Duende speaks without permission — Image by kenne
Duende can’t be rehearsed
it blooms suddenly—
dark, luminous, and real,
flooding the room with soul.
— kenne
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI72kyy2Ius&list=RDvI72kyy2Ius&start_radio=1
Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category
Duende Leave a comment
The Closing of the American Mind 5 comments
I first became aware of Allan Bloom in the late 1980s. As a fellow educator and believer in democracy, I was interested in reading his then-recent publication, The Closing of the American Mind. Having read his book, I realized that he was writing about the failure of American Universities to live up to their role of educating the elite. Bloom was a self-described elitist. For Bloom, then, the university, specifically the classics, was the most essential institution of American democracy. He wrote about and taught classes on Plato’s Republic. Taking Plato at his word, he believed that the character of a society is best expressed by the people who rule it. Thus, colleges and universities, the training ground for America’s elites, had the task of ensuring that the country’s leaders embodied the basic principles of its political regime.
I’m a proponent of the classics and believe in their inherent worth. But if we are to build a more convivial society where people become educated persons, thereby gaining knowledge through experience. An educated person can and should love others. Before she can love others, she must respect herself. She must feel confident and competent in herself and her role in dealing with others. She is also rational, skilled in reasoning, intuitive, and analytical in thinking. She is compassionate and warm in interpersonal relationships. She is sensitive, empathetic, and non-ethnocentric. She is an independently motivated lifelong learner. She is a problem-seeker and solver. She is fluent and flexible in her perceptions, ideas, and feelings. She is curious and an inquirer, an avid gatherer and an organizer of information and ideas. She is a copper rather than a defender, an active seeker rather than a passive acceptor. She is a clarifier of her own belief systems and values, working to remove dissonance between the ideals she professes and the actions of her daily life. She is a person who continues to grow in wisdom, competence, compassion, and reason throughout her lifetime.
This type of educated person is ideally suited to life in a rapidly changing society. However, in a highly controlled and stable society, which some scholars propose, such a person would pose a threat. She would be viewed as a deviant and undoubtedly would be “treated” to correct her abnormal tendencies. George Orwell describes this type of society in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four. In such a society, the educated person tends to have an authoritarian personality, having been taught and learned to accept their lot, show great respect for authority, think stereotypically about themselves and others, and believe in the absolute nature and truth of knowledge in academic disciplines. These persons are offended and threatened by the ever-increasing divergence in publicly expressed values and lifestyles.
I once wrote a paper titled “A Theory of the Functional Self.” Most theorists, however, would agree that the self is inseparable from the social contexts in which we exist. This is why, as an educator, I have tried to practice John Dewey’s philosophy, which holds that all learning occurs within a social environment. In this sense, knowledge is socially constructed based on our experiences. As Dewey puts it, the ‘educational process has two sides — one is psychological and the other is sociological.’ As John Donne states in his poetic passage:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
— kenne
Share this:
Aspen Trail Autumn Colors On Mt. Lemmon 2 comments
Aspen Trail Autumn Colors on Mt. Lemmon — Image by kenne
Events drift in the lattice of time,
stitched by light’s patient hand.
Shift the coordinates,
and yesterday’s truth dissolves—
what was simultaneous
now follows itself in echo.
What you see in nature
depends on where you’re standing.
Share this:
The Idea of Fine-tuning 3 comments
Image by kenne
This morning I read an article by Jorge Guerra Pires on the question of whether the universe requires a supernatural designer often centers on the idea of “fine-tuning.” Proponents of the Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP) argue that the delicate balance of cosmological and physical constants provides “irrefutable proof of a creator God”. This argument posits that life-prohibiting universes are vastly more probable than ours, suggesting that our existence — which mathematician Roger Penrose calculated rests on odds of $1$ in $10^{10^{123}}$ possible states — is “wildly improbable” by chance.
Rather than responding directly on the fine-tuning argument, I decided to write a poem:
At the edge of the observable,
light runs out of breath.
Beyond it waits
either an architect
whose blueprints were constants,
or a vast ensemble
of unseen realms
rolling cosmic dice.
Both are grand.
Both are unprovable.
Yet here we are—
a thin film of consciousness
spread across a pale planet
that shouldn’t exist
and yet does.
The mystery is not which answer is correct.
The mystery is that
we were given the question.
— kenne
Share this:
Thanksgiving Eve 2 comments
Thanksgiving Eve On The Patio — Image by kenne
The day rises like a song,
steam lifting from pots,
voices rising in warm tumult.
I thank the earth that fed us,
the sky that watered us,
the invisible threads
that bind our destinies together.
Gratitude walks with me like a brother.
— kenne
Share this:
Invented Frames Leave a comment
Illusion — Image by kenne
Invented Frames
We live inside the scaffolds we’ve drawn—
lines of thought mistaken for walls,
for safety, for truth.
Every morning, we reassemble them:
beliefs, titles,
the quiet architecture of purpose.
We speak as if the frameworks were air,
as if their edges weren’t of our own making—
words pressed into meaning,
meaning pressed into habit.
But look closely:
the seams glow faintly,
the way a photograph
burns at its borders—
revealing not nothing,
but the hand that held the match.
To see that,
to accept the illusion and still go on—
that is the closest thing
to being.
— kenne
Share this:
Moon And Stars Leave a comment
Moon and Stars Over Mountains — Image by kenne
We name the stars,
and think they shine for us—
but they have their own silence,
their own deep discourse
beyond the reach of eyes.
Our knowing is a candle
lit in a wind that does not care.
— kenne
Share this:
Sunset Sky Leave a comment
Sunset Sky — Image by kenne
Photography patronizes.
Life moves—
blur, breath, forgetting.
A flash halts it,
fixes detail
into permanence—
which is its lie.
— kenne
Share this:
Monsoon Sunset From Our Patio Leave a comment
Monsoon Sunset from Our Patio — Image by kenne
Even when the storm hides the sky, the sun finds a crack to remind us it is eternal.
— kenne
Share this:
Audacity 4 comments
Audacity
Life meets you
at the line you dare to cross—
not before.
It listens for the weight
in your step,
the courage in your reach,
the fire you throw against silence.
Audacity is the language it knows.
The bolder you speak,
the closer it comes,
opening paths
that hide from the hesitant.
Share this:
Begin With The Glass All Empty Leave a comment
All My Doors Are Open — Image by kenne
Where you stand
Matters where you sit.
Share this:
Sandhill Cranes 1 comment
Sandhill Cranes South of Wilcox, AZ, Before Starting Their Long Flight to The Artic Circle — Photoartistry by kenne
“Follow your bliss, and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”
Share this:
Our Life To Live Leave a comment
Kenne and Joy
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
— Soren Kierkegaard
Share this:
The Courage To Be 4 comments
Existential me — Image by me
THE COURAGE TO BE
Let’s not join the chorus of those predicting aExiste political crises. It is easy to succumb to the siren song of fear.
Twentieth-century existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote Being and Nothingness. In it, Sartre assumes
that “self” exists in a material universe (Being), but our consciousness does not cohabitate with the body.
Consciousness provides freedom, which gives us an infinite potential for the future. However, our presence
in time makes us finite and ignorant. As a result, our consciousness can perceive what is not but
could be (Nothingness). Sartre believed that human existence is a condition of nothingness,
which allows for conscious choices within our being.
It is this dichotomy that causes fear (existential fear or “angst” – a Kierkegaard term) since our subjective choices
(in the present) represent a limit to our conscious thoughts. As a result, we (humans) tend to free our fear
through activities designed to take us toward some meaningful end. This freeing can take on many forms,
involving immersing oneself into things in our day-to-day experience (being). We, therefore, escape
this threat of non-being by immersing ourselves in being, i.e., reading a book, watching TV, listening to music, etc.
Doing so doesn’t create a state of being fearless but serves as a rest area in our existential fear.
To be without fear would suggest the worst possible existence (psychological). The more we try to reduce or
eliminate fear, the more we become aware of fear, a form of fear about fear. So, the proper response to fear
is to stop being fearful of fear. Another well-known existentialist, Soren Kierkegaard, believed facing fear
is the best way to deal with it courageously. “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing
we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts
to convert retreat into advance.” (FDR’s First Inaugural Address)
The question is, “Do we have the courage to be?” Only each individual can honestly answer this question.
— kenne
Share this:
Does It Matter That There Is No Matter? May 10, 2008 — Revisited Leave a comment
Does It Matter That There Is No Matter?
The short answer is, no. What matters is “…the matrix of all matter.” The dictionary definition of a matrix is “…that which gives origin or form to a thing, or which serves to enclose it; the rectangular arrangement into rows and columns of the elements of a set.” A matrix is formed when parallel existences are crossed to create new relationships that allow for a convivial environment. For Max Planck, who most credit the modern use of “matrix”, it was the field of resulting from linking the conscious and intelligent mind. The process of doing this, in which we can exist as one in the universe, is matrixing. That is to say that we continually attempt to alter our surroundings to benefit all existence more and more. This is what matrixing is all about: constantly developing an environment by building upon a past development without having to recreate the original development from scratch.
From an existential view, it is the act of placing one’s self back into the world, becoming unified with all things. To do otherwise is to ignore enough reality, in which that not ignored is distorted in ignorance. Traditional science tends to view humans as separate from the whole and in doing so can result in the repression of a single phenomenon. The act of this behavior is judging. Thou shalt not judge! Placing desires for one thing above existence in the fullness of all it is. By setting up preferences that exclude any of life, we have condemned ourselves to ignorance. If matrixing is the process of living as one in the universe, then the goal of understanding existence is becoming identical with the process. One is closest to understanding existence when most puzzled as to the true nature of the universe.
Yesterday, I received an email from a friend in Brazil in response to one of my blog entries, which I would like to share:
“Although I may agree with you in several aspects, I´m not that optimistic and idealistic. Many consequences (especially those relating to climatic aspects and geo-political chaotic scenarios) won´t be able to be avoided, which will cause an increase in pain and suffering in the world. Tomorrow´s dawn will be a dark one, no matter what we do now. We can only prepare ourselves and make sure the day after tomorrow won´t be even darker —
‘Can you picture what will be
so limiteless and free
desperately in need… of some…stranger´s hand
in a desperate land.'”
Such a feeling is not uncommon in today’s world, which has also been noted by one of today’s most noted writers, Gregg Braden, on the marriage of science and spirituality being the answer to solving problems such as those expressed by my Brazilian friend. Last evening, Joy and I had an opportunity to attend Gregg’s presentation at Unity Houston titled “The Science of Miracles: If You Know the Code, You Choose the Limits!” Can we solve today’s major global problems, which have existed in the past but are now converging into a “perfect storm” scenario for the first time? For Gregg Braden, the answer is Yes!
However, it is in our hands.
— kenne
