Tag: philosophy

Communication between the diverse: the benefits of modelling conflictual consensus.

May 7, 2025

What do you do to be involved in the community? In an article by the American Public Power  Association [APPA], called ‘Dissecting the True Meaning of Community’, some things are said about unpacking the meaning of the word  ‘community’ from its origins as a word. I have no knowledge of the real politics of APPA, though … More Communication between the diverse: the benefits of modelling conflictual consensus.

‘When Paul and Peter wake up in the same bed, and recognize that they have been asleep, each one of them mentally reaches back and makes connection with but one of the two streams of thought which were broken by the sleeping hours’. My first thought is: “that explanatory parables open up a can of worms”.

April 10, 2025

‘When Paul and Peter wake up in the same bed, and recognize that they have been asleep, each one of them mentally reaches back and makes connection with but one of the two streams of thought which were broken by the sleeping hours’. [1] My first thought is: “that explanatory parables open up a can of worms”. … More ‘When Paul and Peter wake up in the same bed, and recognize that they have been asleep, each one of them mentally reaches back and makes connection with but one of the two streams of thought which were broken by the sleeping hours’. My first thought is: “that explanatory parables open up a can of worms”.

The constituents of ‘flow’ experience suggest that loss of self and time consciousness balances facing new challenges with willingness to learn, allowing neither to rest in stasis.

March 7, 2025

Prompt questions like this assume the virtue of loss of self, and even of coordinates of such concepts in constructs like time and space. The chief architect of the development of that virtue- into a concept he claimed his research participants themselves used called ‘FLOW’ – is Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi in bis book, pictured below: I … More The constituents of ‘flow’ experience suggest that loss of self and time consciousness balances facing new challenges with willingness to learn, allowing neither to rest in stasis.

The danger of loaded words in questions.

March 3, 2025

Superstition is very often a word that is pre-loaded with value judgments. In mainstream modern usage, with justification in the use of it by the ancients and in the history of Christianity. Rarly and continuing internal disputes in Christian tradition is larded with name-calling (in which being ‘superstitious’ is a claim made against sects being … More The danger of loaded words in questions.

‘Education, Education, Education’ seemed good rhetoric to Tony Blair, whatever he meant by it. So let’s stay with its advantages as three sustainable objects.

February 22, 2025

Fighting for a historic third term in government, Tony Blair drove to his constituency in Sedgefield and said that his three-pronged object of political desire remained ‘Education, Education, Education’, without using the by then much mocked word. Here is what he said: Education has been, is and will be the driving mission of a New … More ‘Education, Education, Education’ seemed good rhetoric to Tony Blair, whatever he meant by it. So let’s stay with its advantages as three sustainable objects.

Why offer me a dream of doing what might be better never done.

January 19, 2025

The idea of winning the lottery – or winning the pools as was the norm when when I was a child and before the advent of a state lottery in the UK – may have appealed once as an means of evoking impossible resolutions to real problems – real or relative poverty, economic insecurity and … More Why offer me a dream of doing what might be better never done.

‘Fictile worlds’: a business in the interests of pretensive human well-being aimed at consumers we know to be the ‘most fingent plastic of creatures’.

January 2, 2025

The choice of vocabulary to describe the world we are always trying to shape around us and our needs – either in societies, groups or as individuals – is sometimes the most urgent issue in those worlds. This may be because our chief business as meaning-makers and users of meaning is to get things done … More ‘Fictile worlds’: a business in the interests of pretensive human well-being aimed at consumers we know to be the ‘most fingent plastic of creatures’.

Relationships of Causation or Correlation: Some playful ‘statistical rigour’ about event categories and their impacts on oneself.

December 21, 2024

This prompt ties itself up in knots. It is the nature of WordPress prompts, so to do, in order perhaps to draw ouf variants in response, or, in the worst case scenario, because they rely on assumptions about commonsense definitions of complex words. First of all, they nearly always invoke indeterminate categories, such as ‘impact,’ … More Relationships of Causation or Correlation: Some playful ‘statistical rigour’ about event categories and their impacts on oneself.

The ‘happiness Tsar’: the ideology of well-being despite every circumstance.

December 12, 2024

Photo by Rick Pushinsky of Richard Layard: the ‘happiness Tsar’ under the Tony Blair regime from Annie Maccoby Berglof article in ‘The Financial Times’ ( September 12 2014) available at: https://www.ft.com/content/b1d0b140-3386-11e4-85f1-00144feabdc0 We hear much less of ‘happiness’ since the termination of the Blair-Brown government but perhaps it will return under Keir Starmer, who needs an ideology to … More The ‘happiness Tsar’: the ideology of well-being despite every circumstance.

If mine own self contains multiples then night does not follow day, they are simultaneous and not necessarily in contest.

November 24, 2024

The idea that the surest thing on earth is that night follows day in indubitable sequence is so often invoked that it is the stock-in-trade of politicians, especially those involved of the hubris of building and defending nation states within expanding imperial boundaries and in the belief that might is right: note the words of … More If mine own self contains multiples then night does not follow day, they are simultaneous and not necessarily in contest.