Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
June, 2015
All About Fun
A friend mentioned fun as a primary philosophical category and I agreed: I’ve talked to my guardian angel who translates for the committee of about 30 angels—I’m sure I don’t know for sure—who manage my life and on the side and serve as inspiration sources about fun—and they reported that, though some nuances may be […]
Posted in Foolin Around, Spirituality and Philosophy, Wisdom-ing | No Comments »
The Counter-Productive “War on Drugs”
Following up on the “War on Drugs” blog entry #1380 (and on my website), there has been another pulse: This last week for our summer lectures of miscellaneous presentations at Senior University Georgetown (which I helped found 17 years or so ago), one of the speakers, Russell Jones, gave a talk on parallels between the […]
Posted in Book Reviews, Current Events | No Comments »
“Rationally Coordinated”
One of my heroes, Alfred North Whitehead, has a definition of philosophy at the end of his Adventures of Ideas. He speaks of novel ideas, “rationally coordinated.” that’s somewhat ambiguous. What if the novel idea is that truth cannot be fully or even largely rationally coordinated, but yet this idea is rationally coordinated enough to […]
Posted in Essays and Papers, Spirituality and Philosophy | No Comments »
Pure Rationality
The assumption that rationality in itself is sufficient and will gratify the soul is misleading. Indeed if just rationality alone is employed, and traced out rigorously, it will lead to existential despair. It is necessary and wise to shift to the trans-rational criteria of aesthetics: Things are justified by being beautiful, interesting, and in total […]
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Not Limited to a ‘Rational’ Philosophy
And now a venture into contemplation—for I am, of course, a “contemplateur.” I have realized that rational philosophy cannot achieve what it seeks. There is too much in living that transcends rationality, that partakes of play, non-rationality, sensuality, poetry, imagery, paradox, feelings that resist articulation. I call this “nibbling at the ineffable,” the word ineffable […]
Posted in Autobiographical, Spirituality and Philosophy | No Comments »
My Core Myth
Far from me considering that I can say what my own purpose on Earth is. I am deeply apophatic, meaning that I believe rather strongly that I cannot begin to think about what it’s all about, nor what I’m all about. Our accelerating discoveries about the universe prove to me that whatever our philosophies were […]
Posted in Autobiographical, Spirituality and Philosophy, Wisdom-ing | No Comments »
A Well-Rounded Life
Here’s a myth I heard: We sing and dance for the gods. This is our task. They don’t have hands and feet, so we need to do it, and they enjoy through us. I think it was about Australian Aborigine nature religions, but I’m not sure. It’s a deep idea, though. Dancing and singing has […]
Posted in Art (Mandalas, Doodles, Scripts), Autobiographical, My Favorite Things, Spirituality and Philosophy | No Comments »
Creativity Stimulation
There’s a new technology that derives from drama and theatre, and more particularly improvised theatre. Its goal is creativity stimulation. We’ve been building creativity for a few centuries, and in the last few generations promoting creativity itself has become a goal. Now we have a technology for it: 1. Get people together sharing and […]
Posted in Play and Spontaneity, Psychodrama, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Basic Clear-Thinking Principles
Thinking isn’t what it seems. It’ll trick you! People think they’re thinking whenever they assess a situation. But assessment is not really thinking about whatever, it’s merely getting oriented. Feels like thinking. Maybe it is a first step. But rarely do they re-consider any impressions or assumptions. They’re easily tricked. The first trick is the […]
Posted in Follies, History, Psychological Literacy | 1 Comment »
The Teardrop
Or maybe it should be called wiggling through evolutionary time, over millions of years. Of course it’s multi-dimensional, very much so. But simplifying it all, in the cause of imagination: Most are in the bulbous middle, some a bit more ahead, “civilized,” some more toward the tail, “savage.” But all are needed for progress, and […]
Posted in Spirituality and Philosophy, Whassup? | 1 Comment »