Friday, June 16, 2017

spring 2017


June 13:

Many discursive postings that I did in a blog that I never promoted have been put into this blog and our evolving—over 150 deliberative postings (and fun ones, for example: bizarre, more bizarre, and lightly wise). Those are postings prior to 2010 or so, tagged at each blog (by Web site Area at our evolving, more obliquely here).

30 of those old postings relate directly to Habermasian studies—specifically prospecting progressive practice in light of theoretical interest. Those are listed at a discussion page about them.

One of the “new” postings required adding a short Web page discussion from 2007 which had been elsewhere and is very important to me: “flows in living well.” It’s about a scale of positive, generative, and creative engagement that anticipated this Web project a decade ago.

If you’re especially interested in Habermasian studies, there’s now a link here at the top right; and an easy-to-find link at the “good thinking” page.

These days, I’m marginalizing earlier prominence of Habermas (and Heidegger) discussions, but presently they dominate the site’s content, albeit very much in my own way. Those foci are receding for me, but they remain implicit to where I’m going. (Marginalizing prominence of interest in them isn’t implied by providing prominent links here, but persons interested in the Facebook projects on each might welcome that.) Inteest in them isn’t shelved, rather just increasingly marginal to work going forward—which will include further work directly related to each.

Although the six Areas of the Web site are simply clear, development of each will become conceptually substantive beyond earlier work. If someone casually asks: “So, what’s the point of philosophy?,” easy answers can be improvised fruitfully.

But thinking of all Areas as together a cohering approach to progressive thinking might become elusive, even though clearly tenable.

Anyway, it’s enthralling for me, wandering in a lifelong venture of evolving mind.

Clarity of the venture can be prepared for clear presentation, in the manner of a discursive “curriculum”—a curricular narrative—but the narratable distance from easy answers to clarity of the venture itself depends on an expected audience. Habermas called this “discourses of appropriation” (Justification and Application); Heidegger’s late life work regularly brought readers into focus on “Ereignis”—Enowning or the “event of Appropriation,” which, I think, was always implicitly anticipating work of his which only appeared posthumously.

I do not presume that I have anything comparable to appropriate! But I have senses of my venture which are organized in terms that work well for me, but which would require much explication in order to be worthwhile for a reader, I expect. Easier is working relative to emergent topics of the times, given themes, or short portions of the work of others, taken into presentation fruitfully, but limited in degree of expectation from readers. I’m far from trying to represent what I’m doing altogether (which is my ultimate hope).


June 3 | I’m so involved with experimental writing and intensive reading that I have no substantive update for today.

The Trump Show continues to be an education in how authoritarian posturing can maintain provincial support for serving an ethos of business entitlement.

But note well: Wall Street, U.S. corporate leaders, and states (especially California) animately support the Paris Agreement as good for business. Look carefully at what TrumpLand is actually getting done: Nothing significant; and so far, nothing significantly harmful has happened due to him (thanks to the courts, the mainstream media, and the self-interest of Congressional members facing election).

Yes, folks, navigation of the Ship of State is largely out of the hands of Mr. Showboat.

Anyway, I really am immersed in work which will abundantly show here soon.


May 20 | I’ve been obsessed by news about the impending demise of the moron “presidency” (the ambience of which is captured well by “Shields and Brooks” today [transcript]; and the video version there is worth watching).

Now I feel a bit guilty about spending so much time with that, the past two weeks.

But it’s all encouraging: The U.S. system is working well, especially the “media”that Mr. Showboat so despises. The NYTimes and Washington Post are heroic. Four months into the Republican circus, and already some Republicans are privately talking about “not talking about” impeachment. The U.S. system can survive the knee-jerk populist election of an egoistic, phony salesman.

In another world... I’m making good progress with project work (which I don’t want to summarize). I want to get on with that; so, excuse me.


April 29 | a note on liminality of being


April 16 | Suppose that SNL rules the world.

• April 8: The entire site has been reorganized: “creative process, event of appropriation” above.


March 18 | I posted a discussion, “the EU, Brexit, and global metropolis,” in light of Habermas’s most recent article.

The WordPress platform is retired, in my life. My blogging is now given to Google: “blogger” blogs (here and “our evolving”).

Very accessible areas at the home page level have provided—and will continue to provide—good ways into topic areas whose implicatures will all tend toward a philosophical venue involving all, analogously to how thinking ecologically involves a bricolage of compatibles that all tend to imply a bioscience involving them all. But that’s just an analogy. I don’t think biologistically (nor metaphysicalistically).

A conceptual congruence that is singularly philosophical wasn’t suggested in the past couple of years here. Yet, such was my intent all along. But my conceptual design work is (and was) not anticipated to be formally structural. As I’ve been developing a conceptual design that satisfies me, I’ve improvised a lot online, but never began carrying through a specific conceptual design. Doing so will probably be of little interest, as such, to others, but sharing is all I can do. I hope that the work is interesting for persons who are conceptually oriented.



March 17 | The transition of WordPress postings to blogger has been less than an adventure, given that many webpages of mine link to WordPress posts, and all of that has to be handled.

Worse yet, Dropbox changed its platform so that documents there can no longer be linked from public pages (though they’ve relented for a few days, I guess because too many users weren’t ready for the change). So, I’m dealing with that, in terms of transition to GoogleDrive. Also, I’m transitioning all postings at the two Facebook projects to blogger blogs, though keeping links at Facebook.

All of this is for the sake of a new topic structure for the website, which I haven’t yet had time to implement (but it’s finished in concept). I have a settled set of topic areas to indicate here (this blog), but I have’t yet tagged every posting (ugh).

Lastly, the successful resistances to the Trump Show—via Congress, via leading media, and via world leaders—is intoxicating. I’m addicted to witnessing Our ethos successfully contain The Donald.