Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Answers?
I’ve realized that in the 20th century a major subtle attitude emerged: that there were “answers.” It was okay to ask questions and the unspoken message was that someone somewhere did have an answer. What wasn’t said explicitly enough was that indeed, there were answers to some questions, but this accounted for perhaps only around […]
Posted in Follies, Spirituality and Philosophy, Wisdom-ing | 1 Comment
Deffils (Part 2)
As I said in the last blog entry (yesterday), deffils are the personification of the tendency to buy into simplistic beliefs. Another form this takes is to identify with the role of innocent victim, projecting one’s selfishness on the blameworthy “other.” This justifies defensive aggression: Get them before they get you, undermine your culture. Again, […]
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Deffils (Part 1)
This word, “deffil,” describes a complex in the psyche that seems innocent and blame-free, at one level; at another level, this same complex may be recognized as foolish and naive; and at a third level, deffils in the long run have a thousand times more aggregate power to generate evil than clever, wicked, sociopathic, scheming, […]
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The Influence of Abner Dean
I was strangely influenced as a young man by the surrealistic, semi-cartoon art of Abner Dean, who drew cartoons and pictures that intrigued me. I had been into comic books, but here was a fellow who, like Saul Steinberg, used cartooning to present serious themes. Recently, I remembered Dean and wondered why I was fascinated […]
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Unaffiliated Idealism
If I had to give a name to my “religion,” this would be it. I realized only recently that I did indeed have a spiritual path as a teenager: “unaffiliated idealism.” (I had no name for it then, though.) As a lad I collected and cut out nickel-priced used copies of Readers’ Digests, and similar […]
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Combating Stereotypes About Psychodrama
The term is being misused! The word, “psychodrama” is applied by journalists to describe any sort of emotionally-laded complex situation. Actually, it’s a method for problem-solving that involves improvised role playing. People play mainly themselves or others in various of their own life situations. The goal is not to entertain any audience, but rather as […]
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Wisdom & Folly in Our Time
This blog was stimulated by my reading a recently published book by Howard Gardner titled, Truth, beauty and goodness reframed: educating for the virtues in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Basic Books / Perseus, 2011). I have become increasingly aware of the responsibility each person has for integrating the reality of his or her individuality […]
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A World Shorn of Meaning
I was reminded of my enjoyment of the picture books by Abner Dean when I was a teenager. These involved a mixture of surrealism, a bit of cartooning, and the presentation of world shorn of meaning. He was an illustrator whose books were more known in the late 1940s and 1950s. I was impressed by […]
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Anthro-zoology: Human-Animal Relations
I was stimulated by a book recently published titled Some we love, some we hate, some we eat: Why it’s so hard to think straight about animals, by Hal Herzog (New York: HarperCollins, 2010.) This book is fun and delightfully varied, addressing many aspects of pet ownership, why we eat some animals and not others, […]
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Two Types of Foolishness
My point here is that worry and grumpiness are forms of folly that are remarkably seductive. They feel entirely plausible in the moment, so if you’re not alert, they’ll fool you. (A good deal of foolishness or folly comes from fooling yourself with thoughts and emotions that seem okay, but on reflection from the perspective […]
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