Adam Blatner

Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner

October, 2010

Aesthetic Indulgence

My latest notion—I tend to have them fairly frequently—is that Freud was somewhat right but didn’t dig deep enough. He reduced the motivation system to sexuality because of its forbiddenness at the time, but I’ve been thinking as I’ve grown older about other deep motivations. For example, what about the small griefs I’ve had about […]

Posted in Essays and Papers, My Favorite Things, Psychological Literacy | 1 Comment »

Countering Annoyance at Distractions and Focusing My Priorities

Increasingly in the last year I’ve grown noticeably slightly annoyed at all manner of things, activities that were distractions to my growing focus. I’ve been a little bit puzzled by this reaction, since it seemed new. Then I realized that the annoyance was an externalization—as if the lure of other things was being promoted by […]

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What’s Up With Me Lately

During this October, 2010, I’ve been working on preparing and giving lectures on Lesser-Known Aspects of the Renaissance, to be posted in a few weeks (I hope) on my website—lots of pictures—this for the Senior University Georgetown Fall Program. Beginning to prepare also for the early Spring (February) program next year on the Lore of […]

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Mission Statement 10/21/10

A friend asked me, “What is your goal when you are exploring such territories as spontaneity, creativity and in a more spiritual/esoteric domain, mysticism? I mean, some folks just close the door to these explorations, but you don’t do that. . .. I think you try to have a critical and rational approach to it, […]

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Is a Puzzlement: What to Do?

Sometimes I want to get out and do various things—support local or national candidates or causes, work for the team, give more money to this or that charity, get all worked up about various political issues, religious issues, social issues—so many things. And then there’s my profession, and the insatiable needs to do more to […]

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Constructing a Philosophy of Life

There’s an instinct in the deep psyche to lead the mind towards a sense of meaning. In this sense, almost everyone has a philosophy of life, insofar as they assemble a satisfactory collage of platitudes, social norms, widely-accepted beliefs, and so forth that in their aggregate offer the illusion of coherence and significance. More most […]

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The Seven Deadly Sins—but Sometimes a Little Bit is Good!

The seven deadly sins were enumerated by clerics in the Church in the 6th and 7th centuries. The point to be made here is to think of them and their sub-categories in the spirit of sin not as something to be punished, but rather as a recognition of that which is off the mark, harmartia, […]

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Introduction & Resisting Distractions

The topic for this blog is folly, also to be realized as forms of self-deception, lapses in critical thinking, giving in to your less-worthy motivations, allowing yourself the luxury of illusion, and so forth. In some roles, illusion is just fine, very adaptive, mature, poetic, sublime. It is the mythic foundation that makes our life […]

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