The gentle art of sanity amidst civilization
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The first few times I heard about God, I was already suspicious. My earliest clear memory of it was when I was five, leaning against the screen door of our small town home with my older sister, watching a midsummer thunderstorm unfold. We were in awe, like I have been at every thunderstorm since. I [...]
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It was a scorching afternoon and both of us had given up on doing any serious work for the rest of the day. We’d surveyed most of a disused section of railroad tracks past the suburbs, when across the field I saw Mark pause, look at his watch, and begin packing up the equipment. “F [...]
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Last week I ran into a few online discussions about those big, big questions that often come up in late-night conversations: Why are we here? What is our purpose? Strictly speaking, as members of the human species we do have a purpose. But we didn’t choose it, and it might not be us who stands [...]
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Deep down I knew better, but I couldn’t stop myself. An opinionated Twitter acquaintance of mine had tweeted a snarky comment that dismissed all forms of self-improvement as new age feel-good fluff. It was such a sweeping, cynical remark that I felt I had to set him straight. So I hammered out a sharp rebuttal, [...]
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There is a quote, much celebrated by activists, cynics, and political science students the world over, that I think could use a second look: “It is no measure of good health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” ~Jiddu Krishnamurti I like Krishnamurti, and I think he’s being misunderstood here, but I’ll get to [...]
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This week celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking suggested that alien life almost certainly exists, and humans should do everything we can to avoid contact with it. He reasons that contact with aliens would probably be fatal to us, likening it to the European conquest of the New World: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the [...]
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New Zealand is a black sheep among nations. Having spent the last 60 million years isolated from the rest of the continents — longer than any other major land mass — life has had a long time to do its own thing here. The vast majority of native trees and animals are found nowhere else. [...]
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Despite the earnest efforts of sixty years of Miss USA contestants, world peace has not arrived on our doorstep. The UN has not managed it, nor did John Lennon or Oprah or The Secret. Religion sure made a mess of the effort altogether, and I don’t hold high hopes for China to pull it off, [...]
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I forged my own blade yesterday, from an unassuming piece of plain steel. With some expert instruction, I pounded it on an anvil, ground the blade down, fitted it with a brass hilt, polished and sharpened it. The handle is made out of native timber that was salvaged from a dismantled insane asylum.
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Though the hysteria surrounding the H1N1 flu has left the entirety of the news-watching world with the encouraging habit of frequent handwashing, it is hard to call it anything but an overreaction. Not to dismiss the crushing impact of even one person’s death to their loved ones, but when we venture into the realm of [...]
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