Category Archives: philosophy

thoughts on depression

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Counterpunchin’ preacher cries foul on Pontiff’s #FakeNews

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Know Thyself.


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Jack: ‘You are the truest person I’ve ever known’; thoughts on ‘shadowlands’

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Poisonous Pedagogy and our Culture of Violence


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Melancholia, Depression, and Treatment Models


‘Melancholy’, by Edgar Degas
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On the Occasion of my mum’s birthday, may i invite you to talk about death?

 

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Peter Matthiessen’s “In Paradise”

I have just finished my first reading of this last novel by Peter Matthiessen, and I came online to see what others found and experienced in reading this powerful book.  Most of what I found tells well the subject matter and impact – best described in the various summaries of the work.

What I did not find, and missed not finding it, was a discussion of the questions raised and answers given.  Most reviews seemed to feel the novel gives no answers, and certainly it has that effect upon one in the last pages where one would expect an answer to be found.  But it is a truly beautiful work, and I think it a great shame that the internet seems not to contain, at least so far, meaningful discussion of what it might mean – most reviews found it a stark though compelling compilation of the frailties of the human character and the inadequacy of religion to address such frailties in any meaningful way.  While these are indeed subjects within the text, I find so much more therein that none of the reviews I have found so far have adequately addressed.

I am beginning my second reading.  It is not a long novel – can be read in one night really.  On this forum we’ve discussed many of the issues raised, and they are harsh issues indeed.  To begin with, have a look at ‘Lady with an Ermine’.

300px-Dama_z_gronostajemhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_with_an_Ermine

The novel begins and ends with this Leonardo Da Vinci painting.

As I explore it for the second time, I would so love to have company on this journey.  It takes us into the mind and heart by means of a mindless, heartless place – Auschwitz.  If that was not hell, then we do not know what hell is.

Come with me and see where we end up.

 

Into Light: Part Three – From Script Into Lyre

(Part One is here.;  Part Two is here)

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(‘david playing his lyre’ by juliania)

Now from ‘a little Plato’ to ‘a little Bible’.  I take a very short cut.  I shall proceed directly to the second writing in the sand by the one often addressed publicly as Teacher by his contemporaries, whose name is Jesus, the name still often heard from our lips, when we feel strongly about something and at the same time feel free with our language.

I find this a remarkable phenomenon, namely, that we occasionally feel free to express what’s in our hearts with his name.  It seems to reveal, in spite of our intentions, that at heart we are not indifferent to him, but rather touched by him — one way or another.  And that I find as something to wonder at after all these centuries.

The writing in the sand takes place in Jerusalem, in the Temple that traces its origin to King Solomon.  Matthew, the writer of the first gospel, also traces the genealogy of Jesus, his bloodline, to exactly the same source, King Solomon.  He does not hesitate to spell it out as follows:  “David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.”  That is to say, by another man’s wife, whose name is Bathsheba.  I find this an astonishing prelude to Jesus being in this Temple in Jerusalem, as he faces one particular woman caught in adultery.

Now I am ready to consider the writing in the earth that he does with his finger in the Temple in Jerusalem, (John, Chapter VIII.)

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Into Light: Part Two: From Lyre to Script

pythagorean_theoremFrom Lyre to Script

(Part One is here...)

It is here in the Pythagorean Script that something written takes precedence over something voiced, down to the letters of the alphabet that are visible to us on the pages of Euclidean geometry,  next to points, lines, figures, solids.  It’s their position on the page to our eye that counts, not the sound that goes with them in the spoken word.

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