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Archive for the ‘Spirit matter’ Category

Reassembling democracy?

Posted in Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , on December 6, 2016 | 8 Comments »

Here’s the abstract I’ve just sent in for the keynote I’ll be giving at the Reassembling Democracy: Ritual as Cultural Resource conference in Oslo in February:

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Returning to Sedona

Posted in Eco-culture, Science & society, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 20, 2016 | 1 Comment »

Three things have drawn me repeatedly to the red rock landscape around the small north-central Arizona city of Sedona. First, and most obvious, is the landscape itself, which counts among the most distinctive and stunningly beautiful in the world. Second is the set of processes that landscape has set in motion in the conditions of late capitalist […]

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Interview & autobio

Posted in Process-relational thought, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 31, 2016 | 4 Comments »

Interviews are funny things: you have to think on the spot, but later realize how deeply and profoundly imperfect (!) was your choice of words. The Imperfect Buddha Podcast has an interview with me in which host Matthew O’Connor (of Post-Traditional Buddhism) and I talk at length about Buddhism, process-relational metaphysics, panpsychism, social constructionism, cognitive science, […]

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A process view of “religious Nones”

Posted in Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 18, 2016 | 4 Comments »

While I’ve done no formal surveys, my best guess is that about half my students here at the U of Vermont (at least those in Environmental Studies) would fit into the category of “religiously unaffiliated,” the so-called “religious Nones” — a category that now makes up almost 1 in 4 Americans and over a third of those […]

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Peirce’s “long revolution”

Posted in Anthropocene, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 4, 2015 | 10 Comments »

As the world’s refugee crisis builds — reminding us that much worse movements of people loom ahead, and much worse wars, as climate systems destabilize and the capitalist world-ecology unravels in the decades and centuries ahead — I can’t help asking myself what, if anything, philosophy can offer in response. It depends on which philosophy, of course. But […]

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The many ecologies of Laudato Si

Posted in Climate change, Politics, Spirit matter, tagged , , , on June 18, 2015 | 9 Comments »

Now that Laudato Si, the Papal Encyclical “On Care for Our Common Home,” is available for all to read, the punditocracy can debate it to their hearts’ content. As the most far-reaching statement by the single largest (relatively united) religious denomination on the planet, it is likely to have an immense impact on global conversations around […]

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Quaking the subject

Posted in Process-relational thought, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , on April 13, 2014 | 4 Comments »

This post continues my thinking on the topic of a process-relational “bodymind practice” — an existential art or “technique of the self” building on Buddhist meditation practice reinterpreted and augmented through process-relational philosophy. In this post, I incorporate insights obtained through the practice of Quaker silent worship. See the posts “ What a bodymind can do” parts 1,  2,  3, and update for background […]

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Happy phytomorphosis

Posted in Eco-culture, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , on December 24, 2013 | 6 Comments »

  Plant scientists are wondering if plants really communicate with each other (and with insects and other organisms) or if they just “eavesdrop” on each other’s “soliloquies.” At stake in the debate are the definitions of communication (e.g., is it necessarily intentional, and is intentionality necessarily conscious intentionality?) and behavior (is it something that only animals do?). […]

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Querying Natural Religion: Responses to Latour

Posted in Anthropocene, Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , on November 24, 2013 | 10 Comments »

The following are my notes from “Querying Natural Religion: Immanence, Gaia, and the Parliament of Lively Things.” (Live-blogging did not work, as we didn’t have a live internet connection.) These notes are followed by a brief set of post-event summary comments. The setting: an airplane hangar of a hall in the Baltimore Convention Center. This […]

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Half-Buddhist, half-Marxist

Posted in Spirit matter, tagged , , on July 2, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

For anyone who thought “socially engaged Buddhism” (a.k.a. liberation Buddhism, Buddhist socialism, et al.) was a marginal movement within the Buddhist world, Bruce Smithers’s Tricycle article “Occupy Buddhism” shows it reaches high up the (sort of) hierarchy of publicly known Buddhists… to the Dalai Lama. It’s a selective analysis (the DL is much more pragmatic […]

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AAR panel on Latour’s Gifford Lectures

Posted in Academe, Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , on June 19, 2013 | 2 Comments »

The AAR panel responding to 2013 Holberg Prize winner Bruno Latour’s Gifford Lectures has now been scheduled. Information is as follows. QUERYING NATURAL RELIGION: IMMANENCE, GAIA, & THE PARLIAMENT OF LIVELY THINGS

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Pretty dark out there…

Posted in Spirit matter, tagged , , , , on April 4, 2013 | 4 Comments »

Says NASA: “It turns out that roughly 70% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest – everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter – adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t […]

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