[2022-04-19 Tue] One of my favorite thinkers is Soren Kierkegaard. He is quite creative and this is in large part because he is always theorizing based on his own experiences and frustrations. He was no abstract theorist and was deeply critical of ideas like some of those proposed by Hegel that made the individual just part of the whole. However, Kierkegaard stole an idea from Hegel (well actually more than one)....
Colossians Chapter 1
So I recently had to do a bible study for work. So, I thought I would share a version of it here. It is on the first chapter of Colossians, and I give a little bit of an overview of the letter as well to make it a little more understandable. The first chapter of Colossians is particularly interesting because at the heart of it there is a picture of Christ’s work as the healing of the whole world....
Tell me the truth but tell it slant
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant – Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind – – Emily Dickinson This poem is often seen as a poem about poetry itself, but I think we can also read it as we think about our understandings of God and also our own theologies....
New Schedules, Intuition and an Analysis of Lived Metaphor
I am not sure if it is something about my personality, but I often find myself very disrupted by changes in schedule. I have recently had a major change in schedule and I am not quite sure what I think about it. Somethings things feel a little too free. When we can do anything we often don’t no where to start and I feel a bit that way today. Classic despair of possibility....
Symbolics of the present age
So what I want explore a little today is deeply indebted to Philip Rieff’s ideas about culture. He saw a culture as the system of links between a group of people that allow for trust and cooperation while also a release from deep conformity. This functions because each culture contains a symbolic system of control and a symbolic system of remission or release. The notion of symbolic is important because the ways that these two systems work is not through some deeply propositional argument, but instead through deeply internalized cultural images and ideas....
Gifting and Belonging
These posts are becoming increasingly personal lately, but I guess I am okay with that for now. The thing on my mind today is that in my life (and I think this is probably true for lots of people), I have felt a pressure to be amazing in certain things. The reason I think for this comes from a lot of places perfectionism being one of them, but what has come to mind today is new....
The Need of Uninhibited Productivity
I am not sure if I will publish this or not. It is something that has been on my mind lately and I am don’t think I have finished thinking about it. I felt the need from the title several times in my life, but it was most intense I remember when I was working as a programmer. I got a strong taste of it again the other day when I was looking at programming job postings....
The Burden of Fascination
Something I have noticed about myself is that I am seeminly capable of great things when I am excited about them. This is likely not a unique thing, but what might be more specific to me is the the gulf between me when I am interested in something and when I am just normal. Work that could take 15mins when I am very interested in something at least seems to take more like 45mins when I am not....
Typical Experiences
We have certain experiences that we see as typical to us. This is interesting. We can tell a lot about what we think of ourselves and our identities by what experiences we call typical. What is interesting about them is that the list of things that we do that we see as typical does not necessarily match up with what we actually do all the time. You see this kind of behavior in people who are particularly hard on themselves....
A New Notebook
If you are like me you probably own more nice looking notebooks than you have finished writing in. Buying a notebook is mostly like buying a difficult but impressive book to read. When you buy it you are buying what it promises to be for you. It promises to make you well read, or in the case of the notebook, it promises that you will have ideas worth writing down....