Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Making/Discovering Meaning
I’ve been associated distantly with the “Network for Personal Meaning,” get their e-mailings, and have been contemplating the place of “meaning” in human life. It recently occurred to me that meaning operates at a mid-higher level of mental organization. Mind operates in layers, just like body operates in levels of function, and that operations on […]
Posted in Essays and Papers, Psychology, Spirituality and Philosophy | No Comments
Our State of Understanding
I read this line somewhere: “It is therefore crucial for any professional to under-stand how and why we behave and interact with others the way we do.” In my opinion this considerably overstates the situation. The above-quoted line was perhaps part of the worldview in the 20th century, but now in the 21st century information […]
Posted in Psychological Literacy, Psychology, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | No Comments
That Old Time Throng
A theme came up on one of the list-serves I subscribe to: Where were the past meetings of our professional association? Part of me thought, “Who cares?” Another part said, “Some people: It serves a function.” After some musing, it occurred to me that it’s in a gut way pleasant to recall: There is a […]
Posted in Psychodrama, Social-Depth Psychology (Sociometry), Wisdom-ing | No Comments
Blahg For the Great-Grandchildren
Your Grandpa, my son, reminded me that I’m writing this for you! My true identity as AB is not Adam Blatner—that’s just my “Earth” name. Really its “Amazing Brains!” Adam is just my cover, just this guy. Part of the time in the role of Adam do dishes, enjoy my kids and grandkids, be a […]
Posted in Autobiographical, Foolin Around, World of Almost-Real | 1 Comment
Slight Yikes
Oh, my, getting older, approaching age 78. For a moment I forgot the name of my last kitty who died in 2001, the same year that my oldest grandchild was born. I remembered our first kitty’s name, and second kitty, but Allee had to remind me of the third and then it was, “Oh, yeah.” […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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