Tag Archives: imagination

Saint Ranieri, Meet George Jetson: Deconstruction Illustrated with a Catholic Painting

__________ What is deconstruction? In postmodern theory, deconstruction (in a nutshell) is the undoing of an author’s controlling intentions by time and audience reception. This can only happen because texts are made of parts, not coherent wholes. Over time, parts … Continue reading

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Choosing Atheism Or Theism Is An Act Of Imagination

The universe appears to be lacking in purpose in some ways, but not in others. For example, the Holocaust and the panda’s “thumb” would seem to suggest that we live in a historically contingent universe indifferent and blind to both suffering and … Continue reading

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Penn Rages: 1 In 6 In Prison For Marijuana; Let The Marijuana People Go!

This is Moses to the Pharoah, and I say amen. __________ A transcript excerpt: Do we believe, even for a second, that if Obama had been busted for marijuana — under the laws that he condones — would his life have … Continue reading

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Cyborg Lobster Watch: A Remote-Controlled Plane as a Tool for Vision

Some questions: Is an extension of man, man? Where does the self end and our tools begin? And when we look-in on the “flights” of another person’s consciousness, extended and carried via a remote-controlled plane, does that become us as well? Or … Continue reading

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Short Story: “The Temptation of Saint Irony”

It’s the year of your Lord, 1437; it’s summer; the sun is at high noon, and you’re in the countryside outside Genoa. A tonsured monk in a black robe approaches you, reaching for the hem of your garment. You step … Continue reading

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Sun Salutation

_____ True shield of Aten, color of Van Gogh’s Beard, in an eggy apron of aloes My skin I present to you. O mushroom Atomic; aureola at noon; yolk; bloom Atop Earth’s dome of blue: meet your black pupil (That … Continue reading

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Rod Serling is the Devil!

Not literally, of course. But it occurred to me this morning that Rod Serling’s appeal as a guide to his Twilight Zone episodes is this: he functions as a sublimated devil, the camara darting him into visual consciousness out of nowhere. Serling is a Virgil, but not … Continue reading

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Entering the Twilight Zone via Solitude and Day Dreaming, and Maybe Meeting the Devil (or Rod Serling)

Last week, I wrote a meditative piece on the role that solitude plays in the life of the mind, and how I felt it to be akin to entering Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone (see here). I suggested that if you expose … Continue reading

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Solitude: How to Expose Yourself to the Twilight Zone for Real

This past weekend I was thinking about the importance of solitude to the life of the mind, and it occurred to me that it is useful to think of solitude as a place of exposure. Solitude, in other words, is where we … Continue reading

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Thinking about the Fifth Dimension (the Imagination and the Musical Group)

In a world where God is dead (or at least silent), what dimension should you live in? In other words, should you live in “reality” (whatever that really is) or might you skip the reality quest and spend your life mostly in the realm of imagination? Here’s … Continue reading

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Entering the Fifth Dimension (the Imagination) with Nietzsche, Don Quixote, Rod Serling, and Lawrence Krauss

One of the insights of Friedrich Nietzsche—at least in my reading of him—is that imagination is a dimension, apart from reality, that you can live in. This, of course, is also Don Quixote. And Rod Serling in the Twilight Zone: There … Continue reading

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Catholic Priest, Father James Martin, fails to see the beauty of a fast moving woman in New York City

Catholic priest, James Martin, offers this incident as illustration of the richness of (his) existence that our plugged-in culture is bypassing: Not long ago, I was walking through a park in New York City. Racing across Union Square to an … Continue reading

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Thinking about Nietzsche: does truth matter?

One thing that the religious fundamentalist and the secular scientist agree on is this: what is actually true matters. Or, as they say on the X Files, “The truth is out there.” I’m not interested in denying that the world really … Continue reading

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Ye shall be as gods

And with technology like that depicted in the video below, you can have the illusion of your home being anywhere. Over time, as technologies like this one spread, will our will to fight for real land be weakened? I mean, who will … Continue reading

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What Do Things Really Mean?

I mean really. This from Marvin Minsky, the co-founder of MIT’s artificial intelligence lab: “The secret of what something means lies in the ways that it connects to all the other things we know. The more such links, the more … Continue reading

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“The Creative Writer”: A Poem by Santi Tafarella

  Outside your garret, voices. And you might use them. But you prefer the inner mausoleum of desk drawers and the burial shawls of clean white paper. It’s a cover, you   say, for you really are the bee which through the … Continue reading

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The God Delusion—and the Bush Delusion?

At Salon.com is a great cartoon that captures the delusionary nature (akin to religious delusion) of the Bush years. See it here.

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Certainty, Disorientation, and Imagination

One reason that I am an agnostic is that I think that both atheists and theists can sometimes be too dismissive of DISORIENTATION as a means of accessing the IMAGINATION. If we know too much of the end of a story, … Continue reading

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