Month: October 2011

Notes on the Occupation from the Mountaintop

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I walked to the top of Grand View Park here in the Sunset district of San Francisco. I wanted to clear my head by ascending to the mountaintop, where place expands into space and time transforms into history. History, as we know it, has a beginning and an end. Civilizations, and the cosmopolitical habitats they [...]

The Mysticism and Cosmology of the American Genius Howard Thurman, a lecture at CIIS

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Last night I had the privilage of attending a lecture by Brian Swimme and Bonnie and Kashka Wills on the thought of Howard Thurman. Brian is a mathematical cosmologist who teaches at CIIS here in San Francisco. Bonnie is a Restorative Justice Facilitator in Oakland. Her brother Kashka is a former literature professor turned poet. [...]

#OccupySF 10/26 – rumors of attempted SFPD raid… did the people prevent it?

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I went down to the #Occupy camp here in San Francisco earlier tonight after reading rumors on Twitter about a possible police raid. I arrived at about 11:30pm, after walking several extra city blocks to Justin Herman Plaza due to the closure of the closest MUNI station at Embarcadero by police to prevent an influx of protestors to [...]

Raimon Panikkar on Cosmotheandrism

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"I should like to present this cosmotheandric principle with the minimum of philosophical assumptions. And the minimum here is that reality shows this triple dimension of an empirical (or physical) element, a noetic (or psychical) factor and a metaphysical (or spiritual) ingredient. By the first I mean the matter-energy complex, the cosmos; by the second, [...]

Towards a Cosmotheandric Re-orientation: Response to Knowledge-Ecology

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Adam Robbert over at Knowledge-Ecology recently responded to After Nature's (Leon Niemoczynski) post on anthrodecentrism in Object-Oriented Ontology. I’ve visited this topic several times lately, but I’d have to admit that I seem to have failed to fully develop my own position in regards to the place of the human in the universe. What I [...]

Religion and Reality in the University: Thinking with Robert N. Bellah

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A quote from Bellah's recently published book Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age. I've just started this massive tome, but thus far I think I'm going to really like it. "One could say that if we can no longer glimpse that sacred foundation, the actual university would collapse. For the real [...]

Notes on imagination, Poetry as Soul-making

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Poetry as soul-making Strictly speaking, what I want to talk about today does not exist, or at least if it does, remains for the most part unconscious to the rational, waking ego’s daylight gaze. Nonetheless, I’m forced to call this unknown phantasm something, and the name ‘imagination’ seems to suit it fine. Imagination is that [...]

The Copernican Odyssey: From Kantian Skepticism to Tarnasian Participation, or from the Dawn of Modern Science to the Wisdom of the Midnight Sun

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The following is a rough draft of a presentation I will be giving next week as part of a panel discussion on the philosopher Richard Tarnas'   Archetypal Cosmology. Tarnas' essay entitled Two Suitors: A Parable may aid the reader's comprehension of what I articulate below. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Copernican Odyssey: From Copernican Illumination through Kantian Skepticism [...]

A message to the heart of Wall St.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mytu4ARtic A message to the heart of Wall St.: To the bankers, the executives, the shareholders, and the politicians, I do not want my money back. I will gladly give to Caesar what is Caesar's. I only want what is the earth's, what is the sky's, what is unowned and unownable. I did not invest [...]