The Looming Myth of Joseph Campbell Take any writing class or browse the internet to learn how to produce a novel or a screenplay, and you’re bound to encounter advice on outlines. Consider this another entry, and treat it with …
Ternary Thinking “The equal is an intermediate between excess and defect” —Aristotle Thinking is imprecise. We can hardly expect to arrive like an arrow on the perfect mark every time. First, that would assume there is a right answer, when …
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There are many times in life when an idea strikes while the electricity is out, and your hand is already cramping from living out of old pickle jars due to spoilage in the fridge. Most writers are ill-prepared to deal …
Will Close your eyes and extend your hand slowly, very slowly, until it meets the resistance of some object. Feel the sensation of that thing blocking, or at least slowing, further extension of your hand. You’ve just summarized in experiment …
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“Cult beliefs look insane from the outside.” -Tom Murphy, Do the Math Tom Murphy, a physicist who writes about the hard mathematical limits to infinite growth on a finite planet, recently published a half-joking (and only half) essay in which …
Awareness Awareness is the universal solvent. We can’t intentionally change what we don’t know exists. To become aware of something, even without meaning to act on it in any other way, affects that thing. It becomes separated from the background, …
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I don’t like writing book reviews. Instead, I prefer to think aloud about a handful of interesting questions that a book raises. This essay was inspired by Tools for Conviviality, by Ivan Illich. Americans don’t so much mind a monopoly …
Thirdness To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness. —Alfred Korzybski What is a word? It seems straightforward: a sound or written symbol that stands for something else and conveys meaning. And …
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I recently published an essay about the dynamics of generosity. If you’re short on time, the gist of it is that generosity acts as a kind of supervirtue, spreading and sparing literal energy within a system (like a family, congregation, …
Secondness Imagine you were born each day with no memory. I don’t mean amnesia. Even a person with memory loss retains more than we realize. You forget a name, or a face, but you know a human from a wolf …
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