Tag: dailyprompt

On not liking games. A fanciful reflection on George Herbert Mead.

July 22, 2024

What’s your favorite game (card, board, video, etc.)? Why? Let’s  start with some social psychology. The theories of George Herbert Mead were collected together from notes made by his students and their attractiveness as a theory of child development to me might be explained by the way in which these theories seem to represent themselves … More On not liking games. A fanciful reflection on George Herbert Mead.

To plan to travel is ‘an entitlement’ we cannot imagine not having. Yet we accept and ignore that for some that entitlement is stolen. Reading a little of Mahmoud Darwish.

July 20, 2024

Some prompt questions are difficult to answer without making assumptions that reveal injustice with which I am in effect in collusion. To travel is an exploratory state of experience of either body and mind, but it cannot be experienced, without an assumption of a secure base from which to travel, and to which you can … More To plan to travel is ‘an entitlement’ we cannot imagine not having. Yet we accept and ignore that for some that entitlement is stolen. Reading a little of Mahmoud Darwish.

The ultimate in controlling behaviour is the wish to be in command of a group to whom you are the perfect host.

July 17, 2024

If you could host a dinner and anyone you invite was sure to come, who would you invite? Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party (above) is an iconic image from the history of feminist art and is replete with symbolism that suggested that women could create the imagery of their own world without evoking patriarchal traditions, … More The ultimate in controlling behaviour is the wish to be in command of a group to whom you are the perfect host.

To be bothered is to reject the passivity that is actually COLLUSION with injustice!

July 15, 2024

There is a tremendous blog by Anatoly Liberman in the Oxford University Press blogsite on the etymology of the word ‘bother’ that should give us pause before answering this. This blog shows that the oriigin of the word ‘bother’ itself bothers lots of people. He writes: Bother is a late eighteenth-century addition to the vocabulary of English. … More To be bothered is to reject the passivity that is actually COLLUSION with injustice!

So don’t ask if I want ‘security or adventure’! It is a loaded question, as I hope to show here.

July 13, 2024

The prompt question today recalls the phrase used in English, ‘May you live in interesting times’? It is known, without much supporting evidence as the “Chinese curse“. In the LibQuote above, it is attributed in longer form to Robert Kennedy, and he elaborates it in seeing turbulence in history as the more interesting option. In … More So don’t ask if I want ‘security or adventure’! It is a loaded question, as I hope to show here.

Neuroscientists insist that we cannot, as individuals know the future, or the past, without assembling, and reassembling it, in the hippocampus. Is that why we need each other to make it real.

July 11, 2024

What are you most excited about for the future? Last night I saw the play Mnemonic at the National Theatre. I was intending to blog on it, but today is too full to allow it – with exhibitions on Michelangelo and the Expressionists to see with a dear friend, Catherine. This blog will be somewhat … More Neuroscientists insist that we cannot, as individuals know the future, or the past, without assembling, and reassembling it, in the hippocampus. Is that why we need each other to make it real.

Gently into goodnight

July 10, 2024

What time do you go to bed and wake up currently? Rounded in routine,darkness visibleEats up our nights,and charges up each dayWith residues of power; gets us throughTomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow, The time left until our last long goodnight,When all we have left is the mournings past. Is our dear friend dieing?I dare not think of … More Gently into goodnight

Support me with your strength to make me stronger, the rest is the verbal equivalent of cotton wool

July 9, 2024

What strategies do you use to increase comfort in your daily life? The etymology, at least, of the word ‘comfort’ is clear. ‘With strength’ is the term that indicates that a stronger person or other entity such as a state, a church, or a loving group of lower formality lends its strength to someone or … More Support me with your strength to make me stronger, the rest is the verbal equivalent of cotton wool

Beyond ‘genre’, liking and favourites: I think understanding what isn’t already in my culture is my priority : a blog based on Judith Chernaik’s (2018) ‘SCHUMANN: The Faces and the Masks’.

July 6, 2024

Beyond ‘genre’, liking and favourites: understanding what isn’t already in your culture is the priority. This blog is a plan to repair a small corner of the tatters of my ignorance of and feel I have some way of understanding the life of Schumann without neglecting the music. This is a blog based on Judith … More Beyond ‘genre’, liking and favourites: I think understanding what isn’t already in my culture is my priority : a blog based on Judith Chernaik’s (2018) ‘SCHUMANN: The Faces and the Masks’.

The fragile harmony of consonance without intervals of dissonance. In praise of the role of conflict.

July 4, 2024

Ernst Krenek‘s classification, from ‘Studies in Counterpoint’ (1940), of a triad’s overall consonance or dissonance through the consonance or dissonance of the three intervals contained within. Created by Hyacinth (talk) 17:07, 25 September 2010 using Sibelius 5. We can’t get far with this question without reference to music (and I am hampered by a total ignorance of musical … More The fragile harmony of consonance without intervals of dissonance. In praise of the role of conflict.

Ageing on its own makes nothing better; if anything, it makes it much more difficult, and in more than one way, ‘harder’ to achieve authenticity as a person aiming for ‘a way to the Better’.

July 3, 2024

Currently, I am reading the five volumes of Leonard Woolf’s autobiography. I am on the third crucial volume in which his concern for the oncoming suicide of his wife Virginia is first talked about and explanations that as they increase still don’t suffice to accumulate more than genuine understanding of that tortured, but infinitely great, … More Ageing on its own makes nothing better; if anything, it makes it much more difficult, and in more than one way, ‘harder’ to achieve authenticity as a person aiming for ‘a way to the Better’.