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Archive for the ‘Spirit matter’ Category

No common (sense) world

Posted in Manifestos & auguries, Politics, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 12, 2024 | Leave a Comment »

Here are my thoughts on the US election, and on the challenges it presents us, in four parts. 1. The informational catastrophe, and the sadness of it For all the reasons to be dismayed about these elections, there’s one that saddens me most. It’s that all the people (me among them) who’ve given their professional […]

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The death trip and science’s experiential “blind spot”

Posted in Science & society, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 5, 2024 | 4 Comments »

The study of so-called “near-death experiences” is fascinating, as it is one of those areas that remain most mysterious to science, yet which empirical evidence suggests is very consequential to those who undergo it. By now we’ve all likely heard of the countless reports of people journeying through tunnels toward sources of light, being greeted […]

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Why religion isn’t (coherent)

Posted in Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , on February 29, 2024 | 5 Comments »

Language is an instrument for dealing with the details of reality. All of our words, along with the ways we string them together, contain or reflect concepts — signs or semiotic constructs – by which we refer to elements of a dynamic world. Because they are essentially pragmatic and context-specific, if we scrutinize any of […]

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For a 21st century Logos

Posted in Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , on December 20, 2023 | Leave a Comment »

Teaching my course in comparative spiritual practices, I find there is a rationality underpinning each, but that some require lesser leaps of faith (for us twenty-first-century humans) than others. Stoicism is one of the lesser-leap philosophies: it has a pretty systematic account of the nature of things, which resonates with modern science reasonably well, and […]

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Space

Posted in Manifestos & auguries, Spirit matter, tagged , , on March 25, 2023 | Leave a Comment »

Like atoms and galaxies, days are full of space. What if the ways you take up this space—the pauses, transitions, and gaps between doings—shapes the world as much as the doings?* Do we fill the space with restless preoccupation? Death drive compulsions? Nervous uncertainty? Or curious delight at the poignancy of each thing?** What if […]

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Žižek’s belated reply

Posted in Spirit matter, tagged , , , on January 6, 2023 | 3 Comments »

Slavoj Žižek has “belatedly” replied, in The Philosophical Salon, to some things I wrote in 2009 about his Lacanianism and his understanding (some would say misunderstanding) of Buddhism, and to other critiques of the latter. In his reply, he later mistakes another author — of the blog And Now For Something Completely Different — for […]

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The becoming-visible

Posted in Science & society, Spirit matter, Visual culture, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2022 | Leave a Comment »

Two images came into my in-box this morning from wildly different directions, which in their combination set up a fizzy train of thought in their wake. (No doubt because of my current thinking on images in the Anthropocene, including images of that weird space where we find the religious, spiritual, and divine. And maybe because […]

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Thay passing

Posted in Process-relational thought, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , on January 22, 2022 | 2 Comments »

Readers of Shadowing the Anthropocene will know that Buddhist thought has influenced my own thinking in profound ways. To be more precise, Buddhist thought, feeling, and practice has influenced my own thought, feeling, and practice. But there are many forms of Buddhism; like all philosophical and religious systems, it is a long and complex historical […]

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Reimagining religious imagination

Posted in Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2021 | 5 Comments »

Wouter Hanegraaff has proposed that we rethink the study of religion as the study of “imaginative formations.” Much of my research has focused on something like that, or at least on the creative role of imagination in mediating the ways people come to live in the world, shape that world, and contest it among each […]

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Dreamlife of the Anthropocene

Posted in Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 8, 2021 | 4 Comments »

The work of environmental/climate humanists is premised on the assumption that the way we make sense of the world matters. This means that the dreams we have — Covid pandemic dreams, climate change dreams — also matter. The best artists, in turn, help shape our collective dreaming. The environmental arts and humanities aim to help […]

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Being present while screaming

Posted in Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 20, 2021 | Leave a Comment »

One of the things modern humans aren’t very good at is being fully present in a given moment — being here now, as Ram Dass famously put it — and remaining so in the midst of the activities, distractions, and challenges of the day. Meditation apps and mindfulness teachers can train you to do that […]

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Thoughts on an equinox

Posted in Anthropocene, Climate change, Manifestos & auguries, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , on September 22, 2021 | 1 Comment »

Marking the passage of the seasons from summer to winter and back again is something people have done for millennia. Seasons are reliable — anyone living outside the equatorial band will continue to have colder and warmer seasons, probably for the rest of our lives. But many of us are realizing that larger cycles may […]

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