Appearance

How we present ourselves to others Many years before I was introduced to the Ancient Maya, a little book by Erving Goffman entitled, “The Presentation Of Self In Everyday Life,” set me on the path of becoming an armchair anthropologist. Actually, it may have been his insights that sparked my later interest in the Maya, […]

True Dialogue

Thinking together to learn and make sound judgements on behalf of a whole system The Free Dictionary defines dialogue as “An exchange of ideas or opinions on a particular issue, especially with a view to reaching an amicable agreement.” In the image of these spheres, diverse in size, tonality and texture I can imagine the exchange of electrochemical […]

Purpose

Who do we listen to? What are the messages we’re receiving?   “Makin’ your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got…” Cheers (Theme song) Messages coming from others— You could…                                               […]

The Noosphere

Outside and above the biosphere there is a field of mind. ”Because satellite dishes look skyward, I sometimes imagine lines of light, like coherent laser beams, streaming out of them toward their satellites. If those beams could somehow become visible at night, globally and simultaneously, the resulting web of crisscrossing lines and waves would be […]

Reframing The Ecological Challenge

How we talk and what we see determines how we act The Data The climate has been changing since the Earth coalesced. It will continue to do so until it’s subsumed by the sun billions of years from now. The recent concern is that human beings have accelerated the rate of change—10 to 100 times […]

Irritable? Got A Case Of The Blahs?

Gratitude can turn it around in short order Gratitude: From the Latin gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness depending on the context.  What It Does Gratitude works in at least two ways. It shifts negative thoughts to positive thoughts by recognizing that something in life is good. And because the specific good we think […]

Aesthetic Experience

One of the primary ways to feed the soul Philosophers since Plato have sought to define and describe the aesthetic experience. Among them there’s agreement that it’s a capacity unique to human beings, a contributor to well-being and different for each individual, but there’s no consensus on what it is in essence. This is understandable […]

What’s So Critical About Critical Thinking?

It’s a vaccine against lies, disinformation and conspiracy theories. My grandson, Ethan Miller, and I face off in a heady game of checkers. In an era when untruths have been proliferating across platforms in the form of disinformation, misinformation, fake news, lies and conspiracy theories, it’s refreshing and hope-inducing to know that there’s a vaccine […]

Appreciating The Aesthetic Dimensions

A blog series featuring form, line, color, contrast, texture, gradation… Television tower This posting begins a series that will focus on the aesthetic tools that visual artists and others use, singly and in combination, to create still and moving images that accomplish specific communication objectives. Knowing the purpose of an image before we pick up […]