Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Table of Contents:
Wisdom-ing
Perspectives and Dimensions
We live in a reality that is bigger than ordinary reality, because mind operates beyond reason, beyond its own ability to comprehend it all. I’ve found the metaphor of dimensionality useful—and mainly that there are higher as well as lower dimensions. The point or zero dimensions is the peculiar but widespread idea that words mean […]
Phenomenology
David Arthur Walters from the Miami Mirror emailed me and said “I forgot to tell you I think you are cool.” This then reminded me of my on-again-off-again correspondence with him: He wrote, some years back: DAW: Freud stole his soup from Brentano & Dilthey. Jaspers’ Psychopathologie is right up your eclectic alley, a systematic […]
Philosophy (Linus-Style)
I played Linus in a community theatre production of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” and so I find his character appealing. Here he philosophizes. Parts of me are childlike and other parts grown-up and other parts….well, I don’t know.
Philosophy-Poetry-Cartoon Art
I think that things have changed in a fundamental way: People have become empowered to think more actively, flagrantly, to articulate that which used to be taboo. This has been catalyzed by the emergence of “transgressive art,” art that transgresses rules of rationality and decorum, in cartoons, comics, comedians, some television, and less so, but […]
Philosophy: A Spectrum of Coherence
For many people it doesn’t take that much rational coordination to sustain a viable philosophy of life. Such a system can be sufficiently developed and maintained using a limited number of relatively self-evident platitudes and general social norms, loosely assembled and supported by one’s peer group. Interestingly, all that is needed is the illusion of […]
Play as the Basis for Innovation
As work shifts from mechanical repetition to innovation, what it takes to promote innovation becomes clear: Play. Some essential elements in playfulness involve exploration, experimentation, and doing so with optimal freedom from fear of failure. This state of mind in turn opens to inspiration. (Inspiration tends to happen far less often when there is any […]
Play With Son
A snippet of correspondence between my son David and myself, to illustrate the quality of our interchange: A few days ago, he quoted a limerick told to him by his friend Kris Coppieters.: A doctor in Gastroenterology In charades drew the word entomology But no-one could guess And his act was […]
Playing With the World
“The world is so full of a number of things: I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings!” So wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, a 19th century author and poet, in his “Child’s Garden of Verses.” (Indeed, making things rhyme by having them “sound” the same became a basis for poetry, which shifts intellectual […]
Pondering the Cosmos
So the Cosmos says to me, Hey, Adam, thanks for pondering me. Says I, “Well, ol’ Cosmos, sir, your cosmos-ness—by the way, what is the proper term of respectful address?— I have not yet come to many conclusions. Cosmos: Don’t worry about it, just call me Cosmos. First name basis, kid, that’s us. So what […]
Post-Post-Modernism
My friend Anthony asked me today, “What will be the philosophical trend after postmodernism?” I answered, a mischievous smile breaking out, “I dunno, maybe post-post-modernism?” “What’ll that be?” he asked, playing right into the flow of exploration. I warmed up to the idea: Indubitably, as knowledge and technology advance, there may be several waves of […]
Postmodern Vocabulary: Logocentricity, Marginalization, Privilege, etc.
New words can help us think clearly about new concepts. It isn’t that we’re just trying to be fancy. Old words don’t address the meaning at all. For example, here are some words that help me think about new trends: Logocentricity is a word that suggests that someone speaks in a mode of discourse (or […]
Postmodern Words—But Useful
I confess that reading postmodernist tracts is confusing and annoying—they assume the readers know their jargon. If that were true, they are truly preaching to the choir, as the saying goes. Still and all, there are some new words that I’ve found to be useful, valid, and worth spreading the word about. Logocentric: This word […]
Principles of Action Explorations
In a sense, this is a bit of a personal mission statement: I have been fortunate to encounter a goodly number of tools that I think can help humanity evolve in their consciousness. I plan to develop and promote these ideas and complexes of ideas, together and separately: 1. The goals of living become more […]
Priorities!
I just opened to the fact that I’m not just growing older, but I’m getting old. (I’m 80.6 or thereabouts.) What this means to me: 1. My mind is going a little. I can’t recall facts as well as I used to. I’m still pretty sharp, but not how I used to be. It’s […]
Priorities: A Scale
A friend asked about my priorities in life. After some pondering, this was my response, in the form of a mini-essay, after some pondering. (Such questions are truly food for thought!) Well, I have a bucket list, things I want to do before I kick the bucket. Really, there are fuzzy boundaries. But still, consider […]
Prioritizing
My guardian angels are reminding me through many channels that I’m gonna die. My days are numbered. Maybe 4, maybe 4,000, maybe 40,000. So consequently—there’s a word I haven’t used for a good long while—I need to prioritize. In other words, what’s my bucket list? Not easy, but not that hard, either. First, keep on […]
Promoting “Psychological Literacy”
In some ways, I’m actually a little behind—technologically—and more than a bit out of it—because I don’t have a television set, don’t see many movies, don’t know or care about several major sectors of popular culture (e.g., movies, sports, celebrities, television shows)! But also I realized today that in a few ways I am perhaps […]
Propaganda
As we begin the debates and the next round of political jostling for public office, I’m reminded that I’ve been interested since my early teen years 65 years ago in propaganda, the way the newspapers and other media can and do distort the truth. The old term for this is “rhetoric,” and I think they […]
Psychiatry History
Yesterday I put up some ideas about permeability that in their implications, metaphysically, may challenge the entire materialistic and positivistic paradigm of the modern era. Lest I seem grandiose, it’s only speculation. I might well be mistaken. But still, that’s my role, to fool around, to explore, to draw cartoons, dance, joke, get serious, get […]
Psychological Literacy
Twenty years ago as part of my teaching at the Senior University Georgetown I gave lectures on “Psychological Literacy.” It seemed to me that it’s time to push for psychology to be taught in school as a primary topic. I looked over the names of the theories and theoreticians, and so much may be remembered […]
Psychological Literacy: Further Comments
In the June 7, 2010 issue of the New Yorker on page 21 there is an article about whether college is really cost-effective. My attention was caught by the statement that skills appropriate to the workplace include the ability to “resolve conflict and negotiate,” “cooperate with others,” and “listen actively.” What strikes me here is […]
Re-Considering Epistemology
Epistemology is that branch of philosophy that addresses the question of how we know what we know. There are other branches of philosophy that address other questions, such as “what is fair or good in the realm of social relations”—ethics; or what is really real—metaphysics; and so forth. This topic of “epistemology” came up in […]
Re-Doing Your Philosophy of Life
Everyone generates a meaning system. Most often it is an unconscious set of assumptions that help you make sense out of things. Alfred Adler (a physician who was an earlier associate of Freud but then dropped away because of his own independent ideas) observed that children around the age of five begin to have provisional […]
Re-Juvenile
Thinking of Christopher Noxon’s book, “Re-Juvenile,” (New York: Crown Publishing, 2006), generally I enjoyed it. I think the author speaks to the hunger for a re-integration of the best elements of child-like-ness, as I talked about in my book, The Art of Play, now being revised. However, the language is problematical. I described the value […]