" I would say that life understood is life lived. But, the paradoxes bug me, and I can learn to love and make love to the paradoxes that bug me, and on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion." - Timothy "Speed" Levitch in Richard Linklater's 2002 film Waking Life
"A waterfall is a cataract, a "breaking" or "downrushing" of water over a precipice. We hear the ceaseless thundering of the waterfall before we see its seething, perpendicular rapids and the enveloping mists born of torrential, continuous downpour uniting highest and lowest. In its natural setting of rainforest, woods and mountains, the force and beauty of a waterfall seem sublime and sacred. 'Amid the waters, under the high cliff ... even the sluggish soul can rise to the noblest concerns,' wrote the fourteenth-century humanist Petrarch of his favorite haunt, a waterfall in Vaucluse, Provence, the source of the river Sorgue.(48)" - The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images (Taschen, 2010)
"What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love." - Lord Byron, from the epic poem Don Juan, 1824
“Point of view is usually only conspicuous when it is oppositional. The dominant, prevailing point of view remains invisible or apparently neutral and objective” (14) -- Sally Potter in "The Prospects for Political Cinema Today" Cineaste 37.1 (2011): 6-17.
There is only one holistic system of systems. One . . . interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multinational dominion of dollars. . . . It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic—and subatomic—and galactic structure of things today. . . . There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and IT&T and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. . . . The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. -- Arthur Jensen in Sydney Lumet's 1976 film Network (cited in "The World is a Business." )
"There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit. The assertion of dogma closes the mind and turns a nation, a civilization into a regiment of ghosts — obedient ghosts, or tortured ghosts." -- Jacob Bronowski, Ascent of Man (1973)
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Brivanlou, Ali and David Sinclair. "Is Aging a Disease?" Scientific Controversies (January 25, 2025) ["Are decaying, aging, and dying truly scientifically predestined? And could there be a cure? With advances in biology and genetics, could scientists pause, or even reverse, the process? Would a cure for aging indefinitely stave off death? And what would the implications be for 8 billion people on this planet if we cease to die? To learn more, PW Director of Sciences Janna Levin hosted two brilliant biologists in conversation: Professor David Sinclair of Harvard—a researcher committed to aging in reverse—and Professor Ali Brivanlou of Rockefeller University—an explorer of human embryonic stem cells, and impassioned defender of whiskey, cigarettes, and meat."]
Christianson, Amy and Gavin Jones. "Fire Ecology (Wildfires & Indigenous Fire Management)." Ologies (January 10, 2024) ["As wildfires burn across L.A. — and my neighborhood evacuates — we thought it would be a good time to encore these Fire Ecology episodes so I can literally catch my breath. First Dr. Gavin Jones brings the heat talking about what fire is, how hot it burns, fire trends, tinderboxes, lots and lots of forest fire flim-flam, tolerant wombats, Angelina Jolie Movies, cunning pine cones, thick bark, Indigenous fire stewardship and more. After the break, co-host of the podcast Good Fire, Dr. Amy Christianson, talks about how cultural burns and prescribed blazes can create healthy forests. She also discusses Indigenous history, collaborations between Western science & First Nations elders, Aboriginal thoughts on cultural burns, more flim-flam, evacuations, snowmelt, hunting strategies, land stewardship, happy trees, climate strategies, and the social science behind wildfire education. Also learning from Native wildfire fighters."]
Critchley, Simon and Cornel West. "On Mysticism." Pioneer Works (February 6, 2025) ["How can we find meaning in an apparently meaningless cosmos? This fall, we were thrilled to host the launch of Simon Critchley’s latest book, On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy, with a special dialogue between the author and Dr. Cornel West. The longtime friends discussed nihilism, the boundaries of divinity and reason, and the “funky” stuff of mystical experience. As the barbarism of our times reaches a fever pitch, Dr. West reminds us: “This is nothing new. We are a wretched species, no matter our color, gender, sexual orientation, or nation. And yet, we’re also wonderful.”"]
Cunningham, Vinson, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz. "The Substance and the New Horror of the Modified Body." Critics at Large (October 3, 2024) ["In “The Substance,” a darkly satirical horror movie directed by Coralie Fargeat, Demi Moore plays an aging Hollywood actress who strikes a tech-infused Faustian bargain to unleash a younger, “more perfect” version of herself. Gruesome side effects ensue. Fargeat’s film plays on the fact that female aging is often seen as its own brand of horror—and that we’ve devised increasingly extreme methods of combating it. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss “The Substance” and “A Different Man,” another new release that questions our culture’s obsession with perfecting our physical forms. In recent years, the smorgasbord of products and procedures promising to enhance our bodies and preserve our youth has only grown; social media has us looking at ourselves more than ever before. No wonder, then, that horror as a genre has been increasingly preoccupied with our uneasy relationship to our own exteriors. “We are embodied. It is a struggle. It is beautiful. It’s something to wrestle with forever. Just as you think that you’ve caught up to your current embodiment, something changes,” Schwartz says. “And so how do we make our peace with it?”"]
Donner, Fred. "On the History of Early Islām." The Secret History of Western Esotericism (February 7, 2025) ["In this interview, Professor Fred Donner gives us a superb introduction to the earliest decades of the movement which would become known as Islām. We begin our discussion with the sīra literature, what it is (a body of written accounts of the life and times of the prophet Muḥammad, starting from a century or so after his death and continuing thereafter) and how reliable it is as historical documentation (not very – that ever-elusive grain of truth has got to be in there, but it’s finding exactly where it is that’s the problem). We then ask similar questions of the Qur’ān, and get a more positive answer; for Donner, the Qur’ān is a genuinely-early document, although there are open questions as to how long a period of development it underwent, what exactly happened when ‘Uthman decided to standardize the ‘text’, and a host of other matters. Nevertheless, this is one place to look for solid evidence of what the early Believers were believing. The other place to look is a fascinating text known as the ‘Constitution of Medinah’ or ‘Umma Document’, a treaty, preserved in multiple, slightly-different forms among the sīra and other works, between Muḥammad, his followers, and the various groups present at Yathrīb, better known as Medina. This work really is a window onto the earliest political manifestation of the Believers’ movement. We then turn to the first few decades of the ‘Islamic’ or ‘Arab conquests’ (neither term seems to be quite right), discussing the weird silence in our sources about what went on, precisely, and how we can interpret around these sources."]
Turfah, Mary. "The Most Moral Army." Los Angeles Review of Books (October 1, 2024) ["Mary Turfah examines Israeli officials’ weaponization of language, particularly that of medicine, in an attempt to reframe their genocide in Gaza."]
Miller, Ian. "Self-Esteem: An American History." New Books in Intellectual History (November 17, 2024) ["By the end of the twentieth century, the idea of self-esteem had become enormously influential. A staggering amount of psychological research and self-help literature was being published and, before long, devoured by readers. Self-esteem initiatives permeated American schools. Self-esteem became the way of understanding ourselves, our personalities, our interactions with others. Nowadays, however, few people think much about the concept of self-esteem—but perhaps we should. Self-Esteem: An American History (Polity, 2024) by Dr. Ian Miller is the first historical study to explore the emotional politics of self-esteem in modern America. Written with verve and insight, Dr. Miller’s expert analysis looks at the critiques of self-help that accuse it of propping up conservative agendas by encouraging us to look solely inside ourselves to resolve life’s problems. At the same time, he reveals how African American, LGBTQ+, and feminist activists have endeavoured to build positive collective identities based on self-esteem, pride, and self-respect. This revelatory book will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in the history of mental health and well-being, and in how the politics of self-esteem is played out in today’s US society and culture."]
Pierson, Paul and Eric Schickler."Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era." New Books in Public Policy (December 17, 2024) ["American democracy is in trouble. At the heart of the contemporary crisis is a mismatch between America's Constitution and today's nationalized, partisan politics. Although American political institutions remain federated and fragmented, the ground beneath them has moved, with the national subsuming and transforming the local. In Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era (U Chicago Press, 2024), political scientists Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler bring today's challenges into new perspective. Attentive to the different coalitions, interests, and incentives that define the Democratic and Republican parties, they show how contemporary polarization emerged in a rapidly nationalizing country and how it differs from polarization in past eras. In earlier periods, three key features of the political landscape-state parties, interest groups, and media-varied locally and reinforced the nation's stark regional diversity. They created openings for new policy demands and factional divisions that disrupted party lines. But this began to change in the 1960s as the two parties assumed clearer ideological identities and the power of the national government expanded, raising the stakes of conflict. Together with technological and economic change, these developments have reconfigured state parties, interest groups, and media in self-reinforcing ways. Now thoroughly integrated into a single political order and tightly coupled with partisanship, they no longer militate against polarization. Instead, they accelerate it. Precisely because today's polarization is different, it is self-perpetuating and, indeed, intensifying. With the precision and acuity characteristic of both authors' earlier work, Pierson and Schickler explain what these developments mean for American governance and democracy. They show that America's political system is distinctively, and acutely, vulnerable to an authoritarian movement emerging in the contemporary Republican Party, which has both the motive and the means to exploit America's unusual Constitutional design."]
Sharma, Ruchir. "America's Addiction to Easy Money." Capitalisn't (December 19, 2024) ["Are bailouts the new “trickle-down” economics? Have government debt and deficits caused capitalism’s collapse—thus ending the American Dream? Ruchir Sharma is a well-known columnist for the Financial Times, the author of bestselling books Breakout Nations and The Rise and Fall of Nations, and an investment banker who worked as Morgan Stanley’s head of emerging markets for 25 years. His new book, What Went Wrong With Capitalism, traces the roots of current disaffection with our capitalist economy to unabashed stimulus and too much government intervention. Take an example: Sharma writes that the United States federal government has introduced 3,000 new regulations in the last twenty years, and withdrawn just 20 over the same span. He likens the Federal Reserve’s constant bailouts—under chairs appointed by presidents from both parties—to the opioid crisis, in which the solution created more problems than the pain it was designed to treat. Sharma joins Bethany and Luigi to explain how constant government intervention leads to inefficient “zombie” firms, higher property prices, housing shortages, massive inequality, and a historic government debt and deficit crisis. Together, they discuss the first step to a cure—a correct diagnosis of the problem—and how to approach the treatment without exacerbating the problems. In the process, they leave us with a renewed understanding of how “pro-business is not the same as pro-capitalism,” a distinction that Sharma says “continues to elude us.”"]
West, Stephen. "Nietzsche and Critchley on the tragic perspective. (Amor Fati pt. 2)." Philosophize This! #212 (September 30, 2024) ["Today we begin by talking about Nietzsche's concept of life-affirmation. Contrasting it with the renunciative, rational traditions of Western thought. The episode then delves into Greek tragedy through the lens of Simon Critchley's work; making a case for how these ancient plays offer a life-affirming perspective by embracing the ambiguity of human existence."]
Ziblatt, Daniel. "How Big Money Changed the Democratic Game." Capitalisn't (January 2, 2024) ["Daniel Ziblatt is an American political scientist, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University, and the co-author (with Steven Levitsky) of several bestselling books, including How Democracies Die and Tyranny of the Minority. Ziblatt writes from the position that what defines strong democracies is free and fair competition for power, inclusive participation, and a package of civil liberties that make those first two conditions possible. 2024 saw voters in more than 60 countries go to the polls—and deliver difficult outcomes for incumbents and traditional political parties. This week, Ziblatt joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss the fate of democracy after 2024. They explore how big money and corporate power have destabilized democracies worldwide by interfering with the conditions for free and fair competition for power. The consequence has been the movement of voters toward political extremes, which in turn can often threaten economic growth, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Nevertheless, should we judge the strength of democracy by process or outcome? Does democracy still thrive when the people vote for undemocratic politicians and parties? Together, Ziblatt and our co-hosts discuss how to curb global democratic decline by realigning government away from the interests of corporations or big money and back to those of the people."]
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