Posts Tagged ‘ Self-Destructive Society ’

Destruction of the Self

Humans are the only beings that can have a self. Any child builds one naturally, and it is the greatest pleasure of any parent to watch this happen – and help it to happen. The same is true of society; any human society is built by its people – and it is their greatest pleasure [ READ MORE ]

Something Too Horrible for Words

There is always something we dread more than anything else, something so horrible we don’t have the words to express it – but it is always in the back of our minds, and determines much of our behavior. There are two ways of dealing with this problem, or any other problem: recognize it or deny it. Any [ READ MORE ]

Being Part of Something Big

This is one of the most powerful of our human obsessions. It probably showed up about the time we became civilized. Before that, we were content to live in small societies, and felt no need for something bigger. The coming of civilization has never been studied very thoroughly, as far as I know. Perhaps one [ READ MORE ]

The Mass

I am a firm believer that historical events must be considered as complexes of events. Newtonian Physics accustomed us to thinking in simple terms of cause and effect – and this became a religious obsession. It takes no genius to see that the world is not so simple – but whenever I write about this, I get comments proclaiming the [ READ MORE ]

Be In The World, But Not Of It

I never thought my religious background, which was the curse of my young life, would ever do me any good – but all of a sudden it has come to my rescue. My family belonged to a small religion, more like a sect really, and one thing they hated was worldliness. The world was evil, [ READ MORE ]

The Negative State of Being

This is another posting no one is going to understand. I can just barely understand it myself. The theory is simple enough: there are positive and negative states of being. Most people probably have a feel for what those are. Unfortunately, this feeling is misleading because it is too superficial. First of all, being for [ READ MORE ]

Being Unemployed

There but for the grace of God, go I John Bradford, the man this was attributed to, was burned at the stake. In that sense times have improved, but the emotional impact can be almost a great, as these two links show: NY Times - Control Not Working – the pulse of the American Depression I did the [ READ MORE ]

Loosely Coupled Components

I continue my explanation of how software has influenced people. This influence continues a process that began with civilization: we became like our technologies – or from their perspective: they become like us. Each influenced the other, until it became difficult to separate the two. Our fundamental technology, all along, has been the machine. And we have [ READ MORE ]

People Have Become Worthless

This has been a gradual process; we did not notice it was going on – because we could not imagine such a thing ever happening. And now it has happened, we cannot understand what has happened – or appreciate the magnitude of our loss. Human beings were something new in the world – creatures that were [ READ MORE ]

The Problem of Being

The biggest challenge any person has is to be - to be themselves. I first noticed this when my ex was going crazy – a very difficult time for both of us. She was eventually diagnosed with Schizophrenia, a diagnosis that did not impress me, since that only meant she was crazy – which anyone could see easily enough. [ READ MORE ]

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