beautiful days here, but...
Close to mind for me are all the folks who live in the path of hurricanes, heat waves, fires, and famines—climate change that can’t be reversed soon, no matter how suddenly the entire world might turn its attention to humane political economics. Of course, humanity is blocked by capitalist avarice and autocracy.
Devastating earthquakes and volcanos herald that techtonic time will go its own way, regardless of humanity—which, by the way, is still relatively primative: dominated by warlords dressed in rhetorics of “cost efficiencies,” etc.
Being well won’t prevent idiots from running you down. Conceptual inquiry won’t institute good public policy. Good thinking won’t prevent difficulties of sustaining good society.
Advancing community won’t happen through perspicuous writing.
Being in time is never captured.
And furthermore, the most brilliant lives are usually forgotten before they die, get remembered briefy when they’re gone, then are filed away. The scholar who pulls together a stellar communion might gain a fulfilling sense of artistry, but should expect no effect.
Here is the news: An asteroid passed “close” to Earth last week. Cassini will be destroyed in the atmosphere of Saturn on Friday. And Captain Kirk announced the winning message that will be sent to Voyager in honor of 40 years since Luis Buñuel released his last film,“That Obscure Object of Desire” in 1977. The message reads: “We offer friendship across the stars. You are not alone.”
Anyway, I won’t disappoint you in coming months. What difference that makes is anyone’s guess.
August 26 | I have so much to say, I’m going to say very little: What “ruins” me is not wanting for creative flow. I have more than enough. Distillation and editing takes the time. Incredibly, writing for presentation is easier. The Work is fun. The appropriation is difficult (distillation and editing). Writing for online presence is relatively easy.
I’m in a milestone period. It’s so much fun, I don’t want to stop to post a card home.
My July 29 update (below) explains why I fail to be ready to do promised updates.
I live with a syndrome about not having more to offer. I break my resolve to no longer provide apology.
Yet, I am making progress, analogously as an easy interface of a software app betrays the tedium of getting to that point of easy use (in my case: clear reading for others). Another analogy—which I have no earned right to associate myself with—is Heidegger making easy-listening lectures after doing his impenetrable but lucid Contributions to Philosophy.
Of course, there’s impenetrable and there’s idiosyncratic hermeticism. I’m aiming to avoid both, on my way to easy lucidity—presuming, of course, that the entire venture is worthwhile.
We’ll see.
July 29 | I’m in the flow of too much writing to now have a useful update, but maybe this is good enough: I took a break from project development (and too much obsession with news—as well as having a life!) to respond to someone’s interest in Heidegger and university reform. I posted a long note on that. But I didn’t indicate how I think that my more-or-less Habermasian approach to university excellence implicitly resolves Heidegger’s concerns of a very different era. And my way forward is post-Habermasian (in an honoring manner of son to father), being developed as this entire website (rendered by my “want” posting, July 1, about balancing desire and need).
July 22 | My comment at an excellent opinion article by NYTimes’ Charles M. Blow against The Donald won me a “NYT Picks” label:
On target column. But the ugly truth is an echo of old Ma Bell: "I'm the president. I don't have to care." No, it's uglier: They're marketing people. They know they can buy the ratings they need for the 2018 election. In the meantime, they can live with low ratings, because marketing can always plump up the short memories of the suckered voter. The "voters" are consumers, honey, not citizens. So, why should Trump care? He'll be unforgettable in the real estate market after he gets impeached. What's it to him? Now is his swan song, America last.
July 22 | I don’t use WordPress anymore. But I see that the link to my abandoned blogging via WordPress is a perpetual “Error” message, due to “down” server link. That doesn’t matter to me, but it’s worth noting that all of that earlier blogging was transferred to “blog blog blog,” linked from the home page, top right.
