Meditations
 Meditations
I Want My Country Back!
Martin LeFevre: "I had a cousin, born a few days after I was in the same Midwestern town, with whom I was close growing up. In some ways Mike and I were as different as night and day, but in other ways, especially in political views, we thought alike...There's a curious commonality between cousin Mike's left-wing cry ("I want my country back!" ) and the right-wing echo.
Aug 26, 2010, 11:27am
Meditations
Chinese and American Confucianism
Martin LeFevre: "China just passed Japan as the second largest economy in the world. Never mind that per capita income in China is still at Algeria's level. It's an important milestone, though it raises the question of qualitative vs. quantitative change in China, and the world.
Aug 23, 2010, 5:27pm
Meditations
Back to Basics — Good and Evil
Martin LeFevre: "One of the best studies of good and evil by an American writer is Herman Melville's "Billy Budd." If you haven't read the novella, there's an excellent 1962 film with the same title, which stars, and was directed and produced by, Peter Ustinov. (Revised)
Aug 21, 2010, 5:28pm
Meditations
The Unmet Sorrow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Martin LeFevre: "Here we are again, 65 years and tens of thousands of nuclear weapons later, commemorating the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Perhaps it's because my first political memory, at ten, is of the Cuban Missile Crisis, that the issue of nuclear proliferation still wrings my heart and wracks my mind.
Aug 7, 2010, 11:29am
Meditations
What Is Human Freedom?
Martin LeFevre: "A few friends and I have been asking: Are there choices in life, but is the chooser an illusion? If so, what is the basis of right action? These questions go to the heart of the problem of freedom and determinism.
Aug 2, 2010, 5:35pm
Meditations
Afghanistan: The Tunnel at the End of the Light
Martin LeFevre: "There is no more important and revealing issue delineating the disappointment of clear-thinking people in America and beyond than Obama's senseless continuation of the Bush/Cheney policies in Afghanistan.
Jul 29, 2010, 11:48am
Meditations
Palin's 'Grizzly Moms' Hard to Bear
Martin LeFevre: "Sarah Palin recently granted her 50th endorsement of Republican office seekers. All but one are women. She is positioning herself as the biggest and baddest of the "Grizzly Moms," fighting to defend the indefensible, sustain the unsustainable, and keep going what is already gone.
Jul 19, 2010, 2:31pm
Meditations
Spy Games: Old Cold War and Hot New War
Martin LeFevre: "Two spy stories, in as many weeks, attest to how the old game of espionage has entered a territory somewhere between absurd and bizarre, and become dangerously irrelevant. Last week's exchange of Russian and American spies was, we were told, a mere speed bump...
Jul 15, 2010, 12:45pm
Meditations
The Urgency of Psychological Revolution
Martin LeFevre: "The foundational philosophical investigation to which I devoted my youth flowed from this question: Why are humans generating increasing disorder and chaos, when we evolved along with all other life, and life moves in dynamic order and wholeness?
Jul 11, 2010, 1:23pm
Meditations
The Enlightenment Was a Misnomer
Martin LeFevre: "Both belief and reason are products of thought, but insight is not. Insight is always in the moment; beliefs and knowledge are rooted in the past. Therefore it's the awakening of insight, not the application of reason, that is the way ahead for the individual and humankind...
Jul 8, 2010, 3:38pm
Meditations
4th of July, 2010 - Dunghills From Diamonds?
Martin LeFevre: "This weekend Americans are celebrating the 4th of July, the date that commemorates the birth of the United States 234 years ago. As Tea Party chauvinism metastasizes and merges with the larger cancer of the Republican Party, it's fitting to note that one year before the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Samuel Johnson uttered the famous maxim, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
Jul 4, 2010, 10:22am
Meditations
What Is the Way Ahead?
Martin LeFevre: "It isn't just the environment that's in crisis - climate change or the oil gusher at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Nor is it the economy, national or global, and the absurd disparity of wealth between the rich and the poor all over the world. It's human consciousness itself that is in crisis.
Jul 1, 2010, 11:04am
Meditations
Palin Gobbles Up the Dough At Turkey Tech
Martin LeFevre: "California State University Stanislaus, known for years as Turkey Tech, is located at the geographical center of California in the most productive agricultural area in the world. It sounds like Sarah Palin felt right at home there for her controversial appearance on Friday evening.
Jun 27, 2010, 11:43am
Meditations
Mandela, Obama, and Greatness
Martin LeFevre: "Invictus" is the latest in Clint Eastwood's streak of good to excellent directorial forays in the autumn of his career. Though a bit lumbering, predictable, and sentimental, it's worth two hours of your life, if only to ponder the arc of Nelson Mandela's political and personal life.
Jun 22, 2010, 4:14pm
Meditations
The Case of Peter Erlinder
Martin LeFevre: "A small item in the news about the arrest in Rwanda of the leading defense lawyer for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Peter Erlinder, has big implications for the international rule of law.
Jun 16, 2010, 1:13pm
|
FountainofLight.net