Category Archives: Uncategorized

I wrote this on Facebook on May 17th, but it’s still mostly relevant six weeks later. — I’m more interested in suggesting how we think about this pandemic than what we should think. I see a lot of people sharing … Continue reading →

When I was young, I had this idea of education preparing me for a career with established parameters, a kind of ready-made slot, and I really didn’t want to be slotted. “Writer” seemed like a good career, because it fit … Continue reading →

I spend a lot of my time envisioning the future. I’ve been literally invested in it for a long time. Almost exactly twenty years ago, I started an ebook company, a project based more on speculation than on hard evidence. … Continue reading →

To generate some grist for exploring the prison-maze of the mind, I’ll relate a few key issues in my life, starting with my ambivalent relationship to self-challenge. From my teens through my early twenties, I suffered intermittently from depression and, … Continue reading →

What’s driven my recent posts hasn’t really been a desire to criticize education itself. I’m groping my way toward the topic of despair and suicide, which is really hazardous to talk about, so I’m approaching it from a distance, setting … Continue reading →

Education, part two, on the topic of motivation, meaning, and escaping the mental prison-maze. When I was seventeen, I cried myself to sleep in the dorm at Lewis & Clark College. I wanted to be a writer. I’d had a … Continue reading →

Education. I think it’s appropriate to be at least a little dismayed by your education. I certainly am. Education should give you the keys to escape your unique prison-maze of the mind. Much of what you endure as “education” will … Continue reading →

For the last year or so, I’ve had half a dozen preoccupations at the back of my mind that I think are related: education, motivation, the creative process, depression and despair, suicide, and “important things we don’t talk about” in … Continue reading →

So my friend Mher wanted my review of Joker. The movie has got me thinking and rethinking the definition of art versus propaganda. I’ve long held and still hold that art and politics are separate modes. Art is the explication … Continue reading →