Posts Tagged ‘ The Modern World ’

Thinking Has Become Painful

It is painful because it can get you into trouble, and because you discover too many things you don’t want to know. One discovery can lead to another, as it almost always does, and before you know it you are in deep shit. Not someplace you want to be. The only sensible solution is to [ READ MORE ]

Real People Don’t Read Poetry

  • January 5th, 2012
  • Posted in Poetry

Instead, they avoid it like the plague – while remaining completely oblivious to this – and nearly everything else. They have no objection to poetry, they say, they think it is wonderful – they just never get around to reading it. As part of my innate stubbornness, I am determined to make it part of my life. Although [ READ MORE ]

The Infantile Need for Certainty

I lead a strange life. I am about as socially isolated as a man can get. I don’t live in a desert island, but culturally Orosi, Costa Rica might as well be. The gringo drifters who end up here are sorry specimens of humanity. To balance this, I have a fast Internet connection right to [ READ MORE ]

The Only Important Thing in Our World Should be Us

It should not be our things, which have become more important than we are. Before now, I (and many other people) have addressed this problem by talking about technology. This was a mistake.  Using this particular word drags in all kinds of connotations, and we end up talking about something bigger that life. Technology, I [ READ MORE ]

Five Centuries of History

I keep noticing this – five centuries of history, from the 15th through the 19th Centuries, the most important centuries in history, the era of the Modern world, have been carefully ignored as though they never happened. I got a new book today, hot off the press – Too Big to Know: rethinking knowledge now [ READ MORE ]

China and Religion

I am tempted to repeat Dickens line about the best of possible worlds and the worst of possible worlds – only I would reverse the order. I am a witness to the complete collapse of the modern world, where most of the people are not interested in learning anything. At the same time, the amount [ READ MORE ]

The Non-Linear World

We have moved from a linear to a non-linear world, and the shock of this has been more than we can handle. What do I mean by this? I am talking about rate of change. Previously, this was manageable, now it is not. I am reminded of a Sixties song “Stop the world, I want to [ READ MORE ]

We Know Everything Already

This is the basic belief of our post-modern, globalized world. Globalization has been poorly defined, although I have tried to do so – and defined it as the takeover of a power complex: the global integration of all power structures. This means nothing to the people in this complex, because they have been instructed to [ READ MORE ]

It Has Overwhelmed Us Completely

What on earth am I talking about? What is this it? It is the thing I am using to write this posting, and you are using to read it. It is the result of a whole chain of events that started with the discovery of electricity, strange stuff our senses cannot understand – unless we [ READ MORE ]

Being Wonderful, Being Horrible

I grew up feeling I was both of these – at the same time. And it was driving me nuts. For one thing, it didn’t make any sense. It didn’t make any sense, because the world I was in as an adult (more or less), and the world I grew up in as a child [ READ MORE ]

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