of Existence an Epiphany?
Is the goal of existence, the end, an epiphany—a vision, as it were of God—as in “I see you”? Or is the goal of existence rational coping with passing appearances, seeking to enjoy one’s existential freedom and independence from the (opaque and … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, consumerism, death, epiphany, God, life, love, near-death experiences, the ground of being, the ontological mystery
17 Comments
Six years later, I collapse (my defenses) and listen to Jared Diamond present the broad outlines of his book, “Collapse” (Viking 2004)
Back in December of 2004, when Jared Diamond’s Collapse came out, I decided that I wouldn’t buy it. I simply didn’t want a Paul Ehrlich-1970s-style-downer book about the environment marring my otherwise sunny disposition. I’m not brave Oedipus: I don’t necessarily … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged America, collapse, conservatism, consumerism, ecology, green movement, Greenpeace, jared diamond, life, the environment, UCLA, vegetarianism
1 Comment
Would the Ante-Nicene Fathers call contemporary American Protestants Christians (followers of Jesus)?
Early Orthodox (or proto-Orthodox) Christians writing after the apostolic period but before western Christendom’s adoption of the Nicene Creed (325 CE) are sometimes called the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and there is a fascinating (and rather thick) book I’m reading that catalogues quotes from … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged ante-Nicene fathers, authoritarianism, Christianity, consumerism, fundamentalism, God, islamic fundamentalism, Jesus, materialism, psychology, religion, the Bible
1 Comment
Henry Fairlie on the Iffy Desirability of Being an American Consumer
Back in the 1980s, Henry Fairlie wrote in the New Republic something that I think speaks to our own era as we go through a recession and Americans seem to be tightening their belts and trying to pay down (rather … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Buddhism, capitalism, Catholicism, consumerism, economy, essays, henry fairlie, life, philosophy, psychology, writers, writing
1 Comment
Americans Moving Along Their Cages, Tracks, and Grooves—and Imagining It as Freedom: An Image I Snapped From a Bridge in Las Vegas
Of course, to take this picture I too show myself to be in the cage.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged America, capitalism, consumerism, freedom, Las Vegas, patriotism, photography, poetry, roller coasters, Santi Tafarella, slavery, Statue of Liberty
Leave a comment
