The Universe is a Messy Place to Play . . .

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum morbid phenomena of the most varied kind come to pass.”

Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci

Art by and Photo credit: Lorenzo Quinn

Our models of “reality” are very small and tidy, the universe of experience is huge and untidy, and no model can ever include all the huge untidiness perceived by uncensored consciousness.

Robert Anton Wilson

For every poet it is always morning in the world…This is the benediction that is celebrated, a fresh language and a fresh people, and this is the frightening duty owed.

Derek Walcott, in his Nobel lecture

“No worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception.”

Albert Einstein

So dive in and find, create, and facilitate beauty and wonder. Stir things up and see what happens.

pelvis-with-the-distance-1943-jpglarge

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Light in the Studio Part III

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Some More Ways to Sustain and Develop Open Minds.

Illustration by Maurice Sendak

Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for teachers who wish to promote the development of open minds.

1: Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.

2: Do not think it worthwhile to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.

3: Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.

4: When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

5: Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.

6: Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

7: Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

8: Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.

9: Be scrupulously truthful, even when truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

via Brain Pickings

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Keep Your Mind Open and a Firm Hold on Realty. (We are in for a bumpy ride)

All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, you and me is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain’t got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time however he likes, so long as he don’t interfere with nobody else’ (!!)

H. L. Mencken

voltaire

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Mike Schneider: In the Post-Truth World

 We all have our inner toddler fascist rodent living in our skin, but if we feed him/her with poetry and love s/he will grow bored and calm the ceaseless rage of neediness. We need to make connections internally to understand the mayhem inherent in our enemies’ soul. We need to understand the extent of the utter eclipse of empathy by fear and the black hole of need that will suck the life of our existence.

Vox Populi's avatarVox Populi

the game of truth or consequences
has no consequence. What does it matter
if insurance agents quote Thoreau? The mass of men
still lead lives of quiet desperation. Guns
are not on sale at the mall. My best friend still
has pancreatic cancer. My other best friend smokes
a stinky cigar he’d like to poke into the president’s
face. Meet the world’s 20 insurance billionaires
is something no one wants to do. Only I am
a narcissist in the post-truth world. Only I understand
tyrants as a kind of fruit that grows on trees, many
of them planted by intelligence. There is no intelligence
in the post-truth world. A small tyrant lives inside
me. I feed him poetry. In the post-truth world, no one
has been shot dead at the movies. Dimpled small white
spheroids do not soar over meadows toward holes marked
by flagpoles. His throat shredded by carcinoma…

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